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Culture War Roundup for the week of June 10, 2024

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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.

Why should anyone care except for the [unhappy, unmotivated] males themselves?

Because when the enemy comes the women need the men to defend them.

And if the enemy has more to offer the men than the domestic women, this happens, and the end result is that one way or another the women's power will be diminished (either because they need to suck it up and accept the domestic man, or will be forced to do so at the point of the foreign man's guns).

Thus the balance women in that society have to strike now is one between making it as unpleasant/oppressive/offensive to male dignity possible without the enemy of their society being able to offer them a better deal if only they don't go to war no matter how many white feathers the women force upon them.

It is on these grounds that "incel" is recognized by women to be a legitimate threat to their power- because there's a possibility (however slim in the West, of course) that should incels organize they'll be forced to renegotiate with the men of their society and have to give up some of their social power for protection from incels, just as they had to in times gone by (though granted, women being subordinate to men was still kind of the room temperature in the West when the West still actually fought wars).