faceh
2mo ago
Had an interesting thought.
"Consequence-Free Sex" is a great sales pitch on its face.
But then you notice that some of the 'consequences' of sex are in fact good, desireable, and constructive, and throwing those out is really losing something important.
So women thought they were getting all the pleasure without the risk of pregnancy, STDs, emotional investment, or risk of abuse... and didn't notice that this was costing them a lot of the emotionally fulfilling aspects of it.
faceh
2mo ago
A real question, culturally, do men want the responsibilities, or just the perks?
Bit of a trick in this one. What are 'male responsibilities?'
I'd posit:
- Go out hunting and bring back meat for the tribe.
- If a rival tribe attacks, take up arms and repel them, with deadly force if needed.
- If natural disaster strikes, rescue as many as possible and protect from as much damage as possible.
- Do the heavy lifting to build things/rebuild after disaster.
Almost any role men are expected to perform in society is one of these or a subset of these. Killing a spider in the house? 1. Tracking down and capturing a criminal? Blend of 1 and 2. Change the oil in the car? 4.
1 has been obviated by modern tech, and we prefer it that way.
4 is still a thing, but has been rendered pretty low status overall.
2 has been a nonissue in most places, especially the U.S., for a long time, and we prefer it that way.
3 DEFINITELY still happens, and we have systems in place to ensure it happens, but we have managed to mitigate much of the risk. And we prefer it that way.
But at any given time, if the need arises, men CAN be called upon to fulfill these responsibilities, to the death, if needed.
So the fact that most men haven't been called on to fight a war, kill a mammoth, or go down with a ship while the women and children escape doesn't change the fact that they could be called to do this at any time. And indeed, many of them spend a lot of time preparing themselves to jump into action even as the actual chances of needing to do so go down, since the impact of such events is still deadly and widespread.
So there's a disconnect. "Men don't live up to their responsibilities anymore" really means "men have managed to arrange a society that is mostly peaceful, robust against disaster, and produces more food than we know what to do with." And ignores "they also maintain readiness to take action to preserve this society if it is threatened" factor.
And this means mens' responsibilities are kind of invisible most of the time. So others (especially women) just assume men are getting all the perks whilst doing none of the work to earn them. Which might even be true... until its not.
This also explains why Firemen, Police Officers, and Soldiers still get some automatic cachet with women, since they signal themselves as a man who has actively sought out the male responsibility. Even though each of those jobs has only gotten safer/cushier over time for the reasons outlined above.
I do think its 'cheating' to suggest that women are excused from their obligations on the grounds that men aren't living up to their own standards, when the womens' obligations are relatively painless but very visible on a social level, and men's responsibilities are harder to perceive but extract a drastically higher cost when drawn upon.
So what seems to be the issue is that men DO maintain certain responsibilities... but thanks to successfully creating a highly advanced civilization, they've made it much less likely that they'll be publicly expected to perform those responsibilities at scale.
And yes, there are probably a lot of men who would reject the call to fight off an invader, track down a violent criminal, dive into floodwaters to save a child, or even to lift heavy equipment in the hot sun to construct a building.
And those that refuse those responsibility should, I say, be fairly ostracized.
But that's not really the question. As a man, I ABSO-FUCKING-LUTELY want/accept these responsibilities.
With that said... I ABSO-FUCKING-LUTELY want to minimize the chances of being called on to fulfill these responsibilities, by maintaining a civilization that is robust against such risks.
So bit of a contradiction there. "Yes, give me all the perks of maledom, and I will do my best to ensure that I am not called on to fulfill the responsibilities if I can help it."
But the problem I do keep hitting on, if you remove incentives for men to fulfill their responsibilities, and enough of them drop out of that role, its increasingly likely that the civilization they maintain will start to crumble.
Hmm.
Let me suggest for conversation's sake that there's no reason PK failed that isn't explained by the same reasons that every other male-centric organization was either infiltrated or undermined in this period.
My contention is that martials arts might be the sole remaining bastion of pure, healthy masculinity left in Western Society. I become more certain of this every passing year.
All else has been skinsuited or crushed. The UFC is the only sports league left that doesn't even try to cater to women or push LGBT causes, and it revels in its appeal to the dudebro.
So perhaps the failure of PK was they simply had no 'martial' aspect or even any competitive spirits to it to keep men engaged and deter entryism.
I'm not saying they were hiding it.
The process was definitely transparent in that they will straight up tell you how many they brought in.
I just note that somehow, the Sub-Saharan Immigrant population was about 1.3 million in 2010, and is listed at 2.5 million in 2024, so almost doubling.
Do I have to point out who the sitting Presidents were during the majority of that time period?
And the included map shows that a huge number of them were indeed dropped off in Minnesota, to the point they're around 3% of the population in the Minneapolis area.
The part that hasn't become so transparent until lately is exactly how much aid these folks were receiving, and, likewise, how much fraud and crime many were involved in.
If the Minnesotans start to disapprove of this situation, what's their recourse, precisely?
faceh
2mo ago
I've watched (from some distance) a scenario where a young woman gets knocked up by a guy she's living with, leave him, give the baby up for adoption, then finds another guy, gets knocked up, leaves him while pregnant and travels for a bit, gives the baby up for adoption, and then again just finds a guy to live with.
Insanely corrosive way of going through life.
But she can somehow always find a guy willing to put a roof over her head.
faceh
2mo ago
I don't think they voted for them all to be slammed down into the same jurisdictions granting them instant majorities and almost zero demand to truly assimilate.
Hell, if they had been spread around the country rather than specifically creating ethnic enclaves with outsized political power, I would find it less objectionable.
From my personal perspective, the fact that every bit of meaningful news coming out of Minnesota is related to migrants behaving badly or the Politicians doing insanely self-destructive stuff has been ridiculously radicalizing on the immigration question.
Before, the literal only thing I 'knew' about Minnesota was the Movie FARGO and the accents. Never been there, but the people I meet from that area are unfailingly polite and stable if a little weird to my southern sensibilities.
I viewed it as a quaint little slice of Midwestern rural charm. A bit of cultural crossover between the U.S. and Canada, maybe.
I've since learned that for NGOs and the Obama and Biden administration, it was viewed as "Free Real Estate."
And if you asked me to define the precise polar opposite of the Minnesotan cultural archetype, I'd probably say "Somalia".
So naturally a whole bunch of Somalians with zero cultural connection and from an area with a completely incongruous environment got shoved into Minnesotan towns and given every single piece of governmental assistance possible to try to ease their transition... and now the full implications of that are unavoidable. The existence of Ihlan Omar alone is enough for me to balk.
All the more so because as far as I can tell the Minnesotans were never asked, nor do they currently have much of a say. That is what really makes the situation feel 'unfair' if you ask me. The FedGov, through cooperation with NGOs (funded by FedGov) can instantly and irretrievably change the entire character of a given town without technically violating anyone's rights or needing their direct approval.
We've seen how well off communities react to this (Remember Desantis' Martha's Vineyard stunt), but these towns probably have little political clout and not much wealth to speak of.
faceh
2mo ago
The seeming abruptness of Anakin's turn can be attributed in part to the Second Movie being as jumbled as it was.
In AotC, that's where he first demonstrates he's not really in control of his emotions.
Nevermind the issue of why he only JUST NOW tried to help his mother, at least this clearly demonstrated his 'trigger point' of losing a loved one. And of course, after losing his mother, it explains why he gets fanatical about protecting Padme from everything. The beginning of the Third film also showed him giving in to emotion under Palpatine's influence.
All of this was inartfully done. Anakin's rampage against the sand people realllllly should have been part of the climax of the second film (like the Vader/Luke encounter in Ep V) but instead it was that horrendous arena battle, and the slaughter was like the halfway point?
So he turn was foreshadowed but you'd be forgiven for downplaying that earlier incident in the grand scheme.
With Daenarys I dont' think there was any previous "losing control" moment They had Cersei murder her friend in front of her in the previous episode but that would only explain her rage against Cersei.
I dunno, if the goal all along was for Daeny to be a mad queen, she can't be mostly unphased by the experiences she has up until then.
faceh
2mo ago
I've come across plenty of cases where "couple splits up, guy takes up with new partner, who if she isn't already pregnant soon becomes pregnant, guy is too involved with new family to do much about kids he's left with former partner".
Yeah, and WITHOUT marriage involved there's a common lower-class outcome of "guy knocks up 3 or more baby mommas, is involved in none of their lives, owes huge amounts of child support."
The alternative outcomes of a woman having no children whatsoever OR just having a child out of wedlock is generally not preferable!
My point is that even in the case where the woman is abandoned with a child in spite of being married, there are ample government and non-government social programs that will ensure she at least has a roof over her head, food, and protection from harm. IF she chooses to have a kid, a basic standard of living for said child is all but guaranteed.
Leaving out confounding factors like drug use or pure psychological illness, there is virtually no scenario where a woman is left destitute and to her own devices. Clearly it happens, there are a lot of homeless women out there, but in terms of risk calculation, for a 'normal' woman it is negligible.
And the one thing that reliably ensures a woman's happiness over the course of her entire life is generally "marriage to a decent guy and raising kids who love her." That's it. Nothing else provides the same level of consistent upside over the course of decades. And accepting the risk that a guy might eventually abandon her is the price of getting there.
If many women are too anxious or indecisive to take that initial risk, some additional social pressure to push them along would actually be beneficial overall.
faceh
2mo ago
It's the most tit-for-tat political retaliation ever.
Yep.
Completely irrespective of ideal political norms or even the optics of it, I have to respect how precisely targeted and proportional it is.
Comey basically signed off on a witch hunt that he knew was baseless. And it wasted two to three years of the first Trump presidency.
Given that issue, and the irregularities around the 2020 election, I'd almost just shrug it off if Trump wanted a third term.
He shouldn't get one, and not just because of the rules. But the bureaucracy effectively vetoing a President's agenda for years (with congress' tacit approval, granted) is a worse problem than a President winning an election for a third time.
That's my conclusion.
Rough as it sounds, the evidence is that giving women what they've said they wanted is becoming an albatross and we've sacrificed a lot of theoretical children on the altar of a false god. That's a melodramatic way to say "TFR has cratered", of course.
When I say "pressure women to actually settle" I DO NOT mean "force them to accept men they find unworthy, bar them from academia, mandate pregnancies, etc. etc.".
I literally just mean "Stop granting uncapped, unrestricted optionality that is subsidized mainly by the males they're refusing to settle for."
Women have been handed the unrestricted ability to pursue academic degrees, careers, travel, sex with anyone they want (and nobody they don't), raise kids or don't (irrespective of getting pregnant! She can abort if she wants, or adopt if she wants), imbibe whatever illicit substances she wants, associate with whomever she wants, and in many cases, inflict social ostracization and legal consequences on anyone she can gin up plausible enough allegations of abuse or sex pestism against.
In the case of attractive women, it isn't exaggeration to say that if she wants anything, literally anything, she just needs to broadcast that desire to the world (trivial thanks to social media) and it is all but certain someone will run out of the ether to give it to her.
The one thing that they don't get guaranteed for them in this life is "commitment from a high value male."
Which, irony of ironies, is basically the one specific thing they're actually wired to want. The very basis for all the intrasexual competition, the 'hypergamy,' the makeup, the social climbing, the degree-getting. Almost all else (except child-rearing) is arguably secondary to that evolutionary drive to lock down the male with the highest status in her vicinity.
So all that optionality and many of them are just cut off from the thing that nature programmed them to actually covet. Whoops.
My concern now is that between the women themselves who are wont to give up this optionality, the cohort of men who are wont to ever upset women, and the small cohort of men who are massively benefiting from the status quo (until it all crashes), there's no way to muster any political will to even adjust the current policy reality.
We've basically got some sub-majority portion of men, including the hardcore trads and the incel brigade, who would possibly be on board with any platform that includes "possibly telling women 'no, you can't have that.'" So as some on here have been saying, it seems like a "coup-complete" issue.
faceh
2mo ago
As mentioned, though, he HAS taken action against political enemies now, with Comey's indictment being an opening salvo.
But obviously arresting sitting congresspeople who haven't done a blatant crime is a much harder lift.
You see why women would want to be sure they have financial independence?
I've always seen that.
But the new equilibrium they find themselves in has undermined that goal entirely.
Meckenzie Bezos is also not the most sympathetic case because she's throwing piles of money around at any charitable cause that she can, its functionally an admission that she doesn't need that money to maintain her lifestyle, she just received a massive boon and has no desire to apply it towards herself at all.
then you hit your forties and he trades you in for a newer, younger model and you're left with no independent income of your own, no career, no job history or one that is long out of date, and probably custody of and responsibility for the kids
Most of what I've read has indicated that this was not all that common of an occurrence, and relegated mostly to the upper classes, where a guy might have enough money to get a younger model. Middle/lower class guys hitting their 40s generally weren't finding hot young side pieces either. The lower class version of this was dad going out for cigarettes and never coming back.
I suspect it was a fear overblown by feminist rhetoric and probably caused more damage than it was worth, since the recent research I've read, which seems pretty reliable, pegs neuroticism as the personality factor most likely to result in relationship failure/divorce.
Or to put it bluntly, a partner being irrationally worried about their partner cheating on them or dumping them for a new partner is more likely to kill a relationship, than it is for the partner to actually do those things. Which doesn't mitigate the emotional impact when a partner does cheat, granted.
Turns out women have seemingly been getting more neurotic lately.
So my diagnosis is that women have been conditioned to fear being abandoned by their partner and left without support (a very rational fear in premodern times, less so now), and in that fear they're making decisions to sacrifice their fertility and sexual market value in their earlier years in hopes of gaining economic independence.
But the conditioned fear itself is contributing to them being less suitable for maintaining relationships... which means they're less likely to get a committed partner at all, on top of all the other forces working against them.
It is a point I keep coming back to. EVERY policy change in the past fifty years has favored women and their autonomy. You would EXPECT this to increase their comfort levels, and to increase their willingness to marry, since the risk of being left destitute is functionally nonexistent now. But lo and behold the exact opposite occurs. They're LESS comfortable... and LESS likely to marry. I don't know what you're supposed to do with a group who gets less satisfied the more privileges they're given.
As stated above, THEY ARE HEDGING AGAINST THE WRONG RISK. The risks associated with picking the wrong guy who abandons you in middle age (which can be mitigated!) are significantly smaller than the risks of delaying picking a partner at all.
Or so I argue.
faceh
2mo ago
I understand it as Trump doing his version of constant A/B testing to see if there's any appetite for following through.
I don't know what his negotiating stance is in this case. Dems feel comfortable speaking out against him. Boohoo. Staff the agencies with as many friendly people as possible and fire as many of the rest as possible (which means fighting the Courts, granted) so there's minimal concern about mutiny.
Just keep doing things and if the best the Dems can muster is veiled non-threats then its safe to ignore that rather than give them new sound bites.
And if its time to kick things off by actually arresting them, then cowabunga it is, I've been ready for that for years now.
faceh
2mo ago
I can't even tell who is baiting whom anymore.
This one reads like Trump rising to some sort of obvious bait, yet the Dems are getting further and further out over their skis with this whole "threatening Democracy" thing.
As far as I can tell, we just had an election held that produced winners that were not favorable to Trump, and there was not a single attempt to overturn those outcomes or halt the election or otherwise interfere in it.
Adding on the pleas to get the military to act in some very under-specified way and its genuinely annoying at this point to have to deal with the constant superposition of "Trump is literally inches away from becoming supreme leader of a fascist state unless we act NOW" and "by 'act now', we really just mean 'vote for Dems in the next election like a good citizen.'"
I dunno, Trump has actual reasons to be concerned about seditious behavior given how much as been revealed in just the past month about Dems (up to and including Barack Obama?) worked to hamstring him.
He's gone after Comey and Brennan using the standard, established criminal justice process, he didn't have them assassinated in their beds in the middle of the night.
But its also kinda incoherent to call for someone's arrest for Sedition while being the guy who is in charge of the agencies that would be arresting them.
Shit or get off the pot guys. All this sound and fury signifying nothing is just tedious.
faceh
2mo ago
Not sure I buy that this is a higher risk than before, but I do agree that its difficult for a woman to make that judgment in the critical time when she's deciding to make the commitment.
I do worry that more guys are getting sniped by superstimuli (crypto gambling, Weed & Vidya, Porn) and not even building the prerequisites for a stable life, though.
faceh
2mo ago
Yep.
A good relationship should indeed accelerate both party's life trajectories. This requires taking a gamble on the other person's capabilities/potential. But its easier to realize said potential when you have a good, complementary partner backing up your efforts, and you theirs.
Discouraging early marriages is probably making younger people seriously poorer than they'd otherwise have been.
It definitely contributes to higher housing prices. Lots of single people living separately will on the margins drive prices up compared to people pairing off and sharing a space at younger ages.
Alas there is some truth to the Redpill adage that women often prefer to wait at the finish line and marry/fuck the winner.
Gets to the point that a young woman should really have some men in her life, father and brothers, ideally, who can make a judgment call on whether a given suitor has the chops to become a general someday.
Not going to disagree.
The 'dirty' secret is that a woman can actually "have it all," bear and raise some kids, enjoy significant amounts of leisure time, and end up with a rewarding, even high-status career if she marries well early on. A guy who can support her while she's at home raising kids, and can give her career a boost when needed, and take her on nice vacations once they're financially established solves this equation entirely.
The extended adolescence thing seems like a particularly nasty trick on women since front-loading their 'fun and games' time is the opposite of their ideal strategy. Do all the leisure stuff up front, then try to get a career going, and ONLY THEN give consideration to marriage and kids? The failure modes for this are numerous.
Of course, the risks of early marriage are significant, if they pick the wrong guy things can blow up and backfire. So its easy to get them too scared to commit to a guy unless they believe they are capable of supporting themselves if he leaves.
But their current dominant strategy hedges against the wrong risk. The pool of 'good' available men is largest in their early 20s, and then will inherently shrink along with their ability to attract said men. And there's no take-backs or do-overs if they miss that boat.
By my own personal observations, if a woman isn't in a stable relationship by approximately age 26, or isn't aggressively working to lock one down at that age, the safe bet is she probably won't get one with a higher value guy, for reasons not even related to "the wall." Its just a combination of her own heightened standards, the shrinking pool of eligible men to choose from, and the general increase in competition from younger girls for said men... AND her fading youthfulness working more against her as time passes.
Exceptions exist. Taylor Swift seems to have done well in the end, but again, the risks of waiting are more severe than they look when you're young and impressionable.
Its perhaps a huge irony that when we identify biological women of particularly notable and valuable ability, especially in arenas that are traditionally male-dominated, the single best thing we could do is pay them tons of money to produce and raise several children with a man of particular notable ability, in the expectation that the children are more likely to have the same traits that produce that notable ability and can themselves sire more kids with those abilities.
The value of her talents now is almost intrinsically less than the value of her ability to produce more individuals with those talents going forward, all the more so because of the narrow window in which she is able to produce them. Its like Nature's most brutal tradeoff, especially since it echoes through the generations either way.
Our options are to exhaust the capabilities of one (1) exceptional individual during their life, but lose their abilities after they die... or have them produce, hopefully, 2-3 at least somewhat exceptional individuals who can, on net, produce 2-3x more value during their lives than exhausting the exceptional individual would have during theirs.
Wow, we've got a woman of genius intellect, showing prodigy-level talent in science and math, as well as the drive to actually compete in those fields... and if she does compete as hard as she can, we're basically guaranteed that her genes won't pass on and thus whatever genetic advantages she may have possessed will be expressed less in future generations.
Maybe its generally better for everyone if she channels that competitive drive into raising the most talented children possible and nurturing them to maximum potential.
A woman with a towering stature and musculature that actually holds her own in physical feats against men in her weight class? Uhhh yeah make sure she marries a reasonably intelligent corn-fed U.S. Marine so her kids can be the next generation of super-soldiers.
A woman with an exceptionally cool head, innate motivational ability, and a keen business sense? Well we could plug her in as a CEO but why not guarantee that all of her offspring will be admitted to Wharton School of Business on a full-ride scholarship and have her raise a generation of top-tier MBAs? (mostly tongue-in-cheek, that's probably a waste too)
And no, I'm not saying that women with good genetics should be diverted into state-run eugenics programs. I'm just remarking that any sane economic calculus would support a large ratio of these women not being pushed into careers (ESPECIALLY combat where they might die before reproducing) and instead into stable, supportive marriages where her talents are focused on raising a few kids that will carry her genetic legacy and are more likely to produce great achievements going forward.
And she should be considered extremely high status for her contributions, perhaps even moreso than if she'd gone on to get a PhD in Rodent Biology and made a minor breakthrough towards curing pancreatic cancer in rats with her time.
Yes, an incidental effect of this will be even fewer women represented in the upper echelons of scientific achievement. Another incidental effect is that these women are more likely to sire a few multimillionaires who will hold her in high regard and ensure her comfort and well-being for the rest of her life.
At least, if we fix the cultural norms around marriage/family formation along with this, which I would agree is an important prerequisite.
Because the only other approach that makes sense from a civilizational point of view is to let high-achieving males with notable ability have kids with a comparatively large chunk of the women, and yet not have him divert too much attention to child-rearing so he can still crank out his achievements in with his spare time. I know this general sort of thing has been proposed before.
That's also ensuring that the genes that propagate those talents are more heavily represented in the next generation, but lessens reliance on the exceptional women to assist with the propagation.
Okay, I did hide one assumption in there. This argument also supports just having high-achieving women donate their eggs and then find surrogate mothers to bear and raise their kids so that the high-achiever can go on to do their thing whilst their offspring are raised (hopefully competently) by someone who is not as much of an outlier.
My assumption is that a biological mother and father are inherently better-suited to raise kids that share their genes than anyone else, and thus keeping a stable nuclear family environment is better for them overall. If you don't share that assumption, then multiple alternatives present themselves.
I think it adds a large complexity penalty, however, if we need to create and maintain the whole "donate eggs, find surrogate, ensure they raise the child well" system rather than just using a pretty tried-and-true social structure to achieve the preferred outcome.
And I am very open to "negative second-order effects" arguments. I just point out that we're currently living through the second-order effects of giving women nearly unfettered reproductive choice and we can see and predict what that leads to.
faceh
2mo ago
The thought has crossed my mind.
Or develop an app that is basically designed to mute/filter out all the worst, noisiest polluters of the digital commons.
Yep.
There were like 50 ways they could have taken Rey's character to make the trilogy interesting and unique.
I distinctly recall talking to my friend after watching The Force Awakens and saying "I think they made Rey too perfect, but I am curious to learn about her background and I'm willing to see if they do anything fun with her." And they just drove her deeper into Mary-Suesville.
Having her turn in the second film would also suit the general "the good guys lose" trend of the second movies in the trilogy. And if they want to keep the circle of important characters small, then obviously have Finn be the one who either redeems her and/or kills her in the third.
Building up one character as an Overpowered prodigy to then have her flip to the bad side is a great way to raise stakes.
Likewise, one idea I've had floating around was... if you wanted to give Leia force powers, then why not have her whip out force lightning at some point in the film. A power that is universally associated with the bad guys, and Leia can use it, but maybe only under extreme stress or something. You can subvert expectations without just dumping on the actual work itself.
faceh
2mo ago
Not Aldi. At least, not so aggressively.
And I have dreamed of setting the magazine rack at the Publix checkout on fire for as long as I can remember.
Someone buys those things, I assume. I've literally never seen someone pick one up.
faceh
2mo ago
Neither is a gas station or a grocery store or any other service.
The gas station or grocery store sells me the desired product, takes my money, and gives me a receipt.
If a grocery store also attempted to add random items to my grocery cart that I had to physically remove before I hit the checkout line, because "we algorithmically predicted you'd want to buy this one too!" I would probably go to a different grocery store.
Incidentally Aldi is my favorite Grocery Store because it doesn't play games with putting items on 'sale' or do weird pricing practices with coupons. It provides reasonable quality products at what I can generally expect is the lowest price around, and that's it. I appreciate this commitment to simply providing the goods and not trying to futz with the customer to get them to buy more.
That's the sum total of what I want from my media platforms too.
I hope I don't have to explain why grocery stores putting all the products in one physical place is certainly a greater value-add to me (from a pure logistics standpoint) than youtube attempting to shove random videos into my eyes, when I can go to any website I wish with no effort and find the precise content I want with minimal time investment.
Man. Same way.
I've gotten to the point where I can justify a fling with a particular sort of partner who is clearly never going to be able to commit to someone, as a means of physically satiating the desire.
But I have to be so emotionally distant about it that it is simply unfulfilling.
Repeated sexual intercourse with someone you genuinely care for and know their ins and outs and exactly how they respond... its better in ways that you wouldn't even realize if you've only ever had short-term partners.
"Intimacy" is poorly understood and seemingly underrated as part of the experience. Of course, sometimes you just want the dopamine hit that comes with banging someone hot.
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