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Notes -
Occasionally we are told that there is an epidemic of "male loneliness" or "male sexlessness" - an increasing number of young men are going long stretches of time with few or no sexual partners. But why is this a problem? Why should anyone care except for the sexless males themselves?
Evolutionarily, men have always been the disposable gender - the average male was historically much less likely to produce any offspring than the average female. In fact, depending on which estimate you go with, the average male is still significantly more likely to reproduce in a first world Western country today than he would have been historically. So why is there such concern over this particular dip in fertility?
You might say that a high number of sexless males is more likely to lead to violence and social instability - but plainly, that hasn't happened so far, certainly not on any appreciable scale. It's never been harder to imagine actual widespread social unrest occurring in the modern West, given how thoroughly people have been anesthetized with material abundance and cheap entertainment. (This question has been raised a few times recently, about the possibility of the culture war "going hot" over the Trump verdict or the border crisis or whatever - I am of the opinion that no, it won't "go hot", and such a development is essentially unthinkable at this point). Plus, certain MENA societies provide a case study in how you can have a resilient social order where the majority of women disappear into the harems of rich men and the majority of men are left sexless - these may not be pleasant places to live, but the society is capable of reproducing itself all the same.
Assuming the trend is real, we should care on an abstract level because we'd prefer to maximize human happiness and fulfillment and it's sad to see so many people being lonely.
On a social level, there probably is a disadvantage to having a large number of men feeling useless and lonely, which probably leads to them not being very productive.
Should we actually worry about violence and social unrest? Probably not - I think the notion of sexually frustrated males turning into an army and causing widespread civil disorder is mostly an incel vengeance fantasy. (I have largely the same opinion of every scenario that is supposedly going to "go hot" and cause American Civil War II.)
But it would be more productive to ask "What can we do to help these guys?" than "Why should we care about lonely guys jerking it to hentai in their basements while they imagine they're Rorschach?" For the same reason that any trend of widespread dissatisfaction would be better addressed with some grace and compassion than saying "Fuck those losers."
I don't really like the MENA comparison, because we have lots of historical examples that were, by objective measures, awful places to live for 95% of the population but were still "capable of reproducing themselves."
Given mass immigration and increasing automation, how much of a concern is this, really?
What happens once the immigrants can't fuck either?
They go back to their home country with the wealth they've accumulated working in the US, which being far more than they could have earned there, greatly improves their marriage prospects?
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