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PaperclipPerfector  18d ago (text post)   26208 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 13, 2026

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Feminism in the YooKay

This is an article that popped up on my feed and has been making the rounds.

It's about young women in the UK. The UK, for context, has been stagnating on a GDP per-capita basis since 2008 and is facing funding problems amid a large social spending bill. It's hardly a Randian capitalist paradise.

O’Brien grew up in Leicester, in what she calls a working-class family. (She defined this in the Marxist sense, meaning anybody who works for a wage, unlike the “asset class” and what she calls the billionaire “Epstein class”.) She had always been progressive. But while studying for her master’s degree at Bristol University, she started going to Black Lives Matter protests on College Green and felt inspired by the collective energy she saw there. She already had a TikTok following from sharing “random content”, but her audience rapidly grew as her posts got more political. Hamas’s 7 October 2023 attack on Israel, and Israel’s response in Gaza, was a “catalytic moment” for her. “I had been talking about immigration issues before, like Marxism, like philosophy,” she said. “Then it all just became the war.”

I don't have a problem with her in particular. There are odious people in every generation, in either sex. There will always be people that demand more even in the face of the state being bankrupt, nobody ever thinks they live in a good economy (not to say the UK has one).

The problem is that the movement here has become utterly unmoored from reality. In the case of the UK, the left broadly got what it wanted. There are sweeping laws against almost every leftist bugbear, there are gender equality rulings that means female cashiers have to be paid the same as male warehouse workers, taxes are incredibly punitive at the top end, the UK has worse pay compression than the Soviet Union (!!!).

While Adolescence was filmed about incels (an utterly fabricated moral panic, as involuntary celibate men are both more likely to be non-white, less likely to rape and less likely to be violent against women than their sexually more successful counterparts), there is no societal feedback mechanism against the wishes of women. When the (western) world chafes against women's preferences, the world gets sanded, even if it shouldn't. There is no accountability or feedback mechanism against female preferences, they are assumed to be true. While this is unpleasant, one could stoically accept this for a while. But when it starts intersecting with politics at large and with the functioning of the economy, well, that's a different story. I don't live in the UK but I have strong ties there, so this story did feel sad.

Online divides have also bled into real life. Exclusive polling by Merlin Strategy for the New Statesman reveals that young women, aged between 18 and 30, are by far the most progressive demographic in the UK. This polling found that young women are 26 percentage points less likely to feel positively about capitalism than young men, and much less likely to feel the economy works in their favour. They are also much more pessimistic about the future – their own, and everyone else’s. They also feel much more negatively towards young men than young men feel about them.

Again, beliefs utterly unmoored from reality. Young women outearn men and the economy bends over backwards to an absurd degree to make that happen. I work in quantitative finance, in a field where there is an incredibly tight feedback loop between performance and PnL. It's really not that possible for us to do affirmative action or similar. And yet every year, HR tries to force teams (sometimes successfully) to hire subpar women. I am sure there are some women who could do the job, but most very intelligent women eschew quant finance. And yet.

O’Brien told me she considers herself a revolutionary rather than an activist. “Revolutionary is more, ‘I want systemic change. I don’t want to exist within these same systems. I want to be an instrument of the revolution.’” She said she felt anxious seeing injustice and doing nothing. It was a physical sensation in the centre of her body. Perhaps this was why women were more likely to be progressive than men, she speculated. “Women tend to be a little bit more connected to their bodies and their physical sensations and emotions.” It seemed like an essentialist, even reactionary view of gender: the idea that women are emotional, physical beings, in a way men aren’t.

Women are more agreeable and more neurotic than men, in a big five sense. Both qualities that are not necessarily adaptive. Women are good at steering and enforcing social consensus, at language games, etc. What is described here is just women's greater emotional reactivity, as measured by the big five personality scores. This is not new information or anything; variants of these tendencies have been known to societies across the ages.

Anna’s politics had become more radical during the long process of getting personal independence payments for her disability. She felt the whole system was set up against her. The experience made her feel dehumanised.

I grew up in a European country with a large welfare state. It's quite funny how quickly people start taking welfare payments for granted. I guess if you believe in the whole Marxist system as such you are just taking what you are owed and any obstacles to that are just signs of reactionary resistance.

When I asked women what specifically had radicalised them, the war in Gaza was the most common answer.

Gaza as the omnicause. Many words have been spilled about this already; suffice to say that the Gazans would have none of this.

These women weren’t outliers. According to the New Statesman’s polling, young women are twice as likely not to want children as young men. All the Leeds women told me they feared a Reform government pressuring them to have babies. One woman mentioned Suella Braverman’s pledge to scrap the Equality Act and repeal other human rights laws. “It just feels… out of control.”

Their growing isolation could also have profound long-term consequences for British society. It will almost certainly make relationships harder: fewer than half of young women feel men understand them. Young women are much less likely than men to date people who disagree with their politics. People will get lonelier, and angrier. And it’s getting worse. Among those under-30, younger women feel the bleakest: women under 25 are most likely to believe things are “stacked against me, no matter how hard I try”.

The UK's current TFR is 1.41 and recent research suggests TFR is heavily downstream from relationship formation. It making relationships harder is one thing; if the Zoomettes mass opt-out of having children then it's very possible (and I'm generally no doomer!) that the UK as its current society no longer exists in 50 years. Maybe reality has to be the escape valve that forces women's beliefs to become moored to reality again.

Is this what it's like to be in Latin American country seeing decline, like Argentina? Blame everything on capitalism, ignore the fact that you are getting your preferences (as much as the state finances and bond markets can bear it year over year) and continue advocating for a system that guarantees you'll be worse off in 20-30 years?

As I've said before.

Women aren't the problem. But the problem is with women. It is harbored in their minds.

Its right there in the data. In every piece of reliable data that is available on this topic.

Here's the actual graph on the data about each gender's view of the other as discussed in that article.

72% of men under 30 view women positively. 7% view them negatively.

For women under 30, 50% view men positively, 21% view them negatively.

For women under 25, its 35% and 27%, respectively.

If men are steeped in misogyny and treat women so horribly, how does it work that a supermajority of men view women positively, and a substantial minority of women view men negatively. This is incoherent without some very strained definitions of the terms used.

The only way the data makes sense is if these women absolutely believe men are steeped in misogyny, and do not realize that this appears to be misguided and incorrect.

It also pairs well with this bit of data out of the UK where young (teen) men in relationships report substantially more abusive behavior from their partners than the women do. This suggests that men's 'flaw' is believing in the goodness of most women in spite of experiencing their bad behavior.

And of course the official governmental policy [in the UK] is to crack down on male behavior. They (the UK) are trying to ban depictions of strangulation in porn even though, once again, women tend to be slightly more likely to consume such content. Its not clear to me if this is an incompetent government that is ignoring the data, or a malicious/intentional attempt to shape the outcomes by force because it just doesn't like what the data shows and wishes it were different.

How is it possible that after decades and decades of civil rights advances favoring women, they're LESS satisfied with their status in society?

How is it possible that they view men as collectively the biggest danger to their rights and safety when, A) women are as a class safer than they've been at literally any point in history and B) men have very peaceably stood aside or actively boosted women's interests to enable the aforementioned civil rights advances?

If the entire course of the civil rights movement was viewed as an empirical study, an experiment in trying to truly increase human thriving by social engineering and applying technology to alleviate almost every burden that is nominally borne by women... hasn't it objectively failed at that goal?

They're more sad. More mentally ill. Less healthy. They have more STIs (likely because they tend to have more sex partners). They have more debt (although you can certainly argue they're more financially independent). They commit suicide (slightly) more often. And to the extent they still care about marriage and childbirth, they're having more trouble finding and keeping relationships, and they're having fewer children, later in life, if at all. They've acquired artificial signifiers of success like degrees and job titles and digital photo albums full of travel photos... but have so very little tangible to show for it.

All the material wealth we've accumulated has made life easier, across the board. So most 'difficulties' they complain about must be either illusory or self-imposed. It is simply impossible that men as a group are conspiring to keep the women from achieving true happiness.

Anyway, my nutshell theory is that the women are wonderful effect simply dominates cultural and political norms. That's why we get a documentary about the Manosphere and its effect on women, and NOT one about Tiktok and Feminist influencers and its effect on women. Because there's an unstated assumption of "if women are doing it, it can't be bad!"

In spite of the latter being an OBJECTIVELY bigger deal with larger negative impacts on both the individual and social level.

Yes, I'm, still mad.

Gentlemen, what women want is Dracule Mihawk. And I, for one, have no problem with that 😁

What sort of woman is worthy of such a man, remains the question.

We are a long ways off equality of outcome. Quick, something must be done. Women must kill themselves at rates close to men! Or at least succeed more often at it.

Only slightly less pithily, why aren't you considering this the result of an evolutionary response from women, who precipitate the memeplex to make their competition (other women) deeply unpleasant and avoidant of men?

72% of men under 30 view women positively. 7% view them negatively.

I think this statistic elides some subtleties which women IRL realise but which are non-obvious prima facie. While I am no longer under 30, my opinions now remain as they previously were: in that I would answer a polling question “Do you have a positive opinion of women” with a yes, but this is almost exclusively because I have a positive opinion of titties. “Do you have a positive opinion of women” is synonymous with “Are you heterosexual”; a yes answer comes not because I have a positive opinion of respecting a woman, or treating her and her opinions and professional goals with anything like the consideration I would do for a male peer (affirmative action is a great way to weight my priors that she’s not as competent as a man in the same job, that’s just an inevitability).

So I put it to you that possibly this dynamic is at play, and women are right to infer that mens’ positive opinion of them is positive in a way that they don’t want (or at least they’d like to check height and jawline before they decide whether they want). Under such conditions, it makes some sense that they would not reciprocate the demographic’s affections; and their opinions are based on an understanding of men which is MORE accurate, not less accurate, than that captured by the survey’s relative ratios.

This seems like an overly complicated rationalization.

Whatever the basis for it, if men are claiming a positive view of women by and large, this runs against any strict definition of 'misogyny.' As I alluded to, viewing women as more likeable and having more positive emotions towards them is common enough that it has a specific term in psychology that doesn't mince words: the "women are wonderful" effect.

And on top of that, there are precisely ZERO ways in which Western society has become more patriarchal over the last 50 years. Many ways it has advanced women's interests.

So how exactly have women correctly assessed mens' true feelings and intent, when the actual consistent trend over decades is men standing by and even actively supporting the social ascension of females across the board. This needs an even more elaborate explanation for why men, in spite of hating women, have used their social authority to give them every thing they've requested and have not backtracked on it once.

Their belief is arising from somewhere, and you're basically saying that they're Making it up in their heads based on attempted mindreading.

Meanwhile we can see many womens' negative feelings towards men demonstrated constantly in their easily observed behavior.

Its literally backwards logic:

"Men, despite their actual statements and their observed behavior, are secretly all hateful towards women and actually dislike them very much. No I have no direct evidence of this but we can reach this conclusion by reasoning from certain premises... which I also have no evidence for."

And of course, if men really were these dangerous, secretly malevolent actors who were obscuring their true beliefs, how in the hell do you feel comfortable constantly antagonizing this group.

"Men, despite their actual statements and their observed behavior, are secretly all hateful towards women and actually dislike them very much. No I have no direct evidence of this but we can reach this conclusion by reasoning from certain premises... which I also have no evidence for."

I always feel like I'm living through Groundhog Day whenever I participate in one of these gender discussions, and it is always pretty incredible to me how much of the discussion always proceeds solely on vibes (seen often whenever people discuss the supposedly widespread nature of Male Bad Behaviour here, with this omnipresent "Everyone knows" attitude that really shouldn't be so common in a forum like this one).

This seems like an overly complicated rationalization. Whatever the basis for it, if men are claiming a positive view of women by and large, this runs against any strict definition of 'misogyny.' As I alluded to, viewing women as more likeable and having more positive emotions towards them is common enough that it has a specific term in psychology that doesn't mince words: the "women are wonderful" effect.

It's not just overly complicated, it's actively contradicted by much of the existing literature. The argument is especially lacking if you're in any way acquainted with the actual methodologies of these studies, considering that many of the Women are Wonderful studies do not simply ask people about their positive or negative opinions about the opposite sex absent any further investigation. The basis for a lot of these studies is to get respondents to indicate their beliefs about the traits typically held by a certain social group, and then to evaluate these traits on a good-bad ranking system. The very first Women are Wonderful study going all the way back to 1991 explicitly studied the evaluative content of people's beliefs about men and women in this way, and no evidence of negativity towards women was found from both male and female respondents, in fact they found preference. Then there's also the fact that more contemporary research shows that perceptions of competence and intelligence (and also communalism) now favour women, and male respondents assigned traits like competence more to women than they did to men (the only gender difference that favours men is perceptions of agency, possibly a byproduct of the constant promotion of female victimhood and helplessness). The new study is just another drop in the ever-growing body of evidence that points in a female-favouring direction.

It is very common to find that perceptions of women among both sexes are more positive than perceptions of men. The issue is that women's activism constantly needs a new problem to justify its continued existence, and without any proper empirical basis for misogyny they have to signal-boost disparate wrongthinking corners of the internet that haven't yet been aligned with their ideological project and, hilariously enough, bring them more into public view. It's a memeplex whose survival is dependent on creating problems that it then "solves", and it has resulted in women having a very prejudiced view of how hostile men and the world at large are to them, with a seriously adversarial view of gender relations. And yet we are supposed to believe men are the ones who are The Problem in spite of everything. I'd echo Strider's sentiments further downthread; I become more and more radicalised on the topic of sex issues as time goes on, and feminism is the cause of this, not "Andrew Tate".

Making it up in their heads based on attempted mindreading

Yeah, because women would never try to do that, especially when men are concerned.

Men, despite their actual statements and their observed behavior, are secretly all hateful towards women and actually dislike them very much.

Well, we could turn that around and say

Women, despite their actual statements and their observed behavior, are secretly all loving towards men and actually like them very much.

which I think is closer to the truth of the matter but it's inconvenient for both parties. That whole "seriously but not literally" thing comes to mind... but then the [comparatively rarer] women who don't work like that achieve power -> an audience because they don't work like that, then start telling the more traditional women that not being treated [as a fellow man would be] is bad, who then believe it and enter a state of confusion where they don't actually want to be treated that way but insist on it anyway because femininity is, like, weakness or whatever.

(Of course, because that's been the room temperature for the last 100 years, most of the literature about this is just, like, really bad, and as we can see from what passed for psychology in the late 1800s [and earlier] we were just as stupid then as we are now so it's not like you can even go back to the past for answers.)

Meanwhile we can see many womens' negative feelings towards men demonstrated constantly in their easily observed behavior.

You know, it's almost like that negging thing is fundamentally uncomfortable to women [the kind it doesn't work on] more because they know it's the thing their gender does to men. A trans-gender behavior where the man's adopting what the woman sees as a female behavior.

We can't talk to each other honestly because some of us don't even work like that and especially post-feminism it's all case-by-case for people who aren't used to that. The pronoun discourse is perhaps instructive about this matter.

At the risk of engaging in shameless self promotion.

I don't think that this has anything to do with whether or not someone has a Y chromosome. I think the issue is that as a society becomes more traditionally "feminine" the failure modes of femininity will become more prevalent.

You know, it's almost like that negging thing is fundamentally uncomfortable to women [the kind it doesn't work on] more because they know it's the thing their gender does to men.

It is rather interesting how men acting like women in relationships is considered abusive isn't it?

I guess trans acceptance only goes so far.

And of course, if men really were these dangerous, secretly malevolent actors who were obscuring their true beliefs, **how in the hell do you feel comfortable constantly antagonizing this group.

The same way Jews are both running the world and are about to be wiped out any second if only USA stops helping.

and are about to be wiped out any second if only USA stops helping.

The only people saying this are Jewish, or sympathetic to them. Otherwise, the suggestion to stop helping them would be met with a shrug, not all the drama we see in reaponse to it.

Jews are permitted far more leeway to organize specifically around advancing their own interests than males are, incidentally.

Women are not treated better, they are treated far worse. Huge numbers of women are in situationships, used for sex and losing out in other ways. A hypergamous dating market and hookup culture is deeply damaging to young women. The amount of women who have negative experiences is genuine and largely the fault of certain men who are over-represented in the amount of harm they commit.

  • -15

The amount of women who have negative experiences is genuine and largely the fault of certain men who are over-represented in the amount of harm they commit.

Yeah but they're the gatekeepers and they're consistently picking the same people to let through the proverbial gate. Average single guy in the average single woman's body could speedrun to 'an okay relationship' in 48 hours even on the dating apps. Vice-versa and they are so very very very very fucked.

That sexual revolution thing didn't turn out so well for women, did it?

I always thought it was common sense to anyone paying attention. It liberated men more than it did anyone else.

Well, a certain class of men who are charming and sociopathic enough to exploit the opening it presented.

As I said before.

Huge swaths of men don't even have the OPTION to enter a situationship. (hate that term, personally).

Women can practice celibacy if they want, they can stay off dating apps, they can avoid hookups and demand commitment before sex (or, marriage, if they're trad enough).

Some percentage of them do, its just far smaller than it used to be.

How much agency do we ascribe to the rest of them?

The amount of women who have negative experiences is genuine and largely the fault of certain men who are over-represented in the amount of harm they commit.

The question, of course:

In what way are those men forcing, coercing, or otherwise cajoling women to act this way? What we learned post #metoo is that a LOT of women will retroactively claim they were forced or coerced when in fact they just folded to the most minute amount of pressure or even enthusiastically accepted advances from a more 'powerful' male.

And if women are unable to resist a minute amount of pressure, or can't be trusted to make good decisions around powerful males... what else might we need to protect them from?

And more importantly. If women are having bad experiences with a small subset of men, then why does that justify negative opinions about all men?

Why are men expected to tolerate bad behavior (and as seen in the stats, maintain a positive view of women as a whole) or be labelled misogynist, whilst women can base their opinion of the whole male gender on the conduct of <10% of them?

This is where we find ourselves. Unable, as a society, to police womens' behavior (in part because the men who would do the policing benefit too much from the current arrangement), but far, far too ready to go after males for the smallest misstep, and to heap all blame on the men for things they ultimately have no control over. And unable to shift out of this equilibrium because any proposal that might inconvenience ladies is politically nonviable. Nonviable, that is, while the Boomers are in charge.

There are no non-loser first world men who are involuntarily celibate, you can passport bro if it comes down to it(and even if you have strong ethnic preferences, very poor countries with lots of white women exist)- but it usually doesn't. I don't know if it'll stay at that point forever, but most men can get themselves into a long term relationship, even if they're pretty average(and average is a broad term). Yes, this might entail lowering your standards, you're probably not that much of a catch either.

  • -12

you can passport bro if it comes down to it

'Just be rich enough to fly to another country and find a wife' is not the stirring rebuttal you think it is.

I understand the Motte is weird, but you do realize that this is outside the price range for most men, yes?

You know I am not a tech worker, right?

Affording a mail order bride/passport bro wife(I don’t quite know the difference between the two, and I suspect there isn’t one) is doable for a man earning mildly above median(which is a very reasonable expectation in a high opportunity society), because there are many such men who have done it. And most men don’t have to, thé average 35 year old man is married. The point is that unmarried western men who are genuinely above average in desirability are unmarried because they choose to be, perhaps by priority- not because there are no options.

Also with modern migration etcetera you can passport bro lite without leaving your immediate surrounds in a lot of places. I met my Malaysian wife in Australia and now live in Malaysia, but having extensively online dated on my way to finding my wife the majority of women who hit my minimum threshold of non-fat, has a job, doesn't have somebody else's kids, not overtly trashy in order to have a first date were born overseas.

A combination of the locals 'pricing themselves out of the market', value drift in Western women etcetera

It's an option yes, but it's not a scalable solution for a lot of people. That's also like saying starvation isn't a real problem because you can always dig out of a dumpster if you're really that desperate. Yeah. Technically that is true. It's not a sound policy to address unemployment or homelessness. I have options in my social circle available to me if all I was doing was looking to get laid and knock a former fling up or a friends that I know are on the level. That's not generally what they're looking for though.

But starvation isn't a real problem in the modern west. People who can't afford food will be taken care of- possibly by food waste, but more often by charity- either private, government, or informal(eg the donut shop worker giving unsold product to the homeless at close instead of throwing it out for raccoons).

I'm reactionary enough to suggest that an average male shouldn't have to leave the country of his birth to have a prospect of finding a wife. That's a major social failure.

And now you've just exported the externality. What of the poor males in the countries where the women are being plucked from? Now they've got to compete with wealthy foreigners and THEY can't passport bro it up.

And it all leaves the fundamental, core problem. Men have no stake in the continued maintenance of their future if they don't expect to be able to form a family. Why would they throw in their lot with their home country at that point? What's their buy-in?

And of course, all the single cat ladies will continue to cast votes in their country too.

However, if we were to implement an immigration program specifically to allow scads of young, nubile, single women to attain citizenship if they marry and pop out some kids, I think the incentives overall would get aligned REAL QUICK.

Of course, it appears that a huge excess portion of the ACTUAL immigrants we get are young males.

What of the poor males in the countries where the women are being plucked from? Now they've got to compete with wealthy foreigners and THEY can't passport bro it up.

You'd be amazed how deep the chain of passport broing goes into the developing world. I'm an Australian who met my Malaysian Chinese wife in Australia and now live in Malaysia. The stereotypical Malaysian Chinese boomer guy looking for a second wife/mistress will usually pull from Vietnamese girls who are a bit poorer and then the equivalent Vietnamese guy will usually pull from Laos. God knows what the Laotian guy's doing, though.

God knows what the Laotian guy's doing, though.

Padme: He gets to marry the Australian woman who's now available... right?

Trickle down chain hypergamy :laughing_crying_emoji:

Australian Men       ←  Australian Women 
                     ↖
Malaysian Chinese Men   MC Women
                     ↖
Vietnamese Men          Vietnamese Women
                     ↖
Laotian Men             Laotian Women

Simplified diagram as there could be more northwest-pointing arrows at steeper and steeper angles.

God knows what the Laotian guy's doing, though.

This is my point. There's a bottom somewhere, unless everyone is going around stealing everyone else's women.

This is not me saying I owe the Malaysian, Chinese, Laotian, or Filipino men anything. "Stealing" women from competing tribes is about the most natural process we can imagine.

But as usual, I'm an advocate for facing and solving the actual problem head-on.

And it all leaves the fundamental, core problem. Men have no stake in the continued maintenance of their future if they don't expect to be able to form a family. Why would they throw in their lot with their home country at that point? What's their buy-in?

It seems to me that modern society, and this goes beyond just issues of sex, works by honestly demanding very little of people. I hate taxes as much as the next guy, but I'm a pampered tech worker who works in a climate controlled office. When it comes down to it, I live a very comfy life even if I'm taxed a lot and culturally disparaged. The closest thing I've done to sacrificing my comfortable life is having a kid, and even then I still either work in a climate controlled office or live in a climate controlled house. I'm still comfy. The men and women who become NEETs are in a similar boat. The middle class too. Not much is demanded of most people.

It remains to be seen how modern western society would function in a crisis that does demand broad sacrifice from its people. We are not currently in that state.

I hate taxes as much as the next guy, but I'm a pampered tech worker who works in a climate controlled office.

My hatred runs a bit deeper because I'm aware of what we could be achieving if we weren't wasting billions, arguably trillions per year on programs that aren't just wasteful, but often actively detrimental.

The lackadaisical attitude to the waste allows it to continue.

But the point rings true. Nobody in America is really expected to shoulder serious burdens on behalf of the whole.

Although it gets to a question that came up recently. which subset of people are actually doing the critical work that allows the rest of us to coast, relatively speaking?

I’m not disputing that something is broken in a system where guys who round to average and aren’t doing anything wrong need to go to foreignstan to find a wife often enough for it to be a discussed phenomenon(to be perfectly fair, this system isn’t great for women either). Just saying that ‘incels’ aren’t an actual thing- they don’t ’just Want a wife’, those are available assuming these guys aren’t just, giant losers, and basement dwellers wouldn’t have been married in 1955 either(there were just fewer of them). The craving for validation from a specific kind of woman is a different phenomenon entirely, and while it’s not entirely unprecedented it’s also… look, these guys want to be rock stars. It’s not a totally natural response to circumstances, thé history of loveless men is pretty long and it tends to look like broadening thé search pool, not like endless public whining about the need to restructure society completely.

I think you're understating the effect of being neurotic/intensely spectrumed. I've got a family friend who's a very brilliant (Major international awards) academic mathematician but socially incapable who essentially got adopted by his wife in high school in rural Australia 40 years ago and now has a bunch of sons who have not fallen far from the tree.

The sons haven't been able to get into academia since they're cis hetero whites and they're intensely struggling to find productive employment and/or girlfriends since the dating app and job app realm is fucking brutal for a nerdy white autist. Longterm I'd expect they probably find partners born overseas due to the market and cultural dynamics, but it does seem downright deranged how hard it is for them to get meaningfully on any ladder. Their father's a genius but I also don't think he'd be doing particularly better if he were in his twenties circa 2020.

I mean, unemployed, uneducated men with poor social skills are losers though.

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I had an Australian Indian friend. His dad went to one of the best universities in India via scholarship, moved to Australia and is among the top rated neurosurgeons in the entire country. Absolute narcissist though. Verbally and physically abused his son to a point where his mom (who was abusive herself) took him and his sister away. The sister was adored by both their parents, turned out fine, got an arranged marriage and moved to Singapore where she recently had a son. My friend seemed like he didn't fall far from the tree when we were growing up but... he sorta turned out okay. Above average intelligence, normal job, okay social life, level headed. Unsure about his dating life though.

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When I look around at a lot of couples, I see examples of people who I think have a wrong headed attitude to what a relationship is and should be. Two crackheads can stay together forever, but that isn't the kind of thing that makes up a good relationship. Even mutual interests isn't sufficient for the things that matter. At some point, the honeymoon phase is over. You know all their stories. You're with them at their best and you're also going to slog through things with them at their worst. Just because people are in relationships doesn't at all mean they're happy or functional and fulfilled. And frankly when it comes to your obligations to your wife/husband/children, your happiness can kiss my ass and go right out the window as far as I'm concerned. If the choice is between your family or your happiness, there's only 1 correct answer to that question; and only in healthy relationships are those 2 the same thing.

Most guys I know don't want what it is you're describing. They are intelligent, industrious and very hard working people who want a fairly simple life and were raised in and for a social model that's been out of vogue for almost a century now. We no longer live in a family society. We live in an individual society that isn't conducive to the former. Either economically or socially.

There are no non-loser first world men who are involuntarily celibate

This is just a tautology.

And more importantly. If women are having bad experiences with a small subset of men, then why does that justify negative opinions about all men?

Because the men the women are having bad experiences with are the only men the women have any interest in, in the first place. And they have that interest in them precisely for the same qualities that result in the bad experiences.

Yeah, which is indicating that there needs to be some policing of that subset of men too.

But the logic of the sexual revolution is that women get to choose whomever they want, so ipso facto restricting the access of those top tier men to the wider female population is verboten as it directly restricts female's 'choice'.

Like imagine a rule that, say, banned professional athletes from hooking up with random girls they see on Instagram in their hotel room while they're in town for a game. I'd go ahead and guess that the women would howl harder about this restriction than the athletes would.

You nailed it. That's exactly the problem. For someone to step in and begin regulating social behaviors or rolling back norms to generations prior, that would amount to "telling them how to live their lives." They're not ready to have this conversation. The kind of solution they want to this problem is the kind of solution that would prevent them from having a voice at all in the first place. The only time you'll ever be able to blame me for the way I am as a man is when I'm making choices on your behalf. Otherwise, this is on you. You're the one making the choice. I've never been for unbridled freedom in the case of either gender, but what's an occasional problem for every other man has become an epidemic for woman writ large and there's only one group of people responsible steering the ship.

They are treated worse, by men they choose. Yet it's a choice. I reject the idea that women as a sex are so stupid they can't help themselves, or that the hookup market is a force that acts upon them with no recourse.

Maybe in the 90s the memeplex around dating was "go grrrl", but today there's plenty of wisdom in the air that men [that they notice first] are not out for the women's best interest. One needs but listen and learn.

The irony is the men that are out to aid and assist women's interests are the ones women hate on the most. You may reject the idea of their complete ignorance in being able to detect the quality traits and attributes of those they choose to deal with, but they absolutely are out to convince you of precisely that. I literally can't tell you how bad some of their choices are.

You want to know if a man is a bad catch? Simple. I can tell you that easily. If a man is tatted like the underpass on the 10 freeway, that's a clue. If a man has been through rehab (or worse yet, hasn't been through rehab), that's a clue. If a man is 30 years old and hasn't had consistent employment, maybe you're with someone who just wants to sponge off you. If a man is physically threatening or harming you, there is never a valid reason that justifies that kind of behavior. Hell, I can tell you if he's a good catch as a teenager without ever seeing him in person. Give me his high school report card and I can sort this out in 20 minutes. Just listen to the kind of people you come across. How ignorant can you be to not see things like this?

I mean how dumb can you be to not see things like this?

That's the question I asked with the story of the divorced Irish woman from a little while ago. All I can think is that sexual attraction is one hell of a drug, worse than heroin or meth or fent or crack or all of them put together. It turns your brain to mush and you can't literally see what is in front of your nose when your hormones are all addled with "I have to be in a relationship, will I ever get anyone, the years are going by" plus "this guy is charming and interested in me". You end up ignoring "okay yeah so he hits me sometimes and is verbally and emotionally abusive and a loser and I'm the one supporting the household and kids, but otherwise everything is just fine!"

I swear, with all the failures in my life, the one thing I am absolutely thankful for is that I never, ever, succumbed to romantic love. How fucked-up would I be right now if I were running like a bitch in heat after some guy, any guy, please somebody stick with me I don't want to be alone?

I have a stronger drive and appetite on all levels than a lot of people I know. Whether it’s food, sleep or sex; and it took me a very long time to learn how to control it. My father used to call it my “obsessive need to consume.”

It makes sense why you would tolerate someone’s faults when you’re in love with them. Forgiving people for their sins and mistakes is part of my charter and it absolutely doesn’t come easy. But we shouldn’t be quick to associate people’s mistakes, faults and imperfections with abuse.

I was never one of those people who was afraid to be alone. I’ve learned how to live on nothing but my own two feet and have practiced it for decades. I used to tell people “if you can’t tolerate being alone, it’s only because you’re in bad company.” (i.e. you suck as a human being). If I woke up tomorrow morning to a ghost city, with everyone having disappeared but me, left to wander the streets, it wouldn’t cause me much sorrow or grief. I’d say to myself, “damn, it sucks that so-and-so isn’t here to see this…,” and I’d miss my family and friends, but I’d get along just fine by myself.

In love, I was raised according to the conventional norms and stereotypes of the 20th century. Marriage is about love, primarily in the context of family life and family formation. I don’t want a “business partner,” or “partner in crime,” or be the “hang-around-er,” that never left. In a relationship, as a man, I want a wife and kids. That’s my purpose that I was raised and built for. I know what that entails, I know what it demands of me and requires me to sacrifice, I know it’s a lifelong endeavor that you can’t back out of and I accept the costs. For me it’s always been an easy choice because I think I have a more correct frame of mind than a lot of other people do.

Marriage is about love, primarily in the context of family life and family formation.

I think the problem is we have replaced love in that context with self-fulfilment. Love is romantic love, it's not "we're spouses, we're parents, we've built a life together, we stay together and don't jump ship at the first rough patch". So once X or Y has 'fallen out of love' with Y or X, then it's time to shut it down and move on to the new partner Z. Oh, the kids will be fine, they'll adjust!

I think love changes as it matures, but if someone confuses the first fizzy giddy romantic feelings of new love as how it is supposed to be and should remain like that forever, then they are not going to be able to cope with "oh but I don't feel the way I used to feel" and then we get the whole no-fault divorce and constantly moving on and looking for the next best thing and distrust between men and women that we get now.

This, of course, is different from abusive situations or marriages where one or both parties are not able to handle the demands, where the best thing indeed may be to separate.

All humans are so stupid they can't help themselves. Thankfully they are never truly alone.

This is why wise leaders create institutions so that everyone helps each other reach higher Nash equilibria and we avoid the tragedy of commons.

One of these institutions is marriage, which among its many benefits (the thing is truly so neat it is rightfully associated with the divine) solves the problems we are talking about by taking top men out of the market and enforcing monogamy and certainty of paternity.

However marriage has sadly been abolished and forbidden by no fault divorce. This has evidently turned us into savages.

The simple fix is to allow people to marry again and encourage them to reenter civilization.

...Tune in next time, where we will solve rampant crime with wooden beams, rope and a wig.

<De Maistre Hat>The authority of marriage collapsed before the no-fault was the law. Before no-fault was the law, people would get around the fault rules by perjuring themselves. Only through the organic growth of successful subcultures will no-fault divorce once again be the social norm. </De Maistre Hat>

I'm glad to see I have some followers around here.

In practice, a truly no-fault divorce free marriage in the modern world requires a subculture in which every single one of your friends and acquaintances testifies against the spouse who wanted the divorce. The only successful ones so far have been religious.

Ah man it's almost as if there's a social need for religion which would explain why all successful human societies had it to some degree.

I sound sarcastic but I'm genuinely bummed out that the humanist project of reason just doesn't work. We actually can't free ourselves from society and live blissfully in the rekindled state of nature. We can't just act rationally without our trembling hands tied by a higher power.

I feel like Lazar Kaganovich, the last Old Bolshevik, who joined the Communist party in 1911 and lived through the whole of Soviet history up to 1991 to die a few months before the fall, his last words being allegedly: "This is a Catastrophe".

That's about how I feel about sex relations at this point.

Maybe in the 90s the memeplex around dating was "go grrrl", but today there's plenty of wisdom in the air that men [that they notice first] are not out for the women's best interest. One needs but listen and learn.

Well, listening and learning is hard enough for anyone, but I think there's a catch-22 here that's specific to this situation, in that the people they need to listen and learn from in order to avoid these pitfalls are people that they, almost by definition, don't respect or even notice. I do agree with you that it's entirely the personal responsibility for someone, woman or man, to avoid people who are romantically harmful to themselves, and the negative treatment of women in this context is the responsibility of the women who choose to tolerate or even reward such treatment. But I don't think they can help it any more than men can help being attracted enough to skinny, youthful women that they enable awful behavior from that set.

The issue is that it is far harder for a woman to compete when other women are engaging in that type of behaviour. If all other women are doing things to grab attention it is difficult for women who don't

If all other women are doing things to grab attention it is difficult for women who don't.

Most men I know are attracted to a woman who doesn't have a vain desire to stand out above everyone else. I certainly am not attracted to attention whores. The more she acts like one the less interested I become overtime. When I was in high school there was a very attractive girl who liked me who lost me on behavior alone, pulling shit like this. I really have no idea how some of them manage to think that leading like a ho is something that’s going to inspire attraction and affection. It’s disgusting and repulsive.

If only it were illegal!

The issue is that it is far harder for a woman to compete when other women are engaging in that type of behaviour. If all other women are doing things to grab attention it is difficult for women who don't

I totally disagree with this. With so many women chasing so-called "Chad" it's become very easy for a woman to find a guy who has solid morals; a decent job; and genuine desire for a long-term committed relationship. Provided she is willing to overlook the fact that he is short; or balding; or mediocre in facial attractiveness.

Exactly. Also the nature of dating apps means that the territory of a given 'chad' has expanded exponentially and their mindshare of the market has thusly increased. Plus it gives a sense that the pool is a lot wider and deeper than it is so if something's not perceived as a perfect fit you should just keep drawing lots.

With so many women chasing so-called "Chad" it's become very easy for a woman to find a guy who has solid morals; a decent job; and genuine desire for a long-term committed relationship. Provided she is willing to overlook the fact that he is short; or balding; or mediocre in facial attractiveness.

In other words, it hasn't gotten any easier for women to find a mate who has solid morals; a decent job; and genuine desire for a long-term committed relationship.

They don't all have to compete for the top fuckboys. And seeing as we appear to have established that actually attracting the attention of the fuckboys then getting used in a situationship is bad for them, it should be a relief to quit the attention whoring race and get herself someone more her speed.

Because all Europe and the US and the west in general has internalised the Marxist framework of sadness, anger and depauperation caused by oppression, believing that people that receive more are more peaceful and more amicable to the system. While the reality is the Nietzschean framework of ressentment turbocharged by equality. The more people will be democratic, equal and fair, the more they will absolutely hate each others.

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