>I can choose to pity or hate him, but having chosen I can’t pretend the choice didn’t exist; it’s something I had to do.
I've had to face similar situations in my family life, and this part really resonated with me. It's an extremely eloquent way of capturing something I've never been able to put into words. Thank you for that.
He has abrasive behaviour due to his circumstances. The author has the choice of overlooking the negatives and empathizing with him (pity), or rejecting his behaviour regardless of why (hate).
Both reactions can be rationalized and he has the ability to choose which way he leans.
When you have to make hard choices in life (staying with a partner, maintaining a relationship with a toxic family member, supporting a friend that's behaving in a way you don't approve), it's easy to be on the fence since you will have arguments for and against the decision.
However, once we choose, we tend to incorporate that choice into our narrative as the solution that makes sense, and reinforce it to the point that we end up forgetting there was once an alternative. "I left my wife, it was miserable, I'm so glad I left", etc.
It is good to not forget that there was once a choice to make, the choice wasn't easy, and there were arguments in the other side that could have won.
I'm really worried for my teenage son. Dating was brutal when I was doing it 20 years ago, and as far as I can tell, it's gotten so, so much worse since. Modern dating can't literally be "winner take all", but it sure looks like it's getting close.
I strongly disagree, but my evidence is all anecdotal. I'm not saying that literally every guy can find a partner, but I have seen all manner of men end up with perfectly lovely partners (and/or occasional sex partners). And when I say "all manner" I mean dumb guys, ugly guys, short guys, guys with terrible hygiene. The spectrum of men I have personally witnessed have success with women is vast and diverse and even kind of disgusting.
And how many men who are unbeknownst to you alone and completely struggling in the dating market have you seen but are conviently ignored for a couple flashy examples that stuck out in your mind?
My take on it has always been that you wouldn't want to date someone who picks on physical features like that anyway, it's a giant red flag for an overall shitty personality.
Nearly everyone has physical dealbreakers, and height is a very socially acceptable one that the vast majority of women have. Most women also filter on somewhat less politically correct factors like race. The total hypocrisy when it comes to this topic is considered acceptable since women control the market.
The solution is to stop dating for dating's sake, and just get out there and socialize with people. At some point, you'll end up in conversation with someone really interesting and things can/will escalate from there.
Get out of the "dating scene" and just do stuff with people.
I don't think it's that bad. Being the chosen one is harder, but making connections is way easier.
I am part of the generation that went through the change and saw both "systems", and I personally much prefer the current one - at least you never reach a dead end like you did when you depended on friends of friends to meet news people. It just requires you to be more proactive.
"It’s 2021, and it would be pretty hard to find someone who would come out and say that women deserve to be treated worse than men by default, and similarly difficult to find someone believes men shouldn’t have rights. In that sense at least we are all feminists and men’s rights activists, but nearly 100% of everyone reading this would have felt some emotional recoil from being called at least one of those two things. Why? Because there’s a vast difference between a person who believes the stated beliefs of a group as opposed to a person who holds membership in a group as a defining part of their identity."
The piece of the puzzle that this misses is the difference in perceived reality between the groups - the definitions those groups use to define equal and the policies they think would provide equality. Sometimes the policies of the two groups in question are actually at odds with each other, and even their own stated intent (equality).
I’ve seen this thrown around by Jordan Peterson and his fans but I’ve never met anyone, regardless of how crazy their ideology was, advocate for equality of outcomes outside of basic necessities. I’m convinced it’s a strawman.
You might say that marxism is for more equal outcomes than we have under today's system, but that's true of lots of things that aren't marxist (any form of progressive taxation to fund social programs, for example).
But even that's sort of an oversimplification and doesn't do either marxism or "equality of outcomes" justice.
No, it's not. Marx was critical of the capitalist mode of production. Marxism is a lens of looking at economics and sociology.
Communism and socialism, which are considered different in modern writing but were the same in Marx's time, are something Marx believes are an inevitable outcome of capitalism.
Marxism suggests that when the workers own the companies, then benefits are distributed to the workers who own/operate the company. Profit doesn't get centered in individuals, it gets spread across the workers of a company.
Folks like Lenin/Stalin took this idea further and created an authoritarian regime out of the ideas, and create what we commonly think of as 'communism' in the states.
Edit: Parent comment asked a question about Marxism, I'm getting downvoted for explaining some high level concepts of Marxism? Do folks want me to dive deeper into the dialectical models Marx discussed? Lol
Not at all. Marxism is a method of analyzing history and the present through the lens of class conflict.
Generally "Marxism" is thrown around as a boogie man term by people with little understanding for something approximating extreme authoritarianism in which the state owns all the means of production and allocates everyone the same resources.
It's not "a boogie [sic] man". Marxist governments were definitely not "analyzing history", they were enacting government policies. That's what governments do, unsurprisingly.
(Source: I grew up in a Marxist country and was taught Marxism by a Marxist teacher.)
You're probably thinking of Marxism-Leninism, though it's hard to know without knowing what country you're talking about. I'm not even sure what a "Marxist" country could possibly entail. They'd dedicate all resources to analyzing society through the lens of historical materialism?
Marxism-Leninism is a strict subset of Marxism. The Marxian ideas about stages of societal development for example have no bearing about whether you should focus on light or heavy industries.
If you're talking about the USSR, there was actually some dissension after the death of Lenin on whether light industry or heavy industry should be focused on. Lenin wanted to focus especially on neither, with his NEP that would create a temporary market economy to figure that out on it's own.
Eventually, the decision was taken to focus on heavy industry. The decisive arguments for a focus on heavy industry had nothing to do with Marxian economics - those arguments went either way. The main determinant of the Soviet focus on heavy industry was the failure of Stalin to obtain security assurances from Western Europe, leading to a focus on heavy industry for military purposes.
At least in the 20s this was a solid move, because Soviet heavy industry saved tens of millions of lives by stalling the Nazi offensive, whose plan was to kill 50% of the Soviet population (something very bad).
After the end of WW2 however, it was pointless in retrospect to continue the focus on heavy industry. But the Soviet Union did not really calculate the geopolitcal impact of nuclear weapons and built a military that could rival NATO, and this required a lot of heavy industry.
Pretty much, Marxism had nothing to do with Soviet investment in heavy industry. The main reason was to feed the Soviet war machine, from the very beginning.
If this statement were true then the statement above about Marxism being "a method of analyzing history" would be false. So there's an obvious contradiction right there, just like a claim that a human is a head is incompatible with the statement that a leg is a subset of a human.
> The Marxian ideas about stages of societal development for example have no bearing about whether you should focus on light or heavy industries.
I didn't claim any such thing. You simply asked what did our Marxist government focus on, and I answered. And there's no reason to jump hundreds of kilometers away into the USSR and decades into the past into the NEP period; our economic failures stretched all the way from 1960's onwards all the way to the fall of the Iron Curtain.
>If this statement were true then the statement above about Marxism being "a method of analyzing history" would be false. So there's an obvious contradiction right there, just like a claim that a human is a head is incompatible with the statement that a leg is a subset of a human.
I don't see the incompatibility. Lenin used Marxism, a method of analyzing history, to derive a political program for the Russian empire. Not everything that the Soviet Union did was done because of Marxism Leninism - the vast majority was done out of practical considerations, outside of the general guidelines.
>I didn't claim any such thing. You simply asked what did our Marxist government focus on, and I answered. And there's no reason to jump hundreds of kilometers away into the USSR and decades into the past into the NEP period; our economic failures stretched all the way from 1960's onwards all the way to the fall of the Iron Curtain.
You were talking about the focus on heavy industries of the Soviet Union. I explained to you why this focus on heavy industry had nothing to do with Marxism, and everything to do with the geopolitics of the Soviet Union. I gave an explanation that was valid from death of Lenin to the end of the Cold War. It seems to me that my thesis that the Soviet government wasn't a "Marxist government" but rather a government whose political program was initially based partly on a Marxist analysis of history, but were many of the fatal decisions and errors had nothing to do with Marxism.
Subsets can't contain elements that their supersets lack. If A is a subset of B, then if x is an element of A, x is also an element of B. So the claim that a state ideology is a subset of a method of analyzing history would necessarily imply that methods of analyzing history habitually contain elements of state ideologies at their core, which I haven't observed. Hence I see a contradiction there.
> You were talking about the focus on heavy industries of the Soviet Union.
I did not grow up in the Soviet Union, hence I wasn't talking about it.
Marxism Leninism was on paper the state ideology of the Soviet Union, sure. But in practice the vast majority of decisions taken by the Soviet Union did not have much to do with the official state ideology.
As for a method of understanding history containing and ideology, this is absolutely the case. All methods of analyzing history and social systems at some level rely on an ideology. Marxism as a method of analyzing history also is an ideology. For other methods of analyzing history often the ideology defaults to the current ruling ideology.
Marxism also contains economic theory, and social theory, all in the goal of analyzing history and changing it. Marxism writ large contains all of its sub-tendencies which understandably after 150 years evolved a lot.
As far as my assumption that you were talking about the Soviet Union, often Marxism Leninism refers to the precise ideology of the Soviet Union. If you meant it in a different way, you'll have to specify the country and time period because various different ideologies call themselves Marxism Leninism (and none of them come from Marx or Lenin).
Not quite. According to the original Marxist dogma, Russia couldn't become socialist in 1917, since it had too few proletarians, and too many peasants - i.e. it wasn't capitalist enough for a socialist revolution. Bolsheviks disagreed with that, obviously (and some Marxists even say that this forcible approach in a society that wasn't ready for it is precisely why the USSR turned out like it did).
Lenin himself did not actually disagree for very long. He changed his mind very rapidly (if it was really set) and enacted the NEP. It was Stalin that tried to "force" communism with disastrous effect and killed everyone that disagreed even among the Bolsheviks, which also fucked up the Soviet political system.
That's a common misconception about marxism. "To each according to his needs" does not mean "To each the same amount". Societies that reportedly strived to be marxist, still had different people doing different things and being granted different resources - and that's inevitable. It was even a typical complaint of soviet societies, the fact that "connected" people would get more than others.
It just so happens that, given the pre-existent distribution of wealth will have followed other rules, the first step of marxist enaction inevitably ends up being "the big reset" where inequality of outcome gets temporarily removed for everyone.
No. Marxism is for the abolish ment of social classes, with classes defined as contradictory groups related to relationships of production.
So a Marxist would want, for example, the employer/employee distinction to be abolished. But there would be no issue with inequality in the employee class, an employee may very well produce 3-4 times more value than another.
This is something that Marx explicitly wrote about - he thought that different people had different needs and abilities and thus should receive sometimes very different amounts of resources. The examples he gave would be someone that works much faster and better that someone else, or someone that has children to raise.
The goal and concept of Marxism is to remove economic capital as an input to the circumstantial function that defines a person's outcome. What inputs' weights should increase to replace it is open to interpretation.
Progressives advocate abolishing advanced classes in high school because “they have too many white and Asian students”. Several schools have done so. That is equality of outcome in practice.
The only times I've seen "advanced classes" get abolished is when districts KEPT advanced classes in high schools, but got rid of "ability tracking" (read: high, middle, and low-performing tracks) in early grades (k-6 usually). This is because low-income and minority students are more likely to be tracked low performing in lower grades, thereby baking in the inequity in the system. Eliminating those tracking systems, while keeping AP and other TAG programs is actually a very good way to ensure equality in access with no promise of equality in outcome. . . .
Those headlines tend to get spun as "Chicago district eliminates advanced classes" or something to that effect, because it gets people riled (spelling?) up.
Please, point me to your sources if you are talking about something different.
EDIT: The tracking still occurs in early grades, the isolation grouping does not. Students are still tracked and tested for ability, deficiency, and performance. What they are not doing is grouping them exclusively into high, medium, and low, and letting those groups dictate resource access. They are grouping across abilities, allowing high performers to work with medium and low, thereby allowing them to take a leadership role while still providing the other two groups with valuable resources.
> This is because low-income and minority students are more likely to be tracked low performing in lower grades
Are they actually lower performing or is this an effect of bias?
It wouldn't surprise me at all to learn that children with less resources do worse. I thought the purpose of performance tracking was to give the ability to help those who were struggling. Instead, you're saying that it's more helpful to just not know who's struggling and that somehow creates more equality.
>Are they actually lower performing or is this an effect of bias?
This is why these programs in early grades are eliminated - they absolutely were based on bias and external factors. Yes, children with less resources do worse. That was the problem. Students with less access would be tracked low, thereby ensuring they had access to even fewer resources (which were diverted to high performers and TAG classes).
>Instead, you're saying that it's more helpful to just not know who's struggling and that somehow creates more equality.
I didn't explain it well. They still track student ability for interventions, they don't group solely by ability. When they did the latter of those two, the have's had even more and the have-nots had even less.
That makes much more sense although the argument I'd make is still that the issue wasn't the tracking and grouping, it was the allocation of resources. The schools/policy makers have to allocate resources in a zero sum way which makes the question whether to help those who are struggling or push those who are excelling, both, I think, are worthy motives.
The shame in all of this is that the choice has to be made at all. I think, ideally, every student should have a roughly equal amount of attention and dollars allocated to them and if a school is underfunded, everyone suffers until the problem is remediated.
I suspect there's some sort of incentive on the administrators of these schools, be through funding, personal career advancement or something else, that makes them want to max out the top end rather than raise the low end.
In my experience (granted, that is limited to a dozen or so districts in two states), they used to focus on the top end students because a) they were well-connected compared to their peers, b) they came from the higher income (and therefore higher property-tax) portions of the district and were therefore more well connected to local funding source, and c) had parents that were savvy enough of systems such as education to advocate strongly for their children.
>ideally, every student should have a roughly equal amount of attention and dollars allocated to them and if a school is underfunded, everyone suffers until the problem is remediated.
The problem is that this is sort of what happens right now, and it's not great. The current funding scheme relies disproportionately on local property taxes, which only serves to exacerbate the effects of inequality. The current system is a warehouse for student bodies, with oversize classes, underfunded supplies, underpaid teachers, and too many unfunded mandates.
Ideally, we figure out funding (that's way above my pay grade), and then we can move on to cross-ability grouping. Seriously, it's just a fact that high achievers learn much better when they are left to (roughly) their own devices, with guidance and outlines for progress as appropriate. Low achievers learn better when they are led through the process by someone who can put the language in terms they can understand; ideally with support outside of the teacher, such as from peers (look up supplemental instruction for a model in there). Middle achievers will consistently live up to the exact expectation you place on them; so they need a system and environment that places increasingly more strenuous expectations on them, both socially and educationally.
Combine all of that, and you have a wonderful cross-age, cross-ability classroom focused on social development as well as academics. The ability to specialize for various fields such as STEM, art, or technical education is just built in, as well!
If anyone is interested in funding my charter school idea - it's a neighborhood based one-room-schoolhouse model where education and learning are led by the abilities and desires of the students. Much free time, much outdoor time, and incorporating everything in the above paragraph. Completely unrealistic for public schooling in the united states due to the inordinate per pupil cost. But just a lovely idea.
> The problem is that this is sort of what happens right now, and it's not great. The current funding scheme relies disproportionately on local property taxes, which only serves to exacerbate the effects of inequality. The current system is a warehouse for student bodies, with oversize classes, underfunded supplies, underpaid teachers, and too many unfunded mandates.
I've actually ranted about this cause/effect before. I think it's particularly bad here in California given the wide variety of income levels in the state.
> Seriously, it's just a fact that high achievers learn much better when they are left to (roughly) their own devices, with guidance and outlines for progress as appropriate. Low achievers learn better when they are led through the process by someone who can put the language in terms they can understand; ideally with support outside of the teacher, such as from peers (look up supplemental instruction for a model in there). Middle achievers will consistently live up to the exact expectation you place on them; so they need a system and environment that places increasingly more strenuous expectations on them, both socially and educationally.
I think that's all true but it doesn't account for something that I think is a noble goal with somewhat bad implications:
I think we want to maximize the progress and achievement of the top achievers. People seem to want 100 doctors/scientists instead of 10,000 accountants.
> [...] they don't group solely by ability. When they did [that], the have's had even more and the have-nots had even less.
I have two thoughts on this:
1. Since our global economy is increasingly winner-take-all, we should consider focusing on the high performers. The lower performers will lose, anyway, so it's most important not to sandbag high performers.
2. It sounds like the idea is really to extort high performers into doing unpaid labor to educate their lower-performing peers, at the expense of their own opportunity to advance academically. Is this fair to high performers? Isn't it the school and faculty's job to teach students, not fellow students' job?
The issue is that low performers are often only such because of external factors (low income, food insecure, other factors like that), and not due to actual ability. If we focus exclusively on high performers in the low grade, we will only create a WIDE and absolutely inhumane division among the have's and the have not's (more so than what exists).
>2.It sounds like the idea is really to extort high performers into doing unpaid labor to educate their lower-performing peers,
No. You're 100% wrong in your assessment. One of the best ways to learn to do something really well is to teach someone else how to do it. This applies to everything. Letting high performers take a leadership role teaches them not just the core competencies, but also those 'soft skills' that are so often left out of advanced curriculum, but are vitally important to success.
Also, just to nitpick, adding [that] via edit to my quote is unnecessary to the sentence. That word isn't at all needed for context, clarity, or proper sentence formation. Not sure why you did that.
> The issue is that low performers are often only such because of external factors (low income, food insecure, other factors like that), and not due to actual ability. If we focus exclusively on high performers in the low grade, we will only create a WIDE and absolutely inhumane division among the have's and the have not's (more so than what exists).
No, those factors all contribute to the actual ability of the student; you seem to be talking about inherent or latent ability. As a student, I don't care why my low-performing peers are holding me back, I just care that they're holding me back.
We shouldn't focus exclusively on the high performers, and we should absolutely try to ameliorate those factors with things like free school meals and after-school programs. These policies help those with latent ability to turn that into actual ability.
But we can't skip that step. It's important for students to be around students of similar actual ability, because we absolutely cannot afford to slow down the high performers in a perverted quest for equity.
> No. You're 100% wrong in your assessment.
Yes, you're 100% correct in your assessment. I know that what most helped me to excel in math was tutoring my peers in basic mechanics and notation and walking them through absolutely trivial exercises with which they still struggled.
Thank God I never had to endure a class that promoted my intellectual growth by challenging me with more advanced material than my low-performing peers could handle. I learned so much more taking a leadership role.
It is obvious you have little to no personal experience in difficult technical subjects (STEM) and are invested in a political agenda to change the world as you see fit rather than enabling our best and brightest to fully self-actualize.
We have a public high school around me that is for STEM students. It has limited seats available. It is not only based on prior grades but on essays about why you deserve to go and stuff. It ends up rejecting many students every year. I can see requiring an entrance exam or prior grades to prove you have the ability and won't be slowing people down, but this goes way beyond that.
I wonder how it can be that one has the desire and aptitude to succeed there and the public school can deny people that opportunity. That just seems antithetical to public education.
Every time I see a news article about this, they aren't being honest about what is happening. My high school in particular is often in the news for this reason and the reactionary articles are universally BS.
I don't know why you're being down-voted, you're right. I haven't met anyone, even in the insanely left and progressive university circles that I run in, who advocate for equality in outcome. It's equality in opportunity that's important. It's about letting 'your freedom as an individual to choose your own destiny' actually be 'free' from the start and not constrained by social mores, ingrained biases or discrimination, and/or other external factors.
The freedom in outcomes argument is 100% a strawman used by far right pop culture icons to drum up views and clicks.
It's a core belief of progressivism; those who claim it isn't know it is but are interested in protecting a movement that gives them a means of attacking those they dislike.
It absolutely isn't. Progressives, when they see inequality of outcomes at the group level, correctly identify an inequality of opportunity. There's no progressive in the world that thinks that everyone should have the same outcomes.
That's different from wanting similar outcomes between groups of millions of people, because those almost invariably come from inequality of opportunity.
I don't know of any left tendency that believes in equality of outcomes. Even communists don't believe in equality of outcome.
You believe in quotas, you believe in equality of outcome.
In fact I could be inclined to agree with you in some ways; its more accurate to state that progressives don't believe in equality of outcome in much the same way as they don't really hold any disdain for racism/sexism or any of the other causes that claim to champion but they like the power that comes from doing so.
For example no progressive has any issues with an imbalance in genders in nursing; this of course contrasts brilliantly against theirs views on it in the tech industry.
I don't believe in quotas. I don't think people from every different group should do the exact same in every job. I don't think that quotas are an effective way of dealing with inequalities either.
I do believe that roughly speaking, for an equal amount of work, black and white people should have similar salaries, for example. Something that is not the case today.
This is a disparity that can't be explained away by choice, or innate supremacy, but is instead à result of inequality of opportunity. So you have to fix the opportunity gap.
I do have an issue with the imbalance in nursing. That's because there is a strong stigma against men in nursing and men in nursing often suffer strong discrimination. In a society where these stigmas don't exist but men in general decide not to become nurses, that's fine.
Same in tech. There are stigmas and discrimination against women in tech at every level. For example, different countries have massively different amounts of women in engineering. Women in countries where this amount is lower often report discrimination. So this is clearly not a question of choice, and is thus a gap in opportunities led by sexism.
It would be nice if you wouldn't assume the absolute worst possible interpretation of the argument of your interlocutor. This is against HN's guideline and generally increases the amount of noise. It's also quite rude.
Perhaps you don't, but for progressives it remains a core part of their ideology and one that can't be no-true-scotsman-ed away, now that the belief has become publicly embarrassing to have supported.
And the same goes for your opposition to the gender gap in nursing; as demonstrated by the mysteriously absent global-push to rectify the issue.
Funnily enough I seem to recall it being the countries with far poorer track records on "equality" that tended to produce the higher number of female engineers; and that (for example) scandinavian efforts towards "equality" seemed to have quite the opposite result.
There absolutely are programs for men into nursing.
Using Scandinavia as a barometer for equity in engineering for men and women is cherry-picking. Where I live, these measures were very successful and in the leading engineering-only university the rate of women graduating is now 30%. Seems successful to me.
As for this:
>Perhaps you don't, but for progressives it remains a core part of their ideology and one that can't be no-true-scotsman-ed away, now that the belief has become publicly embarrassing to have supported.
The only way to get out of this conundrum is for you to find evidence that at the ideological level progressivism is based on equality of outcome. I can't prove the negative. I can give examples however of specific far-left ideologies from anarchism to communism to mutualism to intersectional liberalism do not, at the ideological level, aim for equality of outcome.
Brushing away the example as "cherry picking" because no counter argument can be given isn't convincing, particularly when the pattern is seen in developed countries in general.
As for your university efforts I'd have to know what those actually were before making a call.
And re progresivism and quotas; it isn't based on it but it subscribes heavily to it due to its utility.
I gave a counter argument - for many universities this did actually work. The example I was talking about is Polytechnique Montréal. But it's far from being the only one, though admittedly Scandinavia had a failure in this goal.
As far as progressivism and quotas, I simply can't argue on this unless you give me a specific progressive tendencies. If you're talking about US progressives writ large then the main reason quotas are so popular is because the people in power that put those quotas in place, which often weren't even progressives, found quotas to be easy to implement as other solutions are very difficult and inconvenient for those in power, though popular.
Apologies I meant what those efforts entailed; what actually was done in the universities to achieve the numbers increase?
As for the 2nd point, that's more of what I'm getting at; that core populist/mainstream progressive movement. I could certainly believe that the leaders are jumping on it purely due to, as you say the simplicity and popularity of them.
> I gave a counter argument - for many universities this did actually work.
What you assert as proof that "it worked" was, if I understood your "30%!" correctly, an increase in equality of outcome.
How does this square with your claim to favour equality of opportunity, not outcome? Doesn't it show that what worked was what you claim not to favour; why would you crow about that?
If the goal is to have equal opportunity, but inequity is assumed to be indicative of unequal opportunity then that's just a long-winded way of saying the goal is equity.
> Same in tech. There are stigmas and discrimination against women in tech at every level. For example, different countries have massively different amounts of women in engineering. Women in countries where this amount is lower often report discrimination. So this is clearly not a question of choice, and is thus a gap in opportunities led by sexism.
Do you have a source for this claim? Because this contradicts the sources I have read on this topic. The share of women in engineering varies, but not by much. Most countries fall between the 20-30% range. We see no countries where women make up the majority. Furthermore, the representation of women in countries with better gender equality is actually lower than ones that are highly misogynistic [1].
> It would be nice if you wouldn't assume the absolute worst possible interpretation of the argument of your interlocutor. This is against HN's guideline and generally increases the amount of noise. It's also quite rude.
To me it seems you have gone to great lengths to clarify that you mean exactly what the original poster is referring to.
I don't believe their reading your argument at face value is in any way assuming the worst possible interpretation.
It's not a personal attack for someone to disagree with your beliefs.
Those are a lot of absolute statements you're making, and I just don't understand. There is so much wrong with your argument. You're attributing motive and action to someone else, with zero proof, in my opinion.
>You believe in quotas, you believe in equality of outcome.
Who is 'you' here? Who said they believe in quotas?
>they like the power that comes from doing so.
Again, who is this mysterious strawman you're building? Where is this argument coming from? What is your proof? I am very progressive, and I very much have disdain for racism, sexism, and any other bigoted activities. It has nothing to do with power. Often, I am unable to do anything about this behavior because I lack any sort of structural power in my local area. So what does that mean for your argument?
>For example no progressive has any issues with an imbalance in genders in nursing
I literally work to bring men into underrepresented fields in higher education. There are programs across the nation specifically designed to recruit, assist, and help ensure the academic success of men in nursing, men in daycare/education fields, and men in other traditionally 'feminine' fields. Claiming this absolute of a statement is just absurd.
If you would follow a couple steps up the comment chain you'll note that the discussion centred around progressive ideology; you're welcome to re-read the chain and respond again once you have familiarised yourself with the context.
I followed the chain to that comment and then asked the questions I asked. Please answer them, I would appreciate it.
You seem to be building an odd little strawman to knock down based on some bogeyman theoretical progressive you have imagined. I'm trying to point that out to you.
> That's different from wanting similar outcomes between groups of millions of people, because those almost invariably come from inequality of opportunity.
Can you cite any evidence that this is the case? It seems you are simply defining inequality of outcome to mean the same thing as inequality of opportunity at the group level.
Unless you believe there are innate differences between the ability of these groups, then yes the two are logically equivalent. If you don't believe so, I'm not going to get in this debate today.
Or there could be equal ability, but population-wide differences in preferences, demographics, or other factors. Is it your position that men are underrepresented in teaching and nursing because these fields are highly biased against men? Likewise, there's a significant overrepresentation of Asian in tech. Does the fact that tech hotspots like the Bay Area and Seattle metro have higher than average Asian populations have no role in this disparity?
Claiming to support equal opportunity while simultaneously asserting that inequity necessarily indicates unequal opportunity amounts to a long-winded way of saying that the goal is equal outcomes.
And saying that unless someone believes in equivalency between equity and equality, then they believe in innate differences between groups is very reductive. There are plenty of factors here: culture, preferences, geography, and more.
That's not true. It is a false dichotomy. There are a myriad of reasons you'd find different behaviors or results in different groups of people besides either ingrained innate unchangeable differences and lack of opportunity for that group. Even if you sampled two equally sized samples of equal distribution of the same kind of people (whatever that means to you) you'd find aggregate disparity to some degree. No innate differences at all, and no difference in opportunity based on group membership, you'd still find disparity. Your dichotomy is false.
Additionally, I find this whole assertion I see often nowadays that there's some invisible force creating opportunity disparities between different arbitrary groups of people to be a bit hand-wavy and suspiciously convenient. To me it is comparable to asserting that the disparities are because it was the will of God.
Finally, your statement is a roundabout way of saying "if you don't agree with me you're a racist and I don't talk to racists" and that is extremely dishonest. Frankly, if you don't want to talk to people you don't agree with, why are you on a discussion website at all?
The trick is that life is a series of "opportunities" and equality of opportunity at any particular point of choice generally results in perpetuating any imbalance of opportunity that has occurred before that.
For the sake of illustration, assume two large groups of kids who innately would have had identical ability, but one's growth and education is (on average) more stunted because their families are more likely to be single parent families, or have a parent in jail, or just very poor (which affects a lot), so right now they don't have identical average ability because they did not get equal education and support some decades ago.
If you want to have equal representation of the groups, you'd have to artificially correct for all the previous differences in opportunity - without a time machine, you can't actually fix the differences in their skills and experience (no matter how fairly or unfairly those differences came to be), you can only pretend that those differences don't exist. And so we come to the core issue that granting equal treatment to unequally capable candidates means granting unequal treatment to equally capable candidates, there's no way around it.
And there's also a gap between treating individuals fairly and treating groups fairly. You can't/don't measure the opportunity differences on an individual level, but on a group level, and individual variation in opportunity is huge. In general, any "compensating opportunities" happen at a group level, because if one group is underrepresented under a "background-blind" schema, then it's because lots and lots of capable individuals from that group have "filtered away" and gone on to very different life paths long before applying - and any corrective action or quota system is not helping those individuals who suffered most from the lack of earlier opportunities (because they're already "out"), instead it's granting a larger (compensating) opportunity to other individuals who just happen to be from the same group but had enough opportunity to "stay in the game", while individuals who personally have had so-so opportunities get punished if they happen to come from a group that (on average!) has more opportunities.
Isn't the idea of underrepresentation of certain minority groups or genders basically that? we hear that there are only xy % of women in tech or PoC in tech and that the goal is to get for example 50/50% women/men. Isn't this basically a discussion about equality of opportunity vs equality of outcome. 50%/50% is basically equality of outcome. We can see for example in scandinavia that you get unequal outcomes if you amplify the equality of opportunities.
I mean, if you just take it at face value, then it could be interpreted that way. I think the problem is that there isn't an easy soundbite that companies can put out to identify how they will impact equality of opportunity, so they take the easy way to seem 'woke' or whatever other adjective you want to put on it, and attack with equality of outcome. I'm not trying to have a 'no true scotsman' sort of thing, but profit-driven companies are not a great measuring tool for most social issues.
I guess, what I'm saying is, that the outcome being 'only xy% women in tech with a goal of 50/50' is an easily digestible way of saying, women do not have the same opportunity as men to get into tech. But it's harder for companies to outline the steps to ensure those opportunities than it is for them to proclaim that goal.
>We can see for example in scandinavia that you get unequal outcomes if you amplify the equality of opportunities.
Absolutely. (I actually had to look through my post history because I wondered if you were another person who brought up that statement!) What I said to them was, "And that's fair. My argument isn't that it needs to be split and completely equal. It's that the freedom to choose needs to be equal, and the playing field needs to be level, so that who is and who isn't in 'field a' is, in fact based on merit and not arbitrary classification at birth such as gender and ethnicity."
>How do you propose measuring it if not using the 50/50 metric?
If I had that answer, I honestly think I would be a billionaire. Really though, I have no practical ideas, because it isn't something I work with regularly. It seems like a sociologist could come up with something, some way to measure sentiment among youth, or something to that effect, but that's beyond me.
>Are we already at the point of equal opportunity? If not, why?
I don't believe so. Even the often touted Gender-equity paradox can be boiled down to gender stereotypes manifesting in individuals' decisions (https://www.pnas.org/content/117/49/31063).
All I know is that I see nearly no women enter STEM majors at the institutions I have worked with, whereas education and social work is almost 100% female. That is lopsided enough to tell me that something is at play here. I just simply am not educated enough to know what, how to measure it, or how to attempt to fix it.
Have you looked into that study? That seems kind of shady to me. They are using math attitudes to say there's a stereotype. It's not even asking stuff like 'do you think boys or girls are better at math' etc. It's just stuff like "Math is important for my career" etc. Well if they already have ideas about the careers they want to perform, then obviously the study is looking at the outcomes and not the drivers - why did they choose those careers? So it seems we're back at square one - that women as an aggregate choose fields that aren't as math centric. It seems like a leap to assume some implicit meaning behind those general questions on the survey.
"If I had that answer, I honestly think I would be a billionaire."
If we can't even define the problem and the underlying causes or measure the outcomes, then how can we fix it? Even if we try things, we would have no idea if they are actually beneficial because we don't even know what to measure.
"I just simply am not educated enough to know what, how to measure it, or how to attempt to fix it."
If we can't measure it and don't know how to fix it, then do we even know that a problem exists?
"Even the often touted Gender-equity paradox can be boiled down to gender stereotypes manifesting in individuals' decisions"
But if it's their own free choice, then why should we interfere with that? It's like saying my mom doesn't want me to play football because I might get hurt, so I'm going to base my decision on that. That is up to the person to decide if they want to use that as part of their decision making. Nobody is forcing them.
The study had a question about if being a house wife is fulfilling. If a person finds that fulfilling, should we prevent them from doing that? I ha e a STEM job and I don't feel fulfilled. Judging by the number of disillusioned posts on HN, it looks like an engineering job is not something that is fulfilling. I don't see forcing people into it as a fix for anything. You're talking about swapping social norms that value family (fulfillment as a house wife) for the social norm that making more money, even at the expense of fulfillment, is what society values.
I've encountered a slightly more nuanced equity position that comes in the form of supporting equal opportunity, but simultaneously claiming that inequitable outcomes are indicative of unequal opportunity. If the goal is to fix inequality and inequity is assumed to be evidence of inequality, then that's just a roundabout way of pursuing equal outcomes.
I'm not saying that this is your position. It's just a position I've encountered with fequency.
Inequity is not evidence of inequality. Evidence of inequality are things like: sending identical resumes save for male vs. female names and measuring the difference in response rate, anonymizing candidates' voices and measuring changes in interview performance, or other tests that see changes in output directly attributable to aspects of the candidate's identity.
> Isn't the idea of underrepresentation of certain minority groups or genders basically that?
Not really, but it's a bit nuanced.
I'm not taking a position here on what is correct, but advocates for this sort thing will state that inequality in current distribution of outcomes is due inequality of opportunity in the past. If you accept that as true, you have a problem from a policy level as to what to do about it, if anything.
One approach would be to attach the opportunity side only, and assume that in time a more equitable distribution will arrive over time. The problem is for something like this "in time" is probably measured in generations.
Another is to try an tip the scales a bit to correct to impact of opportunity on those people effected, or on your company (or other institution) or both. A problem with this approach is you by definition don't really know what the correct distribution should be, so you are likely to be a bit hamfisted about it.
You don't know any communists in your insanely left and progressive university? I find that hard to believe. I went to a fairly right wing university and the place with lousy with communists. They mostly got better, but still.
My impression is that progressives and conservatives seem to disagree about what constitutes "outcome" vs "opportunity". For example, imagine a tech company found that 20% of it's employees were female and 80% were male, and decided to try to change this by instituting a new program exclusively focused on recruiting women.
A progressive might argue that this program gives women a better "opportunity" to succeed, whereas a conservative would say that the program was created for the purpose of influencing "outcomes", and that by focusing exclusively on women the program is intentionally creating unequal "opportunities".
The left regularly trots out statistics as "proof" of racism. That something isn't equal directly indicates racism (or some other -ism). So inequality of outcome implies inequality of opportunity. It leaves no room for the possibility of equal opportunity and different outcome.
Probably the biggest of these going on right now is the inequality in pay. Women are paid less (they are). This immediately implies sexism because no other explanation is even possible.
I have met many people in left and progressive circles who literally advocate for equality in outcomes and dismiss meritocracy as various internalized not-giving-them-what-they-wantisms.
Well, usually when I see somebody arguing "equity vs. equality", they're advocating strict racial quotas: absolute equality of outcome, at the level of race.
I worked at a company that set a diversity target of 33% women in tech roles. In the same all-hands that announced this target leadership said using our definition of a "tech role" 20% of the workforce was women. To achieve this, we gave women two chances to pass the pre-onsite coding interview instead of one. Sure, this isn't as forceful as a hard 50/50 quota but it is pushing the needle away from equality and towards equity. Equity taking precedence over equality is also the basis of affirmative action used by private universities. And progressive taxation.
In fact, I'm a supporter of equity over equality in plenty of instances beyond basic necessities. I think certain avenues to pursuing this are better than others, and that there are some instances where pursing equity over equality is misguided. But yes, I do believe there are instances where pursuing equity - at least in part - is better than exclusively pursuing equality.
Point of order: I'm taxed the same on my one-millionth dollar of income (assuming the same source) as Jeff Bezos is.
... I just don't have a one-millionth dollar of income to tax, but if someone wants to shift things toward equality rather than equity I'll happily accept donations toward that end. To make things more equal for Bezos and to strike a blow against equity, naturally.
> To make things more equal for Bezos and to strike a blow against equity, naturally.
This is exactly my point: a flat tax rate would be more equal, but less equitable. And I do support a tax code that is more equitable, rather than more equal in this regard.
Have you never seen people decrying unequal representation in, say, tech? I've seen plenty of people make that claim and expect the distribution of groups to match the distribution in the general population. That's equality of outcome, not opportunity. It's also only really possible in two scenarios:
A. Everyone regardless of demographic has the same opportunities, talent and interest in tech
B. You force people into positions they don't want and force people out that do want them
The same goes for education, nursing, construction, sewage, fire fighting...
The trick is in how broadly you define "basic necessities." Go talk to a plains Indian in the 1700s and ask them if a permanent structure all to themselves with running water and a refrigerator is a basic necessity. Now think about access to doctors and drugs.
That's the real crux of what we talk about when we talk about equality of outcomes. What qualifies as a necessity? And that's when you start getting arguments that start with things like "well in a modern society..."
You'll probably be hard pressed to find someone that says that someone deserves to starve to death because they're unwilling to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. You'd probably also be equally hard pressed to find someone who thinks that waigu beef is a basic necessity. You say "strawman" and they say "moving the goalposts" and none of that is productive, this is a legitimate discussion that is going to be had, needs to be had and is not over or settled, shutting it down by calling the opposing viewpoint fallacious on false premises will not change that, it will only be counterproductive.
> Genuine question: Isn't this equivalent to equity vs equality?
Not generally, no; “equity” generally refers to fairness of treatment (as distinct from non-differentiation in equality); while concepts of fairness vary, equivalence of outcomes not the moat common understanding pursued under the banner of “equity”.
Which is not to say that the two are never (especially in particular narrow domains) the same, but they aren’t in general the same.
In my experience, people who are against "equity" call it "equality of outcome" because it sounds more Orwellian/communistic/whatever your dystopian descriptor of choice is. Very few people actually advocate for "equality of outcome".
Equity is closer to "equality of opportunity" than "equality of outcome". "Equality" is neither of those things because it doesn't correct for differences in opportunity and therefore obviously doesn't yield an equal outcome.
>In my experience, people who are against "equity" call it "equality of outcome" because it sounds more Orwellian/communistic/whatever your dystopian descriptor of choice is.
> Very few people actually advocate for "equality of outcome"
There are certainly many people advocating for explicit "equality of outcome" policies e.g. various quota systems that mandate granting unequal opportunities for otherwise equally suitable applicants in order to achieve an equitable outcome for various groups (e.g. gender, ethnicity, caste, etc) the applicants represent.
>various quota systems that mandate granting unequal opportunities for otherwise equally suitable applicants in order to achieve an equitable outcome for various groups
This is the problem in your definitions. Are you talking about equity of outcome at the individual or group level? You are mixing the two there.
No on is advocating equity of outcome at the individual level. People are using equity of outcome at a group level as a measure of equity of opportunity at the individual level because there is an assumption that when two large groups of people have similar opportunities they will have similar normally distributed results at the individual level. If you argue otherwise, you quickly start getting into areas of bigotry by saying that a certain group is not willing or capable to make the most of opportunity.
I'm quite explicitly talking about outcome at the group level and opportunities at the individual level (as you correctly note, it does not make much sense otherwise).
But there seems to be a "definition mismatch" about what "equality of opportunity" means - I'm talking about equality of opportunity and equal treatment for individuals as they are right now at any particular decision point; and this is substantially different from what's measured by, as you say, "equity of outcome at a group level as a measure of equity of opportunity at the individual level" because that essentially measures an "integral" of all lifetime opportunities for all these individuals.
The key difference is whether we consider that "equal opportunity" should include or exclude compensating of earlier unequal opportunities. In general we're talking about specific decisions or policies that unavoidably come after some unequal opportunities e.g. the socioeconomic status of the family you're born in, which correlates with almost every measure of success. I would define "equal opportunity" as a "background blind" system that looks at the relevant attributes of individuals despite of or because of whatever earlier life they had - but it's clear that equal opportunity right now won't result in equal outcomes at the group level, since those would be influenced (and probably dominated) by all the differences accumulated before that. And vice versa, if you're trying to compensate for that, then you might get an equality of outcomes for the groupo, but at this moment you would be granting unequal opportunities to these individuals, even if they actually accurately compensate for other, earlier unequal opportunities to the same specific individuals and not just the groups to which these people happen to belong.
This goes back to my first comment about definitions. You are defining "equality of opportunity" as "equality". You basically want a meritocracy in which everyone is treated the same. I was defining "equality of opportunity" as "equity". This means people are treated differently depending on their needs. This is the classic fence example.
You admit "equality of opportunity" isn't practical right now due to existing systemic biases. The people fighting for equity would probably say it isn't practical in any foreseeable future. Maybe some day we will correct for systemic biases against certain races or genders, but odds are there will always be some sort of inherent disadvantage for various people. Physical disabilities are one example. That is where equity comes into play. Forcing an employer to install a ramp for a an employee in a wheelchair isn't being "background blind". They are not being treated equally because extra attention and resources are being devoted to them in comparison to their coworkers. However this unequal treatment is just in order to provide them an equal opportunity to overcome a disadvantage their coworkers never experienced. They would not have "equality in opportunity" without an inequality in how they are treated.
Honestly because neither feminists nor men's rights activists want equality, despite whatever they purport to be about.
Just like there's a political spectrum with the crazies at the edges of both left and right, there is also a spectrum on gender issues, race, or any other social issue. The crazies are to be found at the edges of that, again on both sides.
Considering the year on year decrease in women who identify with the movement, its fairly clear anyone who would describe said movement as "reasonable" would no doubt hold the traits inherent in the movement that so many find despicable.
The closest thing I can find to your interpretation is that women of color are less probable to adopt the term "feminist" because they are less probable to feel the movement has done enough for them.
I do not know who has convinced you of an alternative definition of the word, but feminism means "believing in equal treatment / equal opportunity / etc".
And plenty more for the willing student; however an ideology that considers "men are on average taller and stronger than women" to be a controversial statement might understandably place some difficulty on those in need of finding these things.
And funnily enough the definition of a group has nothing to do with how it behaves; or are you suddenly going to proudly identify as a mens rights activist? I suppose its just as well that naming North Korea a democratic peoples republic magically fixed the place overnight as well.
You can find footage of people defending literally any controversial take you might have. Doesn't mean there are enough subscribers to consider their position.
Highlighting one extreme statement in a huge ideological umbrella framework does not indict the entire ideology, as your original sentence claimed.
Is that controversial statement a common one in that ideology? An official one? Do many groups from that ideology subscribe to it?
You keep using the phrase "feminism", a memeplex that's as massive and diverse as any social movement, political ideology, or religion. But it's easy to oversimplify and be reductive towards such a memeplex, which includes members as diverse as Susan B. Anthony and Gloria Steinem, Zoe Quinn and Ariel Levy, Andrew Dworkin and Malala Yousafzai. You have to understand when dealing with a hugely variegated ideology it's unhelpful to speak in absolutes.
No but the groups behaviour however does; behaviour illustrated in just one example I have given. And I never claimed one example was what it took to make the situation, I stated the situation and gave an example when pressed for evidence.
The "memeplex" offers no such nuance to any of those that they oppose; and for all the claimed diversity within the movement the resultant behaviour remains the same.
> The "memeplex" offers no such nuance to any of those that they oppose; and for all the claimed diversity within the movement the resultant behaviour remains the same.
On the contrary, memeplex indicates quantity, size. A massive ideology with a thousand schools of thought inside. J.K. Rowling and Charlotte Clymer both identify as feminists. So do both Naomi Wu and Sarah Jeong. Such an umbrella term of ideologies contains myriads of sub-ideologies, many of them often in direct competition and contradiction with each other. To judge such an umbrella based on a single facet is to equate all of Islam to Salafi jihadism, or all of Christianity to Joel Osteen. It would seem that I am not the one operating without nuance, in this discussion.
> behaviour illustrated in just one example I have given.
A single statement from a single video? Perhaps that's the measure by how you judge all ideologies, but most do not subscribe to that heuristic.
> I stated the situation and gave an example when pressed for evidence.
And thus it is up to you to further prove that such evidence is indicative of the ideology, broadly.
You can feel whatever you want about what it indicates, none opposed the worst aspects of their group, most supported them when pressed, most subscribe to a number of malicious beliefs and behaviours; you are welcome to show evidence where they dont. And again they offer no such nuance to those they disagree with so combined with the above none shall be offered in return.
The groups public behaviour indicates the ideology just fine; and when a group becomes publicly malicious enough on a large enough scale the onus is on the defence (eg its a given the nazis were evil; someone defending them doesn't get to come in and just hysterically scream "show me the evidence" because its public knowledge).
There's no feelings involved, only hard facts and cold logic. Comprehensive evidence has not been demonstrated on the other side; only irrational emotion. Argument from outrage is fallacious and has no bearing on reasoned debate. Allegations of public maliciousness must be demonstrated; attempts to claim such exists a priori without actual demonstration is an attempt to engage in the big lie. You have undercut your own position, sir.
You have presented no hard facts or logic. As stated, the groups public behaviour is consistent and malicious enough to be common knowledge. If you can't follow that logic then how can you hope to have an opinion on what is or isn't fact and logic. Or is this another attempt to redefine words for malicious use? Something far from uncommon within said group.
We have seen it over and over again in universities, in the corporate world. We have seen it in their numerous attempts to stifle free speech and to abolish right to fair trial. We have seen it in their uniform hypocrisy (were gendered insults still considered bad or is that mansplaining?)
We have seen it in the trope of sex predators using the identity as a social shield for themselves.
Stating reality I'm afraid to tell you isn't twisting to fit a narrative, but again, subscribers to an ideology who find "men are on average taller and stronger than women" to be a controversial statement will no doubt struggle with this as well.
Could you spell out how the link you shared says anything about "year on year decrease" or anything about the movement being viewed as "despicable". Especially in the context of your very reference saying that the results depend significantly on how the question is phrased?
Ask yourself if you or other people would be more comfortable identifying as feminists publicly now as opposed to 5/10 years ago; that'll give you answer 1.
As for answer 2, I've shown what basic searches can come up with. "why im not a feminst" might give you what you're looking for.
Not OP, but Answer 1: Yes, it's anecdotal but you definitely see the trend.
Answer 2: So I did the Google search as you requested, and read about the book [1]. I hadn't heard of it but it looks interesting, thanks for recommending. From what I can tell, it's central claim is that feminism has an image problem due to it being co-opted by the US right-wing which she calls "choice feminism", and the remedy is a need to return to a leftist concept of what she calls "radical feminism". Is that what you're saying?
A full on reading into one particular book is probably going above and beyond (though I cant immediately see anything about right wing co-option on a skim read of that particular one; the general criticism at the moment seems to centre on the radical lefts takeover).
The search for me at least brings a number of articles which highlight common criticisms of the movement such as rampant sexism, advocacy for abolition of basic rights (free speech, right to fair trial etc), general hypocrisy and bad faith action (see the Cathy Newman vs Jordan Peterson interview for a great example of this)
Oh, so for an incognito search with clear cookies in my locale (bay area), all you get for 1-5 pages or so with the search term you provided is the book and reviews and articles discussing it (with and without quotes): https://google.com/search?q=%22why+i+am+not+a+feminist%22
Perhaps when you search with your normal Google account it's skewing to different results. This particular book and the articles discussing it are critiquing modern feminist movements as too conservative, from what you perhaps would call a "radical left" perspective. I find it interesting that this is the exact opposite of "the general criticism at the moment seems to centre on the radical lefts takeover"!
I personally feel my incognito Google search captures the current zeitgeist better than your search, that people are fed up with conservatives and want a "radical, fearless call for revolution" as Google's auto-summary of my search put it. That said, ultimately it's all "bubbles" all the way down, as there's no such thing as a so-called "algorithm" (ranking formula, etc) free from ideology, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
On Amazon it's described by Jacobin (a leftwing magazine in the US popular with Bernie supporters etc): “A searing critique… a necessary contribution to the effort to push contemporary social justice movements further to the left and to weave an understanding of class politics into modern identity-based movements in order to build a radical politics of solidarity.”
All the other summaries on Amazon are similar, i.e. the very top description (New Yorker): "The point of 'Why I Am Not a Feminist' isn’t really that Crispin is not a feminist; it’s that she has no interest in being a part of a club that has opened its doors and lost sight of its politics—a club that would, if she weren’t so busy disavowing it, invite Kellyanne Conway in"
Having never read the book or even heard of the author until you introduced it to me I don't care one way or the other, but it's clear from a reading of these descriptions that her book is a critique from the left.
> feminism means "believing in equal treatment / equal opportunity / etc
While this might be what feminists like to tell themselves, that is untrue. Feminism is (and can only ever be) the movement asserting women's rights in society. It is unlikely to (and doesn't) advocate for the abolition of advantages women enjoy, like the tax disparity, criminal sentencing disparity or child custody disparity. It is also increasingly uninterested in the male perspective, further reducing its utility.
MRAs, while too androcentric as well, are a younger movement. Like the first wave of feminism, it's focusing on today's disparities. Also like feminism, it has its elements of disdain for the other perspective. And finally, like feminism, men's rights can never be anything but a narrowly focused movement ensuring men aren't treated less than women.
In defence of the OP, I've also heard that less women are identifying as feminists because they feel the movement has lost its way somewhat. It seems like there's some debate if that's true or just wrong things that people repeat. I've never seen numbers one way or another - and your link doesn't present numbers either, it talks about gender equality not whether more or less women identify as feminist.
No, because men's rights advocates are a smaller group further to an extreme end of the spectrum. Let's be generous and say it's 0.2 % of the population. Are the most extreme 0.2% of the population identifying as feminists just as unhinged? Could be. I don't think either of us could say for sure, but it's plausible. There's some value judgments to be made there. But there are crazies on both sides of the issue - that's self evident, right?
The problem with this line of thought is that some of the "crazies at the edge" in the past are the sensible, moderate ideas that you no doubt hold right now. For example, viewing slavery as an evil institution was considered the "crazies at the edge" opinion in the early-mid 1800s in the US, as opposed to the dominant opinion among "sensible" abolitionists that slavery was personal sin that requires a redemption process (like drinking). In some cases, this change of sentiment can take only a couple decades: See opinion polling on gay marriage or weed legalization.
This is why both-sides-ing or argument to moderation is not really a useful or convincing rhetorical device.
"you have to acknowledge that extremists and totalitarians do exist" is a cheap rhetorical device to sneak in "both sides are the same" fallacies. Yes, of course there are crazies in any political movement, demographic, subculture, or other group. Elevating these crazies to the first thing mentioned when discussing the actual substance of the beliefs of a group is silly at best, but more frequently it is simply a dishonest distraction. This is not a slippery slope (also typically a fallacy in practice).
To be clear, I'm not saying both sides are the same - that's a value judgment. But it's obviously not a one side is right and the other is wrong situation either.
It's also simply not a useful type of statement even when made in good faith. It assumes all issues fit on scales. For example, there are people today who call themselves feminists, and have extremely different views about LGBTQ+ rights compared to others who call themselves feminist (notably around the BTQ+ part). I really don't know who is the more "extreme", since that implies that I am referencing an agreed upon "center" which these positions differ from, and that simply doesn't exist. There is no agreed upon "center" for anything. Both claim to be feminists, and claim the other side is wrong, and neither would consider the other either more "extreme" or more "centrist".
This is just one example, but I would argue that this holds true in nearly every case: Reducing something to a scale with "extremes" on each side mostly just shows how the speaker perceives other positions and is otherwise not very useful.
CS stuff: IMO a better mental model would be non-Cartesian. Perhaps a weighted graph, where the vertices are ideologies (or, to be more granular, people), and the edge-weights represent some fuzzy metric of overlap of beliefs.
I think that it is just as important to talk about the extremes and the bad ideas as it is to talk about the good ones. We bring up the extremes because they're there, and they can be tempting, and so we should warn each other about them. Saying what you're saying usually (but not always) is an attempt to not address the usually perfectly reasonable point one is responding to without outright defending the extremes. Extreme ideas do need to be pointed out precisely to do what you want: prevent the reasonable discussion from becoming one between two extremes.
You are completely right in the appropriate context: when talking about ideology A we should consider more than just its most standard version. But when comparing ideology A and ideology B, focusing on the extremes of ideology A while considering only the middle ground of ideology B (what happened in this thread) is more or less whataboutism.
Nothing about what I said means that values are static over time or that the balance can't shift. It's true that today's crazies at the edge might be tomorrows center - although I find that thought troubling!
But make no mistake, the extremes at both ends harbor dangerous crazies. In politics, while the evils of the right are obvious and dangerous, the evils of the left are much more seductive but have been just as dangerous this past century (think fascists vs communists).
On gender issues, the incels are clearly unhinged. But so are the extreme feminists.
Just an aside, I've noticed that anything I post criticizing the right gets me upvotes on HN. Anything criticizing the left is much more controversial. I wonder how HN leans as a whole?
I view myself as left of center, but not left enough by the standards of this community.
The problem with the definition of equality within the modern feminist movement is that it does not make allowance for the social power that females intrinsically have over men. In particular it completely ignores that, as in the vast majority of sexually dimorphic species, women are (at social scales) effectively the gatekeepers of the bedroom, and this gives females massive influence over male behavior. The dominant socially acceptable view of equality therefore is markedly unequal, and quite self serving as the "ideal" balance of power within the feminist framework becomes rather lopsided.
There is no way this can be true. Sex takes two consenting people; there is no "gate" to be unequally "kept" because both parties have autonomy.
Trying to shift to "social scales" to escape the central role of autonomy is a nifty trick. But casting individual bedroom decisions as a matter of social equality is to presume a degree of entitlement in the bedroom. After all, we're entitled to be treated equally, right?
By governments? Yes. By our managers at work? Yes. By those who we desire? No, not at all.
"Trying to shift to "social scales" to escape the central role of autonomy is a nifty trick."
I don't understand this comment. Isn't feminism addressing an issue at social scale, often in areas that include autonomy? Even looking at marriage, you are expected to treat each other fairly.
There are absolutely places where the social scale is relevant: places where one is entitled to equal treatment.
Incels mistakenly think that the bedroom is one of these places, and that they are entitled to an equal amount of sexual attention as some other man. Thus the "gatekeepers" language when there is no gate.
The social-scale concerns are totally appropriate when it comes to how we construct masculinity and what male attractiveness requires, and feminists are by and large interested in that conversation.
I saw the gatekeeper comment as being more related to the natural processes of diamorphic species. Take for example your statement below. This very much implies a "gate" and that women are making choices to keep that gate closed for some men. Just because a person is not entitled to what is behind that gate, doesn't make that gate less real. If anything, it enforces the analogy in the fact that gates do exist in real life to keep out those who are not entitled to what lies beyond them.
"Incels mistakenly think that the bedroom is one of these places, and that they are entitled to an equal amount of sexual attention as some other man."
The proof is that men aren't described as gatekeepers, even though just like women, they choose to have sex with certain people, and not with others.
The "gate" you're talking about uncontroversially belongs to each individual in the form of their bodily autonomy. Yet women are uniquely cast as "keeping out" certain people. That's not a matter of dimorphism: that's a matter of mens' bodily autonomy being assumed, and womens' being up for debate.
In other words: for the sake of argument, sure, there's a gate. But only women are viewed as gatekeepers, as though keeping others out undermines equality, rather than being part-and-parcel of having the equal autonomy to choose one's partners.
Gatekeeping is relevant only when there is scarcity. If there is a pair of people (A, B) where A's desire for sex is three times bigger than B's, then although both A and B have full bodily autonomy (that nobody disputes), in practice only B would be a gatekeeper, as sex for A is scarce, while sex for B is plentiful (relative to their desires).
The same argument could be generalized to society. If one gender has on average much higher desire for sex, then the second gender would be considered gatekeepers in practice, as for members of the first the gate is much more selective that for the members of the second gender (due to scarcity difference). That is completely unrelated to equality or bodily autonomy, which is granted to both.
Exactly, which gets back to the actual underlying dynamic: the accusation of gatekeeping only makes sense on a societal level, not an individual one, and can only be turned into an equality issue if one (silently) shifts back to the perspective of an individual who believes they are entitled to an equal amount of sex.
This is a common and disingenuous misconstrual of the argument. It isn't about feeling entitled to sex, it's about making access to sex more evenly distributed across society, for both genders. Not because of entitlement, but because of better overall happiness for both genders.
You are talking about a movement which on its face is about social equality, but refuses to acknowledge that is explicitly engineering norms which are already creating oppressive social inequality. You clearly have disdain for them but whether you want to admit it or not, "incels" are a low status social class, and if they are the way they are because of the efforts of others then by modern progressive logic they are oppressed - by feminists. The refusal to even acknowledge the possibility that this could be happening is a form of disenfranchisement, and is inevitable when your entire worldview is based on a false oppressor/oppressed binary, which is the essence of modern feminism (progressivism really).
So, to be clear, you believe it is axiomatic that one must internalize rape-desire to observe or discuss obvious consequences of sexual reproduction under selective pressure?
It's interesting that the concept of bodily autonomy doesn't extend to the male not wanting his body to engage in a lifetime of forced labor when the female's bodily autonomy extends to carrying an irrational pregnancy to term, though, isn't it?
One might even go to say that there are very real systemic and social inequities which have nothing at all to do with your rape fixation...
That's not "gatekeeping the bedroom". That's called "bodily autonomy". They're allowed to decide who gets to stick what inside their body -- exactly the same as you have.
You appear to resent women for being allowed to decide what happens to their own bodies. You also seem to think that this is the only thing in society that actually matters -- that this one thing gives women all of the power.
I believe you should reconsider these positions. Bodily autonomy is a bare minimum. What is it about access to a woman's body that is so vitally important to you?
I really take offense to the notion that simply for criticizing the feminist movement or acknowledging the romantic power dynamic, I "resent women". Nor have I implied that "this one thing gives women all of the power". Neither of these are arguments, instead they are cheap, disingenuous dismissals which only stifle meaningful discussion.
I am merely explaining that this is a particular domain over which women have massively disproportionate power, however feminists refuse to acknowledge the existence of this power while claiming to be in pursuit of social equality.
A movement which seeks to re-engineer social norms in pursuit of "equality" is bound to disenfranchise men if this power dynamic is ignored. The result is movements like "incels". None of this implies that men are entitled to access to female bodies, but there is an inescapable give and take. If women are to be treated the same as men in all domains, then restructuring romantic interactions while maintaining the onus on men to bear the brunt of initiation and rejection unfairly shifts the power dynamic in favor of women.
And this has consequences for women too. Indirectly, in that frustrated men are likely to withdraw and/or become antisocial (criminally or violently). And directly in that it shifts the dating dynamic toward hypergamy, where many females compete for a small proportion of men. Though perhaps there is an argument that some or most women prefer a polygamist arrangement, but I don't know if that's the case and it certainly is detrimental to men. Monogamy is a social norm which maximizes romantic equity for both men and women, not merely a patriarchal construct. Regardless of the argument of bodily autonomy, the romantic/social marketplace is an economy and can be modeled with the same sort of inequality measures that we apply to financial economies, with consequences for the function and overall happiness of society.
What can be done about this though? I don't think it's a good idea to make life harder for those who are privileged in some way, because it will just lead to a world where everyone is equally miserable. And it would be wrong to put all the women in this category, because not all of them have the privilege that you talk about.
> but nearly 100% of everyone reading this would have felt some emotional recoil from being called at least one of those two things
What's the rationale behind this statement? It seems like it's implying "nearly 100%" people are one or the other kind of extremists when it comes to Gender politics. Wouldn't it rather be the other way round, people knowingly identifying themselves as both Feminists and MRAs (redundant, as "Feminist" by itself means someone who strives for equality among genders), since most are normally moderate in their opinions?
The rationale behind that statement is explained in the subsequent statements in the article. Something about how there's a difference between agreeing with some group or cause's ststet principles and identifying as an in group member as a part of ones identity. The article explains it better than I am.
There's something in humans and I'm not sure if it's an anglo culture thing or a biological thing but men who haven't reached a certain stage in life are more or less considered sub-human. Many don't reach it and still more don't develop far past it.
I feel like I'm just there and there's a night and day difference in how people treat you but it's most extreme with your female peers. It's also nice to have some friends from before, I feel like they're the people I would go to if my life fell apart.
> I got absurdly lucky when I found my wife, but I spent every day without her more or less miserable. It’s arguable she’s the only reason I’m able to be happy. I imagine some of these men are similar to me in the loneliness and not as lucky in finding someone, and it’s impossible for me to not feel something.
This is basically a red flag for any relationship. If the only thing making or allowing a person to be happy in life is their partner then something is wrong. Mental health is no joke and not being able to enjoy life is usually a symptom of an underlying cause. Depression is probably the most common but anxiety disorders can be similarly hard.
I think that's the strongest criticism of incels as well; having a romantic and sexual relationship is not a requirement for a happy life. No one wants to be the partner that gives meaning to another person's life, unless they're also codependent in some way. It's emotionally draining to take on that kind of responsibility.
EDIT to add: the best explanation that I've heard for the feeling men have of basic unhappiness without romance and sex is toxic masculinity; the general societal rejection of deep emotional relationships between straight men. Lonely? Make strong friendships! Spend your time with other men who like you and enjoy your company and validate you. A partner is not a replacement for the natural circle of close friends humans are supposed to have. I'll be honest that I'm not the best at doing this, to my own detriment, but I think it's basically the solution.
Yeah people who say this are so wrong, companionship and a significant other is a required for a fulfilled life for a majority of people. We evolved to have this, and most people need it. You shouldn’t depend on one for happiness, but there is nothing wrong or weird about longing for one.
On the flip side, however, no one owes you companionship or a relationship (platonic or not). If you are struggling to fulfill that need, it's on you to improve yourself through building skills, seeking therapy, finding appropriate medications, or whatever else. Pushing the blame outwards to some other group for not bending to fulfill your needs is a real problematic stance.
Totally, but most people are not emotionally well adjusted or in a place where they an introspect and build themselves up to be the better version of themselves. A lot of folks would be helped by therapy and having someone to talk through to work through this (but that's a healthcare conversation, which we don't have to devolve into here).
I unequivocally do not condone folks who go off the rails in ways that cause harm to others (self destruction and harm is similar, but a different conversation), but I've seen enough mental health challenges and crises to understand why it happens. In general, life is hard, and no one is coming to save you except yourself.
Indeed, you shouldn’t based your identity around it or blame others (e.g. incels) but at the same time you shouldn’t be made to field there’s something wrong with you for wanting it. Like most things there is a balance to be found. I think the stars every day that I failed my way into relationships for most of my life and I can’t imagine the struggle of these individuals.
I don't think the identity of inceldom is necessarily blaming others for being lonely (though probably most incels do), but being angry at society for trying to sell an incorrect narrative of relationships.
On the flip flip side, no one owes anyone anything (except bodily integrity). You aren't entitled to a partner who does a certain number of hours of chores; you aren't entitled to a specific or any job title; you aren't entitled to a particular lifestyle; you aren't entitled to respect and admiration. That doesn't mean the only valid approach is to criticize people who systemically have a harder time reaching those things and feel frustrated by it.
We can simultaneously tell individuals to work on self-improvement to get themselves out of tough situations while also recognizing that society can do things to make life fairer and better for everybody.
I agree with you wholeheartedly, but there's a small problem here (and it's not just in the West) -- people dismiss these people, call them names, and put a dark label on them.
And yet, quite often they need help. Changing one's personality, mastering new skills, etc etc. are not small nor easy steps. And some people may not even be capable of doing them by themselves. So what do they do? They seek out people and go public with their frustration... and they come across two groups: Group A, who call them names and shun them out, and Group B, who claim they understand them and talk with them.... all while telling them things like "Look, it's not your fault, man." "They're all whores", etc. What do you think happens next?
What I am trying to say is, some empathy and understanding would go a long way. I get that some people don't want to help themselves and are beyond saving, but there are many others who just need a small push to improve themselves.
Incels call this "maxxing". It doesn't seem to be particularly effective for them.
> Pushing the blame outwards to some other group for not bending to fulfill your needs is a real problematic stance.
Why? Reducing inequality in dating seems like a fair goal to me. People become incels because everyone else rejects them. If that doesn't change, the number of incels will keep growing.
It's not working because they believe the wrong things about why they are struggling to find companionship. It's not just find some stat to max and done, positioning the problem this way is itself part of the problem.
> Reducing inequality in dating
What does this mean, be specific. I cannot think of anything except absolutely ghoulish ideas that remove agency from women.
> It's not working because they believe the wrong things about why they are struggling to find companionship.
So they don't need to improve themselves, they just need to believe in the right things and suddenly women will value them.
Really?
> I cannot think of anything except absolutely ghoulish ideas that remove agency from women.
And yet it's this agency that created such a thing as incels. Look at data from online dating services, plenty of evidence showing over 80% of men are rejected outright. Do you think this is normal?
No, you misunderstand. They are optimizing for what they think will get them success, not what will actually get them success.
> And yet it's this agency that created such a thing as incels.
No, incels were not created created because women have agency in who they date. What toxic nonsense.
And also, you still haven't put forward any changes you'd like to see to remedy the situation as you see it. Bring solutions to the table if you think there is a problem.
> incels were not created created because women have agency in who they date
Did you not look at the evidence? Online dating is already the primary means of forming relationships. There's data showing women reject over 80% of men they see on dating apps. They actively choose to compete over the other 20%. They'd rather share a top 20% man than settle with a bottom 80% man.
How is this supposed to not create a class of universally rejected men?
> Bring solutions to the table if you think there is a problem.
Why bother? I doubt you'd consider any real solution since they would naturally result in disadvantages for women in favor of men and would therefore be "toxic nonsense".
Let me use an analogy. As a manager I help my folks get promoted all the time. The folks who struggle the most are the ones who think about promotion as a set of checkbox items they have to cross off. The ones who are easily promoted are the ones who are looking less at the criteria and more at how they can be introspective and develop themselves.
Framing finding a relationship in a "I'll just check these checkboxes and then I will immediately get a relationship" fundamentally misunderstands that we aren't generally selecting partners for one trait. No one is working from a checklist when they select their partners, so why set yourself up to fail by imagining they are.
Develop a growth mindset, focus on building your skills, build rich and fulfilling friendships. Ask for feedback and accept it. Build others up. People will want to be around you.
> Did you not look at the evidence?
I did a cursory Google search, which suggested online dating results in roughly the same outcomes as in person dating.
> How is this supposed to not create a class of universally rejected men?
If you are suggesting that 80% of men will face universal rejection, I find that extraordinarily hard to believe. It's quite frankly trivially falsifiable.
> Why bother?
Because you've made vague gestures that somehow society is to blame, but won't say how you'd fix it. Either that means you aren't sure, which undermines the idea that society is actually to blame, or your ideas are so repugnant that you are afraid to show them the light of day. You do not get to claim a moral victory by claiming to be a victim and then failing to engage with even the lightest questioning of your narrative.
It follows that if you fail to meet these criteria you are considered unattractive.
> Develop a growth mindset, focus on building your skills, build rich and fulfilling friendships. Ask for feedback and accept it. Build others up. People will want to be around you.
This assumes attractiveness is caused by factors that are within our control. This doesn't seem to be the case. Height is a very simple and uncontroversial example. How is a "growth mindset" supposed to help the incel who gets rejected by women on dating apps because he's shorter than them?
This isn't some insane idea either. Women I've dated have complained about short men on dating apps to my face. They want those men to reject themselves so as to spare them from even acknowledging their existence.
> If you are suggesting that 80% of men will face universal rejection, I find that extraordinarily hard to believe. It's quite frankly trivially falsifiable.
I said the data shows women reject about 80% of men they see on dating apps. The set of rejected men is different for every woman. Universally rejected men (incels) are the insersection of these sets, naturally it is a smaller set than 80% of men.
The fact is there's massive inequality in dating. Like all inequalities, it'll probably get worse over time.
> Because you've made vague gestures that somehow society is to blame, but won't say how you'd fix it.
Not providing a fix doesn't invalidate my point.
> Either that means you aren't sure, which undermines the idea that society is actually to blame, or your ideas are so repugnant that you are afraid to show them the light of day.
Yeah, I just encountered this subject. The most obvious solution is to go back to enforced monogamy. Nothing repugnant about that but obviously female agency will be impacted. You don't seem to be open to any ideas that don't maximize female agency.
> You do not get to claim a moral victory by claiming to be a victim and then failing to engage with even the lightest questioning of your narrative.
No, you don't get to dismiss people's arguments as "toxic" and then demand they "engage" with your questioning.
How about actually having a likable personality, which easily tops all other qualities? Dating apps do prioritize looks, and especially during COVID I believe it makes finding a partner harder. But in-person the initial “not-as-good-looks” can very easily be overcome if one is kind, honest, funny, etc.
> How about actually having a likable personality, which easily tops all other qualities?
Does it really top all other qualities? Doesn't seem to be the case. There's evidence showing personality is only considered after a minimum threshold of physical attractiveness is met.
And a huge percent of attractivity is nurture rarher than nature.
You can work out and get into shape, you can have good hygiene, you can dress nicely, etc. Just because someone is luckier and doesn’t really have to pay attention to what he/she eats to get a good figure doesn’t mean that others can’t achieve that, although with more work.
Also, the face itself is much more important for men than women.
I don't buy that. If we use the example of height alone, the vast majority of women would not date a man shorter than them regardless of whether the man has a "likable personality". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbG05ePWRQE
Fortunately women’s height shows a normal distribution, as well as it’s not like many 150 cm women would date a guy well above 2m.
(Sorry, don’t know freedom units)
"How about actually having a likable personality, which easily tops all other qualities?"
So do you now agree this statement is obviously false?
Height is just one of the first filters women use, and often the requirement is more strict than just "taller than me". You also have to pass other commons filters. Another very important filter for most women is race, and we're just getting started.
As opposed to men who all happily choose someone overweight from another race.
But if you want to hate more than half of humanity, be my guest. But then don’t be surprised that someone from your hated group will not like you back...
Men are definitely far less picky on average, for biological reasons, but that's not even related to this discussion. Hating half of humanity? What are you going on about? You made a scientific statement which was false. The truth is not politically correct and doesn't paint women in a positive light so you resort to accusing me of "hating women". OTOH you have an obvious hatred towards men and are even denying real issues that affect them.
It was a false statement. You clearly would not stick up for short or ethnic men the way you do for women (who are already heavily privileged). Who determines what's attractive? Are you really suggesting society doesn't play a role? I've seen women with your left wing mentality talk about women's rights and BLM and then, in the next sentence, move on to making fun of Indian men and talking about how they would never date them. Most of society does share this hateful mindset.
You responded by saying "the sky is blue", do you believe some races are objectively less attractive than others?
> You clearly would not stick up for short or ethnic men the way you do for women
Based on what?
> who are already heavily privileged
Depends on country. I’m not supportive of some new-found feminist movements, but all for it in some Muslim secular countries where women are not allowed to drive and are all around thought of as the property of their husband.
> I've seen women with your left wing mentality talk about women's rights and BLM and then, in the next sentence, move on to making fun of Indian men and talking about how they would never date them
That’s called a hypocrite. And I don’t see how generalizing an entire gender based on n=1 is any different than your example where you rightfully was offended by the making fun of Indian men. You do the same shit for half of all people.
> Most of society does share this hateful mindset.
And a significant percentage of men also share the mindset that women are inferior/object, or other misogynistic shit. Neither should happen.
> You responded by saying "the sky is blue", do you believe some races are objectively less attractive than others?
Heh?
In another thread I did write that men usually don’t want to have relationship with women of another race (and vice versa). But it is all around true, most cultures look down on interracial relationships — which is said.
The fact that you blamed "personality" for all problems.
> Depends on country.
Well I'm talking about the West, the US in particular.
> generalizing an entire gender based on n=1
It's not n=1, the reason people do it is because it is generally considered socially acceptable.
> And a significant percentage of men also share the mindset that women are inferior/object, or other misogynistic shit. Neither should happen.
You really don't realize how many men are not misogynistic, and how much more acceptable it is to make fun of men for their insecurities (like height).
> Heh? In another thread I did write that men usually don’t want to have relationship with women of another race (and vice versa). But it is all around true, most cultures look down on interracial relationships — which is said.
This is not true, men are more open in general, and women, especially white women, have the strongest bias. Women will even refuse to date ethnic men they find attractive. There are lots of studies on this although I'd have to dig them up. Also why doesn't this affect white men as much if it's just about opposition to interracial relationships? They are preferred by many ethnic women.
> The fact that you blamed "personality" for all problems.
Which is all around the most important; the catch is that one can't really get to it over a picture. And unfortunately even in real life (especially now with COVID) it makes first moves harder. But there are many places where one can get to know others - work place, school/college. There people can show their true personality. And many part of one's appearance can be changed.
> It's not n=1, the reason people do it is because it is generally considered socially acceptable.
I'm fairly sure each culture have stereotypes of other cultures; but it is getting better. I'm sorry if you have been the target of such negative stereotypes, it's absolutely not okay, but one should not hold grudges against unknown individuals of that society, because it is the same shit.
> You really don't realize how many men are not misogynistic, and how much more acceptable it is to make fun of men for their insecurities (like height).
I said a significant percentage of men are misogynistic. And it is never acceptable to make fun of someone's insecurities - if it happens to you, quit those circles, they are toxic people. But I doubt non-popular high school girls have it better. My point is that the problem is bullies, not another group who is often hurt.
> This is not true, men are more open in general, and women, especially white women, have the strongest bias. Women will even refuse to date ethnic men they find attractive.
Well, how about blaming society instead of the individual? Behind every such woman there is a father and mother who repeatedly told her how bad these "other" people are and to never bring one home, etc. Or even just implicitly meaning that. It takes time to "heal" a society and interracial couples are much more acceptable than even just a decade age.
The science simply doesn't back this up. And nowadays, even without covid, most people meet online where the simplest filters (race, height, face) are the most important. Imagine if men used a "breast size" filter, do you see why this is so disturbing?
> I'm fairly sure each culture have stereotypes of other cultures; but it is getting better. I'm sorry if you have been the target of such negative stereotypes, it's absolutely not okay, but one should not hold grudges against unknown individuals of that society, because it is the same shit.
There is no stereotype like this about white men, they are considered extremely attractive.
> I said a significant percentage of men are misogynistic.
This has not been my experience in general, most men I meet in tech and in the US share your types of beliefs.
> Well, how about blaming society instead of the individual? Behind every such woman there is a father and mother who repeatedly told her how bad these "other" people are and to never bring one home, etc. Or even just implicitly meaning that. It takes time to "heal" a society and interracial couples are much more acceptable than even just a decade age.
Even asian women show these biases for only dating white men. A lot of these women are very left-wing, it is not because of their fathers and mothers. They should take responsibility.
> Imagine if men used a "breast size" filter, do you see why this is so disturbing?
They do? Like what do you think they swipe left/right based on? It is another very apparent feature..
> There is no stereotype like this about white men, they are considered extremely attractive.
Where? Do you think a Muslim women would prefer a white men over another Muslim? An Indian women (living in India) a white one over another Indian?
I mean, yeah, all around white people do have a positive bias, mostly due to the US's movie industry exporting it.
> This has not been my experience in general, most men I meet in tech and in the US share your types of beliefs.
Maybe you just don't consider those things misogynistic, because frankly you do sound like one..
> Even asian women show these biases for only dating white men.
I doubt asian women date white men over other asian ones, but stereotypically asian people can be very racist, except for white people, I agree with you on that.
> They should take responsibility.
For daring to prefer someone with the same skin color as themselves? It's called a personal preference, and I agree there is a problem with racism, but come on.. Should we also be angry at men for not wanting to have sex with another gay men? That's like the most fundamental personal choice. It sucks, but you are way overstepping someone else's personal authority.
> They do? Like what do you think they swipe left/right based on? It is another very apparent feature..
No it would be heavily criticized to filter based on that, and it often is not that apparent. Men would not be able to ask for it even if they wanted to know. There is also no weight option, which men would like. All of this is because women control the market.
> Where? Do you think a Muslim women would prefer a white men over another Muslim? An Indian women (living in India) a white one over another Indian?
In the US, and yeah all women pretty much prefer white men. White men are heavily preferred in india.
> Maybe you just don't consider those things misogynistic, because frankly you do sound like one..
Because you consider me pointing out how racist/sexist women can be as misogynistic. It's an easy way to avoid the issues I bring up.
> I doubt asian women date white men over other asian ones, but stereotypically asian people can be very racist, except for white people, I agree with you on that.
Asian women raised in the US often strongly prefer white men, you rarely see it the other way around.
> For daring to prefer someone with the same skin color as themselves?
For the societal biases and helping to fix them. You're clearly a complete racist, that is practically the definition of racism. Why would you word it like that unless your a psychopath? Also it's not about skin color, it's about race. Again I even mentioned how women admit to finding ethnic men attractive but still won't date them. Women will even ask for ethnic background for ambiguous looking people and unmatch based on that. This is not comparable to sexual orientation, it's very much about societal issues and you know it. You are disgusting. You fight so much for women's issues but don't care at all about fixing problems like these.
> All of this is because women control the market.
Yeah, I'm sure every dating apps' CEO and other important positions are held by women...
> In the US
There you are, at least read what I was writing. You know there are other countries than one that is predominantly white from its inception?
> Because you consider me pointing out how racist/sexist women can be as misogynistic
No. There is a difference between being racist and not being attracted to someone from another race. And your conclusion of some women being racist is in no way in disagreement with what I say. But you've been saying that all women are racist, which is not true.
> Asian women raised in the US
raised in the US, maybe that has to do something with it??
> Again I even mentioned how women admit to finding ethnic men attractive but still won't date them
SOME. They are racist, or has parents that would disown them if they would have an interracial relationship, or other reasons.
And thank you for your kind remarks, that's a great way to emphasize your points...
EDIT: I do apologize if I upset you, it was not my intention at all. I just feel that in your reasoning you are thinking of an object instead of another human being. Unfortunately, even if the other's choice is due to some evil reason, like blatant racism, it is only their choice who they want to date with and you can't do anything at all with it at this level. But as I noted earlier: more and more interracial couples, even at first surface-level things like more attention to diverse casts in movies will slowly make it more acceptable at a societal level. Of course there will always be racist people, but exactly the societal-pressure-free choice of women will let go of the old stigmas.
It's a general well known trend. You can make a fake account and test it in a few minutes.
Just like in many other animals, female choosy selection is the limiting factor, and the males either prove themselves or might as well die. That's where all this lack of empathy is rooted.
> most obvious solution is to go back to enforced monogamy. Nothing repugnant about that...
And there it is. Yes, that stance is awful. Going back implies removing the right of women to choose who they partner with. Enforced monogamy removes the ability of folks to choose how many partners they have. And who gets to define 'monogamy' and who does the enforcement?
It also completely ignores the poly folks out there, or the folks who are not interested in long term relationships.
It's at best, a narrow and puritanical view of human sexuality.
And having a dating scene with an 80/20 distribution isn't? Monogamy seems like the only way to give everyone chance.
So I guess this comes down to whether you think everyone should have a fair chance to find a partner. Do you? And if so how would you achieve that?
> Going back implies removing the right of women to choose who they partner with.
Nope, they can still choose whoever they want. The point is to get the top 20% of men committed and off the dating pool as quickly as possible.
> Enforced monogamy removes the ability of folks to choose how many partners they have.
Yes? That's the point.
> And who gets to define 'monogamy'
... The dictionary.
> who does the enforcement?
I don't know, society?
> It's at best, a narrow and puritanical view of human sexuality.
Probably. I did say it was the most obvious. Do you have a better idea? Because this "just be better" stuff doesn't seem to be working.
Assuming people even want to help these incels to begin with. Other posts I've seen just want to pacify them so they don't become violent or something.
>no one owes you companionship or a relationship (platonic or not).
That's your opinion.
>is a real problematic stance.
Oh, no, not problematic! What if there are actually external factors that influence your ability to succeed, and you would like to advocate for modifying those external factors to increase your ability to succeed?
>>no one owes you companionship or a relationship (platonic or not).
> That's your opinion
Yes, and it's shared by nearly everyone. The alternative is that you believe someone does owe you a relationship, which is anathema to anyone who values individual liberty and freedom at any level. Everyone who is advocating for making changes to society to improve their chances is really fucking cagey about the specifics.
So let me ask you, what changes do you propose, and who owes you a relationship?
Not really. If you're talking specifically about whether an unmarried man that fits some particular criteria is owed a wife, most people in the western world at this point in time would agree with you. But that's far from universal.
>The alternative is that you believe someone does owe you a relationship, which is anathema to anyone who values individual liberty and freedom at any level.
Not really. "Individual liberty and freedom" is not one concrete set of ideas that you have to either accept or reject wholesale.
>Everyone who is advocating for making changes to society to improve their chances is really fucking cagey about the specifics.
Some are, probably. I don't know which you've been talking to.
>what changes do you propose
Bring back severe social shaming for women that engage in sexual activity outside of a committed monogamous relationship (e.g. marriage or on the way to marriage). Bring back social pressure for a man to marry a woman that he has had sex with outside of marriage.
>and who owes you a relationship
I am married, so I think from society's perspective, my wife should owe me a relationship. If either of us denies the other a relationship without very good reason (meaning something more than just not being happy any more), the one abandoning the marriage should be looked down upon as having done something very wrong.
So... Oppress women is the solution you are proposing here? Why have you gendered it at all? Why do women have to face social stigma and not men? What about gay relationships, presumably you'd apply the same thinking (en route to a marriage or married)? What about poly relationships?
> I think from society's perspective, my wife should owe me a relationship.
I'm going to assume you mean owes you a supportive, caring, platonic relationship. Eg, two married people support one another to their mutual benefit. I'm going to assume you don't mean to imply your spouse owes you sex.
>So... Oppress women is the solution you are proposing here?
If that's what you want to call shaming them for certain behavior, yes.
>Why have you gendered it at all?
Because women are, on average, different from men, and, on average, exhibit different tendencies. Different measures are needed to push their behaviors to the same point.
>Why do women have to face social stigma and not men?
As I said, a man who has sex with a woman outside of marriage should be pressured to marry her, or in other words, if he doesn't marry her, he should be shamed for it.
Note that I don't think that should apply if he's not the only man that's had sex with her. In that case she is the one that should be the subject of social shaming to discourage other women from following in her path.
>What about gay relationships, presumably you'd apply the same thinking (en route to a marriage or married)?
I don't think homosexual behavior is very relevant to the discussion of men being unable to find suitable wives, but generally speaking, I don't think society should put any effort toward ensuring homosexuals end up in healthy marriages. And if there is any conflict between the interests of homosexuals and the goal of getting normal people in to healthy marriages, the conflict should be resolved in favor of normal people every time.
>What about poly relationships?
I think society should reject polygamous relationships.
>I'm going to assume you mean owes you a supportive, caring, platonic relationship. Eg, two married people support one another to their mutual benefit. I'm going to assume you don't mean to imply your spouse owes you sex.
I mean both. Both are important to the maintenance of most healthy relationships.
Honestly, you not being able to have partner night have to do with you being coercive and potentially abusive partner. It is the way you think about relationships - you want to create set up in which your potential partners are helpless and have no choice. You don't care about how vulnerable to rape or domestic violence it would make them. You don't care about consequences to children.
As in, potential partners are better off single and alone.
Sorry. But I do really find this persons plans highly coercive and abusive. I dont just disagree, I in fact find it abusive and threat.
And it is also true that such setup would make women super vulnerable for rape or sexual abuse and then forced them to marry their rapists. That is exactly how it worked in the past and how it still works in some radical Christian circles.
It would also create environment in which domestic violence would flourish as women were unable to leave as partner starts the abusing.
The whole plan, in multiple comments, is about creating coercive setup that don't care about violence it puts people at risk for.
I agree that the comments were egregious and banned the account. Nonetheless, it's against the site guidelines to feed such comments by replying to them—that just perpetuates flamewars.
"Don't feed egregious comments by replying; flag them instead."
(Or, if you prefer Old Internet, please don't feed the trolls.)
When they don't get replies and are properly flagged, egregious comments are deprived of oxygen and the fires quickly die out. When they are fed, we end up in various circles of flamewar hell. Such flamewars are a co-creation of the provoker and the provokees. We're trying to avoid that here.
The only egregious thing about my comments is your dislike of the opinions expressed within them. This was not an ideological flamewar. There were no insults being thrown around. Everyone was being respectful. And it was perfectly relevant to the topic of the submission.
You banned my account because you don't like my opinions. It's as simple as that.
I don't care about your opinions (or anyone else's, for that matter) but I do care about users dumping flamebait on HN, like how you want to shame women and whatnot. The issue is what sort of thread such comments will lead to (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...). In this case the answer is: extremely bad.
You've been creating accounts to break HN's rules with for a long time now. Would you please stop doing that?
Not that I expect you to care, but I'm not buying it. I was specifically asked what changes I proposed to alleviate the problem discussed in the submission. I gave an answer briefly detailing a system that has been and continues to be used around the world. You don't like that system, so you banned my account.
I never said I wanted to shame women. I said I thought society should do it to alleviate a problem I consider very serious, not because I'm personally enthusiastic about doing it. I think people around here are able to understand the nuance.
>You've been creating accounts to break HN's rules with for a long time now.
> You shouldn’t depend on one for happiness, but there is nothing wrong or weird about longing for one.
Precisely; too many men rely on partnership to meet most or all of their emotional needs and that is what drives intense loneliness when they don't have a partner.
I don't think that is true, but that's because I think there's a huge difference between what people think will make them happy and what actually will. The former tends to be an ever moving target, the latter requires a change in perspective that takes quite a bit of effort and doesn't make anyone any money.
Not sure why you're getting downvoted; others may not agree, but I think you have a very valid opinion. It is an incredibly common human experience to think "I would be happy if only I had X," only to find that achieving X does not actually make one happy.
I believe everyone is capable of being happy in their own company. It may take a lifetime of work for some people to achieve this. We are social creatures and human interaction is essential for our well-being, but that doesn't mean you can't have your own personal goals and interests or just simply enjoy time with yourself: you are a human being in your own company, too! Frankly without that ability you are not going to have healthy relationships with others no matter how good looking or successful you are. I know so many unhappy couples that put on a good front. I was part of one for years.
In the West in particular we are crippled with insecurity, anxiety and doubt. Are we masculine/feminine enough? Do we fit the image we have of other people's desires? We have incredible wealth and abundance and feel like shit. It's a societal ill as well as a personal one. It is possible to practice contentment, gratitude, and self-compassion and acceptance, these are just things that are not taught or idealized in our culture. I do think the mindfulness movement, commercialized though it may be, has something to offer to modern secular society.
That's one bitter truth about life: (almost) everyone needs some amount of physical intimacy to be happy, but it's not something anyone is entitled to. Those of us who have access to that are privileged.
I agree with the author though. IMO the existence of so many "incels" is some expression of a real societal problem. Many young men are suffering, and we don't acknowledge their suffering as genuine. We just tell them that they suck, call them names and walk away. This can cause them to become more radicalized.
I was raised by a mentally ill single mom, on welfare. In many ways, my emotional maturity really lagged behind that of other guys. I didn't know how to make friends, let alone how to approach women or form a healthy relationship. I did eventually manage, but it took me years of learning during my 20s. When I was a young man, I struggled with some pretty bitter feelings myself, and I feel like society didn't make it easy to overcome them. Even today, the not so ambiguous message that society sends to young men is: if you can't get women, it's entirely your fault, because you are not enough. It just adds insult to injury, particularly when you're really missing closeness and understanding, when you feel alone and wounded.
IMO, the modern discourse around gender only really goes one way. We hear about women's issues everyday, but even in 2021, it's no more okay for men to talk about the challenges they face than it was in the 1950s. Men are told to just suck it up, and that's a huge part of the problem. If feminism is really about gender equality, then it needs to allow some room for men to talk about their issues and concerns as well, without fear of judgment. I would also like to see words other than "toxic" being used to describe masculinity.
At least in the bay area there are plenty of cuddle parties for platonic physical touch.
Feminism has a pretty convincing answer to the problem like I edited my original comment to include. Toxic masculinity is the social exclusion of deep emotional relationships between men, including the "suck it up" culture. The key is that only men can really participate in that healing because it's entirely a problem between men. Women, as I've observed, seek out deep emotional friendships with other women and have most of their emotional needs met that way. Men, for the most part, do not do that with other men.
How do you reconcile that with the fact that one of the defining features of the last few decades of feminist writing has been intersectionality? And that some of the most prominent feminists are Black?
Kimberle Crenshaw's theory of intersectionality has been debunked using data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics that was released just before she released her work into the world back in 1989. If you want to see the debunking head here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6g6D3Cc-Wc (Antonio Moore)
Intersectionality, as described by its creator, is simplistic and misleading. It completely ignores black male incarceration because all of the labor statistics preclude them. Black men's suffering has been erased and its causing a generation (or more) of people to treat them like they are the white patriarchy and that they have privilege they really don't when you look at the data.
Intersectionality has taken demographic disparities in isolation, say white mens rights versus white womens rights, and applied them to black people without nuance to the difference between how white men and black men are treated by institutions in the US.
It's given cover for Feminists to look past racial inequity that is the basis for much of black women's suffering. Go watch the video and look at the data, tell me what you think they got wrong.
Would you please stop posting ideological flamewar comments to HN? We ban accounts that do this. Actually I just banned your account, but decided to unban it after looking a little bit closer. If you keep posting like this, though, we're going to have to.
We want thoughtful, substantive, curious conversation here, not bomb-throwing, fights to the death, and whatnot. You've posted a lot of serious flamebait. Please review the site guidelines and stop doing that. Note this one: "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."
"Cuddle parties" are not a substitute for sex, for men or women. Nor are "strong friendships", as you insinuate above.
Emotional intimacy, physical closeness, and sex are distinct and separable. Though they are linked for most people, for many no one of those is a substitute for any other.
"cuddle parties"... It's about as close to the real thing as jerking off to pornhub is to the happy marriage with a loving partner. It may take care of the immediate physiological urge, but that's it.
So feminism's answer to the the problem is "cuddle parties"? Are you serious?
I remember people used to argue that feminism was good because sexual liberation of women meant everyone was gonna get to have lots of sex. Obviously, these incels were not invited to the party. Women are having lots of sex, just not with them. And you actually believe "deep emotional relationships between men" are the cure for this unrest?
This is about deeper issues than friendship. It's about people's essential worth as human beings. People don't just have sex with anyone, they select partners and this implies selection criteria which implies value judgement. By seeking intimacy, we all risk judgement and rejection. Can you imagine what constant rejection by everyone must do to a person's self-worth?
"Cuddle parties" won't solve anything because they fail to understand the problem. Even proposing something like this compounds the issue because it's like saying "you are not good enough to have sex, enjoy this platonic activity instead". The root cause of this issue is society and women especially have decided these men are unattractive and therefore worthless. There is no fixing incels without fixing this inequality.
Jumping on somebody like that is seriously not ok on HN, and breaks the site guidelines badly ("Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.").
Taking the thread noticeably further into ideological and gender flamewar, as you did here and elsewhere, is also not ok.
You posted tons of flamewar comments in this thread. We ban accounts that do that. Please stop and don't do it again.
> At least in the bay area there are plenty of cuddle parties for platonic physical touch.
I never knew such a thing existed until you posted this, and perhaps I could have done with this at earlier points in my life. My receptivity would have varied greatly at different times though.
Fundamentally, I'm not sure it would have helped me as much as finding a therapist and talking about this stuff. Now that I'm out of the rut it would be much easier to approach a cuddle party.
Men struggle to see therapists as part of the "suck it up" culture so it's extremely difficult to get out of the existence once you are part of it. The system is self-protecting and does things to embed people deeper into the anti-feminist rut.
>That's one bitter truth about life: (almost) everyone needs some amount of physical intimacy to be happy, but it's not something anyone is entitled to.
it is, I notice that me or even people in my family who often times tend to show anticonformity behavior need some love.
Often times I wonder how would I feel if someone were to hold my hand, or give me a kiss but the feeling goes soon away perhaps dictated by the way I was raised or my own genes (something I'm can't determine since I'm not an expert neither in science or parenting)
Just to give you some context I grew up in a family with 6 uncles, 2 aunts and my mom, just one of them married, although all of them seem to fare well economically speaking.
To be clear, "(almost) everyone needs some amount of physical intimacy to be happy," is a falsifiable statement of fact. You can go out and measure something to find out whether it matches reality.
On the other hand, "but it's not something anyone is entitled to" is fundamentally a statement of opinion, unless it is limited to a specific context like within a specific social system.
Masculinity isn't toxic. It becomes toxic when it blames women for its problems.
Feminism is all for men talking about their issues. It practically begs them to. It is absolutely, positively not feminist to tell men that you're not enough if you can't get a woman.
That doesn't, however, pose an obligation on any woman to listen to you. It doesn't matter whose fault it is that you can't get a woman; it does matter that it's no woman's job to make sure you get one. Exactly what that will require is up to a billion different factors -- but "blames women" is going to be an enormous red flag.
Your suffering is real. You absolutely don't have to just suck it up. Go talk about it. If you don't have a friend you trust, try a therapist -- they're paid to do that. But be prepared for the fact that if your plan is to blame feminism, a good therapist is going to ask you to reconsider your underlying assumptions. And if your friends are just there to affirm for you that the reason you don't have a woman is the fault of the women -- there's a reason the word "toxic" came to be applied.
Modern feminism has actually been fairly two-faced on what it really wants. At this point, I can't tell whether feminism would prefer (given constraints only allow for one):
* Working on an issue which only helps women a bit, but doesn't help men at all
* Working on an issue which helps both women and men a lot
Considering media has a routine narrative of painting men as demons and women as angels, any claim that feminism is for anything in regards to men, might need to be backed up with some strong cases.
I don't think it's helpful to think of "feminism" as a singular movement, the way it's often portrayed in conservative editorial writing and cable news. We're talking about 50+ years of academic scholarship and grassroots activism here, and all the complications and inconsistencies that implies.
If you're looking for something in particular to make this case for you, I recommend reading the short book Feminism is for Everybody, by bell hooks, which does specifically talk about mens issues and how what she calls the patriarchal organization of society negatively affects men in different and unique ways (compared to women).
But again, editorials - especially on the right - typically pick out the most extreme or indefensible positions and try to make them appear to be normalized and widely accepted. You're doing yourself an intellectual diservice not to really deeply interrogate the motivations and biases of any piece of media that leaves you feeling like an enormous group of people (those who consider themselves feminists) is in fact wildly irrational and extreme. It should set off alarm bells when you draw such stark lines in the sand as "any claim that feminism is for anything in regards to men, might need to be backed up with some strong cases" that you're missing some nuance or complexity.
I know you don't intend to do so, but assuming that someone's conclusions about an issue must have come from talking points, and were not arrived at independently, dehumanizes them and makes it difficult to convince them of anything.
It discounts the lived experiences of people who have seen their friends and coworkers radicalized against them, of either gender. "This happened to me" cannot successfully be countered by "stop parroting X/Y/W-wing editorials." (general pattern I've seen even among family, not necessarily your phrasing)
The terminology used also doesn't help make the case for feminism among anyone not already convinced. Terms like "the patriarchy" can be seen as implying that it's okay to talk about men as a whole group who can be vilified, but it's not okay to talk about women in any negative way at all. Or "ally" could be seen as implying that the only identity someone not of group Z can have that matters is as an accessory to their cause.
The most disappointing and insulting thing a friend has ever said to me might be (paraphrasing) "I thought you wanted to be an ally." No, I wanted to be your friend, not a footsoldier who dutifully agrees with you 100% of the time no matter what my independent experiences have been.
I don't think it's helpful to think of "feminism" as a singular movement,
Sadly, even some of those who advocate for feminism (whichever branches might be considered "the good kind" for purposes of this discussion) seem to deliberately lump feminist movements together, so one can be forgiven for seeing terms like "the patriarchy" used by different groups and not knowing which group's beliefs to ascribe to the term. I don't think this can be blamed on a particular flavor of media, except maybe social media.
>It should set off alarm bells when you draw such stark lines in the sand as "any claim that feminism is for anything in regards to men, might need to be backed up with some strong cases" that you're missing some nuance or complexity.
What should set off alarm bells is this blind acceptance of written works and words, when the actions routinely do not reflect the words feminism espouses. There are entire subreddits and blogs online showing the many cases where feminism doesn't do anything, or worse, actively intervenes at the detriment of women. Your own example shows the same problem: "what she calls the patriarchal organization of society negatively affects men in different and unique ways". Cool, you talk about it, but what are you doing about it?
What is an intellectual disservice, is how quickly you circumvent my question only to berate my manner of writing. If people truly are such huge proponents of feminism, and feminism truly claims to "be good for men", surely they can answer a question this simple and provide clear examples. Do you not realize your own behavior is indication of the problem here? How can you not see that if you can't even answer "well duh, the second issue obviously" on an ideological basis, the claim that feminism is "for all" is complete bollocks?
If I really wanted to go full-on antifeminist, I could've mentioned the many issues that feminism causes for men and women that it seems to be utterly blind to. That's part of the question as well: a clear division between not only "we want the best for women", but "it doesn't need to be at the cost of men". If I really wanted to go and write on nuances, I could write a 12-page blog page and fight against the relentless nitpicking which will ensue. I'm not asking a simple, black-white question for the sake of trivializing a complex, multi-faceted subject. I'm asking it because ideologically, if we can't even answer this part first, there's no point going any further. It means the population of feminists is filled with people joining the movement, without knowing what it actually stands for. Including its most fierce proponents carrying the torches. Surely, I do not have to tell you about the many occurrences in human history where this didn't work out well.
Because the population of Hackernews has a great overlap with the population of Silicon Valley-type software developers and Redditors, who vehemently believe feminism is the same as egalitarianism and believe the few books written by a few big figures make up for the fact feminism contradicts those words at every corner in all of its actions. And when you point that out, the first thing you get is a No True Scotsman claiming "that's not real feminism / not all feminists", despite the argument being that feminism as a whole doesn't seem to care for men beyond empty platitudes and words.
It is literally in the name. FEMinism. If it was truly "for both sexes", we could argue the naming is sexist and supremacist. We already have a better word, egalitarianism, and people still aren't willing to adopt it.
Notice people talk past my example as well. I'm explicitly asking if feminism would prefer resolving an issue which prefers women over men, over an issue which benefits women more but benefits men equally. How this simple question cannot be answered by proponents of a movement this big, is possibly the biggest red flag. Yet we see it in the media every day: some minor issue with women needs major attention, despite there being an egalitarian issue which would help anyone outside the upper class way more. If lamenting about some "pink tax" is more important than resolving a mental health epidemic caused by making people increasingly more competitive with one another, where failure is met with lasting mental trauma, surely that should tell people what feminism really is about.
The very people claiming to be proponents for men in their words alone, are the ones partially responsible for the mess. And they are too blind to see it.
The issue is when people conflate "there's no obligation on any woman to listen to you" with "expression of frustration in a public forum is a character flaw worthy of criticism," or when people conflate "blames women for its problems" with "criticizes toxic gender norms enforced on men."
Imagine a woman who is frustrated because her partner doesn't do any chores or give any indication he respects her. She complains about it online, attributing it to sexist gender norms. Someone says the same thing to her as you say here: men are not obligated to listen to you, your suffering may be real, but please keep it to close friends. If your friends affirm that the reason your relationship is the fault of patriarchy, it's an example of toxicity. It probably makes the most sense to talk to a therapist: they can help you figure out why your way of thinking is flawed and how you can convince your partner to treat you well or, barring that, find a new partner.
That'd be a pretty terrible comment, right?
Toxic gender norms hurt both men and women, but we're only willing to consider toxic gender norms that hurt women as a politicized issue.
Toxic gender norms hurt both men and women, but we're only willing to consider toxic gender norms that hurt women as a politicized issue.
"Patriarchy hurts men" is a feminist slogan. It gets hundreds of thousands of hits on Google. The front page is full of lefty think-pieces saying that we need to consider toxic gender norms hurt men.
The fact that it needs to be said means that not everybody knows it yet. But it means that the ones who are listening to it are the feminists. Feminism is an ally in trying to fix the problems of toxicity towards men, and these threads always bring out lots of men who blame feminism for their problems. If I've accidentally confused you for one of them, I apologize.
The issue is that the slogan "patriarchy hurts men" is nearly always used in a way that still puts the onus on men to stop policing gender norms on other men. The reality is that women have every bit as much agency and power in upholding patriarchy that men do, but few women (feminist or not) are willing to acknowledge the extent they enforce toxic gender norms, or even that women enforce toxic gender norms at all.
Women absolutely, positively enforce toxic gender norms. Women are part of the patriarchy. In fact, for many women, the best strategy for them is to embrace the patriarchy as hard as they can. That sets them up for rewards from the dominant paradigm.
Ending patriarchy requires both men and women to reject it. But the ones calling for for an end to patriarchy are the feminists -- which includes both women and men. Feminists absolutely, positively call out women who are guilty of entrenching the patriarchy.
That's not few women. It's lots and lots of women. And lots of men, too.
I agree with you that feminists don't enforce gender roles more than average, so attributing the shitty state of gender relations to feminism is silly.
I disagree that they are particularly willing to call out instances of women entrenching the patriarchy. I think this probably has to do with a root disagreement about the scope of what is considered policing gender roles.
It's true, for instance, that feminists are more likely to criticize a mother who tells her son not to play with dolls, which is good and something I agree with. It's just not the primary mechanism by which women enforce gender roles, which is partner choice. That's not to say that women shouldn't have the right to choose their partner--of course they should--but the patterns of how women choose partners enforce toxic gender norms, and many of the most toxic aspects of gendered male behavior arise from men navigating that landscape.
As a concrete example, consider bisexuality. The majority of women dislike the idea of choosing a bisexual guy as a partner: he's considered less masculine, or dirtied, or some kind of perversion of masculinity. This is their right, but it's also shitty. The problematic aspects I want to call out are that 1) the majority viewpoint among women about bisexual men is still very prevalent among feminist-identifying women, and 2) when someone expresses frustration at these collective choices, feminist-identifying women are far more likely to criticize the frustrated party instead of the toxic gender norms. The net result of this is men being terrified of homosocial affection and remaining closeted so as not to scare off potential partners, both behaviors most people would consider expressions of toxic masculinity.
This pattern repeats itself across a lot of different forms of gendered policing. But many feminists refuse to acknowledge it, because they don't acknowledge that partner choice can be a mechanism for gender role enforcement.
I have no idea what feminists you're dealing with, or under what circumstances, so I'm not going to apologize for them. But I can tell you that you've come across as hostile in this conversation, and it comes as no surprise to me that others have responded to you in a negative way.
The vast majority of "patriarchy hurts men" discussions I've seen, including the Buzzfeed and Washington Post articles I spot checked at the top of this search, have been about how the men reading the article need to fix their bad behavior. Buzzfeed calls for me to learn "specific strategies to end gender violence" so that I won't "engage in everyday sexist behaviours"; Wapo suggests "Giving up a small slice of privilege in exchange for a longer (and happier) life".
Curious, are there are more of these now than in the past?
I suspect there were more decades ago because of more cultural taboos about premarital relationships. What's different now? That these folks are angry about it?
> if you can't get women, it's entirely your fault
I'm curious, and this will probably be too curt but I am honestly trying to figure it out: Whose fault is it? Because incels believe it's the women's fault, and this message is the opposite.
It doesn't seem productive to tell them that it's society's fault or some other external thing. What are they supposed to do about that?
Most men that I know, including myself, function better when there's something tangible to work on. Lose weight, hit the gym, learn to lower my ego, listen better, practice small talk, learn about fashion, etc.
I think there's a healthy way to "blame" yourself. Or if you want a nicer way to put it: to be able to have honest criticism of yourself. After all, if you can't fix it, what's the point?
I think the answer would go along the same lines as answering the question "whose fault is it that you can't get a job?" when aimed at an identity category such as women or minorities. Basically: society has failed them in some form or other.
I'm not convinced it's the same. When talking about dating, there are a bunch of stuff that you can do that boils down to "make yourself a better person." See: my list above. It's obviously not guaranteed, and many are more genetically gifted than others, but it seems way more manageable of a task than your example.
You can't expect women to work on having more of a penis.
Yeah, for the most part I agree, I just think that it's possible to frame the fact that a lot of guys simply being at a loss of how to go about this can be framed as a societal failure of some kind.
These kinds of skills are rarely talked about in any setting. Maybe that's how it's always been, but it seems to me that young men really aren't given much actionable advice when it comes to attracting a mate, and at one point the rules/expectations were a little more codified than they are today.
My own experience: I would be a millionaire if I had a nickel for every time I was told to "just be yourself". On the other hand, I was told a lot growing up what NOT to do when interacting with a woman. Don't try to kiss/etc her without asking permission. Norms around when it's ok to flirt (almost never appropriate). All of these kinds of negative rules made interactions with women feel like a minefield to me so I just stuck to online dating, but of course that has its own rules and expectations that take a lot of getting used to. Don't mention sex or anything remotely sexual. Don't mention how attractive she is. Don't use pick up lines. Don't just say hi. Don't expect a reply. And then of course, there's a whole new minefield to walk through when you start getting more serious -- a lot of which comes down to boundaries, another thing we don't do a very good job of talking about.
I made it through though, amazingly. I had a reasonably successful 8 year relationship, and even though it ended, I feel like we were right for each other in the sense that we had things to offer each other and I learned so many valuable life lessons from my partner during that time. Now I'm 4 years into my next relationship and it's going great as well, still learning so much!
I think a lot of this just comes down to things changing a lot re: gender roles, norms, etc. We're in this liminal space where things haven't quite shaken out yet into something more stable. My hope is once that happens (it feels inevitable -- things can't just keep on changing like this forever, right?) we will be able to talk about it more concretely.
It is worrisome though. My younger brothers (24) have not yet made any foray into the world of relationships. I try and fail to get them to open up about their feelings about this or anything else. They don't use the word incel but it could certainly apply.
Generally agree with you. I guess I was looking at it a little differently. If I'm talking to an individual, the only thing that matters is what they can do to better themselves now. It's not productive, on an individual level, to say stuff like "if only society was better!"
> I try and fail to get them to open up about their feelings about this or anything else.
To be fair, opening up about my feelings to my family sounds awful. I know I know, society did this to me yada yada.
I learned by watching and doing, not talking about my feelings to my family. College buddies being my wingman and showing me the ropes, etc. and failing until I stopped failing. Then again, last time I dated, "can I buy you a drink" still worked to get a few minutes of face time and I didn't need apps. Not sure what's out there now.
I think talking about my feelings to my family would have done absolutely nothing.
> Don't try to kiss/etc her without asking permission. Norms around when it's ok to flirt (almost never appropriate). All of these kinds of negative rules made interactions with women feel like a minefield to me
Is the "don't kiss her without permission" really they difficult? And frankly the same with flirting.
If these make women minefield, I don't see how to make it better without sacrificing women who fly want to be kissed or flirted with while they have presentation at work.
> You can't expect women to work on having more of a penis.
That's a bit simplistic, isn't it? Not to mention, maybe it's not just the penis. Maybe you can teach women how to copy the kinds of attitudes (eg: assertiveness) that help men succeed. Maybe you can get more women in engineering by giving them positive role models from an early age.
We can help prevent there being so many incels by supporting young men emotionally from an early age. Right now we have a very punitive approach IMO. The education given to young men is a lot of "don't do this", "that's toxic", "women hate it when men do that", but there isn't enough positive messaging and encouragement.
I think this is the right way to look at it. This is why I gave myself as an example. I was raised by a mentally ill single parent in poverty. I wasn't taught how to socialize with others in a healthy way. As a result, I wasn't equipped to form healthy relationships.
I think there are a lot of young men who are in a similar position and if they are given proper guidance and healthy role models when they are young, they can be in a better position to succeed in friendships, work and relationships.
It's often fault of a psychological trauma suffered in childhood. Sexual abuse, for example. So counseling is one thing that society could provide to such men. Sexual therapy treatments have been used successfully in some countries.
This is much more convincing than dnissley's response to me. I wonder how many "incels" have suffered trauma in their childhood.
I certainly don't expect people to just work through childhood trauma without societal help. ex. Make it cheap, easy, and acceptable to get therapy. Much different than my list above IMO where most people can work on it themselves without many excuses.
Hadn't considered that -- but has there been a rise in childhood psychological trauma? There's definitely been a shift in the way we talk about trauma, just in the sense that we open up about it more, so that could be part of it.
The example I'm coming back to though are people like my younger brothers, who had relatively happy childhoods (afaik), but still have failed to launch for some reason or another. To be fair my father has anger problems to some degree, but nothing too crazy, just a proclivity to yelling more than was really necessary.
> Lose weight, hit the gym, learn to lower my ego, listen better, practice small talk, learn about fashion, etc.
This is a bit of a fresh thought to me, but it seems that the standard male self-improvement advice ends up in one of three buckets:
1. The activity is its own reward (lose weight, hit the gym). Even if it’s not immediately successful at helping one find a partner, their benefits are almost immediately self-evident.
2. Advice that is vital for sustaining a relationship but usually not the missing piece when it’s time to find a new one (listen better, lower the ego). They’re needed to get the second date but can’t help get the first date.
3. Advice for the sake of having given advice (read books by female authors).
“Learn fashion” is hard to place on here. On the one hand, ensuring that you comb the crumbs out of your beard daily and wear clothes that fit better than a garbage bag is essential. On the other, becoming “into fashion” when it’s not a natural interest is often more of advice for advice’s sake unless you’re targeting a very fashion-conscious woman (or the fashion-forward portion of the gay dating pool).
> “Learn fashion” is hard to place on here. On the one hand, ensuring that you comb the crumbs out of your beard daily and wear clothes that fit better than a garbage bag is essential. On the other, becoming “into fashion” when it’s not a natural interest is often more of advice for advice’s sake unless you’re targeting a very fashion-conscious woman (or the fashion-forward portion of the gay dating pool).
Yeah I mean, I think most of the things on the list have a "basic" and "advanced" tier.
Lose weight/hit the gym: Basic is to not be obese. Advanced is to be fit.
Small talk: Basic is to be able to start and hold a conversation. Advanced is to be smooth and captivating.
Learn fashion: Basic is learning how clothes are supposed to fit. Advanced is... something like what you said. (I'm not advanced here! haha).
"I would also like to see words other than "toxic" being used to describe masculinity."
"The Fantastic Masculinity of Newt Scamander" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4kuR1gyOeQ is a pop culture analysis of the mild-mannered leading man of the Happy Potter prequel movies.
I think that we are engineered to have sexual and romantic partners by default. And there are some, like me, that somehow we can live without one and not fall into addiction traps ( drugs, party, videogames... ).
But we all have friends ( most ) that are not like this, the difference for most of them between being single or not is big, and I don’t agree that they are depressed its just human nature.
Most people need comfort for the misery of their lives.
some choose food (obesity), some choose crazy partners (tend to be great in bed but bad in life), other choose video games (sense of accomplishment), and others try to help others as a way of hiding from themselves.
most people are running, some though are doing it in a socially acceptable way. but the root cause is the same.
> having a romantic and sexual relationship is not a requirement for a happy life.
I don't have the all data off hand (see some citations below) but I believe they say married men live longer, commit less crimes and are happier. So yes in some sense, can you be happy if you are not married however, is it almost certainly harder. I assume you would find similar data for not having a romantic parter. You, a human, are not an island and almost certainly would benefit from close personal and romantic connections.
I would say that there is a way of expressing this towards your partner -- especially too early in a relationship -- that can be very draining.
The correlations are clear but causality less so. What if it’s not marriage that makes men happier, less prone to crime, and longer-lived - rather it is that women select for partners who are happier, less prone to crime, and healthier?
It's weird to try and explain this from a sterile alien-studying-humans perspective, but since that's the HN theme I'll do my best. Marriage and having dependents carries with it a lot of economic cost. By revealed choice theory, that implies it has significant benefits, or else nobody would ever do it.
I would be interested in a citation that those entering into marriages and child rearing are aware of the economic costs and are able to enumerate the benefits prior to the events, or if its look back justification after the fact. If you dig, I think you'll find most folks were not aware of the economic and opportunity costs of children, as well as the work involved in maintaining a healthy relationship with a party for an extended period of time.
(removed a bunch of pew research citations that made the comment unwieldy; happy to cite for those interested)
Well if we want to be all logical and science-y about this, we can't assume humans are rational beings. People obviously make bad decisions all the time.
Just because lots of people have kids, for example, doesn't mean that having kids makes people happier, and in fact studies seem to show the opposite to be true on average. That said, I'm not trying to say that having kids is always an irrational choice, and certainly it makes some people happier (or it might make people "unhappier" but lend them a greater sense of meaning and purpose that balances things out). But clearly you can't just say "well, correlation must imply causation because otherwise why would people do X if it makes them less happy?"
This is counterintuitive. The obvious benefit of marriage is producing children.
Producing children is extremely costly for both parents. This is true both in animals and humans - you would generally not say that rearing children is good for the health of the parents. It probably brings emotional benefits to the parents (which it would have to, otherwise they wouldn't do it), but there's no reason to assume that couples are automatically better off in terms of their finances or physical health than singles.
Edit: Since people correctly pointed out that you can have children without marriage, please replace marriage with "romantic relationships that produce children".
> The obvious benefit of marriage is producing children.
No. Marriage doesn’t produce children.
Marriage can provide social obligations relating to the support of children, though. (It also provides social obligations of mutual support between spouses.)
I think it would be more accurate to say it had significant benefits, but they decreased. And there is a lot of inertia keeping it popular. This results in a lot of "failed" marriages.
Revealed preference doesn't always work well as an explanation for why people do what they do though. E.g. if someone falls for an investment scam a-la Madoff, the person obviously didn't want to end up destitute because of that.
A closer example here might be a salesperson performing a "hard sell" on an automobile that is just at the edge of affordability for the buyer. The buyer really wants to be able to drive around in this cool looking automobile, but they end up with a lemon that they can't afford to keep drivable and sucks up all their resources. It's not so hard to draw a parallel from that to someone who has a family on accident.
> It's weird to try and explain this from a sterile alien-studying-humans perspective, but since that's the HN theme I'll do my best.
This made me laugh, in a good way :) I'll approach it from that angle:
Monogamous child-rearing looks to me a successful evolutionary strategy for the human race (and keep in mind the "monogamous" part might be relatively recent). It implies less about the happiness of the parental units, though.
The Terran octopus dies off soon after giving birth to its progeny, and this is successful for octopus-kind, but results in no long-lasting happiness for the octopus mother. Likewise with many species of insects, arguably very successful lifeforms on Earth. Many of them die or are cannibalized after mating or giving birth.
Successful species propagation strategies do not necessarily make the parents live happier lives. There is an evolved reason for said strategies, but is happiness the maximized factor?
To figure out the causality, you'd need an experiment where people are randomly removed from relationships though random external events.
We do have an imperfect example of this, in the case of widowers. When someone is widowed, does their happiness tend to increase, remain level, or decrease?
That's not enough. One of the often espoused counterarguments is "do happy people marry more, or does marriage make people happier?". You'd have to continuously check happy people and keep a control group from marrying. Checking just the widowers doesn't account for the severity of the loss.
I think it goes both ways. Women obviously do prefer partners who are successful, higher in socioeconomic hierarchy. Yet not being able to find a partner may lower one's self-esteem, which in turn may reduce the likelihood of doing things that increase chances of socioeconomic success.
I mean, advancing in life generally requires leaving your comfort-zone, but that may be hard if you lack confidence.
In fact, AFAIK, one issue with incarceration is that you are not seen as suitable partner anymore. Turns out that both men and women tend to avoid partners with criminal record.
The GP pointed out that the relationship described in this has red flags because the relationship alone is the source of happiness. It would lead to a happier, possibly longer lived, less criminal person.
You seem to be implying (and I don't think this is intentional) that close personal and romantic relationships [for straight men] == a wife. But that doesn't necessarily need to be true. Maybe for romance, but certainly not for close personal friendships.
You're correct that a person isn't an island, but the focus on single romantic partner may be to the detriment of other forms of relationship which are still hugely valuable health wise.
The question of what would most benefit a person's path toward happiness isn't the question of what do people need to be happy, though.
Sloppy analog: If I won the lottery tomorrow, it would allow me to buy a guitar I want sooner than another method; but not winning the lottery doesn't preclude any possibility of my acquiring that guitar.
I'm not sure that not winning the lottery means the path without winning the lottery is harder.
Winning the lottery may even prevent other conditions from developing in the course that would otherwise sustain the goal.
Humans and Islands analogies have been waged in many philosophical battles, but I never gathered that one was settled. Personally, I've subscribed to every man being and island and no man being an island all at once, and think both are fundamentally true in constant contradiction of one another and the contradiction is all you can really point to being true. (the original line "No man is an island" was Donne remarking of man's nature with regard to the Christian god, at least as far as I understood it)
I think if you [general you, not personally] hang your happiness on any one thing you're going to struggle or cause undue burden on someone or something else. And that's what the incel crowd gets so wrong; and I must say the proof kind of seems in the pudding there...
I think there is a really good point here. However, it should be recognized that some of those studies do not control for divorced vs never married very well and the magnitude of the benefit of marriage is over-stated. Not to say marriage does not have health/happiness/other benefits, but the effect is smaller (although the Harvard study seems to control for it certain cases, in strange ways).
>This is basically a red flag for any relationship. If the only thing making or allowing a person to be happy in life is their partner then something is wrong. Mental health is no joke and not being able to enjoy life is usually a symptom of an underlying cause. Depression is probably the most common but anxiety disorders can be similarly hard.
This is nonsense. The instinct to reproduce is inescapable for the vast majority of people. Without it humans would not exist. There is only so much social conditioning that can be done to override the innate drive for partnership and sex. Ignoring this basic drive, which is implicit in Maslow's hierarchy of needs, disenfranchises young men who are disproportionately driven by evolutionarily derived instinct to seek romantic female companionship.
>A partner is not a replacement for the natural circle of close friends humans are supposed to have
No, more like friends are not a replacement for intimacy.
> the best explanation that I've heard for the feeling men have of basic unhappiness without romance and sex is toxic masculinity; the general societal rejection of deep emotional relationships between straight men. Lonely? Make strong friendships! Spend your time with other men who like you and enjoy your company and validate you
I'm not sure I buy this. I'm a man who has lots of close friendships (many of which are with women, but some of which are with men), and I still feel like it's not enough and that I want a romantic/sexual partner. A partner is not a replacement for a close circle of friends, but neither is close circle of friends a replacement for a partner.
> I'm not sure I buy this. I'm a man who has lots of close friendships (many of which are with women, but some of which are with men), and I still feel like it's not enough and that I want a romantic/sexual partner. A partner is not a replacement for a close circle of friends, but neither is close circle of friends a replacement for a partner.
I think the difference is between wants and needs. Aside from a very small number of people most of us need friends and family who care about us and meet our emotional needs. Children need this unconditionally but adults have to take responsibility of their emotional needs and fulfill them in a healthy way by making and keeping friends. I think sexual and romantic desires are not needs; they are very strong desires and their fulfillment is definitely wonderful but life can be happy and fulfilling without them.
I wouldn’t be so fast to dismiss it as a want for most people. I would wager most men feel like emasculated failures if they cannot attract a mate when surrounded by single women. It seems unlikely that a large portion of men only view romantic success as a mere cherry on top.
Not the parent, but I don't think friends are a substitute for a romantic relationship, but having friends is certainly better and more comforting when you're not in a relationship rather than being truly alone.
Regardless, men in romantic relationships should still be sure to cultivate strong friendships
> This is basically a red flag for any relationship. If the only thing making or allowing a person to be happy in life is their partner then something is wrong
When you get older, a partner (or children) are important to keep you going. Your body will fail you. Your mind will fail you. Your life will end and (statistically) it will be a long downward slope. Binding yourself to the right person keeps that slope more even, for longer.
People who think being alone is great are right, until some point after the slide begins that has slowly eaten away at your own ability.
You have a point, but in this case the author of the article says:
> I was a bit of an oddity in that I was anticipating marriage since early adolescence; that outsized-value for relationships came with what I feel were comparably overgrown feelings of loneliness. I got absurdly lucky when I found my wife, but I spent every day without her more or less miserable. It’s arguable she’s the only reason I’m able to be happy.
So it's not old age, but youth in his case that was unhappy until he met his wife. That does look like a red flag to me. Suppose his marriage goes south, will his (ex) wife now be responsible of not only ending the marriage, but also of ending all possible happiness in his life? That's an unreasonable burden to place on her.
> So it's not old age, but youth in his case that was unhappy until he met his wife.
Some people feel the existential dread before it is realized. This is shared by both sexes and sometimes expressed at absurdly young ages without prompting.
Yes, that's absolutely correct. In my case at least I remember occasionally waking up when I was very young in hysterics because of general existential dread related to death.
Would finding a romantic partner help with existential dread related to death? You will not only worry about your own death, but that of your partner's as well. Some degree of this is normal and expected, as it's part of being human, but if it reaches the pathological levels described by the author of TFA...
I remember becoming interested in finding a life partner from as young as 7 or 8. I spent my teens and early 20s turning off girls with my seriousness and didn't manage to get laid until my late 20s. I was sore about it at the time, but in retrospect I'm glad I didn't meet with more success because I likely would have ended up marrying someone who would not have been a suitable lifelong match.
Yes, but that's different. And certainly "empty nest syndrome" is a thing too, but I think there's a large difference between acclimating to a new normal and general mental/physical degradation vs starting out in this mental state in the beginning of your life.
I like doing everything with my wife. It would be hard imagining life without her! Or my kids. But I wasn't an unhappy mess before I met her.
> until some point after the slide begins that has slowly eaten away at your own ability.
Whats your commentary on people who marry and then divorce very late in life like Bill Gates? After all if the primary purpose was to protect against this aggressively lonely stage in life -- no fault divorce has thrown that guarantee out the window.
They seem to now be in the same position as long term single people -- except it's a massive uprooting stressor placed on you in your final years.
> People who think being alone is great are right,
I think the critical part is the "only thing" in the quote.
The same thought expressed as "she makes me happy" and "she's the only thing that makes me happy" are different because of the implied loss of everything (that you will give up everything else that could make you happy to have this person stay).
> until some point after the slide begins that has slowly eaten away at your own ability.
I'd say that is pragmatic, but a very selfish thought.
My parents were taught that by their society ("successful kids" == "retirement plan"), but they didn't follow through with that thought during our upbringing - if anything, they thought they were paying it forward.
For an american comparison, the silent generation of America were a lot like my parents in their attitude towards the future (bright, but built for the kids).
> I think the critical part is the "only thing" in the quote
This is editorial added by the commenter, which is incidental to the point and does not purport to even hold the meaning of "she's the only thing that makes me happy". This is not literally meaning "the only happiness I feel". Ostensibly, the man still finds happiness in sleeping, eating, etc but a good partner fills a particular kind of happiness that is near impossible to replace.
So it seems like old age is the right time to start relationships, as almost everyone will be a lot more willing to start one, and exclusivity will be valued a lot more for practical reasons
While I love being in a relationship, you go too far to imply that all humans need a relationship. There are many people in history who have lived on their own, even as hermits, and been happy that way. Perhaps it's not the right lifestyle for you, but your lifestyle isn't the right fit for everyone else either.
I agree with this. Maybe it doesn't apply to everyone, but I feel it can apply to most people.
For a while, I could have been described as "incel" (as in the literal description of the term, not the negative connotations it has picked up). I was not exactly popular with the ladies, and my dating history was close to nonexistent. My now wife was my first girlfriend and we met when I had pretty much thrown in the towel and given up on romantic relationships.
In an alternate version of my life I could have lived the single life and filled it with other activities and material possessions. I could imagine myself being happy to some extent living like that into my 30s, my 40s, maybe even early 50s. But after that?
Now I can't imagine life without her at my side.
I think there is a lot to be said for having a life partner that is beyond just a good friend and always has your back (yes I'm aware not all relationships/marriages are functional). Especially as the two of you grow older.
I feel the same about kids. We don't have immediate plans for kids. Right now we can imagine living without kids forever, but at the same time we also feel this will change and we'll regret not having one when we are in our 50s 60s or 70s, etc.
Why don't you think people deserve housing and food, in the richest country in the history of the world? Our society could absolutely provide them, it just doesn't because they're "not worthy".
Sorry what? USA doesn't provide food to poor people? I find that a little hard to believe. Even India, with one tenth the resources per capita, manages to do that.
Try substituting 'crave' for 'need' there. You're assigning moral weight to something that acts more like hunger, or attempting to breathe whilst drowning.
People can adapt to this lack more gracefully than they can adapt to drowning, but it's not a thinking process being addressed here. This is an animal drive and you can't switch it off just because it's ungraceful.
And what makes you think Maslow was right? Just because someone wrote something down or a belief is held as true in the Zeitgeist does not make it objectively true. There are many things that we hold as "true" which we really can't say are objective fact.
I'm not trying to be combative, I just believe that it's important to question things we believe to be true when we don't fully understand the reasoning.
Admittedly, though I know OF Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, I have no idea HOW Maslow came to their conclusions. So, I just looked it up:
> The most significant limitation of Maslow's theory concerns his methodology. Maslow formulated the characteristics of self-actualized individuals from undertaking a qualitative method called biographical analysis.[1]
> He looked at the biographies and writings of 18 people he identified as being self-actualized. From these sources, he developed a list of qualities that seemed characteristic of this specific group of people, as opposed to humanity in general.[1]
> From a scientific perspective, there are numerous problems with this particular approach. First, it could be argued that biographical analysis as a method is extremely subjective as it is based entirely on the opinion of the researcher. Personal opinion is always prone to bias, which reduces the validity of any data obtained. Therefore Maslow's operational definition of self-actualization must not be blindly accepted as scientific fact.[1]
Doesn't seem like the experiment was very rigorous or even scientific.
The linked article goes on to explain more modern and scientific research on the subject that seems to disprove some of the original hierarchy's assumptions.
> having a romantic ... relationship is not a requirement for a happy life
Do you think having friends is a requirement for a happy life? It's not strictly necessary, but they are a positive factor, and most people will not be happy entirely devoid of friendship.
Having a partner is a friend you commit to and are closer with than other friends (generalization, sure). I have friends who I would not support through depression, but I would support my partner through depression. Needing someone like that is not unhealthy. It will be difficult to find someone willing to give the same commitment to your friendship as to their partner (generalization again).
edit: I just found this meme: https://i.imgur.com/WCzNW77.png and I decided to link it here. People think friendship is something that is built over years because it takes years in order to have finally made it through enough hardship and shared struggle so calling each other friends is justified. This is the literal meaning of having a friend. You know they'll help you even you got nothing to give and without expecting anything in return from them.
> You know they'll help you even you got nothing to give and without expecting anything in return from them.
I cannot decide if that is more abusive or more romanticized.
If you expect your friends to be there for you without you returning anything, you are abusing them. That isn't friendship, that is exploitation.
And if your friend is there for you even though you are incapable of returning anything, it is incredibly romantic. But also usually very limited, because that drain on your friend has consequences and needs to either be equalized by something (not you) or suck your friend dry until he himself is incapable. Which is a very un-romantic ending, because it leaves the world with 2 emotional cripples.
For me, friendship is also very much about knowing the limits of what i should make my friends suffer through.
life is swings and roundabouts. having nothing to give in return isn't romantic - it's humbling. it's depressing and devastating the one who has no choice but to accept and I'd rather they get out of their dump than thinking about my expectations. it's more important that they're OK to me than if they give back (which I trust will anyway happen because "swings & roundabouts").
I understand most people are more calculating. My own family who would keep tabs of what they give and receive so to never feeling they're in somebody#s debt. I'm like that in business situations, and to those who I know would do it to me, but not to those who are close enough to consider friend.
> for me, friendship is also very much about knowing the limits of what i should make my friends suffer through.
No, I'm not. While I would appreciate help in such a situation, I can fully understand anyone walking away. Being a bother to people and needy is one of the worst parts of being ill.
If you have a treatable form of depression, go get treated. If you have a personality disorder, the person you're responding to is the lucky one, not you.
The medical term for what you are talking about is compassion fatigue. It's symptoms look a lot like depression: "People who experience compassion fatigue may exhibit a variety of symptoms including lowered concentration, numbness or feelings of helplessness, irritability, lack of self-satisfaction, withdrawal, aches and pains, or work absenteeism."
It's important for you to understand the difference between actual clinical depression, which is fully treatable with medication, and depression as a symptom of personality disorders, which is not.
I don't know if you have ever dealt with the latter, or if perhaps you are part of that group, but encountering someone who is can be enough to turn you away from ever potentially being involved with anyone displaying depressive symptoms. There's just too much risk to one's personal life and well-being if they end up being the "bad" kind of depressed person, and not the "good" kind.
It is one thing to nominally 'support' friends through depression and another help them see it through to an under-defined end.
Supporting a depressed person will inevitably take a huge toll on your own mental health. That's aside from the time and physical effort it would take up. I am assuming that the friend has some understanding of depression to begin with, which from my personal experience is rarely the case.
I have supported a couple of friends through depression, and it is exhausting. In most cases I was only around them for weeks, and it drained happiness from my life. At time I felt like cutting contact, because depressed people are insufferable. The only reason I stayed to help was because I had personally gone through a similar situation recently, and didn't want to wish it on my worst enemy, let alone a friend.
It's like having a special needs child or being the carer for dependent parent. It is easy to say that you'd gladly do it, but the sad reality is you'll find yourself wishing for a better situation (with all the guilt in the world) once you are knee deep in it.
In a "comment a positive message on your facebook status" way? Sure, I'd do that. In a real, be-there-no-matter-what, show up consistently for them even when they're a drain and show no signs of improving for months on end? Some I would, some not.
Really, though, friendship isn't a commitment. I am friends with people I enjoy spending time with. I have plenty of people I am no longer friends with because we stopped having things in common or geography got in the way. That's not a failure on them or me as people. I've made new friends and so have they.
I don't feel bad about saying no to things I don't want to do. I don't want to spend time with someone who isn't fun to be around. With some close friends, I will, out of some sense of obligation or caring about that person. With most friends, I don't feel responsibility over their emotional state, and would rather support my own.
I would argue any "friends" you have that you wouldn't be there for when its not convenient or "fun" for you to be around are not real genuine friends. I cannot imagine a single one of the people I actually consider my friends being unwilling to be there for me if I was going through a depressive spiral and I can't imagine me not being there for them if they were. Friendships are a form of relationships and that means being together through thick and thin, when its easy and when its hard. If you are unwilling to be there for your "friends" when its hard only when it's "fun" then you are not friends as far as I am concerned, you are acquaintances.
> I have friends who I would not support through depression
they aren't your friends then. aquaintences perhaps but not real friends. I'd jump through fire for my friends and know they would do (and have done) for me. but then I also run a tight ship with what I consider a friend. if we haven't gone through some kind of shared struggle together we can never be friends. that's why most men will have trouble making real bonds once they leave their teenage years and early 20ies behind. not much new happens (such as puberty) that you struggle through as a group. try to make friends in your 40ies that are as strong as your oldest friendships and it'll be pretty much futile to get anywhere. it's even worse: trusting somebody at that age to become a close friend is a natural red flag for most men. the smell of danger is too high. you're meant to stand on your own feet with that age and better be used to (or even enjoy) being alone (if you don't have a partner)
Sure. At that point, this is just a semantic difference in acquaintance / friend / close friend / best friend. I would argue that there are many people who have zero friends by your definition.
I have friends (by my definition) who I'd, say, drive 30 min out of my way to pick them up if they got car trouble, but I wouldn't lend them $10,000. These are people I see regularly and actively make time to hang out with. I feel like most people would lean toward my definition over yours, but I could be wrong.
my old roomate wouldn't even lend me $200 one night, but he was more than willing to basically chauffer me around for a week when my car was in the shop. This included taking me to work 20 minutes north every day. Despite that, he wouldn't take the $50 I offered for gas. Definitely still consider him a friend.
This doesn't mean anything at all to this thread, but your comment reminded me of that. it still bugs me a tiny bit, even if I completely understand and don't blame him for it. I know some people are just extremely picky about money.
What a banal comment. You understand precisely nothing and you start proclaiming solutions that make no sense and then you even have the gal to psychoanalyze the health of the author's relationship.
A perfect example of the attitude of some that refuse to even try to empathize with others.
Your problem is that you just have no ability to comprehend a situation that is not very similar to your life. So for you, anyone who acts in a way that you do not understand is obviously acting up and doing it wrong, rather than acting in a way that makes sense given the person's circumstances.
Agreed- not only is it overly judgmental and presumptuous, it’s also a nitpick of a single passage from an entire article. It’s not off-topic, but it really swerves discussion into a tangent.
EDIT to add: the best explanation that I've heard for the feeling men have of basic unhappiness without romance and sex is toxic masculinity; the general societal rejection of deep emotional relationships between straight men. Lonely? Make strong friendships! Spend your time with other men who like you and enjoy your company and validate you. A partner is not a replacement for the natural circle of close friends humans are supposed to have. I'll be honest that I'm not the best at doing this, to my own detriment, but I think it's basically the solution.
I don't agree with this. The desire to bone isn't 'toxic masculinity' and isn't something easily substituted with more friends (unless they are of the "with benefits" variety). In me, at least, it is a distinct and real feeling of need without easy substitutes. More friends may lead to more romantic opportunities, sure, but that is indirect and subject to circumstance.
>The desire to bone isn't 'toxic masculinity' and isn't something easily substituted with more friends (unless they are of the "with benefits" variety)
Wow, that's two turns of phrase that erode your point in one sentence.
what I recall from my time in my 20ies my desire to be sexually active was a lot more dominant and in charge of my higher faculties than what it is today nearing 50.
biology determines how strongly we feel we need to be with a partner I think. I accepted much more toxicity and negativity just to not be alone (allowing control by my partner over my emotions and was far more ready to compromise) than what I'm today.
Today any potential relationship needs to be solid on a mental level first before I'd even consider going further. That certainly wasn't the case in my early 20ies. Also I'm today able to spend time by myself (and not just get by but really enjoy my own company, thoughts etc ...)
I think that varies highly between individuals. I consider myself high libido and it's something I have to deal with fairly often, otherwise it starts screwing with my faculties. And the desire has not changed much since my 20s, even if I've learned to be more comfortable in the things that intersect with it
The concept of a dead bedroom absolutely terrifies me. Like, why bother with a relationship if the one person you can have sex with doesn't ever want to have sex?
If the primary thing you want is sex, does it makes sense to tie some relationship to it? Like, in place where prostitution is legal, all you would need is either that or partner that don't mind you having extra.
I wouldn't call it a primary thing, more like an essential component of a romantic relationship. Otherwise, a couple is what? Very committed best friends (I would hope)?
And on your other point, polyamory is increasingly common and a very valid way for people to approach such an inclination
If it were only about the desire to bone, then “just visit your local prostitute” would be the accepted obvious solution. The need for stable companionship is not as easily solved. Luckily, it is not tied to sexual attraction, like the drive to bone.
Close platonic friendships that outlast romances are more healthy than requiring each new girlfriend to be your primary means of emotional support. The lack of social interactions outside of work and wife is also a cause of codependent burnout: it’s unreasonable to expect that the same person is good in bed, a loving mother to your children, primary full-time emotional support, and a chef.
I think it's normal to be happier when you're in a relationship than when you're along, but you certainly shouldn't be completely miserable on your own.
There's a quote I read when I was younger that helped me realize this and come to find peace with my own loneliness at the time.
"Until you get comfortable being alone, you'll never know if you're choosing someone out of love or loneliness."
I remember growing up in the 90s, and in the AOL Instant Messenger profiles of my friends, was commonly the quote: "You have to love yourself before you can love another." Also a lot of DMB song lyrics... it was a different time.
I remember there being a few hopeless kids in high school, but looking back there was also a lot of undiagnosed asperger's and who knows what else.
What I'm really curious about is if the number of Incels is increasing through the years, or if now the underserved mentally ill just have platforms to espouse their misery. The Incel seems to be singularly focused on sex. Companionship, shared interests, mutual respect don't seem to get any daylight in their psyche. I would like to blame the consumption of instant, abundant hard core pornography. But I don't have any data to back that claim up. I'm just thinking of a difference from the 90s (I know porn existed online back then, but come on, everyone was on dial up) versus today.
>Lonely? Make strong friendships! Spend your time with other men who like you and enjoy your company and validate you.
The author has a great followup comment that should really be part of the original article that addresses this line of thinking exactly. Pasted below:
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I want to have a dialogue about this, because I think it's important in a couple ways. To start, I agree in sort of generic terms that a lot of the Incels must be whining without doing anything to fix it; that's just necessary.
But your scenario here for them, parsed, seems to be making a lot of assumptions I'm not sure are true. One thing I get told a lot when I talk about dieting/obesity is that everyone WANTS to be thin; if it were possible/doable/easy then we'd expect to see a bunch of obese people losing weight, and we don't, so it would be wrong to treat all obese people as lazy fat slobs. Basically that they deserve sympathy and the assumption should be that even if they aren't trying real hard at the moment, that what they would have to try is real hard, and it's more complex than just writing them off as voluntarily broken.
In this case I'm not sure what you are doing is the same, but it feels similar. It's something like "Yes, there's a problem - why don't they just change their personality, looks, and conversational abilities?". If that's easy, great; if that's even something someone can do, fine. But I'm not sure it's that simple; I don't know that many people who have drastically upgraded their personality successfully (read: I don't know any people who have done this) and I don't know many people who have ever made themselves more than marginally better looking (read: I've known some people who have done this, but not many). There's probably some dudes out there who are romance-marketable if they just start showering more, dress a little better and make some token effort at not being rancid assholes, but it's relevant that we think about whether those guys are the norm, or outliers.
I say this because, like, the solutions you propose besides that are A. Something that's expensive, stands a good chance of getting them sent to jail and only solves a small part of the problem most of them have B. Something that's expensive, slow and that we'd only expect to fix the underlying problem if the underlying problem is entirely them - i.e. if the stats I posted above are completely the un-loved faults, with no "market" problems they are getting screwed by.
If you are a guy who isn't a capital-I Incel seeing those suggestions, I'm suspicious that it's not that unlike seeing someone complain about their obesity and how society treats the obese and saying "Well, stop whining, bucko - it's hard to have any sympathy for you when "eat less, exercise more" is an option - do you even have a gym membership?".
If it's anything like that, it gets really easy to imagine this lower-case-i not-yet-toxic incel turning to some community somewhere that will give him some level of sympathy. What I'm saying is, we have an option to have sympathy for the generic condition without having sympathy for the bad behavior, something like "Hey, I get that it's hard out there and that this might not feel like or even be something that you can just 'fix' in that way. I feel for you, that's terrible" so they have some other option at all besides "listen, man, I'm going to explain 100 ways women are whores and this isn't your fault at all".
And the normal stuff with escalating problems applies - this is a problem that got almost twice as bad over the last couple decades. Right now, nobody is paying any real attention to it; some people acknowledge that those stats above exist, but nobody is seriously looking into why or what societal trends are pushing it. If we get down the road another 20 years...
>This is basically a red flag for any relationship.
No it isn't.
My grandparents, who were married for 60 years had this mentality. My wife's grandparents, who were married for a similar amount of time, also shared this mentality. My wife's parents still share this mentality (and are obviously completely devoted to one another, which you will notice if you spend about 5 seconds with them). My parents divorced, which has had an incredibly destructive effect on my family, almost certainly as a result of my father's belief that he needed a life that was independent of our family, and that he could somehow live "independently" and still fulfill his role with my mother as the leaders of our family unit.
Go talk to some elderly people: the ones who have been in marriages that have lasted the entire lives are generally completely devoted to one another, and as an extension their families. Unsurprisingly, those families seem to be generally full of happy, healthy people in their own happy, stable relationships.
There is a bizarre (and imo destructive, and toxic) idea that seems to be running through tech especially that devotion to your partner is rooted in "jealousy". It usually leads to "maybe you guys should become polyamorous. What are you jealous?"
And then, predictably, that leads to relationship collapse, heartbreak, and bitterness about 100% of the time. Shocking.
Both this post and the OP strike me as "if it works, it's great, but if it doesn't, it's bad". Different things work for different people, and generalizing too much leads to suggestions that aren't useful for any particular individual situation.
I would argue that a high level of devotion is not the same thing as codependency. I'm not sure you and OP are actually disagreeing with each other here.
It's entirely possible to have an enduring, meaningful, devoted, monogamous relationship that brings a great deal of happiness to both partners without that relationship being a requirement for the people involved to experience any amount of happiness or fulfillment in their lives.
Yeah man I don't think I would classify a committed relationship where partners end up missing their partner when they're gone as "codependent". And honestly this whole trend of laymen trying to psychoanalyze people with whatever toxic psychobabble their read on twitter is getting out of hand.
Codependence is when two people have some unhealthy trait that is reinforced by the other person's unhealthy trait. From wikipedia:
>Codependency is a concept that attempts to characterize imbalanced relationships where one person enables another person's addiction, poor mental health, immaturity, irresponsibility, or under-achievement.
That is not the same as "I get sad when my wife is gone because she is my life partner".
Right, but this is the statement that someone pointed out as a red flag, that you disagreed with
> I got absurdly lucky when I found my wife, but I spent every day without her more or less miserable. It’s arguable she’s the only reason I’m able to be happy.
Which is basically the exact definition of codependence.
>Which is basically the exact definition of codependence.
Well okay I suppose that the people I'm talking about, in their 50+ year relationships would describe their love for their partner as a type of addiction, but what you might be missing there is: that is a joke, and they are being cute.
If we're redefining romantic devotion as an "addiction" then I think we have officially lost the plot.
You're kind of just arguing past the people in this thread ("these relationships in my life are healthy and not codependent, so codependence is not a problem in relationships"). I would also argue that your takes offer the same "armchair psychoanalysis" you're arguing against, fwiw.
> If we're redefining romantic devotion as an "addiction" then I think we have officially lost the plot.
No one is redefining anything. This term is poorly defined. Codependence is not "romantic devotion". "Romantic devotion" should not be codependence.
> A codependent is someone who cannot function on their own and whose thinking and behavior is instead organized around another person, process, or substance.
Look-- my life would be crap without my wife. She's awesome and I am much happier in partnered life. I'd survive and have some enjoyment alone, but most of us end up partnered up because it's a serious buff to life fulfillment.
That doesn't make us codependent, to know that I'd spend lots of time miserable if unpartnered and without my wife in particular.
I don't think it's generally worthwhile to argue with people whose arguments center around "I love my wife and you cannot tell me that's not okay." Lots of these responses read as though people are feeling attacked, which isn't a great baseline to start any reasonable conversation.
In fairness, the tone of the earlier comments has been edited-- the original tone of "you're all codependent" and the statement that we're all just jealous that we can't play video games whenever we want maybe reasonably made people feel attacked.
I'm not suggesting that the person feeling attacked isn't right to feel that way (I didn't see the comment you're referring to, but this topic seems to be kind of heated in nature regardless).
Mostly just, attempting to reason with someone that's feeling attacked (much less, someone that's feeling attacked about something as emotional as loving their wife) is an unwinnable task. I wish this conversation started better, because I actually think it's very important (and I generally think/agree that lots of relationships are unhealthy and it contributes to a lot of more negative societal issues), but I think discussing those topics with those that think you're trying to invalidate their relationship serves no one.
See, I disagree, because I believe that we've evolved to prefer stable, partnered life, and that a large portion of the population is still substantially affected by those drives. Not all of us can just say goodbye to biological imperative.
I agree that people should be "okay" without a partner and freestanding as their own person. But, this doesn't mean that it's unhealthy for partnership to be a major portion of life's happiness and fulfillment.
I don't know what the version of me without a stable, long-term relationship would be like. But-- I do know that my life became much better around the time that I met her; that the improvement appears to have lasted and cumulated, and also that it seems to me that a large part of my fulfillment and happiness comes from interaction with my wife. If this is unhealthy, I haven't seen the negative impact from it yet.
Apologies, I didn't realize you were the commenter I've been referencing as feeling attacked.
> See, I disagree, because I believe that we've evolved to prefer stable, partnered life, and that a large portion of the population is still substantially affected by those drives. Not all of us can just say goodbye to biological imperative.
Can you reference any legitimate science to back this up? I believe the push towards partnered life is a byproduct of capitalism, and has nothing to do with evolution or biology.
> But, this doesn't mean that it's unhealthy for partnership to be a major portion of life's happiness and fulfillment.
This is the strawman that keeps getting thrown around in this comment section. Nobody is suggesting that finding happiness and fulfillment in a partner is unhealthy.
> I don't know what the version of me without a stable, long-term relationship would be like. But-- I do know that my life became much better around the time that I met her; that the improvement appears to have lasted and cumulated, and also that it seems to me that a large part of my fulfillment and happiness comes from interaction with my wife. If this is unhealthy, I haven't seen the negative impact from it yet.
This is again a strawman. "Incapable of being alone" is different than "enjoying being together". The former is what is unhealthy, as has been referenced over and over again in these comments.
> I believe the push towards partnered life is a byproduct of capitalism, and has nothing to do with evolution or biology.
?? This is something that is observed across many cultures. Yes, attitudes of permanence are different, and the strength of prohibition against adultery is different, and you can find an outlier. But e.g. we have pre-capitalist Native Americans practicing marriage and stable coupling, and thousands of years of documented traditions within China, ancient Egypt, etc.
> This is the strawman that keeps getting thrown around in this comment section. Nobody is suggesting that finding happiness and fulfillment in a partner is unhealthy.
It's hardly a strawman when it occurred earlier in this thread (and still is there weakly even after edits).
Yah. I think for me, in the long term, I'd be miserable without a partner. The continuity and shared journey is a key part of what makes life tolerable. Yes, friendships are great, but they're not the same. Not to mention: I like getting laid.
I also think my wife is a uniquely good partner for me. If I lost her, for some reason, it would be difficult to find a situation nearly as good for me.
That's hardly the same as codependence, though.
I also gotta say: When my wife leaves to travel on her own or with the kids for a few days... it's bliss, both during and after. A few days without her is great, and reunion and the chance to share stories of our independent adventures is great, too.
I've known people who are happy and fulfilled living alone, but it's hard for me to picture myself in their shoes.
My wife and I have an awesome relationship. I would be okay-ish, but it couldn't hold a candle to what I have now.
The big bright spots in my life are my work, my relationship with my wife, and my kids. I would have more time to play video games and consume media, and I'm sure I'd have some more friends and hobbies... But it's hard for me to picture papering over her absence with friendships and hobbies.
I still don't understand if by that sentence the article author means he was miserable before, or if this means he misses her after just one day of her being away. "Spent" is in the past, so I assumed it's the former.
I have the impression that people are talking about different things in some replies.
> I still don't understand if by that sentence the article author means he was miserable before, or if this means he misses her after just one day of her being away.
Honestly to me it's not important, if it's either of those things, if it's misery every day without someone that's pretty extreme. IMHO, YMMV etc. Glad he's happy, but that's a lot to put on a partner.
> Go talk to some elderly people: the ones who have been in marriages that have lasted the entire lives are generally completely devoted to one another, and as an extension their families. Unsurprisingly, those families seem to be generally full of happy, healthy people in their own happy, stable relationships.
> And honestly this whole trend of laymen trying to psychoanalyze people with whatever toxic psychobabble their read on twitter is getting out of hand.
No offense, but that's exactly what you just did. I personally know of families with 30+ years of marriage who appear "full of happy health people" on the outside but independently disclose their lifelong frustration.
You're interpreting this very different to how I read it. Missing someone is very different from being miserable when apart because you don't have anything else to give your life meaning.
I'm not miserable when I miss someone. I'd never describe it as that way, because if I'm apart from someone, while that sucks, at the same time it means I have someone. Longing is not misery to me at least.
I agree that OP should not have used such absolutist terms, but you are guilty of the same thing. There are couples which are *devoted* to each other. And there are couples that simply have a deep friendship and know that in 30 years they will probably drift apart but continue having respect for each other. Self-awareness and honesty are obviously necessary, but you describing "life-long devotion and complete dependence on one-other" as the only way to build lasting meaningful relationships is simply harmful. Just as harmful as saying that such type of devotion should not exist.
> There is a bizarre (and imo destructive, and toxic) idea that seems to be running through tech especially that devotion to your partner is rooted in "jealousy"
I feel like you're responding to a different argument than the one that was posed above. They weren't saying that a deep devotion to your partner is bad at all. They were saying that if you're miserable every moment you're not with your partner, there is likely something wrong that needs to be addressed.
Being able to be comfortable and happy even when your partner isn't around doesn't preclude you from having a devoted long term relationship. In fact, that feels like a recipe for a healthier long term relationship. Otherwise you can end up with codependency or separation anxiety.
But what I'm responding to is the idea that if you're only ever happy when your partner is there, there's likely something wrong. I didn't even really bring up single life.
> indeed is one we should all strive for (or why bother)
What do you mean by this? Why bother with what?
(As an aside, I actually don't think that being in a relationship is something that all people need to strive for.)
Being miserable whenever you aren't around your partner does rise to the level of a mental health issue, I feel. You aren't going to be around your partner 24/7/365, and it's not healthy or reasonable to spend that away time in misery.
But you are moving the goalposts, the statement in discussion is this:
> I got absurdly lucky when I found my wife, but I spent every day without her more or less miserable.
This is not healthy, doesn't matter how much you care about your partner and relationship. Feeling miserable every day without someone is not a good sign.
You can be much happier when you are with your partner, you can enjoy to spend most days with your partner, that's natural. Not enjoying a single day without them is pretty alarming.
> I was a bit of an oddity in that I was anticipating marriage since early adolescence; that outsized-value for relationships came with what I feel were comparably overgrown feelings of loneliness. I got absurdly lucky when I found my wife, but I spent every day without her more or less miserable. It’s arguable she’s the only reason I’m able to be happy. I imagine some of these men are similar to me in the loneliness and not as lucky in finding someone, and it’s impossible for me to not feel something.
>Feeling miserable every day without someone is not a good sign.
I would guess that the main issue here becomes the tendency for folks to become housebound. Retirement is no joke in terms of becoming inwardly focused.
I feel like you're reading that text differently. I don't think they're saying "if my wife or I are apart for a few days [business trip or something], then I'm miserable", but rather "I was miserable before I found the relationship with my wife, but we can perfectly well be apart for normal business trips without issue."
I don't think you're arguing against what the parent actually said. If you need your partner in order to be happy, and when they are not around you're unhappy, that is not healthy. Not healthy for you personally, and not healthy for your relationship. That's dependence (or codependence if it goes both ways), and that's not the same as simply missing someone when they're not around.
You can be 100% devoted to your partner and relationship but still be happy when the two of you are apart. A polyamorous relationship, or a person who has a whole other life completely separate from their partner, is not the only other option. You seem to be creating a false dichotomy here.
Pinning your happiness to the presence of another individual is not healthy. You cannot be with that person 100% of the time. And what if they die, or their feelings change and they don't want to be with you anymore? (Certainly either event would be devastating, but it should not destroy your only source of happiness.) How is it healthy for you to put all your emotional eggs in their basket? And even worse, how is it fair to the other person, to make that person an essential part of your constant happiness?
I suppose the best reply to this is that for a healthy romantic/sexual relationship to exist the partners in it must already be basically emotionally healthy, including having the coping skills and support to deal with their own emotional disregulation if it exists.
It's wonderful to see happy partners in lifelong relationships. That is almost certainly a sign of individual emotional maturity and self-regulation. Those people would be happy in or out of that particular relationship (absolutely not discounting the intense grief of losing a lifelong partner, but the emotional resilience to start enjoying life again), and the ones you mention clearly have strong and healthy relationships with other people as well.
Unhappiness with life before finding a partner demonstrates that there is something fundamentally wrong. People feel too lonely, or too insignificant, or too unloved, or too undervalued, or some other excess of negative emotion that at its root is unhealthy self image or mental health issue and needs to be dealt with independently of whether or not that person is in a partnership. Validation from a relationship can certainly mask the underlying negative emotion, but there's a big risk that at some point a partner's validation will stop working and the person will become unhappy again but put the blame on the partner or the details of the relationship without realizing that it's the same internal emotional problem that was always there. Almost certainly if the relationship ends the person will think the partner left because of the incorrect belief they have about themselves due to negative emotions, e.g. "I was unlovable" or "I wasn't attractive enough".
> There is a bizarre (and imo destructive, and toxic) idea that seems to be running through tech especially that devotion to your partner is rooted in "jealousy". It usually leads to "maybe you guys should become polyamorous. What are you jealous?"
That is indeed toxic. Jealousy is a natural feeling; it can be rooted in some negative beliefs but not always. To me it feels like a fair mix of instinctual response from relationship preference and underlying fears. Unfortunately for the folks you mention instinctual jealousy is a pretty strong indication of a preference for monogamy and not for polyamory. In contrast what I've heard called "compersion" is a feeling of shared joy and happiness about a polyamorous partner's experiences with other partners, distinct from any sort of fetishization of another relationship (which while not necessarily unhealthy is distinct from simple happiness at a partner's happiness). Jealousy for me has usually been rooted in fear of loss; loss of a relationship or fear of missing out. For monogamous people jealousy is also rooted in, for lack of a better word... Monogamy. It's probably the majority relationship preference.
To add to the other replies, my own grandparents sound similar to yours in that they were happily married for 52 years. But my grandfather passed away 5 years ago, and while I know she still misses him deeply, I don't think my grandmother is in a constant state of misery. She is still able to find happiness in life despite now being alone.
I think that's what the parent was getting at. Being devoted to your partner doesn't mean you need them to enjoy life.
> the ones who have been in marriages that have lasted the entire lives are generally completely devoted to one another,
I've been happily married for 17 years and have been with my wife for over 20.
Trust me: there is a big BIG difference between being deeply devoted to your spouse and being co-dependent on them such that you cannot be happy during their absence.
> Go talk to some elderly people: the ones who have been in marriages that have lasted the entire lives are generally completely devoted to one another, and as an extension their families. Unsurprisingly, those families seem to be generally full of happy, healthy people in their own happy, stable relationships.
Have you actually talked to or people long enough for them to trust you with their past or current martial issues? Because in my experience, after knowing then for long enough, they start talking for real and completely different pictures emerge.
And really really, you don't know whether people are happy nor what that happiness actualy practically means, until they know for really well. Because most people don't talk about how their relationships looks like from inside.
Sorry but I’ll have to downvote this, there’s something about humans that is either cultural or genetic, but we travel and live in groups and we settle with partner(s). Being alone might be OK in a tribe, but as we moved to more isolated and individualist ways of living being alone means something completely different. On top of that every song you hear is about love and every movie you watch has a love story. You go out and you see happy couples around you, conversations most often revolve around dating.
My theory is that behind every violent crime or act of terrorism there is a huge amount of frustration that built up from not having that someone.
Your choices are not limited to "being adhered to a codependent sexual partner" and "being totally disconnected from society trying to live as a Randean ubermench ascetic".
It is the belief that those are the only possibilities that makes people incels, not the lack of a chick.
Isn’t the point of incels that they want something that is majorly important in society, yet can’t get it. It’s a bit like telling poor people that they should not care about money.
> This is basically a red flag for any relationship. If the only thing making or allowing a person to be happy in life is their partner then something is wrong. Mental health is no joke and not being able to enjoy life is usually a symptom of an underlying cause. Depression is probably the most common but anxiety disorders can be similarly hard.
There is a great amount of neuro-diversity in the human species. Some people are wired to be rugged individualists who could enjoy living by themselves in a cabin in the woods. Other people are wired to need to be around their family.
For some people, its not a choice, its how their brain is wired.
I think the issue is how extreme the statement "It’s arguable she’s the only reason I’m able to be happy" is. I think there is nothing necessarily wrong with that if you find a partner who is comfortable with providing this author's needs. In my mind though that statement signals a codependent relationship which are generally not seen to be a great thing. I'm not saying they are in a codependent relationship as an FYI, but it sounds like something people in that type of relationship would say. Like can the person not be happy at all if they were not in a relationship? Can they not find satisfaction in their job, hobbies, volunteer work, etc? yes it might not be fulfilling as being in a relationship, but to have a binary happy / not happy state based only on being in a relationship seems extreme. This is just going based on how the author worded it. Maybe a better way to have written their statement would be "less happy".
>It’s arguable she’s the only reason I’m able to be happy. ...then something is wrong.
I don't think work life balance and societal expectations are given enough discussion in these matters. Having a toxic job or no balance is going to breed problems in even the most well adjusted people.
Likewise, men are taught by society at large to providers. Men are expected to get great jobs so the wife can stay at the mcmansion with the kids and that anything less than this is a failure of their person. I'm obviously exaggerating, but these messages still abound in pop culture.
I don't know what the solution is, but I think it starts with employees taking more control over the work they do, how they work, and what happens to the profits they create.
> This is basically a red flag for any relationship. If the only thing making or allowing a person to be happy in life is their partner then something is wrong.
Vast majority of people are only happy when they're in a relationship and have a circle of friends. We've evolved this way. If you have no friends, you focus on your partner to get this social interaction.
When you have no friends, no partner, then you turn to poor substitutes for social engagement, like online forums. If you ask me that's the red flag (using Internet a lot).
This sounds pretty ignorant and insensitive. What someone wants or needs to live a happy life cannot be generalised. While I don’t think people owe you more than some empathy and politeness, they shouldn’t also be allowed to make sweeping judgments about your character on the basis of what you hold valuable or not.
It can be generalized. Sex drive is a biological imperative. To suppress it takes a lot of effort and adaptation. Workarounds take a lot of effort.
When you buy certain species of pets, you will only be able to buy them in pairs. Holding them solo is considered animal cruelty. I do consider holding humans solo cruelty, and people advocating things like "the world doesn't owe you a companion" cruel. Maybe the world isn't able to provide, but it should endavour to.
> having a romantic and sexual relationship is not a requirement for a happy life.
This is a bit silly: either it's trivially true but irrelevant, if the claim is that there exist people who can live happy lives without (sexual) relationships; or it's flatly false, if the claim is that everyone can be equally happy without relationships as they would be with them.
Relationships bring significant happiness. People who are in relationships self-report more happiness. They're richer. They live longer lives. You might say that I'm mistaking cause and effect: maybe happier/richer/healthier people are more likely to enter into relationships? This is probably part of the effect, but not the majority of it. If someone randomly ends up a widower from their partner experiencing a sudden, tragic accident, their happiness doesn't remain level. In fact, it substantially decreases: widowers have some of the highest suicide rates of any demographic group.
Relationships aren't some crazy random idea that just happened to develop in 2020 USA. They exist universally, across all cultures and times. All of them consider a relationship as a good, important goal (even as the typical attributes of relationships do vary). It's hard to name any facet of culture as universal as that.
Man this thread sure must be depressing if you're single.
Single? That's your problem, that your single. Go get a relationship and be happy!
Way to dogpile on people when they're down.
I say enjoy being single. If a relationship happens, good for you, but don't listen to people that say you're damaged / worse off / going down the drain because you're single. They're just jealous you can travel and play video games whenever you want. =)
I see far more people saying the opposite, that if you're single and unhappy, it's your fault for not trying hard enough to be happy.
Some people need relationships to be happy. Some don't. It's silly to deny the existence of either group, but most discourse seems to deny that it's valid for someone to see a relationship as an important component of their path to happiness.
Another way to phrase the original top comment (which, btw, is very deservedly the top comment): "If you can't be happy on your own, there's no way you'll be happy with a partner."
Happiness comes from within. Pegging your happiness on something external to yourself - material wealth, social standing, another human being - is giving away all agency you have over your own happiness.
>pegging your happiness on something external to yourself - material wealth, social standing, another human being
You have incomplete and varying, but nonzero levels of control over all these things.
I agree with the whole "if you're not happy alone" rule of thumb but happiness isn't a binary. It's a scale. And amassing a little more wealth, becoming a little more respected, having a partner, all those things can add amounts of happiness that push someone from "unhappy" to "good enough". Look at the reverse case when people lose all that stuff if you really want to see how evident it is.
A death of a parent is identified as one of the most significant causes of unhappiness. If your happiness is negatively impacted by the death of your parents, is the issue that your parents died, or that you've given away your agency to choose your own happiness?
> Another way to phrase the original top comment (which, btw, is very deservedly the top comment): "If you can't be happy on your own, there's no way you'll be happy with a partner."
Why does everyone in this thread like posting definitive statements like this? As if it's universally true?
Life isn't as black and white as people like to think.
I was not much of a happy person before I found my (now) wife many years ago. She helps me deal with life in a way no therapist could ever do (and vise versa, me to her). We're in it together and help each other.
I could not figure out how to be happy on my own. Once I found my partner, I was able to be happy.
This isn't universal, of course. Many people are able to be happy on their own, but it's so strange reading definitive stuff like "there's no way!" when it's just not black and white.
People say it as a sugar-coated way to express "if you're unhappy, it's because of a character flaw, so you should internalize your frustration, not express it to other people, deal with it privately, and definitely don't politicize it."
> They're just jealous you can travel and play video games whenever you want. =)
This comment comes off defensive and hypocritical to me, rather than contributing to the conversation. You're basically saying we shouldn't talk about good things if some people don't have those good things; and also screw people with good things because they're actually jealous of the have-nots
I think life is incomparably better with a partner. It's not a question and it's not even close: there's nothing I miss about being single and almost every single thing about my life today is better because I'm in a relationship than if I weren't. It's cheaper, I have someone to share the good times with, I have someone to support me in my bad times, I have a teammate for life's plans and adventures, and I never feel lonely. I can also travel and play video games whenever I want; in fact my partner often buys me videogames and I often buy her things for her to enjoy on her own.
That's not dogpiling on anyone. It's not my fault if someone's single, and it may or may not be true that being in a (good) relationship would make them happier. It definitely makes me happier, and statistically it's a massive boost to quality of life for the vast majority of people. It's not fun to think that someone's worse off, but changing what you say doesn't change reality. This is meant to be a place where people can discuss ideas and concepts, and not talking about the benefits of relationships doesn't make them any less real.
To be frank, you response sounds a bit more defensive than mine.
Are you arguing that if someone claims that it's possible to be perfectly content and happy while single, that that somehow undermines the happiness you've found with your partner, as if the mere claim that contentment can be found without a partner invalidates the fact that you're happy with your partner?
I can easily read your response as saying something akin to:
"You're single and happy? Nah. You only think you're happy because you haven't experienced true happiness. Only partnered people can truly experience the incomparable joy that I have found, unlike those benighted singles."
You're happy with your partner. Good for you! That's awesome and amazing. But there's no reason to use that happiness as a reason to look down on other people.
Nowhere in the parent post does he seem looking down on anybody. Stating that life can be a whole lot better with the right partner is a morally neutral statement
Your reading would be an unreasonable stretch, as I explicitly acknowledge in my comment that for a random person,
> it may or may not be true that being in a (good) relationship would make them happier.
I don't know if person XYZ would be happier single in a relationship, and I don't have an opinion on it. Everyone should be free to do what they want, whether or not it makes them happy, and I don't care either way. What I was disagreeing with were your implications that (1) just because some people are single and unhappy, nobody can talk about how good and happy relationships can be, and (2) talking about being in a happy relationship is "dogpiling" on unhappy, single people. To take your wording, there's no reason to use unhappiness as a reason to shut down conversation
I have been single, then married, then single again. I can tell that for me single is better. So for each one its own. It irks me when someone tells other people what is good for them.
I don't think anyone is doing that. It's just the case that many (most?) people are happier and more fulfilled in a committed, long term relationship. It doesn't mean that there aren't people for whom that's not the case, and it doesn't mean that those people are somehow defective.
But this entire post is about how some people get sad, angry, and/or hateful when they want to be in a relationship but continually fail at it. It seems off-topic and missing the point to bring up a "well, actually" about how some people don't want or need that.
Do you think it's sad if a couple has shared values and enjoys living those values together?. My partner and I are both very frugal, hoping to be able to retire early. We constantly celebrate how frugally we're able to live because we're together. Everything is half-off: housing, cars, groceries, travel, electronics. We each research different ways to save on bills, support each other to cut down on costs, research different aspects of saving and investing. You may not value frugality, but the cost savings of being in a relationship is undeniable and great for people who do value it.
> They're just jealous you can travel and play video games whenever you want. =)
To infantilize people like this is more hurtful really. We both know your allotted time with a Nintendo isn't a source of envy. It's a problem, it needs addressing. If you've successfully overridden one of your most primal biological instincts then good for you, you don't need to read all this. However, I suspect most people who say they are just as happy single are not entirely truthful (to themselves).
I'm honestly very surprised at this entire thread.
Clearly the smiley face at the end didn't convey that I was half speaking in jest. But people seemed to have taken my position as an assault on their entire world view.
Let me ask you this though:
> overridden one of your most primal biological instincts
Have you considered the existence of individuals that are gay, lesbian, or asexual? How do these individuals fit into your apparently biological-reproductive-imperative based view of happiness?
Or would you go further to say that those individuals also cannot be happy, since they can't be truly fulfilling their biological instincts either?
> I say enjoy being single. If a relationship happens, good for you, but don't listen to people that say you're damaged / worse off / going down the drain because you're single. They're just jealous you can travel and play video games whenever you want. =)
This is infantilizing people's desires. Enjoying being single is something that many people just cannot do. To me, it's like telling someone who is paralyzed from the waist down to just walk it off - you can still enjoy all that life has to offer... Assuming those things don't involve the use of your legs!
For many people - this is debilitating. A lot of people are just wired up this way.
How many people are truly incapable of happiness while single and how many need a romantic relationship because they see it as the only reliable way to have a friendship that outlasts eight apartment moves and five job changes? When people no longer have reasonable access to social lives outside work and marriage, it’s no wonder so many are unhappily single.
Not disagreeing with your main point, but twin studies show that marriage status account for only 1% of variance in happiness. So maybe the idea that most people need a romantic relationship to be happy is a little overblown?
which addresses a variation of the question. The unpaired half of twins with discordant marital status show significantly (in the case of men) higher rates of depression; women also seem to too, but because there were so few twins of discordant marital status in general, the test is pretty underpowered and so the confidence intervals are huge. Given that, it's actually pretty impressive that it was able to find any significant differences at all.
Thanks for sharing the findings of your quick research. Depression score is indeed not exactly the same as happiness, or life satisfaction, but for the purpose of our conversation I would say they are all close enough to what matter to us, so they are all sufficiently meaningful (and probably very correlated to each other).
Eyeballing the paper you cited, there appears to be evidence that widowed and divorced people are more depressed, but not single people (compared to the baseline, married people). At least when running the regression with all the other important variables controlled. Am I reading it wrong?
For the paper I found, I was looking at Table 4, which is of single never-married people comparing to the baseline of married people. Table 3 seems to correspond to what you're seeing. Skimming the discussion, they guess that the difference in depression and BMI scores between never married/married is due to health selection effects, although AFAICT there's not really a way to differentiate between health selection effects and marriage playing a causal role.
> having a romantic and sexual relationship is not a requirement for a happy life
That's for each person to decide. For incels, it's clearly required. They want it.
It's a fact that interpersonal relationships and sex are part of being human. If you tell them to just give up on this and find other ways to be happy, you're telling them to accept a subhuman existence, that part of their humanity is worthless and should not be exercised.
> basic unhappiness without romance and sex is toxic masculinity
No. It is normal to want relationships and sex. It is normal to be unhappy if you are constantly rejected by everyone. You can have strong friendships and still want this. There is absolutely nothing "toxic" about this.
> Lonely? Make strong friendships! Spend your time with other men who like you and enjoy your company and validate you. A partner is not a replacement for the natural circle of close friends humans are supposed to have. I'll be honest that I'm not the best at doing this, to my own detriment, but I think it's basically the solution.
I agree with you in that this is the best solution, but modern employment is making that hard. When you have a 1h single-way commute, an 8 hour regular work day with an hour of lunch break, another hour of "expected" overtime and "expected" taking part in socializing events to "fit to corporate culture", you lose 11-13 hours each day to work and are probably exhausted. Add another one and half hours to make breakfast and dinner and 8 hours of sleep, that doesn't leave much space for any activities. And God may help you if you're one of the persons who has to take on a second or third job to make rent.
Boomers always complain my generation are "snowflakes" and depression ain't real... yeah no. Depression is real and these people had the luxury of being able to afford two kids, a house and a decent car on one person's salary without ridiculous overtime. Times have changed and not for the better.
I think in this context it's not about toxic masculinity, but simply biology. We're merely animals with big brains, and most individual animals have a deep desire to reproduce. So it's not exactly weird that historically everywhere in the world young men unable to find a partner have been frustrated and a source of social problems, especially as with men troubles finding a partner tend to correlate with lower socio-economic status in general.
> having a romantic and sexual relationship is not a requirement for a happy life.
A romantic and sexual relationship is very much like having money. Money is not a requirement for a happy life. However, having enough money sure does make it much easier to have a happy life.
It is the same with romantic and sexual relationships. You can be happy without them, but having them is such a happiness multiplier that most people want them for very good reason.
Also it has important societal features. If people are poor and they see all the happy, rich people, and they don't think they have any way of getting money, all the psychology self-help telling them that they should be happy being poor, is not going to work. Eventually, a certain proportion will get resentful.
I think it is similar with singles, especially singles who want to be in a relationship but can't. Telling them that they don't need sexual relationships to be happy is not going to work, and will eventually lead to a lot of resentment.
Yeah, no, you are wrong. We are social animals. We haven't evolved to be happy alone. My wife is my best friend. I am absolutely the most happy when my best friend is around and the least happy when she is away. I love doing things with her, talking with her, etc. I have tons of hobbies and interests that don't involve her. I could easily fill my days with those things. But frankly they aren't on the same level as my wife in terms of generating happiness, not by a long shot. And I don't think it is co-dependence. It's just best friends enjoying being together.
> This is basically a red flag for any relationship.
This is a very odd western view of things. None of my Bangladeshi aunts would find it at all controversial if a young man said he was sad because he was chronically unable to find a relationship. Humans are supposed to be in intimate relationships of some sort, for the purposes of making children. Friends and hobbies aren’t a replacement.
I find the ease with which people throw around “codependency” similarly perplexing. I don’t doubt that this situation exists among some people. But normal healthy marriage involves a large degree of codependency. The idea you need to be a standalone individual who would be happy with or without their spouse is inconsistent with how people actually work.
I think the criticism was that the post's author expressed being deeply unhappy with himself to begin with, and the relationship was more like a bandaid that only covered up the underlying personal issues.
But it can equally well be the other way around: loneliness causes the unhappiness.
That's very unfortunate tendency how everyone here first assumes some clear-cut cause and effect, and then goes on from there to interpret someone's expressed feelings.
Yup, I am from India and the experience of men from South Asian countries completely negates the argument in the original comment. Most men in these cultures have no problem finding strong friendships and family bonds, but can still struggle with loneliness and self-esteem when they fail to find intimate relationships.
>I think that's the strongest criticism of incels as well; having a romantic and sexual relationship is not a requirement for a happy life.
Strongly disagree, unless you have low testosterone. Nowhere on Earth except in possibly some religious circles do people mentally push away and control to the point of elimination from awareness their sexual desires and not suffer for it in some form. You don't need to be a Freudian to know that the drive exists and gets out, somehow. If you have a low drive, then it makes sense that it would be viewed as optional.
I mean, if you apply this same reasoning, then "eating this big mac is extremely necessary unless you have one of these weird genes that makes you not crave these type of foods" becomes also a valid argument. It's not about what humans feel they need, it's about what they can live without without tearing their lives apart.
Not analogus at all, there's a wealth of consumable objects other than a Big Mac to sate your hunger. Setting aside fetishism, there's really just one object that sates sexual drive and that's a human being. Or do you think a sex doll is an adequate substitute with no second-order effects?
Me wanting to be famous can only be satiated by other people considering me an enjoyable person. But would you consider that I would be unhappy if I failed at being famous?
>Lonely? Make strong friendships! Spend your time with other men who like you and enjoy your company and validate you.
Men can feel lonely and unhappy and unfulfilled when they are involuntarily celibate even after having strong relationships with other men and with their families.
This has been my experience talking to hundreds of men in India. India has a strong family culture and a strong culture of strong friendships between men (sometimes even involving completely platonic hand-holding which is perceived as weird by the West) but not much of a culture of dating before marriage. The dating pool has a huge under-supply of women, so most men that do want to date would never find a girlfriend. In my experience, many of these men really struggle with loneliness and self-esteem. Eventually, they give in to the family pressure and just agree to an arranged marriage.
I agree with most of this (though "Toxic Masculinity", like "Triggers," "Privilege," and so many others, is a phrase that used to be useful and has now been utterly destroyed by the socially fashionable).
The general "response" to the incel phenomenon seems to be to diagnose (and dismiss) them as the sexual version of anorexics: people who have an unrealistically negative view of their sexual appeal and potential and end up harming themselves as a result. If they could just stop being so hard on themselves and relax, they'd be fine!
This is a problem for two reasons. First, a lot of people genuinely are seriously, perhaps even hopelessly impaired in terms of finding a sexual partner. Appearance, money, and the ability to navigate a host of social and psychological interactions are vital to the process, and some people lack enough of these that their ability to find a partner is slim to none, and will not be improved by a few personal tweaks. The situation is similar to depression: everyone has felt down at some point and gotten over it with simple coping strategies, so they inevitably suggest these strategies to depressed people, not realizing they're dealing with a much deeper problem.
But second, the real issue, as demonstrated in the discussion here, is that a large portion of the population has an unhealthy obsession with having a sexual partner. They view it both as an unqualified good and as a necessity, and are thus terrified of going without it for any significant period of time. For these people, you are not complete as a person unless you're in a relationship. This is a profoundly unhealthy and destructive way to live life, even for ordinary people.
Relationships CAN be good. They can also be bad. On the whole, they generally end up creating almost as many problems as they solve (and sometimes more!). Having a partner is optional. It isn't like air or water or good nutrition. You have to find peace within yourself, with yourself, before anything else. Trying to fix that with any outside thing, including sexual or romantic partners, is a recipe for disaster.
This thread is full of people continuing this warped line of thinking. Relationships aren't evil, they can be good and they can have positive effects on people. But they aren't necessary, and they won't fix you. Only you can fix you.
In short, our culture very clearly has an addiction to sex and romance. Not in the dopamine sense, but because we believe the answer to our problems lies in someone else. In people with the ability to feed this addiction you get mild to moderate problems. In people without that ability, you get incels. Incels are just the most extreme symptom of a deeper disease.
This depends on the attachment style of the person. An avoidant would say 'I want to be independent and no one should take a dependence on me. I feel suffocated if someone does. Nobody likes it".
The other extreme is anxious attachment style. The extreme forms of both are considered personality disorders.
I have lived a significant part of my life being independent, without a partner. But now that I have, I enjoy the interdependence. It is very fulfilling.
> I think that's the strongest criticism of incels as well; having a romantic and sexual relationship is not a requirement for a happy life.
Let me take this in another direction than most of the other comments:
Say you're talking to a homosexual person in a deeply homophobic society, one so bad that you risk becoming a pariah at the very notion that you might enjoy relations with someone of the same sex. Would you tell that person to basically get over it and figure out how to be happy anyways because it's "not a requirement for a happy life"? If that feels like it would be wrong to say, ask why it feels wrong to tell it to that person, but okay to say it to the subjects of the article.
I'm not really sure what should be done offhand. I know the situations aren't exactly analogous. But if you think it's bad to call homosexual people nasty things and they should be allowed to love, then how can it be okay to just casually dismiss straight people who have trouble finding love as being bad people and tell them to get over it?
I agree with a fair portion of the original article and my comment was almost off-topic because it relates more to the author than the article.
The common feeling the author identifies with incels is the intense loneliness and unhappiness. By no means am I criticizing anyone for their feelings. What I am saying is look for the primary underlying cause and dealing with those feelings which is to a) deal with mental health issues. b) focus on building a strong support system for healthy emotional regulation to alleviate loneliness especially. Life should be enjoyable with friends and hobbies, not miserable.
I also want to point out that what a lot of incels want is not a healthy relationship with a woman, but a glorified sex slave or sex worker in exchange for treating them with basic dignity. This is a far cry from gay people oppressed by homophobia. Nonetheless, for the sake of incels who understand what healthy relationships are like and want that:
I'm trying to be pragmatic. I'd advise a gay friend to escape their strictly homophobic society and help them leave. If there's no where to go then I can only offer emotional support and try to fix the society. Likewise, I think introspection about the true source of intense negative feelings is the best thing for anyone who feels intensely unhappy about life for any perceived reason. I have felt intensely unhappy in the past and I have a lot of evidence now that it was mental health and not circumstances like whether I had a partner or not, despite it feeling like the cause sometimes. Love and sex can mask a lot of negative mental health, too.
Pragmatically what else can we do for incels? They feel very bad, none of us (speaking for the men) can give them what they want, and the only way forward for them that I see is helping them find coping skills and support systems to become emotionally healthy. Most of them have unrealistic expectations and will be disappointed until they correct them. The others will have to wait to find the right partner while otherwise enjoying their lives.
> romantic and sexual relationship is not a requirement for a happy life
We have proof of various intelligent animals, domesticated and wild, that display signs of depression, loneliness and self-harm when separated from their bonded partner. If anything, the need for intimacy and romance are central to life as we know it.
"Deep emotional relationships" are based on trust, of the sort that's only really possible with a handful of people at any given time. A relationship that boils down to "spend your time with others who like you and enjoy your company and validate you" is pretty far from "deep", by definition. At that point, you're probably better off just getting a dog.
Hi. I'm a guy who has, for my entire life, had difficulty forming romantic relationships. For most of my life, I also had a lot of trouble forming close friendships. So this is a topic that is very personal for me, and please listen carefully to what I have to say.
First: close friendships are not a substitute for romantic relationships. Friendship and romance are two distinct needs. Not every human is wired to need romance, but _many_ people are. At this point in my life, I'm fortunate enough to have a circle of close platonic friends, but I'm still single, and I'm acutely feeling the lack of romance.
That being said, you have a valid point that romantic relationships are not a substitute for close friendships. Some incels want to get a girlfriend as a substitute for making friends, and I agree that's a bad idea. But telling them "make strong friendships" is not helpful! Most people in this situation will struggle to form to close friendships for the same reasons that they struggle to form romantic relationships.
So how _should_ the problem be fixed? There are no easy solutions. And there especially aren't easy solutions that the sufferers can implement on their own; if there was an easy way out, they would have done it already. I believe this problem will continue until _society_ changes how it treats socially awkward people. Society needs to be more sensitive towards people who lack social skills, and stop demonizing them. For example, there's a tendency to conflate "incels" in the sense of "misogynistic assholes who use terms like Chad/Stacy/femoid", with "incels" in the sense of "any man who's lonely and complains about it". The former group is a tiny fraction of the latter group, and conflating them is very unfair to the latter group. This needs to stop.
In the same way that it's not required to be rich to have a happy life. In theory, yes. In reality, many doors open or close (ESPECIALLY once you're 40+) based on your marital status. for a few of the many examples:
- Not having a spouse may be fine, but being excluded from social outings mostly from your friends who are married may start to affect your social circles.
- Not having a spouse may be fine, but paying higher taxes and more rent due to the rise of the housing market expecting two-incomes may in fact financially affect you.
- Not having a spouse may be fine, but receiving all your societal worldviews and mentalities from your same sex friends exclusively may lead you to have some problematic views in the long run.
It can affect a lot, and goes much deeper than sex. Even in some world where prostitution was not only legal but societally encouraged, these above issues from sexual intimacy wouldn't disappear overnight.
Calling the DNA and the life it produced worthless seems a bit simplistic. Consider e.g. worker bees, which are infertile and rarely reproduce, but are certainly not worthless -- they are crucial to the success of the hive. This is an example of kin selection. [0]
This is a sensitive topic that's hard to bring up and keep things productive in discussing it. So often I see examples of bad behavior, and the commentary is often to demonize and treat the offender as an outcast.
We aren't going to make progress until we start considering that the offenders might be acting out due to internal turmoil and trauma, and that we should be trying to help these people, not outcast them.
There is a lot to unpack here, and it is difficult to know where to begin.
I had a friend who was a pastor who lamented he didn't like that his yearly board game get-together with his other [often pastor] friends often ended up discussing their dead bedrooms. I have no idea how these dynamics have come to be so common, even taking into account the usual ebbs and flows in relationships. I don't know if this problem occurs at higher rates in more religious couples. I suspect that this is the collateral damage of [obviously misguided] purity culture, but we see the same patterns outside of religious couples.
Edit: I should clarify to say the only reason I'm writing this is that these problems have a big impact on people's lives, aren't easy to fix, and often buried from everyone around them.
As far as I understand it celibacy of men devoted to religion or spiritual endeavours is not about "purity" but total focus. And I don't think that is misguided. It's just very resolute.
I don't think that the body being inherently sinful is actually a part of evangelical Christianity. I'm sure there will be some within the evangelical category that teach that, but I think the core evangelical position is this: Sex is for marriage. Outside of marriage, sex is sinful/evil. But within marriage, it is good and to be enjoyed.
Now, you can still think of that as "misguided purity culture", but it's not "the body is inherently sinful".
Myself, as a highly conservative married man, my findings confirm the daily mail article, esp. when I look at the sex lives of my married friends who were more libertine in their youth.
EDIT:
A few theories:
1. My wife is not on birth control, which means she ovulates, and thus has the normal cyclical female sex drive. Her desires during ovulation are way past mine, even if my average is higher than hers. I believe this is why modern men feel so undesirable -- most women are taking hormones that directly affect how attractive they perceive their men to be.
2. No points of comparison. I have no point of comparison with other women. At this point my sexual response, probably through repeated exposure, is finely tuned to my wife. I have fantasies, like any man, but the vividness of my lived experience far surpasses them in excitement.
3. No pornography. I'm not saying I've been perfect, but my religion believes that consuming pornography (same with masturbation) leads to hell, so it's not something I typically do. I have a high sex drive as a result, and instead of masturbating, we have sex instead.
4. No condoms. Similar to number 1. Sex without a condom is better. We tried it once (in violation of my religion) and it was awful. I wouldn't describe it as the same experience. I'm pretty sure there's something in each of our secretions that makes no condom sex better. I'm not a sex scientist, but this is my observation.
I would suspect that usage of antidepressants is lower in highly religious couples. The one-two combo of antidepressants and hormonal birth control absolutely destroy libido.
It seems to me that people could stand to turn these issues into sub-issues. I can't see much similarity between undersexed 25 year olds (typically male) and 60 year old couples who are either constructed differently or have health issues.
My main take-away is to heavily invest in sex robots and teledildonics.
That survey describes personal satisfaction. So it doesn't mean that they have more sex, or better sex, simply that to their own standards and expectations they are satisfied with their sex life.
With this in mind, I'm not surprised that religious couple feel more satisfied.
Having said that, maybe society does set unrealistic expectations when it comes to sex, and it's possible that skews people's perspective and make them all feel like everyone else is having more and better sex, which in turn renders them disatisfied.
So I'm not putting judgement either way, but this seem like a good explanation to me.
Another aspect is knowing better. If you've ever only had Nescafé, you'll still enjoy it and be satisfied with it as your daily coffee driver. But if you've had top notch espresso from world class baristas, you might no longer be able to enjoy Nescafé the same way you used too. Does this apply to sex, I don't know fully, but I think it could be, and religious couple would tend to have less points of comparison, so that could similarly drive them to be able to continuously enjoy and be satisfied with what they have.
Don't take my coffee comparison too literal, "better" with sex doesn't mean like better partner or anything like that, I think just means memories of better times you've had having sex, of more excitement, choice, and all that. I know some people who have an ex-girlfriend, or a one night stand where they still remember that as their best sex. It might often be more because they were simply younger and it was more new to them, then anything to do with the person in itself. And clearly those would have been terrible partners for them. But that memory kind of hunts them with being satisfied in their current relationship sexually, as they can't help but compare one with the other.
This is just all hypothetical, don't take it as ground truth, I'm only exploring the phenomenon.
I'm on your side here (in that I have little patience or care for religious dogma around anything, let alone sex), but I think the point you bring up argues the opposite of what you're arguing.
> That survey describes personal satisfaction. So it doesn't mean that they have more sex, or better sex, simply that to their own standards and expectations they are satisfied with their sex life.
The thing is, that's literally all that matters in this kind of survey. If I'm 10-out-of-10 happy, that is objectively better than someone who is 7-out-of-10 happy, even if those numbers were arrived at via subjective means. Wouldn't you rather be the guy who says "I literally could not be happier", vs. the guy who says "I'm pretty damn happy, but my life is still lacking in some ways"? Ignorance really can be bliss, sometimes.
Your "knowing better" argument is probably a big factor. But isn't that an argument for only having sex with one person? If you end up enjoying sex with that person, then you have nothing to compare it to; most importantly, nothing to compare it to unfavorably. If you don't end up enjoying sex with that person, then yes, you do have a problem. But the survey data seems to suggest that lifelong-monogamy must not produce that outcome often enough to matter.
Not saying everyone should opt for religiously-motivated lifelong monogamy. It's definitely not something I was ever interested in. But obviously there are benefits to it, or no one would do it. (Well, ok, true believers might cite fear of divine consequences as their reason for doing it, which isn't great.)
A lot of this stuff is just fact to you, isn't it?
It's hard to engage when some of the things you talk about here seem immutable to you but are not even reasonable points of contention to me.
"Pornography leads to hell" <- how can we really have a conversation about any of this if you're making blanket statements about some of the content, especially when the statement is so negative? Obviously if hell were real and if pornography certainly led to eternal condemnation in hell, pornography would be bad, but neither of those "if" statements really lead for much discussion.
I believe pornography leads to hell, yes. I also believe that, even if you didn't believe that, it would lead to unhappy marriages? You should feel free to argue to me the benefits of pornography, though.
I think entering into an argument knowing you won't change your mind is disingenuous, and I think your argument that pornography leads to unhappy marriages hinges on the idea that pornography leads to hell, otherwise you wouldn't have mentioned it. It's actually the only reason you've given, and then you built your conclusion on top of it.
My point is by bringing religion into the conversation, you ratcheted up the severity to an 11, since the negative consequences of religion tend to be literally the worst thing you can experience for all of eternity. Before it was a tough conversation about sex, and now it's a tough conversation about sex where if you get it wrong, you're doomed to hell.
At a certain point, I'm left to wonder what your intention actually was, and I'm running out of positive options. For example, you created a throwaway, and I'm curious about what I'm supposed to take away from that decision.
> I think your argument that pornography leads to unhappy marriages hinges on the idea that pornography leads to hell, otherwise you wouldn't have mentioned it. It's actually the only reason you've given, and then you built your conclusion on top of it.
Actually, the argument pornography leads to hell would suggest I think porn makes for a more pleasurable marriage since things that lead to hell typically are extremely fun.
I believe porn leads to unhappy marriages because it causes comparisons, and it causes men to desire things that are not the traditional sex I believe is the most fun and fulfilling. For example, I think it causes men to seek a dopamine rush in sex, like the dopamine rush they get from porn, instead of the connection with another human being that I believe leads to lasting happiness.
EDIT:
> For example, you created a throwaway
Actually, this is not a throwaway. I created a new account because I had to close my previous ones for fear of being doxxed.
They responded on a thread where someone else brought religion in by specifically mentioning the discussions held amongst pastors about their sex lives.
I'm wondering what your intentions are. He's mostly just sharing his personal experiences and perspective and you're responding with a rather negative tone having decided a priori that discussion with him is impossible, when the only questions you've asked him are sarcastic and confrontational ones that don't seem to be posed with an interest in actually having a conversation.
Your experience is different from many others in a few regards. I assume that either you can afford to continue have more children, or you're no longer capable of conceiving. There are many monogamous married couples in the US who must use hormonal birth control or other contraception simply because they can not afford to raise another (or any) child. Childcare is expensive and very little is subsidized by the government to encourage more people to have children. Even simply giving birth is enough to financially ruin some people, and again the government does very little to subsidize this to encourage more people to have children. In fact, many political candidates run on platforms of doing away with anything that might actually enable families to be able to afford to have children, so it's no surprise at all that many people are using birth control, whether they're married or not.
You seem pretty fortunate to be in a position where you can afford to have unprotected sex with your wife, because many people can't afford that luxury. Perhaps it's no surprise they're depressed with unfulfilling sex lives.
My wife and I used natural family planning (ovulation tracking) with great success when we were not having children. We had our first child four years into marriage (conceived quickly). We have never gone more than a few months without conceiving, when we have had sex freely. When tracking cycles, we've gone years.
That's great. It doesn't work for everyone nor is it guaranteed. When your financial stability is tenuous, it seems far more prudent to use more reliable methods, or even to layer multiple methods.
I personally know people who used that method; it didn't work. Conversely my wife and I have used that method with the intention of getting pregnant, and it still took a while because accurately tracking it can be difficult for a variety of reasons.
I'm trying to have a productive conversation here. The original question was about how to avoid dead bedrooms, and I gave my opinion as well as empirical evidence to back it up. I can't comment on the efficacy of birth control. I can say that we have been in fairly financially unstable times, and I have not found that children cost very much, although I can certainly see how some could spend lots of money on them.
If you want to discuss more about having a good sex life, I'm happy to engage but don't want to get derailed by the contraceptive argument. I will say I'd rather have ten kids, less money and a good marriage than a few kids, lots of money and a terrible marriage.
I’m not derailing, I’m making a point that there are many external factors involved. You provided some good tips for avoiding a dead bedroom. My point is that the feasibility of those can depend on other circumstances which tie directly into how society at large cares - or doesn’t - for its members. And this greater issue that the article is about is a societal problem. The implication I took away from your original post is that birth control and lack of conservative religious social mores is partly responsible, and I don’t think that’s the whole picture.
There are other societal issues that help lead us to the situation we’re in, some of which are directly caused by conservative approaches to society. I’m not trying to bash conservatism or religion, but the point I’m making is that it is not without it’s own issues and contributions to other problems.
Lastly it’s not a dichotomy between rich and childless and poor with loads of kids, there are certainly families of 3 or 4 that might want more kids but worry that another might make it harder to provide the same as they have been for their current kids.
Childcare expense has a natural limit: the income of one parent. I have a dozen kids, and I certainly do not attempt to pay for childcare. The kids have a mother to care for them.
It's interesting to ponder how close people might be to hitting that natural limit. Some have gone over it, perhaps without realizing so. There must be many people who would save money by parenting their own kids.
Thank you for sharing this perspective. Honestly, it was really interesting to hear about "traditional" sex, and make me realize just how unnatural most sex has become.
I don't know a ton of married men but every last one of them has managed to let me know one way or another that their sex lives are essentially over. All of them. And it all seems to follow this cliche that people will scream at you does not exist.
Are these people explicitly telling you this? If a bunch of my married friends got together and started bitching about their sex lives, I might nod along in agreement even if my sex life isn't over.
One friend, recently married, much younger than I. Never brought up sex once in all the time I knew him, just casually drops at a party while the two of us are alone in a hallway that the cliche was real.
My longest friendship, married a woman who talked a good game, was very out and proud about her kinky background, and so on. Another dead bedroom, this usually mentioned during long car rides while we go out. She keeps saying that she'll try to do better but does nothing, meanwhile everything she has on the table is a crisis.
I was quite out of tune with this whole issue until I watched the Alek Minassian[1] interview/confession[2]. I still don't really know what to make of it. I will warn you: it's not easy listening, however, it is eye opening and adds further context to this substack post.
For any suffering a communication issue in your relationship, I can't recommend enough the book: "Conscious Loving" [1]
Asides from being an enjoyable read, it provides an excellent framework and guide for how to have conversations about difficult topics successfully. It pairs well with the book "Nonviolent Communication"
These things take time and effort, but they really truly work.
Take care of yourself - health (mental and physical etc).
Sex work should be legal if there is a "market failure" as the article argues.
If someone doesn't want sex in a relationship and other person does - any way to negotiate something - ie, get on tinder for one person or whatever if the issue isn't so critical to break up over?
Is porn a problem? ie, perception everyone getting lots of crazy deep throat action or whatever? Real life is not exactly like that I don't think?
One tip - get off computer / phone / ipad and out from in front of TV. Seriously your life gets better so many ways. Board in bed? Sex gets a lot more interesting.
Kind of interesting, I really have no idea what peoples sex life is like on average. Idk how you can find out, no one wants to talk about it. So either porn or the rare few that do want to talk about it. But those few are going to be such outliers they're likely not average or just lieing
Well, that's the thing. People either lie or (more likely) what they say and what they do are different. My guess is that any study you look at is only slightly tied to reality if it depends on interviews or questionnaires.
Nazi was a shortening of "National Socialist German Workers' Party" which, by this article's logic, means that socialists today should feel at least some level of kinship to the Nazi party. In reality, the Nazis were socialist largely in name only. Likewise, today's feminists have a much broader and less altruistic agenda than one could reasonably infer from their name.
The original NSDAP was quite socialist, and even as Hitler developed it into his own party, it retained a strong socialist faction, which we now refer to as the Strasserites. It was purged eventually, but the history is there.
FWIW, "red-brown" political alliances are still a prominent thing in some countries, usually based on shared social conservative ideals. Furthermore, there are political movements such as National Bolshevism that explicitly draw this connection.
Have there been any comparative studies on this phenomenon between countries with legalized sex work and countries without? I live in a country where it is illegal and have gone through very long dry spells, and let me tell you it is extremely frustrating.
If love, sex, and relationships are as core to people's self-confidence as the author makes it out to be, it seems imperative to let people have access to those things in at least some form. I've certainly been envious of those countries where I would have the option to order up a temporary lover, and the useful-if-fleeting confidence boost that comes with.
My pet theory is that the developed or post-industrialized world is becoming increasingly two-classed. I have had the privilege of having a decent job (being so-called "economically desirable") and decent education and was able to find someone who I think loves me for who I am, for some definition of "I am".
That being said, the "incel" problem concerns me. I think the existence of this entire class of individuals shows that the ideals of equity in gender relations, just like the ideal of equity in relations across economic classes (i.e., being equal before the law, regardless of how much money you have) is obviously a grand ideal that we cannot live up to.
I once tried talking to my girlfriend about it when the topic came up. I brought up the usual statistics that show that men graduate from college at a lesser rate than women, nowawdays. That they are more likely to die in violence or from drugs. That this compounds with the fact that the status of women in the world has generally raised (a _good_ thing!) and that the average woman wants someone who is above them on the social or economic ladder. Her response was that they had so much "male privilege" and that they have no excuse for underperforming. That, thus, they should still be _ahead_ of women, presumably, despite the goal being that they... shouldn't be. They need to pull themselves up from their bootstraps, and "man up", but we also must remember that "man up" is a problematic term that is part of "toxic masculinity".
Of course, all of this was foreseen by French novelist Houellebecq. Economic liberalization has lead to social/sexual liberation. After a period of free love things settle down and here we are. Just as most of the new income generated by later periods of economic liberalization go to the top 20%, so it is with the sexual market.
I've tried to stop moralizing it for my own mental health. Like the author, I just try to look at it with a degree of sympathy. It's complex, and it's kinda fucked up. For myself, these hard statistical realities have increasingly robbed me of the romantic impulse. Marriage to me now seems absurd. An empty, pyrrhic victory.
> Just as most of the new income generated by later periods of economic liberalization go to the top 20%, so it is with the sexual market.
I don't even know what this means. What is "the new income" in "the sexual market"? What is "the top 20%" ? How does "income" "go to" any particular percentile in "the sexual market" ?
OP means that the top 20% of men are getting all of the attention in the dating market. it's a well known fact at this point. i think the numbers largely come from dating apps but they reflect real life pretty well (from my anecdotal experience)
OKCupid used to have a post of sort of barebones statistical analysis of what men considered "average" versus women's outlook. It was ... enlightening.
This would imply that the "bottom" 80% of men are not finding partners. When we look around at the world, either anecdotally or statistically, do we see 80% of men without partners? Not even close.
> Her response was that they had so much "male privilege" and that they have no excuse for underperforming. That, thus, they should still be _ahead_ of women, presumably, despite the goal being that they... shouldn't be.
I genuinely don't understand how someone can reconcile these in their head.
They aren't contradictory. One is an assessment of the currently perceived reality and one is a stated goal. The mindset is simply that we haven't reached the goal yet.
But the "currently perceived reality" (eg the fact that men are now behind in terms of college graduation) is exactly what you would see once you've reached the goal.
By saying "well, they were so far ahead they have no excuse to not be better anyway" you're basically saying that you will reject potential evidence that the goal has been reached.
Maybe I misunderstood the GF's point, but it just sounds like such a lack of empathy for people who face hardship for reasons that are specific to their individuality. It's like saying "poor men are too stupid to not be poor, they have no excuse to be poor".
You are making a different argument now that her perceived reality is not actual reality. You originally asked how someone could reconcile the two quoted ideas as if they were contradictory. I pointed out how they could coexist.
Regarding her perceived reality, we really need more information than college graduation rates, violent deaths, or any of the stats mentioned by OP. For example if every woman is graduating with an English degree and every man is graduating with a nuclear engineering degree, more women can be graduating and men can still have a much higher mean income among post college age people.
Whether the goal has been reached is clearly a matter of debate. It isn't unreasonable for some people to think we haven't reached it yet.
> You are making a different argument now that her perceived reality is not actual reality.
I never said that. I said that what she perceived as actual reality (she didn't seem to disagree with all the points brought up by her partner) should be seen as evidence that maybe the goal has been reached at least in some domains. However, she seems to just brush it off and instead say that these evidence that the goal may have been reached are anomalies since the goal has not been reached.
As for income disparities, as long as women are not prevented from graduating with nuclear engineering degrees and men are not prevented from studying English, I don't think equality of outcome is interesting. As long as equality of opportunity is achieved.
>I said that what she perceived as actual reality (she didn't seem to disagree with all the points brought up by her partner) should be seen as evidence that maybe the goal has been reached at least in some domains.
You didn't say that in you original comment. Maybe that was your intent, but it didn't come across due to the specific portions of the original comment you quoted.
>As for income disparities, as long as women are not prevented from graduating with nuclear engineering degrees and men are not prevented from studying English, I don't think equality of outcome is interesting. As long as equality of opportunity is achieved.
More women graduating from college is not evidence of "equality of opportunity" because the opportunity people are advocating for is some combination of self-determination and a good quality of life that are near impossible to measure. They end goal is not college graduation. No one here is advocating for "equality of outcome".
> these hard statistical realities have increasingly robbed me of the romantic impulse
I think you should reflect on how sensible it is to apply population-wide statistical trends to your personal situation (which is not statistical at all). If you follow the statistics you should not start a business or go to college[1]. I really urge you to take seriously that your own personal experience is more valid than statistical instruments and that, even if by some measurement you are "below average" (whatever that means) you can still be happy and healthy.
I agree that men are doing "worse" than they have been and I do think your girlfriend's attitude towards men who are struggling is not in line with egalitarian principals. I also think that you're promoting a view of society where winners taking all is expected, and in that kind of society, you would expect men to be distributed away from the "middle" of society. After all, if you imagine it's a zero sum competition, then the winning men would push the losing men towards the bottom of society as much as possible to protect their gains. I think this is worth pointing out because I do not think we need to follow that model of society.
Humans will secure the resources they can in situations where zero-sum resource distribution is enforced, but altruism and reciprocity are also possible if we build systems which allow them. If you live life like you either win it all or your life is a waste, then it will almost certainly feel like a waste[2]. You do not have to do that.
[2] This doesn't ignore the many people who are at various kinds of social and material disadvantage. The statistics are real, they just don't mean that men are disadvantaged as a whole.
There was an excellent interview in Danish radio with male/couples therapist, his take was really interesting. There are three groups of men, in his view. The lower class, being uneducated and poor, the upper class, being extremely successful. Both of these group have no problem with the changing male roles or feminism, they just ignore it or it doesn't affect them. They just continue as always and it works for them. Then there is the largest group of men, the middle class. They're told that the male role has to change, or is changing, and they do as they always do, they adapt. The kicker in this thesis is that they're then told that everything is still wrong. That is confusing, angering and leave a large number of men in a state where they no longer care or they develop an anger towards modern society and women.
The solution, again according to this theory, is not to redefine the male role in society, because that was never going to work. Instead we should return to the traditional male ideals, without the negative aspects. In essence to bring back the gentlemen.
Personally I like this theory, because it has practicality, something that is lacking in the idea that men need to evolve, adapt or "find their place in modern society".
> Both of these group have no problem with the changing male roles or feminism, they just ignore it or it doesn't affect them.
That's also true for a growing number of women, especially above a certain age. They feel completely alienated by the current 'feminist' movement and don't identify with it. Wonder if the younger generation might not do the same.
> roles have taken a left turn from becoming equals in society to striving for sameness.
That was actually also part of this interview. They had the therapist with this thesis and another sexual/couples therapist, and the general consensus between them was that "sameness" kills sexual tensions in a relationship. This results in less sex, which in turn, for most people, means a less happy relationship.
There is an expectation men and women should be the same, expect in the bedroom, where the man should return to some classic or traditional role. That just doesn't work, that duality isn't something most people are able to deal with mentally.
> Her response was that they had so much "male privilege" and that they have no excuse for underperforming. That, thus, they should still be _ahead_ of women, presumably, despite the goal being that they... shouldn't be. They need to pull themselves up from their bootstraps, and "man up", but we also must remember that "man up" is a problematic term that is part of "toxic masculinity".
My reading of it is that the commenter is interspersing things his partner said during that discussion with conflicting opinions that she expressed at other times. It’s unlikely that she stated all of these things in sequence.
I think it’s normal for people to hold some contradictory views. Our web of mental concepts may have a lot of nodes in it that resemble one another, but with different neighbors, that developed at different times in different contexts. Duplicate records lead to poor consistency!
It seems like the commenter, upon reflection, noticed this inconsistency and was bothered by it. But he has the EQ to realize that starting an argument over it is unproductive, so posted here under a throwaway to get some catharsis.
> For myself, these hard statistical realities have increasingly robbed me of the romantic impulse. Marriage to me now seems absurd. An empty, pyrrhic victory.
I don't follow why that is. Just because the world's fucked up doesn't mean exclusive devotion to another person doesn't have its romantic appeal.
There was some philosopher I was reading about the other day who posited that the "free love" crowd weren't really free because they were slaves to whims and circumstance. A truly free person, as I gather, is one who decides and acts independently of personal feelings and circumstance.
Ergo, if you don't want to give yourself to your partner, do it anyway. Not out of external obligation, but out of the commitment you decided to make to them. In that perspective, committing to lifelong unconditional love is one of the few victories we have over being mechanical cogs in a sensational machine.
What makes this even better, though, is when you're loving someone unconditionally, it's usually hard for them not to return some of that love sooner or later. So you build a gradual virtuous cycle. Someone's just gotta make the first move.
It is very complicated. My experience in dating post divorce is that men feel like they are in a no win situation. A lot of women still want prince charming and chivalry but they also want independence. They want a man who will take care of them but still want to have the freedom to do what they want. They want to be wanted but give only when it suits them. They want a sensitive man with high EQ but also one that will get in a fight for them at a bar.
That being said, I don't blame them. Why not want it all? A lot of this is cultural. They grow up with Cinderella but very few will get to play that role. They grow up thinking that motherhood is a must but a lot don't really want that life. They work hard and rightly feel desire to have what they want. You mix all these things together and it is no wonder there is confusion.
Another take is one from Billy Crystal in City Slickers, "Women need a reason to have sex, men just need a place." This difference greatly captures a lot of people's approach to sex.
What a fascinating article! I came away with a very bold “misery loves company” feeling. Misery amongst a group begets misery. I wonder how feeling the psychological need to blame someone, some thing for failure, plays in relationships?
I agree about the porn thing, but I'd argue that is not so much one of the major issues surrounding it so much as teens not having sex at the rates they used to. More teens are entering college as virgins, men aren't being taught how to navigate social/sexual relationships by their fathers or friends, media content online holds greater value over real personal relationships, and frankly videogames nowadays have all but turned into time wasting gambling. I mean if you put a weak willed person in a room with any vice they'd want, they're gonna fail. And we're packed to the brim with vices. Now how do you expect any impressionable young man growing up to not become jaded because dating is bar none more difficult than it has ever been? Not only that, the fear of getting the girl pregnant and she keeps it or divorce. I feel like with all the stories about how men appear to get the short end of the stick oftentimes, it's led to a jaded understanding of the system.
Assuming porn causes incels, but the golden age of porn started at 1969, so that doesnt work. Assuming incels cause porn, has porn become more profitable in the past ~20 years? I 'd say probably true based on the innovation of the profitability models , expecially after onlyfans became a thing
We're just relying on guesswork here but to think that the internet only created a 25% increase in porn exposure for teens seems really off, especially considering how hard porn was for minors to obtain pre-internet.
Also, it's worth considering that the "porn" they would have had easiest access to was Playboy magazine content--not the catalog of Pornhub.
People are very reluctant to talk about porn for some reason. Porn is the reason all men are able to (virtually) practise polygamy today. But most will adamantly deny that it has anything to do with a natural male desire for polygamy.
Porn has been around since the 70’s, internet porn since the 2000s. The incel phenomenon arrived in the 2010s, around the same time dating apps took off.
I think we need to legalize both polygamy and sex work.
1) Given the dating dynamics of 80% of women wanting only 20% of the men, clearly society is depriving these women of their desired relationships.
2) If the 80% of men cannot have a relationship, and we agree sex is a basic need, and we don't have sex robots yet, then sex work fulfills a valuable role.
This is kind of ignoring that people get and look for different things in sex work than they do in regular relationships. There's no indication that 20% actually would prefer to be sex workers to get more men.
Our inability to talk about sex is a big problem that enhances all the others. Some people are happy abstaining from sex altogether, those folks might have useful advice for the Incels but they're shy of offering from having been burnt before.
There's plenty of people for whom sex isn't necessarily involved in romance; I personally think a lot of people suffer because they confuse and conflate those two ideas.
Abstaining from sex is not useful advice. Sex and intimacy is a fundamental human desire and it’s cruel and unethical to tell people that they should just suck it up and suppress it.
That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying the abstinate community exists, and could help. I've seen them try.
If you think "abstinate" isn't a valid sexuality, that there aren't people who choose not to have sex just as there are people who choose other genders, machinery, etc; then we'll just have to disagree.
I really like this post because it exudes nuance. So many problems are boiled down to terse summaries that are barely accurate when examining details.
People being hateful and violent are a problem. More of a problem are the conditions that push people in this direction. When presenting the underlying cause, people push back and instead focus on scapegoating or minimizing.
This problem occurs in engineering all the time too. We accrue "tech debt" and when it bites us we're quick to blame incompetence or bad luck. Nobody wants to hear that the problem is because we have to "waste time" working on hardly visible components that don't change anything except "down the road."
The problem is the same now. We blame "bad apples" and "bad days" instead of blaming our own culture and society and undertaking the effort to improve it. We try to make the world fit our own perspectives instead of critically examining our biases. We outright lie to ourselves, and I'm frankly sick of it.
Agreed. It definitely helped me be more sympathetic to a wider variety of single men.
All of us can do better (in the article's case, that includes single men who are romantically frustrated) and _almost_ all of also us deserve some sympathy. I thought the article did a great job of generously showing the overlap between the two.
Showing that intersection — imperfect people with whom you can still sympathize — is key to being helpful. And overcoming imperfections is so much easier when you have help and a listening ear. I know plenty of young men who could use someone to talk to about this.
I think more Americans should consider going back to Europe city. If things are not working out here. Do what other people have done and move away. Things are deteriorating here anyway and standard of living is going down.
If you move to a larger European city, chances are you will end up walking a lot more, lose weight, and meet new people. People walk all the time.
Just the idea of working here overtime for the next 30+ years to barely afford a new house should be enough motivation.
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 514 ms ] threadI've had to face similar situations in my family life, and this part really resonated with me. It's an extremely eloquent way of capturing something I've never been able to put into words. Thank you for that.
Both reactions can be rationalized and he has the ability to choose which way he leans.
However, once we choose, we tend to incorporate that choice into our narrative as the solution that makes sense, and reinforce it to the point that we end up forgetting there was once an alternative. "I left my wife, it was miserable, I'm so glad I left", etc.
It is good to not forget that there was once a choice to make, the choice wasn't easy, and there were arguments in the other side that could have won.
You're not wrong though, both men and women love to make fun of a short guys.
Get out of the "dating scene" and just do stuff with people.
I am part of the generation that went through the change and saw both "systems", and I personally much prefer the current one - at least you never reach a dead end like you did when you depended on friends of friends to meet news people. It just requires you to be more proactive.
The piece of the puzzle that this misses is the difference in perceived reality between the groups - the definitions those groups use to define equal and the policies they think would provide equality. Sometimes the policies of the two groups in question are actually at odds with each other, and even their own stated intent (equality).
You might say that marxism is for more equal outcomes than we have under today's system, but that's true of lots of things that aren't marxist (any form of progressive taxation to fund social programs, for example).
But even that's sort of an oversimplification and doesn't do either marxism or "equality of outcomes" justice.
Communism and socialism, which are considered different in modern writing but were the same in Marx's time, are something Marx believes are an inevitable outcome of capitalism.
Marxism suggests that when the workers own the companies, then benefits are distributed to the workers who own/operate the company. Profit doesn't get centered in individuals, it gets spread across the workers of a company.
Folks like Lenin/Stalin took this idea further and created an authoritarian regime out of the ideas, and create what we commonly think of as 'communism' in the states.
Edit: Parent comment asked a question about Marxism, I'm getting downvoted for explaining some high level concepts of Marxism? Do folks want me to dive deeper into the dialectical models Marx discussed? Lol
Not too surprising given the general demographics of HN being quite biased towards startup founders, VC's, and the like.
Generally "Marxism" is thrown around as a boogie man term by people with little understanding for something approximating extreme authoritarianism in which the state owns all the means of production and allocates everyone the same resources.
(Source: I grew up in a Marxist country and was taught Marxism by a Marxist teacher.)
Also, no; most prominently, we largely dedicated our resources to pointless heavy industry at the expense of light industry and services.
If you're talking about the USSR, there was actually some dissension after the death of Lenin on whether light industry or heavy industry should be focused on. Lenin wanted to focus especially on neither, with his NEP that would create a temporary market economy to figure that out on it's own.
Eventually, the decision was taken to focus on heavy industry. The decisive arguments for a focus on heavy industry had nothing to do with Marxian economics - those arguments went either way. The main determinant of the Soviet focus on heavy industry was the failure of Stalin to obtain security assurances from Western Europe, leading to a focus on heavy industry for military purposes.
At least in the 20s this was a solid move, because Soviet heavy industry saved tens of millions of lives by stalling the Nazi offensive, whose plan was to kill 50% of the Soviet population (something very bad).
After the end of WW2 however, it was pointless in retrospect to continue the focus on heavy industry. But the Soviet Union did not really calculate the geopolitcal impact of nuclear weapons and built a military that could rival NATO, and this required a lot of heavy industry.
Pretty much, Marxism had nothing to do with Soviet investment in heavy industry. The main reason was to feed the Soviet war machine, from the very beginning.
If this statement were true then the statement above about Marxism being "a method of analyzing history" would be false. So there's an obvious contradiction right there, just like a claim that a human is a head is incompatible with the statement that a leg is a subset of a human.
> The Marxian ideas about stages of societal development for example have no bearing about whether you should focus on light or heavy industries.
I didn't claim any such thing. You simply asked what did our Marxist government focus on, and I answered. And there's no reason to jump hundreds of kilometers away into the USSR and decades into the past into the NEP period; our economic failures stretched all the way from 1960's onwards all the way to the fall of the Iron Curtain.
I don't see the incompatibility. Lenin used Marxism, a method of analyzing history, to derive a political program for the Russian empire. Not everything that the Soviet Union did was done because of Marxism Leninism - the vast majority was done out of practical considerations, outside of the general guidelines.
>I didn't claim any such thing. You simply asked what did our Marxist government focus on, and I answered. And there's no reason to jump hundreds of kilometers away into the USSR and decades into the past into the NEP period; our economic failures stretched all the way from 1960's onwards all the way to the fall of the Iron Curtain.
You were talking about the focus on heavy industries of the Soviet Union. I explained to you why this focus on heavy industry had nothing to do with Marxism, and everything to do with the geopolitics of the Soviet Union. I gave an explanation that was valid from death of Lenin to the end of the Cold War. It seems to me that my thesis that the Soviet government wasn't a "Marxist government" but rather a government whose political program was initially based partly on a Marxist analysis of history, but were many of the fatal decisions and errors had nothing to do with Marxism.
Subsets can't contain elements that their supersets lack. If A is a subset of B, then if x is an element of A, x is also an element of B. So the claim that a state ideology is a subset of a method of analyzing history would necessarily imply that methods of analyzing history habitually contain elements of state ideologies at their core, which I haven't observed. Hence I see a contradiction there.
> You were talking about the focus on heavy industries of the Soviet Union.
I did not grow up in the Soviet Union, hence I wasn't talking about it.
As for a method of understanding history containing and ideology, this is absolutely the case. All methods of analyzing history and social systems at some level rely on an ideology. Marxism as a method of analyzing history also is an ideology. For other methods of analyzing history often the ideology defaults to the current ruling ideology.
Marxism also contains economic theory, and social theory, all in the goal of analyzing history and changing it. Marxism writ large contains all of its sub-tendencies which understandably after 150 years evolved a lot.
As far as my assumption that you were talking about the Soviet Union, often Marxism Leninism refers to the precise ideology of the Soviet Union. If you meant it in a different way, you'll have to specify the country and time period because various different ideologies call themselves Marxism Leninism (and none of them come from Marx or Lenin).
Not quite. According to the original Marxist dogma, Russia couldn't become socialist in 1917, since it had too few proletarians, and too many peasants - i.e. it wasn't capitalist enough for a socialist revolution. Bolsheviks disagreed with that, obviously (and some Marxists even say that this forcible approach in a society that wasn't ready for it is precisely why the USSR turned out like it did).
It just so happens that, given the pre-existent distribution of wealth will have followed other rules, the first step of marxist enaction inevitably ends up being "the big reset" where inequality of outcome gets temporarily removed for everyone.
So a Marxist would want, for example, the employer/employee distinction to be abolished. But there would be no issue with inequality in the employee class, an employee may very well produce 3-4 times more value than another.
This is something that Marx explicitly wrote about - he thought that different people had different needs and abilities and thus should receive sometimes very different amounts of resources. The examples he gave would be someone that works much faster and better that someone else, or someone that has children to raise.
Those headlines tend to get spun as "Chicago district eliminates advanced classes" or something to that effect, because it gets people riled (spelling?) up.
Please, point me to your sources if you are talking about something different.
EDIT: The tracking still occurs in early grades, the isolation grouping does not. Students are still tracked and tested for ability, deficiency, and performance. What they are not doing is grouping them exclusively into high, medium, and low, and letting those groups dictate resource access. They are grouping across abilities, allowing high performers to work with medium and low, thereby allowing them to take a leadership role while still providing the other two groups with valuable resources.
Are they actually lower performing or is this an effect of bias?
It wouldn't surprise me at all to learn that children with less resources do worse. I thought the purpose of performance tracking was to give the ability to help those who were struggling. Instead, you're saying that it's more helpful to just not know who's struggling and that somehow creates more equality.
>Are they actually lower performing or is this an effect of bias?
This is why these programs in early grades are eliminated - they absolutely were based on bias and external factors. Yes, children with less resources do worse. That was the problem. Students with less access would be tracked low, thereby ensuring they had access to even fewer resources (which were diverted to high performers and TAG classes).
>Instead, you're saying that it's more helpful to just not know who's struggling and that somehow creates more equality.
I didn't explain it well. They still track student ability for interventions, they don't group solely by ability. When they did the latter of those two, the have's had even more and the have-nots had even less.
The shame in all of this is that the choice has to be made at all. I think, ideally, every student should have a roughly equal amount of attention and dollars allocated to them and if a school is underfunded, everyone suffers until the problem is remediated.
I suspect there's some sort of incentive on the administrators of these schools, be through funding, personal career advancement or something else, that makes them want to max out the top end rather than raise the low end.
>ideally, every student should have a roughly equal amount of attention and dollars allocated to them and if a school is underfunded, everyone suffers until the problem is remediated.
The problem is that this is sort of what happens right now, and it's not great. The current funding scheme relies disproportionately on local property taxes, which only serves to exacerbate the effects of inequality. The current system is a warehouse for student bodies, with oversize classes, underfunded supplies, underpaid teachers, and too many unfunded mandates.
Ideally, we figure out funding (that's way above my pay grade), and then we can move on to cross-ability grouping. Seriously, it's just a fact that high achievers learn much better when they are left to (roughly) their own devices, with guidance and outlines for progress as appropriate. Low achievers learn better when they are led through the process by someone who can put the language in terms they can understand; ideally with support outside of the teacher, such as from peers (look up supplemental instruction for a model in there). Middle achievers will consistently live up to the exact expectation you place on them; so they need a system and environment that places increasingly more strenuous expectations on them, both socially and educationally.
Combine all of that, and you have a wonderful cross-age, cross-ability classroom focused on social development as well as academics. The ability to specialize for various fields such as STEM, art, or technical education is just built in, as well!
If anyone is interested in funding my charter school idea - it's a neighborhood based one-room-schoolhouse model where education and learning are led by the abilities and desires of the students. Much free time, much outdoor time, and incorporating everything in the above paragraph. Completely unrealistic for public schooling in the united states due to the inordinate per pupil cost. But just a lovely idea.
I've actually ranted about this cause/effect before. I think it's particularly bad here in California given the wide variety of income levels in the state.
> Seriously, it's just a fact that high achievers learn much better when they are left to (roughly) their own devices, with guidance and outlines for progress as appropriate. Low achievers learn better when they are led through the process by someone who can put the language in terms they can understand; ideally with support outside of the teacher, such as from peers (look up supplemental instruction for a model in there). Middle achievers will consistently live up to the exact expectation you place on them; so they need a system and environment that places increasingly more strenuous expectations on them, both socially and educationally.
I think that's all true but it doesn't account for something that I think is a noble goal with somewhat bad implications: I think we want to maximize the progress and achievement of the top achievers. People seem to want 100 doctors/scientists instead of 10,000 accountants.
I have two thoughts on this:
1. Since our global economy is increasingly winner-take-all, we should consider focusing on the high performers. The lower performers will lose, anyway, so it's most important not to sandbag high performers.
2. It sounds like the idea is really to extort high performers into doing unpaid labor to educate their lower-performing peers, at the expense of their own opportunity to advance academically. Is this fair to high performers? Isn't it the school and faculty's job to teach students, not fellow students' job?
The issue is that low performers are often only such because of external factors (low income, food insecure, other factors like that), and not due to actual ability. If we focus exclusively on high performers in the low grade, we will only create a WIDE and absolutely inhumane division among the have's and the have not's (more so than what exists).
>2.It sounds like the idea is really to extort high performers into doing unpaid labor to educate their lower-performing peers,
No. You're 100% wrong in your assessment. One of the best ways to learn to do something really well is to teach someone else how to do it. This applies to everything. Letting high performers take a leadership role teaches them not just the core competencies, but also those 'soft skills' that are so often left out of advanced curriculum, but are vitally important to success.
Also, just to nitpick, adding [that] via edit to my quote is unnecessary to the sentence. That word isn't at all needed for context, clarity, or proper sentence formation. Not sure why you did that.
No, those factors all contribute to the actual ability of the student; you seem to be talking about inherent or latent ability. As a student, I don't care why my low-performing peers are holding me back, I just care that they're holding me back.
We shouldn't focus exclusively on the high performers, and we should absolutely try to ameliorate those factors with things like free school meals and after-school programs. These policies help those with latent ability to turn that into actual ability.
But we can't skip that step. It's important for students to be around students of similar actual ability, because we absolutely cannot afford to slow down the high performers in a perverted quest for equity.
> No. You're 100% wrong in your assessment.
Yes, you're 100% correct in your assessment. I know that what most helped me to excel in math was tutoring my peers in basic mechanics and notation and walking them through absolutely trivial exercises with which they still struggled.
Thank God I never had to endure a class that promoted my intellectual growth by challenging me with more advanced material than my low-performing peers could handle. I learned so much more taking a leadership role.
It is obvious you have little to no personal experience in difficult technical subjects (STEM) and are invested in a political agenda to change the world as you see fit rather than enabling our best and brightest to fully self-actualize.
I wonder how it can be that one has the desire and aptitude to succeed there and the public school can deny people that opportunity. That just seems antithetical to public education.
Every time I see a news article about this, they aren't being honest about what is happening. My high school in particular is often in the news for this reason and the reactionary articles are universally BS.
The freedom in outcomes argument is 100% a strawman used by far right pop culture icons to drum up views and clicks.
That's different from wanting similar outcomes between groups of millions of people, because those almost invariably come from inequality of opportunity.
I don't know of any left tendency that believes in equality of outcomes. Even communists don't believe in equality of outcome.
In fact I could be inclined to agree with you in some ways; its more accurate to state that progressives don't believe in equality of outcome in much the same way as they don't really hold any disdain for racism/sexism or any of the other causes that claim to champion but they like the power that comes from doing so.
For example no progressive has any issues with an imbalance in genders in nursing; this of course contrasts brilliantly against theirs views on it in the tech industry.
I do believe that roughly speaking, for an equal amount of work, black and white people should have similar salaries, for example. Something that is not the case today.
This is a disparity that can't be explained away by choice, or innate supremacy, but is instead à result of inequality of opportunity. So you have to fix the opportunity gap.
I do have an issue with the imbalance in nursing. That's because there is a strong stigma against men in nursing and men in nursing often suffer strong discrimination. In a society where these stigmas don't exist but men in general decide not to become nurses, that's fine.
Same in tech. There are stigmas and discrimination against women in tech at every level. For example, different countries have massively different amounts of women in engineering. Women in countries where this amount is lower often report discrimination. So this is clearly not a question of choice, and is thus a gap in opportunities led by sexism.
It would be nice if you wouldn't assume the absolute worst possible interpretation of the argument of your interlocutor. This is against HN's guideline and generally increases the amount of noise. It's also quite rude.
And the same goes for your opposition to the gender gap in nursing; as demonstrated by the mysteriously absent global-push to rectify the issue.
Funnily enough I seem to recall it being the countries with far poorer track records on "equality" that tended to produce the higher number of female engineers; and that (for example) scandinavian efforts towards "equality" seemed to have quite the opposite result.
Using Scandinavia as a barometer for equity in engineering for men and women is cherry-picking. Where I live, these measures were very successful and in the leading engineering-only university the rate of women graduating is now 30%. Seems successful to me.
As for this: >Perhaps you don't, but for progressives it remains a core part of their ideology and one that can't be no-true-scotsman-ed away, now that the belief has become publicly embarrassing to have supported.
The only way to get out of this conundrum is for you to find evidence that at the ideological level progressivism is based on equality of outcome. I can't prove the negative. I can give examples however of specific far-left ideologies from anarchism to communism to mutualism to intersectional liberalism do not, at the ideological level, aim for equality of outcome.
As for your university efforts I'd have to know what those actually were before making a call.
And re progresivism and quotas; it isn't based on it but it subscribes heavily to it due to its utility.
As far as progressivism and quotas, I simply can't argue on this unless you give me a specific progressive tendencies. If you're talking about US progressives writ large then the main reason quotas are so popular is because the people in power that put those quotas in place, which often weren't even progressives, found quotas to be easy to implement as other solutions are very difficult and inconvenient for those in power, though popular.
As for the 2nd point, that's more of what I'm getting at; that core populist/mainstream progressive movement. I could certainly believe that the leaders are jumping on it purely due to, as you say the simplicity and popularity of them.
What you assert as proof that "it worked" was, if I understood your "30%!" correctly, an increase in equality of outcome.
How does this square with your claim to favour equality of opportunity, not outcome? Doesn't it show that what worked was what you claim not to favour; why would you crow about that?
> Same in tech. There are stigmas and discrimination against women in tech at every level. For example, different countries have massively different amounts of women in engineering. Women in countries where this amount is lower often report discrimination. So this is clearly not a question of choice, and is thus a gap in opportunities led by sexism.
Do you have a source for this claim? Because this contradicts the sources I have read on this topic. The share of women in engineering varies, but not by much. Most countries fall between the 20-30% range. We see no countries where women make up the majority. Furthermore, the representation of women in countries with better gender equality is actually lower than ones that are highly misogynistic [1].
1. https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/02/the-more...
To me it seems you have gone to great lengths to clarify that you mean exactly what the original poster is referring to.
I don't believe their reading your argument at face value is in any way assuming the worst possible interpretation.
It's not a personal attack for someone to disagree with your beliefs.
>You believe in quotas, you believe in equality of outcome.
Who is 'you' here? Who said they believe in quotas?
>they like the power that comes from doing so.
Again, who is this mysterious strawman you're building? Where is this argument coming from? What is your proof? I am very progressive, and I very much have disdain for racism, sexism, and any other bigoted activities. It has nothing to do with power. Often, I am unable to do anything about this behavior because I lack any sort of structural power in my local area. So what does that mean for your argument?
>For example no progressive has any issues with an imbalance in genders in nursing
I literally work to bring men into underrepresented fields in higher education. There are programs across the nation specifically designed to recruit, assist, and help ensure the academic success of men in nursing, men in daycare/education fields, and men in other traditionally 'feminine' fields. Claiming this absolute of a statement is just absurd.
You seem to be building an odd little strawman to knock down based on some bogeyman theoretical progressive you have imagined. I'm trying to point that out to you.
Can you cite any evidence that this is the case? It seems you are simply defining inequality of outcome to mean the same thing as inequality of opportunity at the group level.
Claiming to support equal opportunity while simultaneously asserting that inequity necessarily indicates unequal opportunity amounts to a long-winded way of saying that the goal is equal outcomes.
And saying that unless someone believes in equivalency between equity and equality, then they believe in innate differences between groups is very reductive. There are plenty of factors here: culture, preferences, geography, and more.
Additionally, I find this whole assertion I see often nowadays that there's some invisible force creating opportunity disparities between different arbitrary groups of people to be a bit hand-wavy and suspiciously convenient. To me it is comparable to asserting that the disparities are because it was the will of God.
Finally, your statement is a roundabout way of saying "if you don't agree with me you're a racist and I don't talk to racists" and that is extremely dishonest. Frankly, if you don't want to talk to people you don't agree with, why are you on a discussion website at all?
For the sake of illustration, assume two large groups of kids who innately would have had identical ability, but one's growth and education is (on average) more stunted because their families are more likely to be single parent families, or have a parent in jail, or just very poor (which affects a lot), so right now they don't have identical average ability because they did not get equal education and support some decades ago.
If you want to have equal representation of the groups, you'd have to artificially correct for all the previous differences in opportunity - without a time machine, you can't actually fix the differences in their skills and experience (no matter how fairly or unfairly those differences came to be), you can only pretend that those differences don't exist. And so we come to the core issue that granting equal treatment to unequally capable candidates means granting unequal treatment to equally capable candidates, there's no way around it.
And there's also a gap between treating individuals fairly and treating groups fairly. You can't/don't measure the opportunity differences on an individual level, but on a group level, and individual variation in opportunity is huge. In general, any "compensating opportunities" happen at a group level, because if one group is underrepresented under a "background-blind" schema, then it's because lots and lots of capable individuals from that group have "filtered away" and gone on to very different life paths long before applying - and any corrective action or quota system is not helping those individuals who suffered most from the lack of earlier opportunities (because they're already "out"), instead it's granting a larger (compensating) opportunity to other individuals who just happen to be from the same group but had enough opportunity to "stay in the game", while individuals who personally have had so-so opportunities get punished if they happen to come from a group that (on average!) has more opportunities.
I guess, what I'm saying is, that the outcome being 'only xy% women in tech with a goal of 50/50' is an easily digestible way of saying, women do not have the same opportunity as men to get into tech. But it's harder for companies to outline the steps to ensure those opportunities than it is for them to proclaim that goal.
>We can see for example in scandinavia that you get unequal outcomes if you amplify the equality of opportunities.
Absolutely. (I actually had to look through my post history because I wondered if you were another person who brought up that statement!) What I said to them was, "And that's fair. My argument isn't that it needs to be split and completely equal. It's that the freedom to choose needs to be equal, and the playing field needs to be level, so that who is and who isn't in 'field a' is, in fact based on merit and not arbitrary classification at birth such as gender and ethnicity."
If I had that answer, I honestly think I would be a billionaire. Really though, I have no practical ideas, because it isn't something I work with regularly. It seems like a sociologist could come up with something, some way to measure sentiment among youth, or something to that effect, but that's beyond me.
>Are we already at the point of equal opportunity? If not, why?
I don't believe so. Even the often touted Gender-equity paradox can be boiled down to gender stereotypes manifesting in individuals' decisions (https://www.pnas.org/content/117/49/31063).
All I know is that I see nearly no women enter STEM majors at the institutions I have worked with, whereas education and social work is almost 100% female. That is lopsided enough to tell me that something is at play here. I just simply am not educated enough to know what, how to measure it, or how to attempt to fix it.
"If I had that answer, I honestly think I would be a billionaire."
If we can't even define the problem and the underlying causes or measure the outcomes, then how can we fix it? Even if we try things, we would have no idea if they are actually beneficial because we don't even know what to measure.
"I just simply am not educated enough to know what, how to measure it, or how to attempt to fix it."
If we can't measure it and don't know how to fix it, then do we even know that a problem exists?
"Even the often touted Gender-equity paradox can be boiled down to gender stereotypes manifesting in individuals' decisions"
But if it's their own free choice, then why should we interfere with that? It's like saying my mom doesn't want me to play football because I might get hurt, so I'm going to base my decision on that. That is up to the person to decide if they want to use that as part of their decision making. Nobody is forcing them.
The study had a question about if being a house wife is fulfilling. If a person finds that fulfilling, should we prevent them from doing that? I ha e a STEM job and I don't feel fulfilled. Judging by the number of disillusioned posts on HN, it looks like an engineering job is not something that is fulfilling. I don't see forcing people into it as a fix for anything. You're talking about swapping social norms that value family (fulfillment as a house wife) for the social norm that making more money, even at the expense of fulfillment, is what society values.
I'm not saying that this is your position. It's just a position I've encountered with fequency.
Inequity is not evidence of inequality. Evidence of inequality are things like: sending identical resumes save for male vs. female names and measuring the difference in response rate, anonymizing candidates' voices and measuring changes in interview performance, or other tests that see changes in output directly attributable to aspects of the candidate's identity.
Not really, but it's a bit nuanced.
I'm not taking a position here on what is correct, but advocates for this sort thing will state that inequality in current distribution of outcomes is due inequality of opportunity in the past. If you accept that as true, you have a problem from a policy level as to what to do about it, if anything.
One approach would be to attach the opportunity side only, and assume that in time a more equitable distribution will arrive over time. The problem is for something like this "in time" is probably measured in generations.
Another is to try an tip the scales a bit to correct to impact of opportunity on those people effected, or on your company (or other institution) or both. A problem with this approach is you by definition don't really know what the correct distribution should be, so you are likely to be a bit hamfisted about it.
A progressive might argue that this program gives women a better "opportunity" to succeed, whereas a conservative would say that the program was created for the purpose of influencing "outcomes", and that by focusing exclusively on women the program is intentionally creating unequal "opportunities".
Probably the biggest of these going on right now is the inequality in pay. Women are paid less (they are). This immediately implies sexism because no other explanation is even possible.
Well, usually when I see somebody arguing "equity vs. equality", they're advocating strict racial quotas: absolute equality of outcome, at the level of race.
In fact, I'm a supporter of equity over equality in plenty of instances beyond basic necessities. I think certain avenues to pursuing this are better than others, and that there are some instances where pursing equity over equality is misguided. But yes, I do believe there are instances where pursuing equity - at least in part - is better than exclusively pursuing equality.
Point of order: I'm taxed the same on my one-millionth dollar of income (assuming the same source) as Jeff Bezos is.
... I just don't have a one-millionth dollar of income to tax, but if someone wants to shift things toward equality rather than equity I'll happily accept donations toward that end. To make things more equal for Bezos and to strike a blow against equity, naturally.
This is exactly my point: a flat tax rate would be more equal, but less equitable. And I do support a tax code that is more equitable, rather than more equal in this regard.
A. Everyone regardless of demographic has the same opportunities, talent and interest in tech
B. You force people into positions they don't want and force people out that do want them
The same goes for education, nursing, construction, sewage, fire fighting...
That's the real crux of what we talk about when we talk about equality of outcomes. What qualifies as a necessity? And that's when you start getting arguments that start with things like "well in a modern society..."
You'll probably be hard pressed to find someone that says that someone deserves to starve to death because they're unwilling to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. You'd probably also be equally hard pressed to find someone who thinks that waigu beef is a basic necessity. You say "strawman" and they say "moving the goalposts" and none of that is productive, this is a legitimate discussion that is going to be had, needs to be had and is not over or settled, shutting it down by calling the opposing viewpoint fallacious on false premises will not change that, it will only be counterproductive.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/equality-vs-eq...
Not generally, no; “equity” generally refers to fairness of treatment (as distinct from non-differentiation in equality); while concepts of fairness vary, equivalence of outcomes not the moat common understanding pursued under the banner of “equity”.
Which is not to say that the two are never (especially in particular narrow domains) the same, but they aren’t in general the same.
Equity is closer to "equality of opportunity" than "equality of outcome". "Equality" is neither of those things because it doesn't correct for differences in opportunity and therefore obviously doesn't yield an equal outcome.
I call it Harrison Bergeron:
https://archive.org/stream/HarrisonBergeron/Harrison%20Berge...
Equality of outcome is undeniably evil.
There are certainly many people advocating for explicit "equality of outcome" policies e.g. various quota systems that mandate granting unequal opportunities for otherwise equally suitable applicants in order to achieve an equitable outcome for various groups (e.g. gender, ethnicity, caste, etc) the applicants represent.
This is the problem in your definitions. Are you talking about equity of outcome at the individual or group level? You are mixing the two there.
No on is advocating equity of outcome at the individual level. People are using equity of outcome at a group level as a measure of equity of opportunity at the individual level because there is an assumption that when two large groups of people have similar opportunities they will have similar normally distributed results at the individual level. If you argue otherwise, you quickly start getting into areas of bigotry by saying that a certain group is not willing or capable to make the most of opportunity.
But there seems to be a "definition mismatch" about what "equality of opportunity" means - I'm talking about equality of opportunity and equal treatment for individuals as they are right now at any particular decision point; and this is substantially different from what's measured by, as you say, "equity of outcome at a group level as a measure of equity of opportunity at the individual level" because that essentially measures an "integral" of all lifetime opportunities for all these individuals.
The key difference is whether we consider that "equal opportunity" should include or exclude compensating of earlier unequal opportunities. In general we're talking about specific decisions or policies that unavoidably come after some unequal opportunities e.g. the socioeconomic status of the family you're born in, which correlates with almost every measure of success. I would define "equal opportunity" as a "background blind" system that looks at the relevant attributes of individuals despite of or because of whatever earlier life they had - but it's clear that equal opportunity right now won't result in equal outcomes at the group level, since those would be influenced (and probably dominated) by all the differences accumulated before that. And vice versa, if you're trying to compensate for that, then you might get an equality of outcomes for the groupo, but at this moment you would be granting unequal opportunities to these individuals, even if they actually accurately compensate for other, earlier unequal opportunities to the same specific individuals and not just the groups to which these people happen to belong.
You admit "equality of opportunity" isn't practical right now due to existing systemic biases. The people fighting for equity would probably say it isn't practical in any foreseeable future. Maybe some day we will correct for systemic biases against certain races or genders, but odds are there will always be some sort of inherent disadvantage for various people. Physical disabilities are one example. That is where equity comes into play. Forcing an employer to install a ramp for a an employee in a wheelchair isn't being "background blind". They are not being treated equally because extra attention and resources are being devoted to them in comparison to their coworkers. However this unequal treatment is just in order to provide them an equal opportunity to overcome a disadvantage their coworkers never experienced. They would not have "equality in opportunity" without an inequality in how they are treated.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/equality-vs-eq...
Just like there's a political spectrum with the crazies at the edges of both left and right, there is also a spectrum on gender issues, race, or any other social issue. The crazies are to be found at the edges of that, again on both sides.
The closest thing I can find to your interpretation is that women of color are less probable to adopt the term "feminist" because they are less probable to feel the movement has done enough for them.
I do not know who has convinced you of an alternative definition of the word, but feminism means "believing in equal treatment / equal opportunity / etc".
And plenty more for the willing student; however an ideology that considers "men are on average taller and stronger than women" to be a controversial statement might understandably place some difficulty on those in need of finding these things.
And funnily enough the definition of a group has nothing to do with how it behaves; or are you suddenly going to proudly identify as a mens rights activist? I suppose its just as well that naming North Korea a democratic peoples republic magically fixed the place overnight as well.
Citation needed
These conversations always take such a predictable path.
Is that controversial statement a common one in that ideology? An official one? Do many groups from that ideology subscribe to it?
You keep using the phrase "feminism", a memeplex that's as massive and diverse as any social movement, political ideology, or religion. But it's easy to oversimplify and be reductive towards such a memeplex, which includes members as diverse as Susan B. Anthony and Gloria Steinem, Zoe Quinn and Ariel Levy, Andrew Dworkin and Malala Yousafzai. You have to understand when dealing with a hugely variegated ideology it's unhelpful to speak in absolutes.
The "memeplex" offers no such nuance to any of those that they oppose; and for all the claimed diversity within the movement the resultant behaviour remains the same.
On the contrary, memeplex indicates quantity, size. A massive ideology with a thousand schools of thought inside. J.K. Rowling and Charlotte Clymer both identify as feminists. So do both Naomi Wu and Sarah Jeong. Such an umbrella term of ideologies contains myriads of sub-ideologies, many of them often in direct competition and contradiction with each other. To judge such an umbrella based on a single facet is to equate all of Islam to Salafi jihadism, or all of Christianity to Joel Osteen. It would seem that I am not the one operating without nuance, in this discussion.
> behaviour illustrated in just one example I have given.
A single statement from a single video? Perhaps that's the measure by how you judge all ideologies, but most do not subscribe to that heuristic.
> I stated the situation and gave an example when pressed for evidence.
And thus it is up to you to further prove that such evidence is indicative of the ideology, broadly.
The groups public behaviour indicates the ideology just fine; and when a group becomes publicly malicious enough on a large enough scale the onus is on the defence (eg its a given the nazis were evil; someone defending them doesn't get to come in and just hysterically scream "show me the evidence" because its public knowledge).
We have seen it over and over again in universities, in the corporate world. We have seen it in their numerous attempts to stifle free speech and to abolish right to fair trial. We have seen it in their uniform hypocrisy (were gendered insults still considered bad or is that mansplaining?) We have seen it in the trope of sex predators using the identity as a social shield for themselves.
You are being a denier at this stage.
As for answer 2, I've shown what basic searches can come up with. "why im not a feminst" might give you what you're looking for.
Answer 2: So I did the Google search as you requested, and read about the book [1]. I hadn't heard of it but it looks interesting, thanks for recommending. From what I can tell, it's central claim is that feminism has an image problem due to it being co-opted by the US right-wing which she calls "choice feminism", and the remedy is a need to return to a leftist concept of what she calls "radical feminism". Is that what you're saying?
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Why-Am-Not-Feminist-Manifesto/dp/1612...
The search for me at least brings a number of articles which highlight common criticisms of the movement such as rampant sexism, advocacy for abolition of basic rights (free speech, right to fair trial etc), general hypocrisy and bad faith action (see the Cathy Newman vs Jordan Peterson interview for a great example of this)
Perhaps when you search with your normal Google account it's skewing to different results. This particular book and the articles discussing it are critiquing modern feminist movements as too conservative, from what you perhaps would call a "radical left" perspective. I find it interesting that this is the exact opposite of "the general criticism at the moment seems to centre on the radical lefts takeover"!
I personally feel my incognito Google search captures the current zeitgeist better than your search, that people are fed up with conservatives and want a "radical, fearless call for revolution" as Google's auto-summary of my search put it. That said, ultimately it's all "bubbles" all the way down, as there's no such thing as a so-called "algorithm" (ranking formula, etc) free from ideology, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
All the other summaries on Amazon are similar, i.e. the very top description (New Yorker): "The point of 'Why I Am Not a Feminist' isn’t really that Crispin is not a feminist; it’s that she has no interest in being a part of a club that has opened its doors and lost sight of its politics—a club that would, if she weren’t so busy disavowing it, invite Kellyanne Conway in"
Having never read the book or even heard of the author until you introduced it to me I don't care one way or the other, but it's clear from a reading of these descriptions that her book is a critique from the left.
While this might be what feminists like to tell themselves, that is untrue. Feminism is (and can only ever be) the movement asserting women's rights in society. It is unlikely to (and doesn't) advocate for the abolition of advantages women enjoy, like the tax disparity, criminal sentencing disparity or child custody disparity. It is also increasingly uninterested in the male perspective, further reducing its utility.
MRAs, while too androcentric as well, are a younger movement. Like the first wave of feminism, it's focusing on today's disparities. Also like feminism, it has its elements of disdain for the other perspective. And finally, like feminism, men's rights can never be anything but a narrowly focused movement ensuring men aren't treated less than women.
The word you're looking for is egalitarian.
This is why both-sides-ing or argument to moderation is not really a useful or convincing rhetorical device.
It's also simply not a useful type of statement even when made in good faith. It assumes all issues fit on scales. For example, there are people today who call themselves feminists, and have extremely different views about LGBTQ+ rights compared to others who call themselves feminist (notably around the BTQ+ part). I really don't know who is the more "extreme", since that implies that I am referencing an agreed upon "center" which these positions differ from, and that simply doesn't exist. There is no agreed upon "center" for anything. Both claim to be feminists, and claim the other side is wrong, and neither would consider the other either more "extreme" or more "centrist".
This is just one example, but I would argue that this holds true in nearly every case: Reducing something to a scale with "extremes" on each side mostly just shows how the speaker perceives other positions and is otherwise not very useful.
CS stuff: IMO a better mental model would be non-Cartesian. Perhaps a weighted graph, where the vertices are ideologies (or, to be more granular, people), and the edge-weights represent some fuzzy metric of overlap of beliefs.
But make no mistake, the extremes at both ends harbor dangerous crazies. In politics, while the evils of the right are obvious and dangerous, the evils of the left are much more seductive but have been just as dangerous this past century (think fascists vs communists).
On gender issues, the incels are clearly unhinged. But so are the extreme feminists.
I view myself as left of center, but not left enough by the standards of this community.
I just find that interesting.
There is no way this can be true. Sex takes two consenting people; there is no "gate" to be unequally "kept" because both parties have autonomy.
Trying to shift to "social scales" to escape the central role of autonomy is a nifty trick. But casting individual bedroom decisions as a matter of social equality is to presume a degree of entitlement in the bedroom. After all, we're entitled to be treated equally, right?
By governments? Yes. By our managers at work? Yes. By those who we desire? No, not at all.
I don't understand this comment. Isn't feminism addressing an issue at social scale, often in areas that include autonomy? Even looking at marriage, you are expected to treat each other fairly.
Incels mistakenly think that the bedroom is one of these places, and that they are entitled to an equal amount of sexual attention as some other man. Thus the "gatekeepers" language when there is no gate.
The social-scale concerns are totally appropriate when it comes to how we construct masculinity and what male attractiveness requires, and feminists are by and large interested in that conversation.
"Incels mistakenly think that the bedroom is one of these places, and that they are entitled to an equal amount of sexual attention as some other man."
The "gate" you're talking about uncontroversially belongs to each individual in the form of their bodily autonomy. Yet women are uniquely cast as "keeping out" certain people. That's not a matter of dimorphism: that's a matter of mens' bodily autonomy being assumed, and womens' being up for debate.
In other words: for the sake of argument, sure, there's a gate. But only women are viewed as gatekeepers, as though keeping others out undermines equality, rather than being part-and-parcel of having the equal autonomy to choose one's partners.
The same argument could be generalized to society. If one gender has on average much higher desire for sex, then the second gender would be considered gatekeepers in practice, as for members of the first the gate is much more selective that for the members of the second gender (due to scarcity difference). That is completely unrelated to equality or bodily autonomy, which is granted to both.
You are talking about a movement which on its face is about social equality, but refuses to acknowledge that is explicitly engineering norms which are already creating oppressive social inequality. You clearly have disdain for them but whether you want to admit it or not, "incels" are a low status social class, and if they are the way they are because of the efforts of others then by modern progressive logic they are oppressed - by feminists. The refusal to even acknowledge the possibility that this could be happening is a form of disenfranchisement, and is inevitable when your entire worldview is based on a false oppressor/oppressed binary, which is the essence of modern feminism (progressivism really).
One might even go to say that there are very real systemic and social inequities which have nothing at all to do with your rape fixation...
You appear to resent women for being allowed to decide what happens to their own bodies. You also seem to think that this is the only thing in society that actually matters -- that this one thing gives women all of the power.
I believe you should reconsider these positions. Bodily autonomy is a bare minimum. What is it about access to a woman's body that is so vitally important to you?
Access to women's body obviously important for men (sex, kids etc.). Why is this even a question?
I am merely explaining that this is a particular domain over which women have massively disproportionate power, however feminists refuse to acknowledge the existence of this power while claiming to be in pursuit of social equality.
A movement which seeks to re-engineer social norms in pursuit of "equality" is bound to disenfranchise men if this power dynamic is ignored. The result is movements like "incels". None of this implies that men are entitled to access to female bodies, but there is an inescapable give and take. If women are to be treated the same as men in all domains, then restructuring romantic interactions while maintaining the onus on men to bear the brunt of initiation and rejection unfairly shifts the power dynamic in favor of women.
And this has consequences for women too. Indirectly, in that frustrated men are likely to withdraw and/or become antisocial (criminally or violently). And directly in that it shifts the dating dynamic toward hypergamy, where many females compete for a small proportion of men. Though perhaps there is an argument that some or most women prefer a polygamist arrangement, but I don't know if that's the case and it certainly is detrimental to men. Monogamy is a social norm which maximizes romantic equity for both men and women, not merely a patriarchal construct. Regardless of the argument of bodily autonomy, the romantic/social marketplace is an economy and can be modeled with the same sort of inequality measures that we apply to financial economies, with consequences for the function and overall happiness of society.
What's the rationale behind this statement? It seems like it's implying "nearly 100%" people are one or the other kind of extremists when it comes to Gender politics. Wouldn't it rather be the other way round, people knowingly identifying themselves as both Feminists and MRAs (redundant, as "Feminist" by itself means someone who strives for equality among genders), since most are normally moderate in their opinions?
There are quite a lot of people who would try to argue that mean don't deserve rights.
"men need a curfew"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GD8cwX6g3do
MRAs being counter protested: https://www.vice.com/en/article/8gd9y4/who-do-mens-rights-ac... (and this article that handwavy justifies a counter-protest)
Speech being protested and threatened: https://thevarsity.ca/2012/11/17/arrest-assaults-overshadow-...
I feel like I'm just there and there's a night and day difference in how people treat you but it's most extreme with your female peers. It's also nice to have some friends from before, I feel like they're the people I would go to if my life fell apart.
This is basically a red flag for any relationship. If the only thing making or allowing a person to be happy in life is their partner then something is wrong. Mental health is no joke and not being able to enjoy life is usually a symptom of an underlying cause. Depression is probably the most common but anxiety disorders can be similarly hard.
I think that's the strongest criticism of incels as well; having a romantic and sexual relationship is not a requirement for a happy life. No one wants to be the partner that gives meaning to another person's life, unless they're also codependent in some way. It's emotionally draining to take on that kind of responsibility.
EDIT to add: the best explanation that I've heard for the feeling men have of basic unhappiness without romance and sex is toxic masculinity; the general societal rejection of deep emotional relationships between straight men. Lonely? Make strong friendships! Spend your time with other men who like you and enjoy your company and validate you. A partner is not a replacement for the natural circle of close friends humans are supposed to have. I'll be honest that I'm not the best at doing this, to my own detriment, but I think it's basically the solution.
It is for many, many, many people.
I unequivocally do not condone folks who go off the rails in ways that cause harm to others (self destruction and harm is similar, but a different conversation), but I've seen enough mental health challenges and crises to understand why it happens. In general, life is hard, and no one is coming to save you except yourself.
We can simultaneously tell individuals to work on self-improvement to get themselves out of tough situations while also recognizing that society can do things to make life fairer and better for everybody.
And yet, quite often they need help. Changing one's personality, mastering new skills, etc etc. are not small nor easy steps. And some people may not even be capable of doing them by themselves. So what do they do? They seek out people and go public with their frustration... and they come across two groups: Group A, who call them names and shun them out, and Group B, who claim they understand them and talk with them.... all while telling them things like "Look, it's not your fault, man." "They're all whores", etc. What do you think happens next?
What I am trying to say is, some empathy and understanding would go a long way. I get that some people don't want to help themselves and are beyond saving, but there are many others who just need a small push to improve themselves.
Incels call this "maxxing". It doesn't seem to be particularly effective for them.
> Pushing the blame outwards to some other group for not bending to fulfill your needs is a real problematic stance.
Why? Reducing inequality in dating seems like a fair goal to me. People become incels because everyone else rejects them. If that doesn't change, the number of incels will keep growing.
> Reducing inequality in dating
What does this mean, be specific. I cannot think of anything except absolutely ghoulish ideas that remove agency from women.
So they don't need to improve themselves, they just need to believe in the right things and suddenly women will value them.
Really?
> I cannot think of anything except absolutely ghoulish ideas that remove agency from women.
And yet it's this agency that created such a thing as incels. Look at data from online dating services, plenty of evidence showing over 80% of men are rejected outright. Do you think this is normal?
> And yet it's this agency that created such a thing as incels.
No, incels were not created created because women have agency in who they date. What toxic nonsense.
And also, you still haven't put forward any changes you'd like to see to remedy the situation as you see it. Bring solutions to the table if you think there is a problem.
Which is?
> incels were not created created because women have agency in who they date
Did you not look at the evidence? Online dating is already the primary means of forming relationships. There's data showing women reject over 80% of men they see on dating apps. They actively choose to compete over the other 20%. They'd rather share a top 20% man than settle with a bottom 80% man.
How is this supposed to not create a class of universally rejected men?
> Bring solutions to the table if you think there is a problem.
Why bother? I doubt you'd consider any real solution since they would naturally result in disadvantages for women in favor of men and would therefore be "toxic nonsense".
Let me use an analogy. As a manager I help my folks get promoted all the time. The folks who struggle the most are the ones who think about promotion as a set of checkbox items they have to cross off. The ones who are easily promoted are the ones who are looking less at the criteria and more at how they can be introspective and develop themselves.
Framing finding a relationship in a "I'll just check these checkboxes and then I will immediately get a relationship" fundamentally misunderstands that we aren't generally selecting partners for one trait. No one is working from a checklist when they select their partners, so why set yourself up to fail by imagining they are.
Develop a growth mindset, focus on building your skills, build rich and fulfilling friendships. Ask for feedback and accept it. Build others up. People will want to be around you.
> Did you not look at the evidence?
I did a cursory Google search, which suggested online dating results in roughly the same outcomes as in person dating.
> How is this supposed to not create a class of universally rejected men?
If you are suggesting that 80% of men will face universal rejection, I find that extraordinarily hard to believe. It's quite frankly trivially falsifiable.
> Why bother?
Because you've made vague gestures that somehow society is to blame, but won't say how you'd fix it. Either that means you aren't sure, which undermines the idea that society is actually to blame, or your ideas are so repugnant that you are afraid to show them the light of day. You do not get to claim a moral victory by claiming to be a victim and then failing to engage with even the lightest questioning of your narrative.
They're not doing this consciously. Research supports the notion that people widely agree on what features make a person attractive:
https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2F0033-2909.1...
It follows that if you fail to meet these criteria you are considered unattractive.
> Develop a growth mindset, focus on building your skills, build rich and fulfilling friendships. Ask for feedback and accept it. Build others up. People will want to be around you.
This assumes attractiveness is caused by factors that are within our control. This doesn't seem to be the case. Height is a very simple and uncontroversial example. How is a "growth mindset" supposed to help the incel who gets rejected by women on dating apps because he's shorter than them?
This isn't some insane idea either. Women I've dated have complained about short men on dating apps to my face. They want those men to reject themselves so as to spare them from even acknowledging their existence.
> If you are suggesting that 80% of men will face universal rejection, I find that extraordinarily hard to believe. It's quite frankly trivially falsifiable.
I said the data shows women reject about 80% of men they see on dating apps. The set of rejected men is different for every woman. Universally rejected men (incels) are the insersection of these sets, naturally it is a smaller set than 80% of men.
The fact is there's massive inequality in dating. Like all inequalities, it'll probably get worse over time.
> Because you've made vague gestures that somehow society is to blame, but won't say how you'd fix it.
Not providing a fix doesn't invalidate my point.
> Either that means you aren't sure, which undermines the idea that society is actually to blame, or your ideas are so repugnant that you are afraid to show them the light of day.
Yeah, I just encountered this subject. The most obvious solution is to go back to enforced monogamy. Nothing repugnant about that but obviously female agency will be impacted. You don't seem to be open to any ideas that don't maximize female agency.
> You do not get to claim a moral victory by claiming to be a victim and then failing to engage with even the lightest questioning of your narrative.
No, you don't get to dismiss people's arguments as "toxic" and then demand they "engage" with your questioning.
Does it really top all other qualities? Doesn't seem to be the case. There's evidence showing personality is only considered after a minimum threshold of physical attractiveness is met.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40806-017-0092-x
> But in-person the initial “not-as-good-looks” can very easily be overcome if one is kind, honest, funny, etc.
Attractive people are perceived as nicer, funnier, kinder, more honest, more intelligent, etc.
https://www.gwern.net/docs/psychology/okcupid/weexperimenton...
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01918...
You can work out and get into shape, you can have good hygiene, you can dress nicely, etc. Just because someone is luckier and doesn’t really have to pay attention to what he/she eats to get a good figure doesn’t mean that others can’t achieve that, although with more work.
Also, the face itself is much more important for men than women.
So do you now agree this statement is obviously false?
Height is just one of the first filters women use, and often the requirement is more strict than just "taller than me". You also have to pass other commons filters. Another very important filter for most women is race, and we're just getting started.
But if you want to hate more than half of humanity, be my guest. But then don’t be surprised that someone from your hated group will not like you back...
It was hardly a scientific statement. Men like attractive women and women like attractive men, in other news the sky is blue...
I don’t hate men at all, most don’t share this misogynistic mindset.
You responded by saying "the sky is blue", do you believe some races are objectively less attractive than others?
Based on what?
> who are already heavily privileged
Depends on country. I’m not supportive of some new-found feminist movements, but all for it in some Muslim secular countries where women are not allowed to drive and are all around thought of as the property of their husband.
> I've seen women with your left wing mentality talk about women's rights and BLM and then, in the next sentence, move on to making fun of Indian men and talking about how they would never date them
That’s called a hypocrite. And I don’t see how generalizing an entire gender based on n=1 is any different than your example where you rightfully was offended by the making fun of Indian men. You do the same shit for half of all people.
> Most of society does share this hateful mindset.
And a significant percentage of men also share the mindset that women are inferior/object, or other misogynistic shit. Neither should happen.
> You responded by saying "the sky is blue", do you believe some races are objectively less attractive than others?
Heh?
In another thread I did write that men usually don’t want to have relationship with women of another race (and vice versa). But it is all around true, most cultures look down on interracial relationships — which is said.
The fact that you blamed "personality" for all problems.
> Depends on country.
Well I'm talking about the West, the US in particular.
> generalizing an entire gender based on n=1
It's not n=1, the reason people do it is because it is generally considered socially acceptable.
> And a significant percentage of men also share the mindset that women are inferior/object, or other misogynistic shit. Neither should happen.
You really don't realize how many men are not misogynistic, and how much more acceptable it is to make fun of men for their insecurities (like height).
> Heh? In another thread I did write that men usually don’t want to have relationship with women of another race (and vice versa). But it is all around true, most cultures look down on interracial relationships — which is said.
This is not true, men are more open in general, and women, especially white women, have the strongest bias. Women will even refuse to date ethnic men they find attractive. There are lots of studies on this although I'd have to dig them up. Also why doesn't this affect white men as much if it's just about opposition to interracial relationships? They are preferred by many ethnic women.
Which is all around the most important; the catch is that one can't really get to it over a picture. And unfortunately even in real life (especially now with COVID) it makes first moves harder. But there are many places where one can get to know others - work place, school/college. There people can show their true personality. And many part of one's appearance can be changed.
> It's not n=1, the reason people do it is because it is generally considered socially acceptable.
I'm fairly sure each culture have stereotypes of other cultures; but it is getting better. I'm sorry if you have been the target of such negative stereotypes, it's absolutely not okay, but one should not hold grudges against unknown individuals of that society, because it is the same shit.
> You really don't realize how many men are not misogynistic, and how much more acceptable it is to make fun of men for their insecurities (like height).
I said a significant percentage of men are misogynistic. And it is never acceptable to make fun of someone's insecurities - if it happens to you, quit those circles, they are toxic people. But I doubt non-popular high school girls have it better. My point is that the problem is bullies, not another group who is often hurt.
> This is not true, men are more open in general, and women, especially white women, have the strongest bias. Women will even refuse to date ethnic men they find attractive.
Well, how about blaming society instead of the individual? Behind every such woman there is a father and mother who repeatedly told her how bad these "other" people are and to never bring one home, etc. Or even just implicitly meaning that. It takes time to "heal" a society and interracial couples are much more acceptable than even just a decade age.
The science simply doesn't back this up. And nowadays, even without covid, most people meet online where the simplest filters (race, height, face) are the most important. Imagine if men used a "breast size" filter, do you see why this is so disturbing?
> I'm fairly sure each culture have stereotypes of other cultures; but it is getting better. I'm sorry if you have been the target of such negative stereotypes, it's absolutely not okay, but one should not hold grudges against unknown individuals of that society, because it is the same shit.
There is no stereotype like this about white men, they are considered extremely attractive.
> I said a significant percentage of men are misogynistic.
This has not been my experience in general, most men I meet in tech and in the US share your types of beliefs.
> Well, how about blaming society instead of the individual? Behind every such woman there is a father and mother who repeatedly told her how bad these "other" people are and to never bring one home, etc. Or even just implicitly meaning that. It takes time to "heal" a society and interracial couples are much more acceptable than even just a decade age.
Even asian women show these biases for only dating white men. A lot of these women are very left-wing, it is not because of their fathers and mothers. They should take responsibility.
They do? Like what do you think they swipe left/right based on? It is another very apparent feature..
> There is no stereotype like this about white men, they are considered extremely attractive.
Where? Do you think a Muslim women would prefer a white men over another Muslim? An Indian women (living in India) a white one over another Indian?
I mean, yeah, all around white people do have a positive bias, mostly due to the US's movie industry exporting it.
> This has not been my experience in general, most men I meet in tech and in the US share your types of beliefs.
Maybe you just don't consider those things misogynistic, because frankly you do sound like one..
> Even asian women show these biases for only dating white men.
I doubt asian women date white men over other asian ones, but stereotypically asian people can be very racist, except for white people, I agree with you on that.
> They should take responsibility.
For daring to prefer someone with the same skin color as themselves? It's called a personal preference, and I agree there is a problem with racism, but come on.. Should we also be angry at men for not wanting to have sex with another gay men? That's like the most fundamental personal choice. It sucks, but you are way overstepping someone else's personal authority.
No it would be heavily criticized to filter based on that, and it often is not that apparent. Men would not be able to ask for it even if they wanted to know. There is also no weight option, which men would like. All of this is because women control the market.
> Where? Do you think a Muslim women would prefer a white men over another Muslim? An Indian women (living in India) a white one over another Indian?
In the US, and yeah all women pretty much prefer white men. White men are heavily preferred in india.
> Maybe you just don't consider those things misogynistic, because frankly you do sound like one..
Because you consider me pointing out how racist/sexist women can be as misogynistic. It's an easy way to avoid the issues I bring up.
> I doubt asian women date white men over other asian ones, but stereotypically asian people can be very racist, except for white people, I agree with you on that.
Asian women raised in the US often strongly prefer white men, you rarely see it the other way around.
> For daring to prefer someone with the same skin color as themselves?
For the societal biases and helping to fix them. You're clearly a complete racist, that is practically the definition of racism. Why would you word it like that unless your a psychopath? Also it's not about skin color, it's about race. Again I even mentioned how women admit to finding ethnic men attractive but still won't date them. Women will even ask for ethnic background for ambiguous looking people and unmatch based on that. This is not comparable to sexual orientation, it's very much about societal issues and you know it. You are disgusting. You fight so much for women's issues but don't care at all about fixing problems like these.
Yeah, I'm sure every dating apps' CEO and other important positions are held by women...
> In the US
There you are, at least read what I was writing. You know there are other countries than one that is predominantly white from its inception?
> Because you consider me pointing out how racist/sexist women can be as misogynistic
No. There is a difference between being racist and not being attracted to someone from another race. And your conclusion of some women being racist is in no way in disagreement with what I say. But you've been saying that all women are racist, which is not true.
> Asian women raised in the US
raised in the US, maybe that has to do something with it??
> Again I even mentioned how women admit to finding ethnic men attractive but still won't date them
SOME. They are racist, or has parents that would disown them if they would have an interracial relationship, or other reasons.
And thank you for your kind remarks, that's a great way to emphasize your points...
EDIT: I do apologize if I upset you, it was not my intention at all. I just feel that in your reasoning you are thinking of an object instead of another human being. Unfortunately, even if the other's choice is due to some evil reason, like blatant racism, it is only their choice who they want to date with and you can't do anything at all with it at this level. But as I noted earlier: more and more interracial couples, even at first surface-level things like more attention to diverse casts in movies will slowly make it more acceptable at a societal level. Of course there will always be racist people, but exactly the societal-pressure-free choice of women will let go of the old stigmas.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
They do. You think those women are single? They are not. I know one with 99+ likes on Tinder.
Just like in many other animals, female choosy selection is the limiting factor, and the males either prove themselves or might as well die. That's where all this lack of empathy is rooted.
And there it is. Yes, that stance is awful. Going back implies removing the right of women to choose who they partner with. Enforced monogamy removes the ability of folks to choose how many partners they have. And who gets to define 'monogamy' and who does the enforcement?
It also completely ignores the poly folks out there, or the folks who are not interested in long term relationships.
It's at best, a narrow and puritanical view of human sexuality.
And I suspect that's exactly why he said "Why bother?".
And having a dating scene with an 80/20 distribution isn't? Monogamy seems like the only way to give everyone chance.
So I guess this comes down to whether you think everyone should have a fair chance to find a partner. Do you? And if so how would you achieve that?
> Going back implies removing the right of women to choose who they partner with.
Nope, they can still choose whoever they want. The point is to get the top 20% of men committed and off the dating pool as quickly as possible.
> Enforced monogamy removes the ability of folks to choose how many partners they have.
Yes? That's the point.
> And who gets to define 'monogamy'
... The dictionary.
> who does the enforcement?
I don't know, society?
> It's at best, a narrow and puritanical view of human sexuality.
Probably. I did say it was the most obvious. Do you have a better idea? Because this "just be better" stuff doesn't seem to be working.
Assuming people even want to help these incels to begin with. Other posts I've seen just want to pacify them so they don't become violent or something.
That's your opinion.
>is a real problematic stance.
Oh, no, not problematic! What if there are actually external factors that influence your ability to succeed, and you would like to advocate for modifying those external factors to increase your ability to succeed?
> That's your opinion
Yes, and it's shared by nearly everyone. The alternative is that you believe someone does owe you a relationship, which is anathema to anyone who values individual liberty and freedom at any level. Everyone who is advocating for making changes to society to improve their chances is really fucking cagey about the specifics.
So let me ask you, what changes do you propose, and who owes you a relationship?
Not really. If you're talking specifically about whether an unmarried man that fits some particular criteria is owed a wife, most people in the western world at this point in time would agree with you. But that's far from universal.
>The alternative is that you believe someone does owe you a relationship, which is anathema to anyone who values individual liberty and freedom at any level.
Not really. "Individual liberty and freedom" is not one concrete set of ideas that you have to either accept or reject wholesale.
>Everyone who is advocating for making changes to society to improve their chances is really fucking cagey about the specifics.
Some are, probably. I don't know which you've been talking to.
>what changes do you propose
Bring back severe social shaming for women that engage in sexual activity outside of a committed monogamous relationship (e.g. marriage or on the way to marriage). Bring back social pressure for a man to marry a woman that he has had sex with outside of marriage.
>and who owes you a relationship
I am married, so I think from society's perspective, my wife should owe me a relationship. If either of us denies the other a relationship without very good reason (meaning something more than just not being happy any more), the one abandoning the marriage should be looked down upon as having done something very wrong.
> I think from society's perspective, my wife should owe me a relationship.
I'm going to assume you mean owes you a supportive, caring, platonic relationship. Eg, two married people support one another to their mutual benefit. I'm going to assume you don't mean to imply your spouse owes you sex.
If that's what you want to call shaming them for certain behavior, yes.
>Why have you gendered it at all?
Because women are, on average, different from men, and, on average, exhibit different tendencies. Different measures are needed to push their behaviors to the same point.
>Why do women have to face social stigma and not men?
As I said, a man who has sex with a woman outside of marriage should be pressured to marry her, or in other words, if he doesn't marry her, he should be shamed for it.
Note that I don't think that should apply if he's not the only man that's had sex with her. In that case she is the one that should be the subject of social shaming to discourage other women from following in her path.
>What about gay relationships, presumably you'd apply the same thinking (en route to a marriage or married)?
I don't think homosexual behavior is very relevant to the discussion of men being unable to find suitable wives, but generally speaking, I don't think society should put any effort toward ensuring homosexuals end up in healthy marriages. And if there is any conflict between the interests of homosexuals and the goal of getting normal people in to healthy marriages, the conflict should be resolved in favor of normal people every time.
>What about poly relationships?
I think society should reject polygamous relationships.
>I'm going to assume you mean owes you a supportive, caring, platonic relationship. Eg, two married people support one another to their mutual benefit. I'm going to assume you don't mean to imply your spouse owes you sex.
I mean both. Both are important to the maintenance of most healthy relationships.
As in, potential partners are better off single and alone.
You can stop right there because as I said above, I'm married.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
And it is also true that such setup would make women super vulnerable for rape or sexual abuse and then forced them to marry their rapists. That is exactly how it worked in the past and how it still works in some radical Christian circles.
It would also create environment in which domestic violence would flourish as women were unable to leave as partner starts the abusing.
The whole plan, in multiple comments, is about creating coercive setup that don't care about violence it puts people at risk for.
"Don't feed egregious comments by replying; flag them instead."
(Or, if you prefer Old Internet, please don't feed the trolls.)
When they don't get replies and are properly flagged, egregious comments are deprived of oxygen and the fires quickly die out. When they are fed, we end up in various circles of flamewar hell. Such flamewars are a co-creation of the provoker and the provokees. We're trying to avoid that here.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
You banned my account because you don't like my opinions. It's as simple as that.
You've been creating accounts to break HN's rules with for a long time now. Would you please stop doing that?
I never said I wanted to shame women. I said I thought society should do it to alleviate a problem I consider very serious, not because I'm personally enthusiastic about doing it. I think people around here are able to understand the nuance.
>You've been creating accounts to break HN's rules with for a long time now.
Now I'm starting to think you just don't like me.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Precisely; too many men rely on partnership to meet most or all of their emotional needs and that is what drives intense loneliness when they don't have a partner.
In the West in particular we are crippled with insecurity, anxiety and doubt. Are we masculine/feminine enough? Do we fit the image we have of other people's desires? We have incredible wealth and abundance and feel like shit. It's a societal ill as well as a personal one. It is possible to practice contentment, gratitude, and self-compassion and acceptance, these are just things that are not taught or idealized in our culture. I do think the mindfulness movement, commercialized though it may be, has something to offer to modern secular society.
I agree with the author though. IMO the existence of so many "incels" is some expression of a real societal problem. Many young men are suffering, and we don't acknowledge their suffering as genuine. We just tell them that they suck, call them names and walk away. This can cause them to become more radicalized.
I was raised by a mentally ill single mom, on welfare. In many ways, my emotional maturity really lagged behind that of other guys. I didn't know how to make friends, let alone how to approach women or form a healthy relationship. I did eventually manage, but it took me years of learning during my 20s. When I was a young man, I struggled with some pretty bitter feelings myself, and I feel like society didn't make it easy to overcome them. Even today, the not so ambiguous message that society sends to young men is: if you can't get women, it's entirely your fault, because you are not enough. It just adds insult to injury, particularly when you're really missing closeness and understanding, when you feel alone and wounded.
IMO, the modern discourse around gender only really goes one way. We hear about women's issues everyday, but even in 2021, it's no more okay for men to talk about the challenges they face than it was in the 1950s. Men are told to just suck it up, and that's a huge part of the problem. If feminism is really about gender equality, then it needs to allow some room for men to talk about their issues and concerns as well, without fear of judgment. I would also like to see words other than "toxic" being used to describe masculinity.
Feminism has a pretty convincing answer to the problem like I edited my original comment to include. Toxic masculinity is the social exclusion of deep emotional relationships between men, including the "suck it up" culture. The key is that only men can really participate in that healing because it's entirely a problem between men. Women, as I've observed, seek out deep emotional friendships with other women and have most of their emotional needs met that way. Men, for the most part, do not do that with other men.
Intersectionality, as described by its creator, is simplistic and misleading. It completely ignores black male incarceration because all of the labor statistics preclude them. Black men's suffering has been erased and its causing a generation (or more) of people to treat them like they are the white patriarchy and that they have privilege they really don't when you look at the data.
Intersectionality has taken demographic disparities in isolation, say white mens rights versus white womens rights, and applied them to black people without nuance to the difference between how white men and black men are treated by institutions in the US.
It's given cover for Feminists to look past racial inequity that is the basis for much of black women's suffering. Go watch the video and look at the data, tell me what you think they got wrong.
We want thoughtful, substantive, curious conversation here, not bomb-throwing, fights to the death, and whatnot. You've posted a lot of serious flamebait. Please review the site guidelines and stop doing that. Note this one: "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Emotional intimacy, physical closeness, and sex are distinct and separable. Though they are linked for most people, for many no one of those is a substitute for any other.
I remember people used to argue that feminism was good because sexual liberation of women meant everyone was gonna get to have lots of sex. Obviously, these incels were not invited to the party. Women are having lots of sex, just not with them. And you actually believe "deep emotional relationships between men" are the cure for this unrest?
This is about deeper issues than friendship. It's about people's essential worth as human beings. People don't just have sex with anyone, they select partners and this implies selection criteria which implies value judgement. By seeking intimacy, we all risk judgement and rejection. Can you imagine what constant rejection by everyone must do to a person's self-worth?
"Cuddle parties" won't solve anything because they fail to understand the problem. Even proposing something like this compounds the issue because it's like saying "you are not good enough to have sex, enjoy this platonic activity instead". The root cause of this issue is society and women especially have decided these men are unattractive and therefore worthless. There is no fixing incels without fixing this inequality.
Taking the thread noticeably further into ideological and gender flamewar, as you did here and elsewhere, is also not ok.
You posted tons of flamewar comments in this thread. We ban accounts that do that. Please stop and don't do it again.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Color me surprised.
I never knew such a thing existed until you posted this, and perhaps I could have done with this at earlier points in my life. My receptivity would have varied greatly at different times though.
Fundamentally, I'm not sure it would have helped me as much as finding a therapist and talking about this stuff. Now that I'm out of the rut it would be much easier to approach a cuddle party.
Men struggle to see therapists as part of the "suck it up" culture so it's extremely difficult to get out of the existence once you are part of it. The system is self-protecting and does things to embed people deeper into the anti-feminist rut.
Are the wimmen at them good lookin'? I'm all for this concept.
That's not a truth about life, it's an opinion.
Often times I wonder how would I feel if someone were to hold my hand, or give me a kiss but the feeling goes soon away perhaps dictated by the way I was raised or my own genes (something I'm can't determine since I'm not an expert neither in science or parenting)
Just to give you some context I grew up in a family with 6 uncles, 2 aunts and my mom, just one of them married, although all of them seem to fare well economically speaking.
On the other hand, "but it's not something anyone is entitled to" is fundamentally a statement of opinion, unless it is limited to a specific context like within a specific social system.
Feminism is all for men talking about their issues. It practically begs them to. It is absolutely, positively not feminist to tell men that you're not enough if you can't get a woman.
That doesn't, however, pose an obligation on any woman to listen to you. It doesn't matter whose fault it is that you can't get a woman; it does matter that it's no woman's job to make sure you get one. Exactly what that will require is up to a billion different factors -- but "blames women" is going to be an enormous red flag.
Your suffering is real. You absolutely don't have to just suck it up. Go talk about it. If you don't have a friend you trust, try a therapist -- they're paid to do that. But be prepared for the fact that if your plan is to blame feminism, a good therapist is going to ask you to reconsider your underlying assumptions. And if your friends are just there to affirm for you that the reason you don't have a woman is the fault of the women -- there's a reason the word "toxic" came to be applied.
* Working on an issue which only helps women a bit, but doesn't help men at all
* Working on an issue which helps both women and men a lot
Considering media has a routine narrative of painting men as demons and women as angels, any claim that feminism is for anything in regards to men, might need to be backed up with some strong cases.
If you're looking for something in particular to make this case for you, I recommend reading the short book Feminism is for Everybody, by bell hooks, which does specifically talk about mens issues and how what she calls the patriarchal organization of society negatively affects men in different and unique ways (compared to women).
But again, editorials - especially on the right - typically pick out the most extreme or indefensible positions and try to make them appear to be normalized and widely accepted. You're doing yourself an intellectual diservice not to really deeply interrogate the motivations and biases of any piece of media that leaves you feeling like an enormous group of people (those who consider themselves feminists) is in fact wildly irrational and extreme. It should set off alarm bells when you draw such stark lines in the sand as "any claim that feminism is for anything in regards to men, might need to be backed up with some strong cases" that you're missing some nuance or complexity.
I know you don't intend to do so, but assuming that someone's conclusions about an issue must have come from talking points, and were not arrived at independently, dehumanizes them and makes it difficult to convince them of anything.
It discounts the lived experiences of people who have seen their friends and coworkers radicalized against them, of either gender. "This happened to me" cannot successfully be countered by "stop parroting X/Y/W-wing editorials." (general pattern I've seen even among family, not necessarily your phrasing)
The terminology used also doesn't help make the case for feminism among anyone not already convinced. Terms like "the patriarchy" can be seen as implying that it's okay to talk about men as a whole group who can be vilified, but it's not okay to talk about women in any negative way at all. Or "ally" could be seen as implying that the only identity someone not of group Z can have that matters is as an accessory to their cause.
The most disappointing and insulting thing a friend has ever said to me might be (paraphrasing) "I thought you wanted to be an ally." No, I wanted to be your friend, not a footsoldier who dutifully agrees with you 100% of the time no matter what my independent experiences have been.
I don't think it's helpful to think of "feminism" as a singular movement,
Sadly, even some of those who advocate for feminism (whichever branches might be considered "the good kind" for purposes of this discussion) seem to deliberately lump feminist movements together, so one can be forgiven for seeing terms like "the patriarchy" used by different groups and not knowing which group's beliefs to ascribe to the term. I don't think this can be blamed on a particular flavor of media, except maybe social media.
What should set off alarm bells is this blind acceptance of written works and words, when the actions routinely do not reflect the words feminism espouses. There are entire subreddits and blogs online showing the many cases where feminism doesn't do anything, or worse, actively intervenes at the detriment of women. Your own example shows the same problem: "what she calls the patriarchal organization of society negatively affects men in different and unique ways". Cool, you talk about it, but what are you doing about it?
What is an intellectual disservice, is how quickly you circumvent my question only to berate my manner of writing. If people truly are such huge proponents of feminism, and feminism truly claims to "be good for men", surely they can answer a question this simple and provide clear examples. Do you not realize your own behavior is indication of the problem here? How can you not see that if you can't even answer "well duh, the second issue obviously" on an ideological basis, the claim that feminism is "for all" is complete bollocks?
If I really wanted to go full-on antifeminist, I could've mentioned the many issues that feminism causes for men and women that it seems to be utterly blind to. That's part of the question as well: a clear division between not only "we want the best for women", but "it doesn't need to be at the cost of men". If I really wanted to go and write on nuances, I could write a 12-page blog page and fight against the relentless nitpicking which will ensue. I'm not asking a simple, black-white question for the sake of trivializing a complex, multi-faceted subject. I'm asking it because ideologically, if we can't even answer this part first, there's no point going any further. It means the population of feminists is filled with people joining the movement, without knowing what it actually stands for. Including its most fierce proponents carrying the torches. Surely, I do not have to tell you about the many occurrences in human history where this didn't work out well.
It is literally in the name. FEMinism. If it was truly "for both sexes", we could argue the naming is sexist and supremacist. We already have a better word, egalitarianism, and people still aren't willing to adopt it.
Notice people talk past my example as well. I'm explicitly asking if feminism would prefer resolving an issue which prefers women over men, over an issue which benefits women more but benefits men equally. How this simple question cannot be answered by proponents of a movement this big, is possibly the biggest red flag. Yet we see it in the media every day: some minor issue with women needs major attention, despite there being an egalitarian issue which would help anyone outside the upper class way more. If lamenting about some "pink tax" is more important than resolving a mental health epidemic caused by making people increasingly more competitive with one another, where failure is met with lasting mental trauma, surely that should tell people what feminism really is about.
The very people claiming to be proponents for men in their words alone, are the ones partially responsible for the mess. And they are too blind to see it.
Gotcha, it wants them to talk about their issues, as long as they don't say anything unapproved. Why would any man want to go along with that, again?
Imagine a woman who is frustrated because her partner doesn't do any chores or give any indication he respects her. She complains about it online, attributing it to sexist gender norms. Someone says the same thing to her as you say here: men are not obligated to listen to you, your suffering may be real, but please keep it to close friends. If your friends affirm that the reason your relationship is the fault of patriarchy, it's an example of toxicity. It probably makes the most sense to talk to a therapist: they can help you figure out why your way of thinking is flawed and how you can convince your partner to treat you well or, barring that, find a new partner.
That'd be a pretty terrible comment, right?
Toxic gender norms hurt both men and women, but we're only willing to consider toxic gender norms that hurt women as a politicized issue.
"Patriarchy hurts men" is a feminist slogan. It gets hundreds of thousands of hits on Google. The front page is full of lefty think-pieces saying that we need to consider toxic gender norms hurt men.
https://www.google.com/search?q=patriarchy+harms+men
The fact that it needs to be said means that not everybody knows it yet. But it means that the ones who are listening to it are the feminists. Feminism is an ally in trying to fix the problems of toxicity towards men, and these threads always bring out lots of men who blame feminism for their problems. If I've accidentally confused you for one of them, I apologize.
Ending patriarchy requires both men and women to reject it. But the ones calling for for an end to patriarchy are the feminists -- which includes both women and men. Feminists absolutely, positively call out women who are guilty of entrenching the patriarchy.
That's not few women. It's lots and lots of women. And lots of men, too.
I disagree that they are particularly willing to call out instances of women entrenching the patriarchy. I think this probably has to do with a root disagreement about the scope of what is considered policing gender roles.
It's true, for instance, that feminists are more likely to criticize a mother who tells her son not to play with dolls, which is good and something I agree with. It's just not the primary mechanism by which women enforce gender roles, which is partner choice. That's not to say that women shouldn't have the right to choose their partner--of course they should--but the patterns of how women choose partners enforce toxic gender norms, and many of the most toxic aspects of gendered male behavior arise from men navigating that landscape.
As a concrete example, consider bisexuality. The majority of women dislike the idea of choosing a bisexual guy as a partner: he's considered less masculine, or dirtied, or some kind of perversion of masculinity. This is their right, but it's also shitty. The problematic aspects I want to call out are that 1) the majority viewpoint among women about bisexual men is still very prevalent among feminist-identifying women, and 2) when someone expresses frustration at these collective choices, feminist-identifying women are far more likely to criticize the frustrated party instead of the toxic gender norms. The net result of this is men being terrified of homosocial affection and remaining closeted so as not to scare off potential partners, both behaviors most people would consider expressions of toxic masculinity.
This pattern repeats itself across a lot of different forms of gendered policing. But many feminists refuse to acknowledge it, because they don't acknowledge that partner choice can be a mechanism for gender role enforcement.
Regardless, I do hope everyone will call out policing of gender norms whenever we see them. Best wishes.
Curious, are there are more of these now than in the past?
I suspect there were more decades ago because of more cultural taboos about premarital relationships. What's different now? That these folks are angry about it?
I'm curious, and this will probably be too curt but I am honestly trying to figure it out: Whose fault is it? Because incels believe it's the women's fault, and this message is the opposite.
It doesn't seem productive to tell them that it's society's fault or some other external thing. What are they supposed to do about that?
Most men that I know, including myself, function better when there's something tangible to work on. Lose weight, hit the gym, learn to lower my ego, listen better, practice small talk, learn about fashion, etc.
I think there's a healthy way to "blame" yourself. Or if you want a nicer way to put it: to be able to have honest criticism of yourself. After all, if you can't fix it, what's the point?
You can't expect women to work on having more of a penis.
These kinds of skills are rarely talked about in any setting. Maybe that's how it's always been, but it seems to me that young men really aren't given much actionable advice when it comes to attracting a mate, and at one point the rules/expectations were a little more codified than they are today.
My own experience: I would be a millionaire if I had a nickel for every time I was told to "just be yourself". On the other hand, I was told a lot growing up what NOT to do when interacting with a woman. Don't try to kiss/etc her without asking permission. Norms around when it's ok to flirt (almost never appropriate). All of these kinds of negative rules made interactions with women feel like a minefield to me so I just stuck to online dating, but of course that has its own rules and expectations that take a lot of getting used to. Don't mention sex or anything remotely sexual. Don't mention how attractive she is. Don't use pick up lines. Don't just say hi. Don't expect a reply. And then of course, there's a whole new minefield to walk through when you start getting more serious -- a lot of which comes down to boundaries, another thing we don't do a very good job of talking about.
I made it through though, amazingly. I had a reasonably successful 8 year relationship, and even though it ended, I feel like we were right for each other in the sense that we had things to offer each other and I learned so many valuable life lessons from my partner during that time. Now I'm 4 years into my next relationship and it's going great as well, still learning so much!
I think a lot of this just comes down to things changing a lot re: gender roles, norms, etc. We're in this liminal space where things haven't quite shaken out yet into something more stable. My hope is once that happens (it feels inevitable -- things can't just keep on changing like this forever, right?) we will be able to talk about it more concretely.
It is worrisome though. My younger brothers (24) have not yet made any foray into the world of relationships. I try and fail to get them to open up about their feelings about this or anything else. They don't use the word incel but it could certainly apply.
> I try and fail to get them to open up about their feelings about this or anything else.
To be fair, opening up about my feelings to my family sounds awful. I know I know, society did this to me yada yada.
I learned by watching and doing, not talking about my feelings to my family. College buddies being my wingman and showing me the ropes, etc. and failing until I stopped failing. Then again, last time I dated, "can I buy you a drink" still worked to get a few minutes of face time and I didn't need apps. Not sure what's out there now.
I think talking about my feelings to my family would have done absolutely nothing.
Is the "don't kiss her without permission" really they difficult? And frankly the same with flirting.
If these make women minefield, I don't see how to make it better without sacrificing women who fly want to be kissed or flirted with while they have presentation at work.
That's a bit simplistic, isn't it? Not to mention, maybe it's not just the penis. Maybe you can teach women how to copy the kinds of attitudes (eg: assertiveness) that help men succeed. Maybe you can get more women in engineering by giving them positive role models from an early age.
We can help prevent there being so many incels by supporting young men emotionally from an early age. Right now we have a very punitive approach IMO. The education given to young men is a lot of "don't do this", "that's toxic", "women hate it when men do that", but there isn't enough positive messaging and encouragement.
I think there are a lot of young men who are in a similar position and if they are given proper guidance and healthy role models when they are young, they can be in a better position to succeed in friendships, work and relationships.
I certainly don't expect people to just work through childhood trauma without societal help. ex. Make it cheap, easy, and acceptable to get therapy. Much different than my list above IMO where most people can work on it themselves without many excuses.
The example I'm coming back to though are people like my younger brothers, who had relatively happy childhoods (afaik), but still have failed to launch for some reason or another. To be fair my father has anger problems to some degree, but nothing too crazy, just a proclivity to yelling more than was really necessary.
https://www.jcf.org/works/quote/every-failure-to-cope-with-a...
This is a bit of a fresh thought to me, but it seems that the standard male self-improvement advice ends up in one of three buckets:
1. The activity is its own reward (lose weight, hit the gym). Even if it’s not immediately successful at helping one find a partner, their benefits are almost immediately self-evident.
2. Advice that is vital for sustaining a relationship but usually not the missing piece when it’s time to find a new one (listen better, lower the ego). They’re needed to get the second date but can’t help get the first date.
3. Advice for the sake of having given advice (read books by female authors).
“Learn fashion” is hard to place on here. On the one hand, ensuring that you comb the crumbs out of your beard daily and wear clothes that fit better than a garbage bag is essential. On the other, becoming “into fashion” when it’s not a natural interest is often more of advice for advice’s sake unless you’re targeting a very fashion-conscious woman (or the fashion-forward portion of the gay dating pool).
Yeah I mean, I think most of the things on the list have a "basic" and "advanced" tier.
Lose weight/hit the gym: Basic is to not be obese. Advanced is to be fit.
Small talk: Basic is to be able to start and hold a conversation. Advanced is to be smooth and captivating.
Learn fashion: Basic is learning how clothes are supposed to fit. Advanced is... something like what you said. (I'm not advanced here! haha).
"The Fantastic Masculinity of Newt Scamander" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4kuR1gyOeQ is a pop culture analysis of the mild-mannered leading man of the Happy Potter prequel movies.
I think that we are engineered to have sexual and romantic partners by default. And there are some, like me, that somehow we can live without one and not fall into addiction traps ( drugs, party, videogames... ).
But we all have friends ( most ) that are not like this, the difference for most of them between being single or not is big, and I don’t agree that they are depressed its just human nature.
some choose food (obesity), some choose crazy partners (tend to be great in bed but bad in life), other choose video games (sense of accomplishment), and others try to help others as a way of hiding from themselves.
most people are running, some though are doing it in a socially acceptable way. but the root cause is the same.
I don't have the all data off hand (see some citations below) but I believe they say married men live longer, commit less crimes and are happier. So yes in some sense, can you be happy if you are not married however, is it almost certainly harder. I assume you would find similar data for not having a romantic parter. You, a human, are not an island and almost certainly would benefit from close personal and romantic connections.
I would say that there is a way of expressing this towards your partner -- especially too early in a relationship -- that can be very draining.
https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/sampson/files/2006_crimino...
https://www.health.harvard.edu/mens-health/marriage-and-mens...
https://ifstudies.org/blog/does-marriage-really-make-us-heal...
(removed a bunch of pew research citations that made the comment unwieldy; happy to cite for those interested)
Just because lots of people have kids, for example, doesn't mean that having kids makes people happier, and in fact studies seem to show the opposite to be true on average. That said, I'm not trying to say that having kids is always an irrational choice, and certainly it makes some people happier (or it might make people "unhappier" but lend them a greater sense of meaning and purpose that balances things out). But clearly you can't just say "well, correlation must imply causation because otherwise why would people do X if it makes them less happy?"
Producing children is extremely costly for both parents. This is true both in animals and humans - you would generally not say that rearing children is good for the health of the parents. It probably brings emotional benefits to the parents (which it would have to, otherwise they wouldn't do it), but there's no reason to assume that couples are automatically better off in terms of their finances or physical health than singles.
Edit: Since people correctly pointed out that you can have children without marriage, please replace marriage with "romantic relationships that produce children".
No. Marriage doesn’t produce children.
Marriage can provide social obligations relating to the support of children, though. (It also provides social obligations of mutual support between spouses.)
Have been married a long time. Today I learned from you that apparently we are missing out on an obvious benefit
People often do things that are not good for them.
A closer example here might be a salesperson performing a "hard sell" on an automobile that is just at the edge of affordability for the buyer. The buyer really wants to be able to drive around in this cool looking automobile, but they end up with a lemon that they can't afford to keep drivable and sucks up all their resources. It's not so hard to draw a parallel from that to someone who has a family on accident.
This made me laugh, in a good way :) I'll approach it from that angle:
Monogamous child-rearing looks to me a successful evolutionary strategy for the human race (and keep in mind the "monogamous" part might be relatively recent). It implies less about the happiness of the parental units, though.
The Terran octopus dies off soon after giving birth to its progeny, and this is successful for octopus-kind, but results in no long-lasting happiness for the octopus mother. Likewise with many species of insects, arguably very successful lifeforms on Earth. Many of them die or are cannibalized after mating or giving birth.
Successful species propagation strategies do not necessarily make the parents live happier lives. There is an evolved reason for said strategies, but is happiness the maximized factor?
We do have an imperfect example of this, in the case of widowers. When someone is widowed, does their happiness tend to increase, remain level, or decrease?
I mean, advancing in life generally requires leaving your comfort-zone, but that may be hard if you lack confidence.
The GP pointed out that the relationship described in this has red flags because the relationship alone is the source of happiness. It would lead to a happier, possibly longer lived, less criminal person.
You seem to be implying (and I don't think this is intentional) that close personal and romantic relationships [for straight men] == a wife. But that doesn't necessarily need to be true. Maybe for romance, but certainly not for close personal friendships.
You're correct that a person isn't an island, but the focus on single romantic partner may be to the detriment of other forms of relationship which are still hugely valuable health wise.
Sloppy analog: If I won the lottery tomorrow, it would allow me to buy a guitar I want sooner than another method; but not winning the lottery doesn't preclude any possibility of my acquiring that guitar.
I'm not sure that not winning the lottery means the path without winning the lottery is harder.
Winning the lottery may even prevent other conditions from developing in the course that would otherwise sustain the goal.
Humans and Islands analogies have been waged in many philosophical battles, but I never gathered that one was settled. Personally, I've subscribed to every man being and island and no man being an island all at once, and think both are fundamentally true in constant contradiction of one another and the contradiction is all you can really point to being true. (the original line "No man is an island" was Donne remarking of man's nature with regard to the Christian god, at least as far as I understood it)
I think if you [general you, not personally] hang your happiness on any one thing you're going to struggle or cause undue burden on someone or something else. And that's what the incel crowd gets so wrong; and I must say the proof kind of seems in the pudding there...
"Why do married men die before their wives?
Because the want to."
This is nonsense. The instinct to reproduce is inescapable for the vast majority of people. Without it humans would not exist. There is only so much social conditioning that can be done to override the innate drive for partnership and sex. Ignoring this basic drive, which is implicit in Maslow's hierarchy of needs, disenfranchises young men who are disproportionately driven by evolutionarily derived instinct to seek romantic female companionship.
>A partner is not a replacement for the natural circle of close friends humans are supposed to have
No, more like friends are not a replacement for intimacy.
I'm not sure I buy this. I'm a man who has lots of close friendships (many of which are with women, but some of which are with men), and I still feel like it's not enough and that I want a romantic/sexual partner. A partner is not a replacement for a close circle of friends, but neither is close circle of friends a replacement for a partner.
I think the difference is between wants and needs. Aside from a very small number of people most of us need friends and family who care about us and meet our emotional needs. Children need this unconditionally but adults have to take responsibility of their emotional needs and fulfill them in a healthy way by making and keeping friends. I think sexual and romantic desires are not needs; they are very strong desires and their fulfillment is definitely wonderful but life can be happy and fulfilling without them.
And I mean, she will eventually figure out and resent that.
Regardless, men in romantic relationships should still be sure to cultivate strong friendships
This is often of critical importance for making the romantic relationship last. Your wife should not be your only close friend.
When you get older, a partner (or children) are important to keep you going. Your body will fail you. Your mind will fail you. Your life will end and (statistically) it will be a long downward slope. Binding yourself to the right person keeps that slope more even, for longer.
People who think being alone is great are right, until some point after the slide begins that has slowly eaten away at your own ability.
> I was a bit of an oddity in that I was anticipating marriage since early adolescence; that outsized-value for relationships came with what I feel were comparably overgrown feelings of loneliness. I got absurdly lucky when I found my wife, but I spent every day without her more or less miserable. It’s arguable she’s the only reason I’m able to be happy.
So it's not old age, but youth in his case that was unhappy until he met his wife. That does look like a red flag to me. Suppose his marriage goes south, will his (ex) wife now be responsible of not only ending the marriage, but also of ending all possible happiness in his life? That's an unreasonable burden to place on her.
Some people feel the existential dread before it is realized. This is shared by both sexes and sometimes expressed at absurdly young ages without prompting.
For me it did not.
I like doing everything with my wife. It would be hard imagining life without her! Or my kids. But I wasn't an unhappy mess before I met her.
Whats your commentary on people who marry and then divorce very late in life like Bill Gates? After all if the primary purpose was to protect against this aggressively lonely stage in life -- no fault divorce has thrown that guarantee out the window.
They seem to now be in the same position as long term single people -- except it's a massive uprooting stressor placed on you in your final years.
I think the critical part is the "only thing" in the quote.
The same thought expressed as "she makes me happy" and "she's the only thing that makes me happy" are different because of the implied loss of everything (that you will give up everything else that could make you happy to have this person stay).
> until some point after the slide begins that has slowly eaten away at your own ability.
I'd say that is pragmatic, but a very selfish thought.
My parents were taught that by their society ("successful kids" == "retirement plan"), but they didn't follow through with that thought during our upbringing - if anything, they thought they were paying it forward.
For an american comparison, the silent generation of America were a lot like my parents in their attitude towards the future (bright, but built for the kids).
This is editorial added by the commenter, which is incidental to the point and does not purport to even hold the meaning of "she's the only thing that makes me happy". This is not literally meaning "the only happiness I feel". Ostensibly, the man still finds happiness in sleeping, eating, etc but a good partner fills a particular kind of happiness that is near impossible to replace.
For a while, I could have been described as "incel" (as in the literal description of the term, not the negative connotations it has picked up). I was not exactly popular with the ladies, and my dating history was close to nonexistent. My now wife was my first girlfriend and we met when I had pretty much thrown in the towel and given up on romantic relationships.
In an alternate version of my life I could have lived the single life and filled it with other activities and material possessions. I could imagine myself being happy to some extent living like that into my 30s, my 40s, maybe even early 50s. But after that?
Now I can't imagine life without her at my side.
I think there is a lot to be said for having a life partner that is beyond just a good friend and always has your back (yes I'm aware not all relationships/marriages are functional). Especially as the two of you grow older.
I feel the same about kids. We don't have immediate plans for kids. Right now we can imagine living without kids forever, but at the same time we also feel this will change and we'll regret not having one when we are in our 50s 60s or 70s, etc.
Note, it's not intimacy but sex itself. Intimacy lies on the 3rd level.
Of course, today, the idea that men need sex simply because they are alive is repulsive.
For example, some people need food, but they don't deserve it just because they're alive. We call that hunger.
Other people need housing, but they don't deserve it just because they're alive. We call that homelessness.
Some need sex, but they don't deserve it just because they're alive. We call those people incels.
People can adapt to this lack more gracefully than they can adapt to drowning, but it's not a thinking process being addressed here. This is an animal drive and you can't switch it off just because it's ungraceful.
I'm not trying to be combative, I just believe that it's important to question things we believe to be true when we don't fully understand the reasoning.
Admittedly, though I know OF Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, I have no idea HOW Maslow came to their conclusions. So, I just looked it up:
> The most significant limitation of Maslow's theory concerns his methodology. Maslow formulated the characteristics of self-actualized individuals from undertaking a qualitative method called biographical analysis.[1]
> He looked at the biographies and writings of 18 people he identified as being self-actualized. From these sources, he developed a list of qualities that seemed characteristic of this specific group of people, as opposed to humanity in general.[1]
> From a scientific perspective, there are numerous problems with this particular approach. First, it could be argued that biographical analysis as a method is extremely subjective as it is based entirely on the opinion of the researcher. Personal opinion is always prone to bias, which reduces the validity of any data obtained. Therefore Maslow's operational definition of self-actualization must not be blindly accepted as scientific fact.[1]
Doesn't seem like the experiment was very rigorous or even scientific.
The linked article goes on to explain more modern and scientific research on the subject that seems to disprove some of the original hierarchy's assumptions.
[1] https://www.simplypsychology.org/maslow.html#evaluation
Do you think having friends is a requirement for a happy life? It's not strictly necessary, but they are a positive factor, and most people will not be happy entirely devoid of friendship.
Having a partner is a friend you commit to and are closer with than other friends (generalization, sure). I have friends who I would not support through depression, but I would support my partner through depression. Needing someone like that is not unhealthy. It will be difficult to find someone willing to give the same commitment to your friendship as to their partner (generalization again).
Also, supporting a depressed person needs lots of time and effort, and while they are depressed they give nothing back except bad vibes.
edit: I just found this meme: https://i.imgur.com/WCzNW77.png and I decided to link it here. People think friendship is something that is built over years because it takes years in order to have finally made it through enough hardship and shared struggle so calling each other friends is justified. This is the literal meaning of having a friend. You know they'll help you even you got nothing to give and without expecting anything in return from them.
I cannot decide if that is more abusive or more romanticized.
If you expect your friends to be there for you without you returning anything, you are abusing them. That isn't friendship, that is exploitation.
And if your friend is there for you even though you are incapable of returning anything, it is incredibly romantic. But also usually very limited, because that drain on your friend has consequences and needs to either be equalized by something (not you) or suck your friend dry until he himself is incapable. Which is a very un-romantic ending, because it leaves the world with 2 emotional cripples.
For me, friendship is also very much about knowing the limits of what i should make my friends suffer through.
I understand most people are more calculating. My own family who would keep tabs of what they give and receive so to never feeling they're in somebody#s debt. I'm like that in business situations, and to those who I know would do it to me, but not to those who are close enough to consider friend.
> for me, friendship is also very much about knowing the limits of what i should make my friends suffer through.
yes, this very much!
The medical term for what you are talking about is compassion fatigue. It's symptoms look a lot like depression: "People who experience compassion fatigue may exhibit a variety of symptoms including lowered concentration, numbness or feelings of helplessness, irritability, lack of self-satisfaction, withdrawal, aches and pains, or work absenteeism."
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compassion_fatigue
I don't know if you have ever dealt with the latter, or if perhaps you are part of that group, but encountering someone who is can be enough to turn you away from ever potentially being involved with anyone displaying depressive symptoms. There's just too much risk to one's personal life and well-being if they end up being the "bad" kind of depressed person, and not the "good" kind.
Supporting a depressed person will inevitably take a huge toll on your own mental health. That's aside from the time and physical effort it would take up. I am assuming that the friend has some understanding of depression to begin with, which from my personal experience is rarely the case.
I have supported a couple of friends through depression, and it is exhausting. In most cases I was only around them for weeks, and it drained happiness from my life. At time I felt like cutting contact, because depressed people are insufferable. The only reason I stayed to help was because I had personally gone through a similar situation recently, and didn't want to wish it on my worst enemy, let alone a friend.
It's like having a special needs child or being the carer for dependent parent. It is easy to say that you'd gladly do it, but the sad reality is you'll find yourself wishing for a better situation (with all the guilt in the world) once you are knee deep in it.
Really, though, friendship isn't a commitment. I am friends with people I enjoy spending time with. I have plenty of people I am no longer friends with because we stopped having things in common or geography got in the way. That's not a failure on them or me as people. I've made new friends and so have they.
I don't feel bad about saying no to things I don't want to do. I don't want to spend time with someone who isn't fun to be around. With some close friends, I will, out of some sense of obligation or caring about that person. With most friends, I don't feel responsibility over their emotional state, and would rather support my own.
they aren't your friends then. aquaintences perhaps but not real friends. I'd jump through fire for my friends and know they would do (and have done) for me. but then I also run a tight ship with what I consider a friend. if we haven't gone through some kind of shared struggle together we can never be friends. that's why most men will have trouble making real bonds once they leave their teenage years and early 20ies behind. not much new happens (such as puberty) that you struggle through as a group. try to make friends in your 40ies that are as strong as your oldest friendships and it'll be pretty much futile to get anywhere. it's even worse: trusting somebody at that age to become a close friend is a natural red flag for most men. the smell of danger is too high. you're meant to stand on your own feet with that age and better be used to (or even enjoy) being alone (if you don't have a partner)
I have friends (by my definition) who I'd, say, drive 30 min out of my way to pick them up if they got car trouble, but I wouldn't lend them $10,000. These are people I see regularly and actively make time to hang out with. I feel like most people would lean toward my definition over yours, but I could be wrong.
This doesn't mean anything at all to this thread, but your comment reminded me of that. it still bugs me a tiny bit, even if I completely understand and don't blame him for it. I know some people are just extremely picky about money.
Your problem is that you just have no ability to comprehend a situation that is not very similar to your life. So for you, anyone who acts in a way that you do not understand is obviously acting up and doing it wrong, rather than acting in a way that makes sense given the person's circumstances.
Wow, that's two turns of phrase that erode your point in one sentence.
what I recall from my time in my 20ies my desire to be sexually active was a lot more dominant and in charge of my higher faculties than what it is today nearing 50.
biology determines how strongly we feel we need to be with a partner I think. I accepted much more toxicity and negativity just to not be alone (allowing control by my partner over my emotions and was far more ready to compromise) than what I'm today.
Today any potential relationship needs to be solid on a mental level first before I'd even consider going further. That certainly wasn't the case in my early 20ies. Also I'm today able to spend time by myself (and not just get by but really enjoy my own company, thoughts etc ...)
The concept of a dead bedroom absolutely terrifies me. Like, why bother with a relationship if the one person you can have sex with doesn't ever want to have sex?
And on your other point, polyamory is increasingly common and a very valid way for people to approach such an inclination
Close platonic friendships that outlast romances are more healthy than requiring each new girlfriend to be your primary means of emotional support. The lack of social interactions outside of work and wife is also a cause of codependent burnout: it’s unreasonable to expect that the same person is good in bed, a loving mother to your children, primary full-time emotional support, and a chef.
There's a quote I read when I was younger that helped me realize this and come to find peace with my own loneliness at the time.
"Until you get comfortable being alone, you'll never know if you're choosing someone out of love or loneliness."
I remember there being a few hopeless kids in high school, but looking back there was also a lot of undiagnosed asperger's and who knows what else.
What I'm really curious about is if the number of Incels is increasing through the years, or if now the underserved mentally ill just have platforms to espouse their misery. The Incel seems to be singularly focused on sex. Companionship, shared interests, mutual respect don't seem to get any daylight in their psyche. I would like to blame the consumption of instant, abundant hard core pornography. But I don't have any data to back that claim up. I'm just thinking of a difference from the 90s (I know porn existed online back then, but come on, everyone was on dial up) versus today.
The author has a great followup comment that should really be part of the original article that addresses this line of thinking exactly. Pasted below:
-----
I want to have a dialogue about this, because I think it's important in a couple ways. To start, I agree in sort of generic terms that a lot of the Incels must be whining without doing anything to fix it; that's just necessary.
But your scenario here for them, parsed, seems to be making a lot of assumptions I'm not sure are true. One thing I get told a lot when I talk about dieting/obesity is that everyone WANTS to be thin; if it were possible/doable/easy then we'd expect to see a bunch of obese people losing weight, and we don't, so it would be wrong to treat all obese people as lazy fat slobs. Basically that they deserve sympathy and the assumption should be that even if they aren't trying real hard at the moment, that what they would have to try is real hard, and it's more complex than just writing them off as voluntarily broken.
In this case I'm not sure what you are doing is the same, but it feels similar. It's something like "Yes, there's a problem - why don't they just change their personality, looks, and conversational abilities?". If that's easy, great; if that's even something someone can do, fine. But I'm not sure it's that simple; I don't know that many people who have drastically upgraded their personality successfully (read: I don't know any people who have done this) and I don't know many people who have ever made themselves more than marginally better looking (read: I've known some people who have done this, but not many). There's probably some dudes out there who are romance-marketable if they just start showering more, dress a little better and make some token effort at not being rancid assholes, but it's relevant that we think about whether those guys are the norm, or outliers.
I say this because, like, the solutions you propose besides that are A. Something that's expensive, stands a good chance of getting them sent to jail and only solves a small part of the problem most of them have B. Something that's expensive, slow and that we'd only expect to fix the underlying problem if the underlying problem is entirely them - i.e. if the stats I posted above are completely the un-loved faults, with no "market" problems they are getting screwed by.
If you are a guy who isn't a capital-I Incel seeing those suggestions, I'm suspicious that it's not that unlike seeing someone complain about their obesity and how society treats the obese and saying "Well, stop whining, bucko - it's hard to have any sympathy for you when "eat less, exercise more" is an option - do you even have a gym membership?".
If it's anything like that, it gets really easy to imagine this lower-case-i not-yet-toxic incel turning to some community somewhere that will give him some level of sympathy. What I'm saying is, we have an option to have sympathy for the generic condition without having sympathy for the bad behavior, something like "Hey, I get that it's hard out there and that this might not feel like or even be something that you can just 'fix' in that way. I feel for you, that's terrible" so they have some other option at all besides "listen, man, I'm going to explain 100 ways women are whores and this isn't your fault at all".
And the normal stuff with escalating problems applies - this is a problem that got almost twice as bad over the last couple decades. Right now, nobody is paying any real attention to it; some people acknowledge that those stats above exist, but nobody is seriously looking into why or what societal trends are pushing it. If we get down the road another 20 years...
No it isn't.
My grandparents, who were married for 60 years had this mentality. My wife's grandparents, who were married for a similar amount of time, also shared this mentality. My wife's parents still share this mentality (and are obviously completely devoted to one another, which you will notice if you spend about 5 seconds with them). My parents divorced, which has had an incredibly destructive effect on my family, almost certainly as a result of my father's belief that he needed a life that was independent of our family, and that he could somehow live "independently" and still fulfill his role with my mother as the leaders of our family unit.
Go talk to some elderly people: the ones who have been in marriages that have lasted the entire lives are generally completely devoted to one another, and as an extension their families. Unsurprisingly, those families seem to be generally full of happy, healthy people in their own happy, stable relationships.
There is a bizarre (and imo destructive, and toxic) idea that seems to be running through tech especially that devotion to your partner is rooted in "jealousy". It usually leads to "maybe you guys should become polyamorous. What are you jealous?"
And then, predictably, that leads to relationship collapse, heartbreak, and bitterness about 100% of the time. Shocking.
It's entirely possible to have an enduring, meaningful, devoted, monogamous relationship that brings a great deal of happiness to both partners without that relationship being a requirement for the people involved to experience any amount of happiness or fulfillment in their lives.
Codependence is when two people have some unhealthy trait that is reinforced by the other person's unhealthy trait. From wikipedia:
>Codependency is a concept that attempts to characterize imbalanced relationships where one person enables another person's addiction, poor mental health, immaturity, irresponsibility, or under-achievement.
That is not the same as "I get sad when my wife is gone because she is my life partner".
> I got absurdly lucky when I found my wife, but I spent every day without her more or less miserable. It’s arguable she’s the only reason I’m able to be happy.
Which is basically the exact definition of codependence.
Well okay I suppose that the people I'm talking about, in their 50+ year relationships would describe their love for their partner as a type of addiction, but what you might be missing there is: that is a joke, and they are being cute.
If we're redefining romantic devotion as an "addiction" then I think we have officially lost the plot.
> If we're redefining romantic devotion as an "addiction" then I think we have officially lost the plot.
No one is redefining anything. This term is poorly defined. Codependence is not "romantic devotion". "Romantic devotion" should not be codependence.
> Commonly observable characteristics of codependency are:
> intense and unstable interpersonal relationships
> *inability to tolerate being alone, accompanied by frantic efforts to avoid being alone*
> ...
> A codependent is someone who cannot function on their own and whose thinking and behavior is instead organized around another person, process, or substance.
That doesn't make us codependent, to know that I'd spend lots of time miserable if unpartnered and without my wife in particular.
Mostly just, attempting to reason with someone that's feeling attacked (much less, someone that's feeling attacked about something as emotional as loving their wife) is an unwinnable task. I wish this conversation started better, because I actually think it's very important (and I generally think/agree that lots of relationships are unhealthy and it contributes to a lot of more negative societal issues), but I think discussing those topics with those that think you're trying to invalidate their relationship serves no one.
I agree that people should be "okay" without a partner and freestanding as their own person. But, this doesn't mean that it's unhealthy for partnership to be a major portion of life's happiness and fulfillment.
I don't know what the version of me without a stable, long-term relationship would be like. But-- I do know that my life became much better around the time that I met her; that the improvement appears to have lasted and cumulated, and also that it seems to me that a large part of my fulfillment and happiness comes from interaction with my wife. If this is unhealthy, I haven't seen the negative impact from it yet.
> See, I disagree, because I believe that we've evolved to prefer stable, partnered life, and that a large portion of the population is still substantially affected by those drives. Not all of us can just say goodbye to biological imperative.
Can you reference any legitimate science to back this up? I believe the push towards partnered life is a byproduct of capitalism, and has nothing to do with evolution or biology.
> But, this doesn't mean that it's unhealthy for partnership to be a major portion of life's happiness and fulfillment.
This is the strawman that keeps getting thrown around in this comment section. Nobody is suggesting that finding happiness and fulfillment in a partner is unhealthy.
> I don't know what the version of me without a stable, long-term relationship would be like. But-- I do know that my life became much better around the time that I met her; that the improvement appears to have lasted and cumulated, and also that it seems to me that a large part of my fulfillment and happiness comes from interaction with my wife. If this is unhealthy, I haven't seen the negative impact from it yet.
This is again a strawman. "Incapable of being alone" is different than "enjoying being together". The former is what is unhealthy, as has been referenced over and over again in these comments.
?? This is something that is observed across many cultures. Yes, attitudes of permanence are different, and the strength of prohibition against adultery is different, and you can find an outlier. But e.g. we have pre-capitalist Native Americans practicing marriage and stable coupling, and thousands of years of documented traditions within China, ancient Egypt, etc.
> This is the strawman that keeps getting thrown around in this comment section. Nobody is suggesting that finding happiness and fulfillment in a partner is unhealthy.
It's hardly a strawman when it occurred earlier in this thread (and still is there weakly even after edits).
I also think my wife is a uniquely good partner for me. If I lost her, for some reason, it would be difficult to find a situation nearly as good for me.
That's hardly the same as codependence, though.
I also gotta say: When my wife leaves to travel on her own or with the kids for a few days... it's bliss, both during and after. A few days without her is great, and reunion and the chance to share stories of our independent adventures is great, too.
I understand not being as happy or fulfilled without a partner, but _miserable_?
I've known people who are happy and fulfilled living alone, but it's hard for me to picture myself in their shoes.
My wife and I have an awesome relationship. I would be okay-ish, but it couldn't hold a candle to what I have now.
The big bright spots in my life are my work, my relationship with my wife, and my kids. I would have more time to play video games and consume media, and I'm sure I'd have some more friends and hobbies... But it's hard for me to picture papering over her absence with friendships and hobbies.
> I spent every day without her more or less miserable
This is a bit more than "missing" them.
I still don't understand if by that sentence the article author means he was miserable before, or if this means he misses her after just one day of her being away. "Spent" is in the past, so I assumed it's the former.
I have the impression that people are talking about different things in some replies.
>It’s arguable she’s the only reason I’m able to be happy.
Is less ambiguous. I would not want to be in a relationship with someone who is that dependent on me to be happy.
Honestly to me it's not important, if it's either of those things, if it's misery every day without someone that's pretty extreme. IMHO, YMMV etc. Glad he's happy, but that's a lot to put on a partner.
> And honestly this whole trend of laymen trying to psychoanalyze people with whatever toxic psychobabble their read on twitter is getting out of hand.
No offense, but that's exactly what you just did. I personally know of families with 30+ years of marriage who appear "full of happy health people" on the outside but independently disclose their lifelong frustration.
Maybe let's all stay out of psychoanalyzing then?
I'm not miserable when I miss someone. I'd never describe it as that way, because if I'm apart from someone, while that sucks, at the same time it means I have someone. Longing is not misery to me at least.
I feel like you're responding to a different argument than the one that was posed above. They weren't saying that a deep devotion to your partner is bad at all. They were saying that if you're miserable every moment you're not with your partner, there is likely something wrong that needs to be addressed.
Being able to be comfortable and happy even when your partner isn't around doesn't preclude you from having a devoted long term relationship. In fact, that feels like a recipe for a healthier long term relationship. Otherwise you can end up with codependency or separation anxiety.
Being measurably happier with a partner in your life is a positive outcome, indeed is one we should all strive for (or why bother)
> indeed is one we should all strive for (or why bother)
What do you mean by this? Why bother with what?
(As an aside, I actually don't think that being in a relationship is something that all people need to strive for.)
> What do you mean by this? Why bother with what?
Why bother finding a partner. If you aren't measurably happier with a partner, why go through the effort of finding one?
"I'm miserable when my partner isn't around", is not the same as "I'm happier when my partner is around". Does that make sense?
> "I'm happier when my partner is around"
> I got absurdly lucky when I found my wife, but I spent every day without her more or less miserable.
This is not healthy, doesn't matter how much you care about your partner and relationship. Feeling miserable every day without someone is not a good sign.
You can be much happier when you are with your partner, you can enjoy to spend most days with your partner, that's natural. Not enjoying a single day without them is pretty alarming.
> I was a bit of an oddity in that I was anticipating marriage since early adolescence; that outsized-value for relationships came with what I feel were comparably overgrown feelings of loneliness. I got absurdly lucky when I found my wife, but I spent every day without her more or less miserable. It’s arguable she’s the only reason I’m able to be happy. I imagine some of these men are similar to me in the loneliness and not as lucky in finding someone, and it’s impossible for me to not feel something.
I would guess that the main issue here becomes the tendency for folks to become housebound. Retirement is no joke in terms of becoming inwardly focused.
You can be 100% devoted to your partner and relationship but still be happy when the two of you are apart. A polyamorous relationship, or a person who has a whole other life completely separate from their partner, is not the only other option. You seem to be creating a false dichotomy here.
Pinning your happiness to the presence of another individual is not healthy. You cannot be with that person 100% of the time. And what if they die, or their feelings change and they don't want to be with you anymore? (Certainly either event would be devastating, but it should not destroy your only source of happiness.) How is it healthy for you to put all your emotional eggs in their basket? And even worse, how is it fair to the other person, to make that person an essential part of your constant happiness?
It's wonderful to see happy partners in lifelong relationships. That is almost certainly a sign of individual emotional maturity and self-regulation. Those people would be happy in or out of that particular relationship (absolutely not discounting the intense grief of losing a lifelong partner, but the emotional resilience to start enjoying life again), and the ones you mention clearly have strong and healthy relationships with other people as well.
Unhappiness with life before finding a partner demonstrates that there is something fundamentally wrong. People feel too lonely, or too insignificant, or too unloved, or too undervalued, or some other excess of negative emotion that at its root is unhealthy self image or mental health issue and needs to be dealt with independently of whether or not that person is in a partnership. Validation from a relationship can certainly mask the underlying negative emotion, but there's a big risk that at some point a partner's validation will stop working and the person will become unhappy again but put the blame on the partner or the details of the relationship without realizing that it's the same internal emotional problem that was always there. Almost certainly if the relationship ends the person will think the partner left because of the incorrect belief they have about themselves due to negative emotions, e.g. "I was unlovable" or "I wasn't attractive enough".
> There is a bizarre (and imo destructive, and toxic) idea that seems to be running through tech especially that devotion to your partner is rooted in "jealousy". It usually leads to "maybe you guys should become polyamorous. What are you jealous?"
That is indeed toxic. Jealousy is a natural feeling; it can be rooted in some negative beliefs but not always. To me it feels like a fair mix of instinctual response from relationship preference and underlying fears. Unfortunately for the folks you mention instinctual jealousy is a pretty strong indication of a preference for monogamy and not for polyamory. In contrast what I've heard called "compersion" is a feeling of shared joy and happiness about a polyamorous partner's experiences with other partners, distinct from any sort of fetishization of another relationship (which while not necessarily unhealthy is distinct from simple happiness at a partner's happiness). Jealousy for me has usually been rooted in fear of loss; loss of a relationship or fear of missing out. For monogamous people jealousy is also rooted in, for lack of a better word... Monogamy. It's probably the majority relationship preference.
I think that's what the parent was getting at. Being devoted to your partner doesn't mean you need them to enjoy life.
I've been happily married for 17 years and have been with my wife for over 20.
Trust me: there is a big BIG difference between being deeply devoted to your spouse and being co-dependent on them such that you cannot be happy during their absence.
Have you actually talked to or people long enough for them to trust you with their past or current martial issues? Because in my experience, after knowing then for long enough, they start talking for real and completely different pictures emerge.
And really really, you don't know whether people are happy nor what that happiness actualy practically means, until they know for really well. Because most people don't talk about how their relationships looks like from inside.
My theory is that behind every violent crime or act of terrorism there is a huge amount of frustration that built up from not having that someone.
It is the belief that those are the only possibilities that makes people incels, not the lack of a chick.
There is a great amount of neuro-diversity in the human species. Some people are wired to be rugged individualists who could enjoy living by themselves in a cabin in the woods. Other people are wired to need to be around their family.
For some people, its not a choice, its how their brain is wired.
I don't think work life balance and societal expectations are given enough discussion in these matters. Having a toxic job or no balance is going to breed problems in even the most well adjusted people.
Likewise, men are taught by society at large to providers. Men are expected to get great jobs so the wife can stay at the mcmansion with the kids and that anything less than this is a failure of their person. I'm obviously exaggerating, but these messages still abound in pop culture.
I don't know what the solution is, but I think it starts with employees taking more control over the work they do, how they work, and what happens to the profits they create.
Vast majority of people are only happy when they're in a relationship and have a circle of friends. We've evolved this way. If you have no friends, you focus on your partner to get this social interaction.
When you have no friends, no partner, then you turn to poor substitutes for social engagement, like online forums. If you ask me that's the red flag (using Internet a lot).
When you buy certain species of pets, you will only be able to buy them in pairs. Holding them solo is considered animal cruelty. I do consider holding humans solo cruelty, and people advocating things like "the world doesn't owe you a companion" cruel. Maybe the world isn't able to provide, but it should endavour to.
This is a bit silly: either it's trivially true but irrelevant, if the claim is that there exist people who can live happy lives without (sexual) relationships; or it's flatly false, if the claim is that everyone can be equally happy without relationships as they would be with them.
Relationships bring significant happiness. People who are in relationships self-report more happiness. They're richer. They live longer lives. You might say that I'm mistaking cause and effect: maybe happier/richer/healthier people are more likely to enter into relationships? This is probably part of the effect, but not the majority of it. If someone randomly ends up a widower from their partner experiencing a sudden, tragic accident, their happiness doesn't remain level. In fact, it substantially decreases: widowers have some of the highest suicide rates of any demographic group.
Relationships aren't some crazy random idea that just happened to develop in 2020 USA. They exist universally, across all cultures and times. All of them consider a relationship as a good, important goal (even as the typical attributes of relationships do vary). It's hard to name any facet of culture as universal as that.
Single? That's your problem, that your single. Go get a relationship and be happy!
Way to dogpile on people when they're down.
I say enjoy being single. If a relationship happens, good for you, but don't listen to people that say you're damaged / worse off / going down the drain because you're single. They're just jealous you can travel and play video games whenever you want. =)
Some people need relationships to be happy. Some don't. It's silly to deny the existence of either group, but most discourse seems to deny that it's valid for someone to see a relationship as an important component of their path to happiness.
Happiness comes from within. Pegging your happiness on something external to yourself - material wealth, social standing, another human being - is giving away all agency you have over your own happiness.
You have incomplete and varying, but nonzero levels of control over all these things.
I agree with the whole "if you're not happy alone" rule of thumb but happiness isn't a binary. It's a scale. And amassing a little more wealth, becoming a little more respected, having a partner, all those things can add amounts of happiness that push someone from "unhappy" to "good enough". Look at the reverse case when people lose all that stuff if you really want to see how evident it is.
See, for example:
https://academic.oup.com/ije/article/36/6/1244/819019
A death of a parent is identified as one of the most significant causes of unhappiness. If your happiness is negatively impacted by the death of your parents, is the issue that your parents died, or that you've given away your agency to choose your own happiness?
Why does everyone in this thread like posting definitive statements like this? As if it's universally true?
Life isn't as black and white as people like to think.
I was not much of a happy person before I found my (now) wife many years ago. She helps me deal with life in a way no therapist could ever do (and vise versa, me to her). We're in it together and help each other.
I could not figure out how to be happy on my own. Once I found my partner, I was able to be happy.
This isn't universal, of course. Many people are able to be happy on their own, but it's so strange reading definitive stuff like "there's no way!" when it's just not black and white.
It sounds good but it is BS e.g., money won't make you happy but the absence of money would make unhappy many people.
You can try to become Stoic or Buddhist monk but it is not the natural state for most humans.
Married people live longer on average compared to single people.
https://www.webmd.com/a-to-z-guides/news/20191010/marriage-t...
Just wanted to add to the dog pile. ;)
> They're just jealous you can travel and play video games whenever you want. =)
This comment comes off defensive and hypocritical to me, rather than contributing to the conversation. You're basically saying we shouldn't talk about good things if some people don't have those good things; and also screw people with good things because they're actually jealous of the have-nots
I think life is incomparably better with a partner. It's not a question and it's not even close: there's nothing I miss about being single and almost every single thing about my life today is better because I'm in a relationship than if I weren't. It's cheaper, I have someone to share the good times with, I have someone to support me in my bad times, I have a teammate for life's plans and adventures, and I never feel lonely. I can also travel and play video games whenever I want; in fact my partner often buys me videogames and I often buy her things for her to enjoy on her own.
That's not dogpiling on anyone. It's not my fault if someone's single, and it may or may not be true that being in a (good) relationship would make them happier. It definitely makes me happier, and statistically it's a massive boost to quality of life for the vast majority of people. It's not fun to think that someone's worse off, but changing what you say doesn't change reality. This is meant to be a place where people can discuss ideas and concepts, and not talking about the benefits of relationships doesn't make them any less real.
Are you arguing that if someone claims that it's possible to be perfectly content and happy while single, that that somehow undermines the happiness you've found with your partner, as if the mere claim that contentment can be found without a partner invalidates the fact that you're happy with your partner?
I can easily read your response as saying something akin to:
"You're single and happy? Nah. You only think you're happy because you haven't experienced true happiness. Only partnered people can truly experience the incomparable joy that I have found, unlike those benighted singles."
You're happy with your partner. Good for you! That's awesome and amazing. But there's no reason to use that happiness as a reason to look down on other people.
> it may or may not be true that being in a (good) relationship would make them happier.
I don't know if person XYZ would be happier single in a relationship, and I don't have an opinion on it. Everyone should be free to do what they want, whether or not it makes them happy, and I don't care either way. What I was disagreeing with were your implications that (1) just because some people are single and unhappy, nobody can talk about how good and happy relationships can be, and (2) talking about being in a happy relationship is "dogpiling" on unhappy, single people. To take your wording, there's no reason to use unhappiness as a reason to shut down conversation
But this entire post is about how some people get sad, angry, and/or hateful when they want to be in a relationship but continually fail at it. It seems off-topic and missing the point to bring up a "well, actually" about how some people don't want or need that.
To infantilize people like this is more hurtful really. We both know your allotted time with a Nintendo isn't a source of envy. It's a problem, it needs addressing. If you've successfully overridden one of your most primal biological instincts then good for you, you don't need to read all this. However, I suspect most people who say they are just as happy single are not entirely truthful (to themselves).
Clearly the smiley face at the end didn't convey that I was half speaking in jest. But people seemed to have taken my position as an assault on their entire world view.
Let me ask you this though:
> overridden one of your most primal biological instincts
Have you considered the existence of individuals that are gay, lesbian, or asexual? How do these individuals fit into your apparently biological-reproductive-imperative based view of happiness?
Or would you go further to say that those individuals also cannot be happy, since they can't be truly fulfilling their biological instincts either?
This is infantilizing people's desires. Enjoying being single is something that many people just cannot do. To me, it's like telling someone who is paralyzed from the waist down to just walk it off - you can still enjoy all that life has to offer... Assuming those things don't involve the use of your legs!
For many people - this is debilitating. A lot of people are just wired up this way.
I found
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3629371/
which addresses a variation of the question. The unpaired half of twins with discordant marital status show significantly (in the case of men) higher rates of depression; women also seem to too, but because there were so few twins of discordant marital status in general, the test is pretty underpowered and so the confidence intervals are huge. Given that, it's actually pretty impressive that it was able to find any significant differences at all.
Thanks for sharing the findings of your quick research. Depression score is indeed not exactly the same as happiness, or life satisfaction, but for the purpose of our conversation I would say they are all close enough to what matter to us, so they are all sufficiently meaningful (and probably very correlated to each other).
Eyeballing the paper you cited, there appears to be evidence that widowed and divorced people are more depressed, but not single people (compared to the baseline, married people). At least when running the regression with all the other important variables controlled. Am I reading it wrong?
I'll take a look at your paper later.
That's for each person to decide. For incels, it's clearly required. They want it.
It's a fact that interpersonal relationships and sex are part of being human. If you tell them to just give up on this and find other ways to be happy, you're telling them to accept a subhuman existence, that part of their humanity is worthless and should not be exercised.
> basic unhappiness without romance and sex is toxic masculinity
No. It is normal to want relationships and sex. It is normal to be unhappy if you are constantly rejected by everyone. You can have strong friendships and still want this. There is absolutely nothing "toxic" about this.
I agree with you in that this is the best solution, but modern employment is making that hard. When you have a 1h single-way commute, an 8 hour regular work day with an hour of lunch break, another hour of "expected" overtime and "expected" taking part in socializing events to "fit to corporate culture", you lose 11-13 hours each day to work and are probably exhausted. Add another one and half hours to make breakfast and dinner and 8 hours of sleep, that doesn't leave much space for any activities. And God may help you if you're one of the persons who has to take on a second or third job to make rent.
Boomers always complain my generation are "snowflakes" and depression ain't real... yeah no. Depression is real and these people had the luxury of being able to afford two kids, a house and a decent car on one person's salary without ridiculous overtime. Times have changed and not for the better.
This reminds me of rich people who think that money isn't that important.
In reality, loneliness is one of the leading causes of suicide.
A romantic and sexual relationship is very much like having money. Money is not a requirement for a happy life. However, having enough money sure does make it much easier to have a happy life.
It is the same with romantic and sexual relationships. You can be happy without them, but having them is such a happiness multiplier that most people want them for very good reason.
Also it has important societal features. If people are poor and they see all the happy, rich people, and they don't think they have any way of getting money, all the psychology self-help telling them that they should be happy being poor, is not going to work. Eventually, a certain proportion will get resentful.
I think it is similar with singles, especially singles who want to be in a relationship but can't. Telling them that they don't need sexual relationships to be happy is not going to work, and will eventually lead to a lot of resentment.
This is a very odd western view of things. None of my Bangladeshi aunts would find it at all controversial if a young man said he was sad because he was chronically unable to find a relationship. Humans are supposed to be in intimate relationships of some sort, for the purposes of making children. Friends and hobbies aren’t a replacement.
I find the ease with which people throw around “codependency” similarly perplexing. I don’t doubt that this situation exists among some people. But normal healthy marriage involves a large degree of codependency. The idea you need to be a standalone individual who would be happy with or without their spouse is inconsistent with how people actually work.
That's very unfortunate tendency how everyone here first assumes some clear-cut cause and effect, and then goes on from there to interpret someone's expressed feelings.
Strongly disagree, unless you have low testosterone. Nowhere on Earth except in possibly some religious circles do people mentally push away and control to the point of elimination from awareness their sexual desires and not suffer for it in some form. You don't need to be a Freudian to know that the drive exists and gets out, somehow. If you have a low drive, then it makes sense that it would be viewed as optional.
Can you imagine why lonely people might not be receptive to this argument?
Men can feel lonely and unhappy and unfulfilled when they are involuntarily celibate even after having strong relationships with other men and with their families.
This has been my experience talking to hundreds of men in India. India has a strong family culture and a strong culture of strong friendships between men (sometimes even involving completely platonic hand-holding which is perceived as weird by the West) but not much of a culture of dating before marriage. The dating pool has a huge under-supply of women, so most men that do want to date would never find a girlfriend. In my experience, many of these men really struggle with loneliness and self-esteem. Eventually, they give in to the family pressure and just agree to an arranged marriage.
The general "response" to the incel phenomenon seems to be to diagnose (and dismiss) them as the sexual version of anorexics: people who have an unrealistically negative view of their sexual appeal and potential and end up harming themselves as a result. If they could just stop being so hard on themselves and relax, they'd be fine!
This is a problem for two reasons. First, a lot of people genuinely are seriously, perhaps even hopelessly impaired in terms of finding a sexual partner. Appearance, money, and the ability to navigate a host of social and psychological interactions are vital to the process, and some people lack enough of these that their ability to find a partner is slim to none, and will not be improved by a few personal tweaks. The situation is similar to depression: everyone has felt down at some point and gotten over it with simple coping strategies, so they inevitably suggest these strategies to depressed people, not realizing they're dealing with a much deeper problem.
But second, the real issue, as demonstrated in the discussion here, is that a large portion of the population has an unhealthy obsession with having a sexual partner. They view it both as an unqualified good and as a necessity, and are thus terrified of going without it for any significant period of time. For these people, you are not complete as a person unless you're in a relationship. This is a profoundly unhealthy and destructive way to live life, even for ordinary people.
Relationships CAN be good. They can also be bad. On the whole, they generally end up creating almost as many problems as they solve (and sometimes more!). Having a partner is optional. It isn't like air or water or good nutrition. You have to find peace within yourself, with yourself, before anything else. Trying to fix that with any outside thing, including sexual or romantic partners, is a recipe for disaster.
This thread is full of people continuing this warped line of thinking. Relationships aren't evil, they can be good and they can have positive effects on people. But they aren't necessary, and they won't fix you. Only you can fix you.
In short, our culture very clearly has an addiction to sex and romance. Not in the dopamine sense, but because we believe the answer to our problems lies in someone else. In people with the ability to feed this addiction you get mild to moderate problems. In people without that ability, you get incels. Incels are just the most extreme symptom of a deeper disease.
The other extreme is anxious attachment style. The extreme forms of both are considered personality disorders.
I have lived a significant part of my life being independent, without a partner. But now that I have, I enjoy the interdependence. It is very fulfilling.
Let me take this in another direction than most of the other comments:
Say you're talking to a homosexual person in a deeply homophobic society, one so bad that you risk becoming a pariah at the very notion that you might enjoy relations with someone of the same sex. Would you tell that person to basically get over it and figure out how to be happy anyways because it's "not a requirement for a happy life"? If that feels like it would be wrong to say, ask why it feels wrong to tell it to that person, but okay to say it to the subjects of the article.
I'm not really sure what should be done offhand. I know the situations aren't exactly analogous. But if you think it's bad to call homosexual people nasty things and they should be allowed to love, then how can it be okay to just casually dismiss straight people who have trouble finding love as being bad people and tell them to get over it?
The common feeling the author identifies with incels is the intense loneliness and unhappiness. By no means am I criticizing anyone for their feelings. What I am saying is look for the primary underlying cause and dealing with those feelings which is to a) deal with mental health issues. b) focus on building a strong support system for healthy emotional regulation to alleviate loneliness especially. Life should be enjoyable with friends and hobbies, not miserable.
I also want to point out that what a lot of incels want is not a healthy relationship with a woman, but a glorified sex slave or sex worker in exchange for treating them with basic dignity. This is a far cry from gay people oppressed by homophobia. Nonetheless, for the sake of incels who understand what healthy relationships are like and want that:
I'm trying to be pragmatic. I'd advise a gay friend to escape their strictly homophobic society and help them leave. If there's no where to go then I can only offer emotional support and try to fix the society. Likewise, I think introspection about the true source of intense negative feelings is the best thing for anyone who feels intensely unhappy about life for any perceived reason. I have felt intensely unhappy in the past and I have a lot of evidence now that it was mental health and not circumstances like whether I had a partner or not, despite it feeling like the cause sometimes. Love and sex can mask a lot of negative mental health, too.
Pragmatically what else can we do for incels? They feel very bad, none of us (speaking for the men) can give them what they want, and the only way forward for them that I see is helping them find coping skills and support systems to become emotionally healthy. Most of them have unrealistic expectations and will be disappointed until they correct them. The others will have to wait to find the right partner while otherwise enjoying their lives.
Poor? Get rich?
Self-fulfilling prophecies are futile.
> romantic and sexual relationship is not a requirement for a happy life
We have proof of various intelligent animals, domesticated and wild, that display signs of depression, loneliness and self-harm when separated from their bonded partner. If anything, the need for intimacy and romance are central to life as we know it.
First: close friendships are not a substitute for romantic relationships. Friendship and romance are two distinct needs. Not every human is wired to need romance, but _many_ people are. At this point in my life, I'm fortunate enough to have a circle of close platonic friends, but I'm still single, and I'm acutely feeling the lack of romance.
That being said, you have a valid point that romantic relationships are not a substitute for close friendships. Some incels want to get a girlfriend as a substitute for making friends, and I agree that's a bad idea. But telling them "make strong friendships" is not helpful! Most people in this situation will struggle to form to close friendships for the same reasons that they struggle to form romantic relationships.
So how _should_ the problem be fixed? There are no easy solutions. And there especially aren't easy solutions that the sufferers can implement on their own; if there was an easy way out, they would have done it already. I believe this problem will continue until _society_ changes how it treats socially awkward people. Society needs to be more sensitive towards people who lack social skills, and stop demonizing them. For example, there's a tendency to conflate "incels" in the sense of "misogynistic assholes who use terms like Chad/Stacy/femoid", with "incels" in the sense of "any man who's lonely and complains about it". The former group is a tiny fraction of the latter group, and conflating them is very unfair to the latter group. This needs to stop.
- Not having a spouse may be fine, but being excluded from social outings mostly from your friends who are married may start to affect your social circles.
- Not having a spouse may be fine, but paying higher taxes and more rent due to the rise of the housing market expecting two-incomes may in fact financially affect you.
- Not having a spouse may be fine, but receiving all your societal worldviews and mentalities from your same sex friends exclusively may lead you to have some problematic views in the long run.
It can affect a lot, and goes much deeper than sex. Even in some world where prostitution was not only legal but societally encouraged, these above issues from sexual intimacy wouldn't disappear overnight.
That women are deep down attracted to men of status is hard-wired, and the result of thousands of years of natural selection.
The nexus among status-seeking behavior, current economic realities, and the changing marketplace of dating, is the primary driver behind "incels".
In other words, nature is a significant factor in this problem.
not nature
>current economic realities
not nature
>the changing marketplace of dating
again, not nature
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kin_selection
evolution is just things happening. there's no goal, no purpose, no meaning.
https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/08/31/radicalizing-the-roman...
Edit: fixed link to point to the right article
https://www.city-journal.org/html/rush-judgment-12282.html
We aren't going to make progress until we start considering that the offenders might be acting out due to internal turmoil and trauma, and that we should be trying to help these people, not outcast them.
I had a friend who was a pastor who lamented he didn't like that his yearly board game get-together with his other [often pastor] friends often ended up discussing their dead bedrooms. I have no idea how these dynamics have come to be so common, even taking into account the usual ebbs and flows in relationships. I don't know if this problem occurs at higher rates in more religious couples. I suspect that this is the collateral damage of [obviously misguided] purity culture, but we see the same patterns outside of religious couples.
Edit: I should clarify to say the only reason I'm writing this is that these problems have a big impact on people's lives, aren't easy to fix, and often buried from everyone around them.
As far as I understand it celibacy of men devoted to religion or spiritual endeavours is not about "purity" but total focus. And I don't think that is misguided. It's just very resolute.
> And I don't think that is misguided. It's just very resolute.
Agree. Celibacy is difficult but can teach much.
Now, you can still think of that as "misguided purity culture", but it's not "the body is inherently sinful".
Myself, as a highly conservative married man, my findings confirm the daily mail article, esp. when I look at the sex lives of my married friends who were more libertine in their youth.
EDIT: A few theories:
1. My wife is not on birth control, which means she ovulates, and thus has the normal cyclical female sex drive. Her desires during ovulation are way past mine, even if my average is higher than hers. I believe this is why modern men feel so undesirable -- most women are taking hormones that directly affect how attractive they perceive their men to be.
2. No points of comparison. I have no point of comparison with other women. At this point my sexual response, probably through repeated exposure, is finely tuned to my wife. I have fantasies, like any man, but the vividness of my lived experience far surpasses them in excitement.
3. No pornography. I'm not saying I've been perfect, but my religion believes that consuming pornography (same with masturbation) leads to hell, so it's not something I typically do. I have a high sex drive as a result, and instead of masturbating, we have sex instead.
4. No condoms. Similar to number 1. Sex without a condom is better. We tried it once (in violation of my religion) and it was awful. I wouldn't describe it as the same experience. I'm pretty sure there's something in each of our secretions that makes no condom sex better. I'm not a sex scientist, but this is my observation.
It seems to me that people could stand to turn these issues into sub-issues. I can't see much similarity between undersexed 25 year olds (typically male) and 60 year old couples who are either constructed differently or have health issues.
My main take-away is to heavily invest in sex robots and teledildonics.
With this in mind, I'm not surprised that religious couple feel more satisfied.
Having said that, maybe society does set unrealistic expectations when it comes to sex, and it's possible that skews people's perspective and make them all feel like everyone else is having more and better sex, which in turn renders them disatisfied.
So I'm not putting judgement either way, but this seem like a good explanation to me.
Another aspect is knowing better. If you've ever only had Nescafé, you'll still enjoy it and be satisfied with it as your daily coffee driver. But if you've had top notch espresso from world class baristas, you might no longer be able to enjoy Nescafé the same way you used too. Does this apply to sex, I don't know fully, but I think it could be, and religious couple would tend to have less points of comparison, so that could similarly drive them to be able to continuously enjoy and be satisfied with what they have.
Don't take my coffee comparison too literal, "better" with sex doesn't mean like better partner or anything like that, I think just means memories of better times you've had having sex, of more excitement, choice, and all that. I know some people who have an ex-girlfriend, or a one night stand where they still remember that as their best sex. It might often be more because they were simply younger and it was more new to them, then anything to do with the person in itself. And clearly those would have been terrible partners for them. But that memory kind of hunts them with being satisfied in their current relationship sexually, as they can't help but compare one with the other.
This is just all hypothetical, don't take it as ground truth, I'm only exploring the phenomenon.
> That survey describes personal satisfaction. So it doesn't mean that they have more sex, or better sex, simply that to their own standards and expectations they are satisfied with their sex life.
The thing is, that's literally all that matters in this kind of survey. If I'm 10-out-of-10 happy, that is objectively better than someone who is 7-out-of-10 happy, even if those numbers were arrived at via subjective means. Wouldn't you rather be the guy who says "I literally could not be happier", vs. the guy who says "I'm pretty damn happy, but my life is still lacking in some ways"? Ignorance really can be bliss, sometimes.
Your "knowing better" argument is probably a big factor. But isn't that an argument for only having sex with one person? If you end up enjoying sex with that person, then you have nothing to compare it to; most importantly, nothing to compare it to unfavorably. If you don't end up enjoying sex with that person, then yes, you do have a problem. But the survey data seems to suggest that lifelong-monogamy must not produce that outcome often enough to matter.
Not saying everyone should opt for religiously-motivated lifelong monogamy. It's definitely not something I was ever interested in. But obviously there are benefits to it, or no one would do it. (Well, ok, true believers might cite fear of divine consequences as their reason for doing it, which isn't great.)
It's hard to engage when some of the things you talk about here seem immutable to you but are not even reasonable points of contention to me.
"Pornography leads to hell" <- how can we really have a conversation about any of this if you're making blanket statements about some of the content, especially when the statement is so negative? Obviously if hell were real and if pornography certainly led to eternal condemnation in hell, pornography would be bad, but neither of those "if" statements really lead for much discussion.
What was the goal of your comment?
My point is by bringing religion into the conversation, you ratcheted up the severity to an 11, since the negative consequences of religion tend to be literally the worst thing you can experience for all of eternity. Before it was a tough conversation about sex, and now it's a tough conversation about sex where if you get it wrong, you're doomed to hell.
At a certain point, I'm left to wonder what your intention actually was, and I'm running out of positive options. For example, you created a throwaway, and I'm curious about what I'm supposed to take away from that decision.
Actually, the argument pornography leads to hell would suggest I think porn makes for a more pleasurable marriage since things that lead to hell typically are extremely fun.
I believe porn leads to unhappy marriages because it causes comparisons, and it causes men to desire things that are not the traditional sex I believe is the most fun and fulfilling. For example, I think it causes men to seek a dopamine rush in sex, like the dopamine rush they get from porn, instead of the connection with another human being that I believe leads to lasting happiness.
EDIT: > For example, you created a throwaway
Actually, this is not a throwaway. I created a new account because I had to close my previous ones for fear of being doxxed.
You seem pretty fortunate to be in a position where you can afford to have unprotected sex with your wife, because many people can't afford that luxury. Perhaps it's no surprise they're depressed with unfulfilling sex lives.
I personally know people who used that method; it didn't work. Conversely my wife and I have used that method with the intention of getting pregnant, and it still took a while because accurately tracking it can be difficult for a variety of reasons.
If you want to discuss more about having a good sex life, I'm happy to engage but don't want to get derailed by the contraceptive argument. I will say I'd rather have ten kids, less money and a good marriage than a few kids, lots of money and a terrible marriage.
There are other societal issues that help lead us to the situation we’re in, some of which are directly caused by conservative approaches to society. I’m not trying to bash conservatism or religion, but the point I’m making is that it is not without it’s own issues and contributions to other problems.
Lastly it’s not a dichotomy between rich and childless and poor with loads of kids, there are certainly families of 3 or 4 that might want more kids but worry that another might make it harder to provide the same as they have been for their current kids.
It's interesting to ponder how close people might be to hitting that natural limit. Some have gone over it, perhaps without realizing so. There must be many people who would save money by parenting their own kids.
One friend, recently married, much younger than I. Never brought up sex once in all the time I knew him, just casually drops at a party while the two of us are alone in a hallway that the cliche was real.
My longest friendship, married a woman who talked a good game, was very out and proud about her kinky background, and so on. Another dead bedroom, this usually mentioned during long car rides while we go out. She keeps saying that she'll try to do better but does nothing, meanwhile everything she has on the table is a crisis.
And so on and so forth.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toronto_van_attack
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGFWovUuWak
I know HN has pretty broad rules, but between stuff like this and the near constant posts about the SV housing market it really cheapens the forum.
Asides from being an enjoyable read, it provides an excellent framework and guide for how to have conversations about difficult topics successfully. It pairs well with the book "Nonviolent Communication"
These things take time and effort, but they really truly work.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Conscious-Loving-Co-Commitment-Gay-He...
Take care of yourself - health (mental and physical etc).
Sex work should be legal if there is a "market failure" as the article argues.
If someone doesn't want sex in a relationship and other person does - any way to negotiate something - ie, get on tinder for one person or whatever if the issue isn't so critical to break up over?
Is porn a problem? ie, perception everyone getting lots of crazy deep throat action or whatever? Real life is not exactly like that I don't think?
One tip - get off computer / phone / ipad and out from in front of TV. Seriously your life gets better so many ways. Board in bed? Sex gets a lot more interesting.
i assume the Kinsey Institute has studied this; they do regular surveys and such on the topic.
Well, that's the thing. People either lie or (more likely) what they say and what they do are different. My guess is that any study you look at is only slightly tied to reality if it depends on interviews or questionnaires.
Nazi was a shortening of "National Socialist German Workers' Party" which, by this article's logic, means that socialists today should feel at least some level of kinship to the Nazi party. In reality, the Nazis were socialist largely in name only. Likewise, today's feminists have a much broader and less altruistic agenda than one could reasonably infer from their name.
What is the evidence that leads you to this nonsense conclusion?
FWIW, "red-brown" political alliances are still a prominent thing in some countries, usually based on shared social conservative ideals. Furthermore, there are political movements such as National Bolshevism that explicitly draw this connection.
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27039982.
If love, sex, and relationships are as core to people's self-confidence as the author makes it out to be, it seems imperative to let people have access to those things in at least some form. I've certainly been envious of those countries where I would have the option to order up a temporary lover, and the useful-if-fleeting confidence boost that comes with.
That being said, the "incel" problem concerns me. I think the existence of this entire class of individuals shows that the ideals of equity in gender relations, just like the ideal of equity in relations across economic classes (i.e., being equal before the law, regardless of how much money you have) is obviously a grand ideal that we cannot live up to.
I once tried talking to my girlfriend about it when the topic came up. I brought up the usual statistics that show that men graduate from college at a lesser rate than women, nowawdays. That they are more likely to die in violence or from drugs. That this compounds with the fact that the status of women in the world has generally raised (a _good_ thing!) and that the average woman wants someone who is above them on the social or economic ladder. Her response was that they had so much "male privilege" and that they have no excuse for underperforming. That, thus, they should still be _ahead_ of women, presumably, despite the goal being that they... shouldn't be. They need to pull themselves up from their bootstraps, and "man up", but we also must remember that "man up" is a problematic term that is part of "toxic masculinity".
Of course, all of this was foreseen by French novelist Houellebecq. Economic liberalization has lead to social/sexual liberation. After a period of free love things settle down and here we are. Just as most of the new income generated by later periods of economic liberalization go to the top 20%, so it is with the sexual market.
I've tried to stop moralizing it for my own mental health. Like the author, I just try to look at it with a degree of sympathy. It's complex, and it's kinda fucked up. For myself, these hard statistical realities have increasingly robbed me of the romantic impulse. Marriage to me now seems absurd. An empty, pyrrhic victory.
I don't even know what this means. What is "the new income" in "the sexual market"? What is "the top 20%" ? How does "income" "go to" any particular percentile in "the sexual market" ?
- https://techcrunch.com/2009/11/18/okcupid-inbox-attractive/ - https://quillette.com/2019/03/12/attraction-inequality-and-t...
I genuinely don't understand how someone can reconcile these in their head.
By saying "well, they were so far ahead they have no excuse to not be better anyway" you're basically saying that you will reject potential evidence that the goal has been reached.
Maybe I misunderstood the GF's point, but it just sounds like such a lack of empathy for people who face hardship for reasons that are specific to their individuality. It's like saying "poor men are too stupid to not be poor, they have no excuse to be poor".
Regarding her perceived reality, we really need more information than college graduation rates, violent deaths, or any of the stats mentioned by OP. For example if every woman is graduating with an English degree and every man is graduating with a nuclear engineering degree, more women can be graduating and men can still have a much higher mean income among post college age people.
Whether the goal has been reached is clearly a matter of debate. It isn't unreasonable for some people to think we haven't reached it yet.
I never said that. I said that what she perceived as actual reality (she didn't seem to disagree with all the points brought up by her partner) should be seen as evidence that maybe the goal has been reached at least in some domains. However, she seems to just brush it off and instead say that these evidence that the goal may have been reached are anomalies since the goal has not been reached.
As for income disparities, as long as women are not prevented from graduating with nuclear engineering degrees and men are not prevented from studying English, I don't think equality of outcome is interesting. As long as equality of opportunity is achieved.
Anyway, not gonna die on that hill :-)
You didn't say that in you original comment. Maybe that was your intent, but it didn't come across due to the specific portions of the original comment you quoted.
>As for income disparities, as long as women are not prevented from graduating with nuclear engineering degrees and men are not prevented from studying English, I don't think equality of outcome is interesting. As long as equality of opportunity is achieved.
More women graduating from college is not evidence of "equality of opportunity" because the opportunity people are advocating for is some combination of self-determination and a good quality of life that are near impossible to measure. They end goal is not college graduation. No one here is advocating for "equality of outcome".
I think you should reflect on how sensible it is to apply population-wide statistical trends to your personal situation (which is not statistical at all). If you follow the statistics you should not start a business or go to college[1]. I really urge you to take seriously that your own personal experience is more valid than statistical instruments and that, even if by some measurement you are "below average" (whatever that means) you can still be happy and healthy.
I agree that men are doing "worse" than they have been and I do think your girlfriend's attitude towards men who are struggling is not in line with egalitarian principals. I also think that you're promoting a view of society where winners taking all is expected, and in that kind of society, you would expect men to be distributed away from the "middle" of society. After all, if you imagine it's a zero sum competition, then the winning men would push the losing men towards the bottom of society as much as possible to protect their gains. I think this is worth pointing out because I do not think we need to follow that model of society.
Humans will secure the resources they can in situations where zero-sum resource distribution is enforced, but altruism and reciprocity are also possible if we build systems which allow them. If you live life like you either win it all or your life is a waste, then it will almost certainly feel like a waste[2]. You do not have to do that.
[1] https://erikrood.com/Posts/college_roi_.html
[2] This doesn't ignore the many people who are at various kinds of social and material disadvantage. The statistics are real, they just don't mean that men are disadvantaged as a whole.
Some statistics only talk about the average subject. If you assume you are not average, there might be a different statistically optimal path.
The solution, again according to this theory, is not to redefine the male role in society, because that was never going to work. Instead we should return to the traditional male ideals, without the negative aspects. In essence to bring back the gentlemen.
Personally I like this theory, because it has practicality, something that is lacking in the idea that men need to evolve, adapt or "find their place in modern society".
That's also true for a growing number of women, especially above a certain age. They feel completely alienated by the current 'feminist' movement and don't identify with it. Wonder if the younger generation might not do the same.
That was actually also part of this interview. They had the therapist with this thesis and another sexual/couples therapist, and the general consensus between them was that "sameness" kills sexual tensions in a relationship. This results in less sex, which in turn, for most people, means a less happy relationship.
There is an expectation men and women should be the same, expect in the bedroom, where the man should return to some classic or traditional role. That just doesn't work, that duality isn't something most people are able to deal with mentally.
That made absolutely no sense.
I think it’s normal for people to hold some contradictory views. Our web of mental concepts may have a lot of nodes in it that resemble one another, but with different neighbors, that developed at different times in different contexts. Duplicate records lead to poor consistency!
It seems like the commenter, upon reflection, noticed this inconsistency and was bothered by it. But he has the EQ to realize that starting an argument over it is unproductive, so posted here under a throwaway to get some catharsis.
I don't follow why that is. Just because the world's fucked up doesn't mean exclusive devotion to another person doesn't have its romantic appeal.
There was some philosopher I was reading about the other day who posited that the "free love" crowd weren't really free because they were slaves to whims and circumstance. A truly free person, as I gather, is one who decides and acts independently of personal feelings and circumstance.
Ergo, if you don't want to give yourself to your partner, do it anyway. Not out of external obligation, but out of the commitment you decided to make to them. In that perspective, committing to lifelong unconditional love is one of the few victories we have over being mechanical cogs in a sensational machine.
What makes this even better, though, is when you're loving someone unconditionally, it's usually hard for them not to return some of that love sooner or later. So you build a gradual virtuous cycle. Someone's just gotta make the first move.
That being said, I don't blame them. Why not want it all? A lot of this is cultural. They grow up with Cinderella but very few will get to play that role. They grow up thinking that motherhood is a must but a lot don't really want that life. They work hard and rightly feel desire to have what they want. You mix all these things together and it is no wonder there is confusion.
Another take is one from Billy Crystal in City Slickers, "Women need a reason to have sex, men just need a place." This difference greatly captures a lot of people's approach to sex.
Because perfect is the enemy of good and you end up bitter, old and alone
But to singly focus on it would also be a mistake.
If anything we just don’t see what people do in their private lives that much. Incel isn’t some new thing, it’s simply more talked about today.
Also, it's worth considering that the "porn" they would have had easiest access to was Playboy magazine content--not the catalog of Pornhub.
1) Given the dating dynamics of 80% of women wanting only 20% of the men, clearly society is depriving these women of their desired relationships.
2) If the 80% of men cannot have a relationship, and we agree sex is a basic need, and we don't have sex robots yet, then sex work fulfills a valuable role.
https://web.archive.org/web/20091121080804/http://blog.okcup...
There's plenty of people for whom sex isn't necessarily involved in romance; I personally think a lot of people suffer because they confuse and conflate those two ideas.
If you think "abstinate" isn't a valid sexuality, that there aren't people who choose not to have sex just as there are people who choose other genders, machinery, etc; then we'll just have to disagree.
People being hateful and violent are a problem. More of a problem are the conditions that push people in this direction. When presenting the underlying cause, people push back and instead focus on scapegoating or minimizing.
This problem occurs in engineering all the time too. We accrue "tech debt" and when it bites us we're quick to blame incompetence or bad luck. Nobody wants to hear that the problem is because we have to "waste time" working on hardly visible components that don't change anything except "down the road."
The problem is the same now. We blame "bad apples" and "bad days" instead of blaming our own culture and society and undertaking the effort to improve it. We try to make the world fit our own perspectives instead of critically examining our biases. We outright lie to ourselves, and I'm frankly sick of it.
All of us can do better (in the article's case, that includes single men who are romantically frustrated) and _almost_ all of also us deserve some sympathy. I thought the article did a great job of generously showing the overlap between the two.
Showing that intersection — imperfect people with whom you can still sympathize — is key to being helpful. And overcoming imperfections is so much easier when you have help and a listening ear. I know plenty of young men who could use someone to talk to about this.