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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   Edited 1yr ago   34415 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 14, 2022

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I am convinced that the Sex Divide is the greatest political engine of today, and that a big chunk of the culture war is based on the existance of this divide, and the inability of society to understand that political differences between males and females have an enormous biological basis.

After I finally understood this concept, I began to "notice", being always passionate about politics and speaking about it, that the discourses and the nature of the topic I discussed with people were and are heavily genderized.

Having a political or cultural discussion with a female is, in general, radically different from having one with a male, not only regarding the topics of interests per se (males more interested in economics or raw politics, female more interested in immigration, equality or similar topics), but also regarding "how" to approach a discussion.

I feel way more free talking with males, because I always had the impression, confirmed 95% of the times, that I can be more open and direct with what I felt without receiving a backslash, that can be personal (simply the person screaming at you or hating you) or social (person beginning to talk with other people in your social network) (NB: I am not American and I do not live in a very polarized society). Apart from the political extremists and activists that you can meet, the following things happened often:

  • Me and the other male have a disagreement, that can be harsh or about an hot topic, but that resolve itself in a shake of hand.

  • We disagree on a lot of topic, but also agree on other ones, making the discussion constructive in itself.

  • I discover that the other male have a lot of, uh, hidden opinions that he does not reveal in his network, often because of female backslash.

In general, I love to talk about politics or culture with other middle or low class males, because I always "received" something in exchange after the discussion, something that can be a new reflection on a topic, an earnest discovering of new knowledge, or simply understanding more some concepts.

Meanwhile, apart from a selected group of very close female friends and a selected other few, almost all the discussion with females ended with a disaster. In spite of me trying to move in a different manner, being more gentle and less direct, and understanding that I need to adapt to other people when I talk about something, the discussions simply does not start well and end well. What happens is:

  • We have a disagreement, and at this point the discussion or close itself ("It is useless to continue, why we should?") or degenerate in a very uncomfortable discussion where the woman put herself as an emotional victim of what we are talking about.

  • If the discussion does not degenerate but continues, it is always redirected to morality or feeling or about a generic "natural law". At this point if I try to redirect the discussion negating the opposing point (I do not agree with your morality or I do not care about this morality) it simply degenerate again in a morality context, where your worth as individual is put on a public pedestal.

The result of all of this, after years of experience... is that I do not talk about these kind of topics with women anymore, apart from a selected few. When I have this kind of conversation I always strive for earning something, that can be knowledge, human connection or shared experiences. Why doing these with women, when the things that you can earn are statistically negative?

Adding to what I said, I also need to mention that, after lowering down the kind of topics and approaches that I have with women, both my dating life and romantic life radically improved. I do not know if it is a coincidence or not.

I think part of this divide has to do with the perception of how "concrete" (as opposed to "abstract") one is thinking about the implications of their discussions. By "concrete" here I mean something like "relevant to the everyday lives and experiences of individuals." So a discussion is very concrete if it is closely about how the politics under discussion will impact the lives of people and it is very abstract if the discussion is more about the politics or principles in a purely logos kind of way, disconnected from any individuals or particularities. My impression is that my political discussions with men have been much more abstract than my political discussions with women have been. This also tracks, I think, the topics you've mentioned discussing with each group as well as explains part of the reaction. It is much easier to become emotionally invested in a discussion or make inferences about another's moral character when one is imagining the people who will be suffering due to some purported principle, or policy, or whatever.

Why is this the case? I posit it is due to a kind of group political consciousness. That is, members of certain groups have, historically, been politically disadvantaged due to their membership in that group. In the United States the 15th and 19th amendments stand as reminders that it was once common to deny people participation in the political process on the basis of race or sex. Not to mention other laws like coverture and Jim Crow that impacted these groups legal standing in other ways. I think this also leads members of these groups to increased sympathy for people who will be on the "losing" end of a policy because of the perception that they were once in a similar position (not necessarily as an individual, but as a member of a certain group).

Consider this through the lens of discussing a particular political issue: whether women ought to have the right to vote. I suspect two men discussing this issue could do so dispassionately assuming the discussion stayed sufficiently abstract. About the merits, from a utilitarian or some other perspective of such a policy. Now imagine we concretize the discussion, we make it more personal. "I think your wife/girlfriend/mother ought not have the right to vote, much harm has been done by their participation in the political process." Would the discussion stay as dispassionate or would it become more heated? More like the conversations you have with women? All the principles in the abstract discussion imply the concretized statement, of course, but plenty of people don't "feel" the implications the way they do when the implications are stated more explicitly. Or imagine one of our interlocutors is a woman. No longer is this an abstract discussion about policies, it's a discussion about whether she and people like her ought to have political equality, about whether maybe society would be better off if she (and others like her) didn't.

I think part of this divide has to do with the perception of how "concrete" (as opposed to "abstract") one is thinking about the implications of their discussions.

I think the term you're reaching for is, at least in common parlance around here, is high vs low decouplers. It's both something innate to different people and something more or less easy depending on distance from topic.

Why is this the case? I posit it is due to a kind of group political consciousness. That is, members of certain groups have, historically, been politically disadvantaged due to their membership in that group. In the United States the 15th and 19th amendments stand as reminders that it was once common to deny people participation in the political process on the basis of race or sex. Not to mention other laws like coverture and Jim Crow that impacted these groups legal standing in other ways. I think this also leads members of these groups to increased sympathy for people who will be on the "losing" end of a policy because of the perception that they were once in a similar position (not necessarily as an individual, but as a member of a certain group).

I find this overly charitable to low decouplers, who can come in all sorts. Nearly everyone has historically been oppressed in one way or another to some degree. And even among you examples it has not been my experience that black men have decoupling abilities in line with white women like your theory would predict.

I think the term you're reaching for is, at least in common parlance around here, is high vs low decouplers. It's both something innate to different people and something more or less easy depending on distance from topic.

I've never been a fan of the "decoupler" verbiage. I think it inappropriately conflates a thing one does with a way one is. I phrased my description of the phenomenon in terms of the debate rather than the debaters deliberately.

I find this overly charitable to low decouplers, who can come in all sorts.

I mean, aren't we supposed to be charitable here? That aside I want to be clear. I intend my description above to be an account of causes rather than reasons. I think having a political identity with a particular kind of narrative history with respect to that identity can cause people with that identity to have issues "decoupling", as you put it. I do not intend to claim that the reasoning I have laid out is something explicitly happening in the minds of people with that identity who is having issues "decoupling."

Nearly everyone has historically been oppressed in one way or another to some degree.

Depending on your definition of "oppressed", "one way or another", and "some degree" I am probably in agreement but I think the kind and degree of the oppression are important. Perhaps more than either it needs to be perceived as having contemporary salience. When feminists connect the contemporary struggle for abortion rights back to the century long effort to improve women's legal and political rights that is an act of building the kind of political group consciousness I'm imagining. Similarly arguments that trace the modern struggle for African Americans against biased policing back to slavery.

And even among you examples it has not been my experience that black men have decoupling abilities in line with white women like your theory would predict.

I am not sure I take my theory to have made any predictions about relative ability to "decouple" among groups that have the kind of consciousness I describe.

I mean, aren't we supposed to be charitable here?

Charitable in that we should engage with the strongest form of counter arguments and assume good faith. Not charitable in that we intentionally discard reasonable hypothesis because they are offensive to some group. I'm very aware that the oppression based theory of increased empathy is fundamental to the progressive worldview and I don't think it's true which is why I'm reluctant to grant it here. I'm afraid it's too much to ask me to be charitable in swallowing the pill that may be the crux in a very large disagreement I have with one of the most powerful ideologies alive today.

I am not sure I take my theory to have made any predictions about relative ability to "decouple" among groups that have the kind of consciousness I describe.

But the theory you're arguing against suggests that Black men would have more in common with white men on decoupling because it's presumed gender/sex is the primary difference and your theory predicts they'd have more in common with women because recent oppression status is the primary difference. So it does seem like strong evidence in favor of the gender based decoupling theory relative to the oppression status based theory.

Charitable in that we should engage with the strongest form of counter arguments and assume good faith. Not charitable in that we intentionally discard reasonable hypothesis because they are offensive to some group.

What "reasonable hypothesis" am I advocating "discard[ing]" "because [it is] offensive to some group?" I view the point of my post as attempting to explain part of why the phenomenon of differences in discussion styles the OP observes exists.

I'm very aware that the oppression based theory of increased empathy is fundamental to the progressive worldview and I don't think it's true which is why I'm reluctant to grant it here.

I would be interested in hearing your characterization of "the oppression based theory of increased empathy." I consider myself pretty progressive and am not sure I agree that any such theory is "fundamental" to my world view.

But the theory you're arguing against suggests that Black men would have more in common with white men on decoupling because it's presumed gender/sex is the primary difference and your theory predicts they'd have more in common with women because recent oppression status is the primary difference. So it does seem like strong evidence in favor of the gender based decoupling theory relative to the oppression status based theory.

Ahh I see, I think I misunderstood your sentence. Do I characterize your experience correctly that, in discussions with black men, their ability to decouple is more like white men than white women? If so then I better understand how this is contradictory to my theory. I also don't really view my project as arguing against the OP's observation, but more trying to provide (perhaps mistaken) explanations for it.

I would be interested in hearing your characterization of "the oppression based theory of increased empathy." I consider myself pretty progressive and am not sure I agree that any such theory is "fundamental" to my world view.

It's difficult to formalize and I'm not super happy with how I phrased it there. It's a little cleaner and recognizable as "lived experience" or "the progressive stack" but not exactly. The idea that people who have experienced hardship are more credible in discussion pertaining to those hardships. Or it's more corrupted form, people who claim to have experienced hardship are more credible in discussions pertaining to hardships in general. In my view at best the hardships experienced introduce more bias than clarity and at worst as you privilege the voices of people who claim to have gone through hardship you create a Goodhart's law situation where legacy admit female graduates from Harvard genuinely think their voices should be privileged over white male coal miners. But even that comparison is playing the game. I think arguments should survive on their own merits and upturning the table for a failure to decouple is a defect bot strategy. The idea that men should be excluded from talks of abortion is ridiculous as an example that I sometime hear.

I'm wondering what kinds of things you would classify under "hardship" for this example. Would it include, say, blindness? It seems like a pretty unintuitive conclusion to me to say that being blind introduces such bias in blind people that sighted people better understand what it is like to be blind than blind people do. Or if blindness would not be included, what facts about a kind of hardship distinguish blindness from ones you would include?

For my part I do believe something like this. Very generally, that people who have had a particular experience have insight about what it is like to have that experience which people who have not had that experience are lacking. One area where I suspect we agree is that just because they have insight into what it was like to have had that experience they do not necessarily have insight into how to improve or alleviate that experience.

I would say that blind people would have insight, in that they may be able to bring things to attention that might have been missed if they were totally ignored. But I don't think it's difficult for others to understand the perspective once it's been raised. I often see a kind of motte and bailey where the motte is "Blind people can help identify what their difficulties are" and the bailey is "sighted people cannot then understand those difficulties once raised well enough to pragmatically make decisions that impact blind people". More commonly the problem is on some culture war grounds where some special interest accuses the opposition to something they're demanding of ignorance rather than a legitimate disagreement. The whole dynamic creates a grievance arms race where rather than carefully discuss issues people race to legitimize their positions by emphasizing how much of an underdog they are in an appeal to pathos rather than logos. It results in what could have been substantive debates being reduced to mere whining.

You see the dynamic in any online forum that is still pseudonymous (such as this one). Even though we can all guess based on general demographic surveys that 85% of the forum, at least, is male, one can't confirm the gender of any particular poster beyond their own representations.

As soon as you enable users to present as a particular gender (all the moreso if you let them add photos) that all goes out the window.

On a side note, this is also tying into my experience of becoming quietly convinced that the inability of society to 'rein in' female sexuality in a healthy way contributes to almost every form of social dysfunction we observe.

Note I'm not saying this is the ONLY condition for dysfunction (plenty of dysfunctional societies which heavily police female sexuality, cf. Iran) but just a seemingly major factor that contributes to dysfunction in the long run.

But as soon as you start letting attractive people leverage their attractiveness to gain popularity, you necessarily compromise the basic factor that allows people to engage in conversation on a 'neutral' playing field. That invites all the rest of the problems inherent to human social group dynamics.

Just say no.

the inability of society to 'reign in' female sexuality in a healthy way contributes to almost every form of social dysfunction we observe.

Isn't it mostly men doing the rioting, heroin, shooting, looting... did I miss any?

Do you think men are more or less likely to go out rioting, shooting, or looting if they have a wife and/or kids to come home to?

Do you think men are more or less aggressive and/or desperate when they can reasonably expect that they will be able to find a long-term partner and 'settle down' with them in the near future?

Do you think that the current environment of hypercompetition in the dating market makes men more or less altruistic and conscientious?

have a wife and/or kids to come home to?

Is that what 'control of female sexuality' looks like? Isn't tying a man down and having kids controlling male sexuality?

I guess my point here is that I don't see this idea of rampant promiscuity ruining the dating market any more believable than a claim that men spending all of their time watching Minecraft streams ruining the dating market, and I definitely don't see 'dating is hard' being the main cause behind recent unraveling of the social contract.

Do you think that the current environment of hypercompetition in the dating market makes men more or less altruistic and conscientious?

I doubt that it has a large scale net effect.

Is that what 'control of female sexuality' looks like? Isn't tying a man down and having kids controlling male sexuality?

You might notice the term I used was rein in, not 'control.'

So yes, promoting the idea that both women and men should try to partner up monogamously is reining in female sexuality, in a world where they otherwise have virtually limitless partners to choose from.

I guess my point here is that I don't see this idea of rampant promiscuity ruining the dating market any more believable than a claim that men spending all of their time watching Minecraft streams ruining the dating market, and I definitely don't see 'dating is hard' being the main cause behind recent unraveling of the social contract.

It's likely a series of feedback loops that all play into each other. I said as much: "Note I'm not saying this is the ONLY condition for dysfunction (plenty of dysfunctional societies which heavily police female sexuality, cf. Iran) but just a seemingly major factor that contributes to dysfunction in the long run."

But I suspect that its similar to the obesity epidemic. Despite the prevalence of technology and prosperity making our lives easier, lots of people have worse health and less fulfilling lives than before.

So, too, is the 'ease' of connecting with potential partners causing some people to see worse outcomes. I think the evidence is clear that women are asymetrically able to exploit their sexuality for personal gain in this environment.

Hence, you'll see outsized effects by focusing on female sexuality as a causal factor.

I doubt that it has a large scale net effect.

Interesting.

Pick a source you find reliable and tell me if you still believe that after reviewing it:

https://news.unt.edu/news-releases/men-have-highest-risk-low-self-esteem-while-using-tinder-unt-study-finds

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/talking-about-men/201810/are-dating-apps-damaging-our-mental-health

https://bmcpsychology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40359-020-0373-1

https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/10.1089/cyber.2019.0561

https://nyctherapy.com/therapists-nyc-blog/how-dating-apps-can-impact-mental-health/

You might notice the term I used was rein in, not 'control.'

Synonymous.

But I suspect that its similar to the obesity epidemic.

Hell, that might be a bigger influence than anything else, because it's making a larger and larger fraction of people unattractive, but you're still striving for an attractive partner. Just not striving in a way that includes reducing calories.

I still don't understand how you're seeing a scenario where young women go after older men as entirely the fault of women or their sexuality and not a mutual decision made by both men and women.

'Dating apps are bad for nental health' isn't automatically a support for the notion that unrestrained female sexuality is responsible for societal ills.

It is.

The response to rioting, heroin, shooting, and looting from other men, on balance, tends to be quite punitive, ranging from social abandonment to imprisonment or lethal violence. Men are much more willing, on balance, to see wrongdoers come to a bad end, and this tends to put a cap on the consequences of such maladaptive behavior.

Pretty sure the anti-feminist case here manages to blame women for it in some roundabout way, just like the feminists will lay all the world's ills at the feet of the patriarchy. Let me try: Low-status men are dissolute and violent because women restrict access to sex and marriage in favor of building harems for a small number of high-status men. Isn't that a common argument?

My personal view differs somewhat: Both men and women are dissolute, but only men are violent because women are physically weak and vulnerable. The cause for the dissoluteness is classic civilizational decline - we morally decay because, at our peak, we could afford to, and it was pleasant to do so.

Isn't that a common argument?

Not a particularly compelling one. I don't know any women who would settle for being part of a harem in favor of being married to a comparatively lower status man.

I think there's this imagination that all the instances of Man not having sex have been replaced 1:1 with woman having sex with Chad.

I think reality is more like: both the man and the woman in the equation are picking a more convenient way to pass the time and unwilling to make themselves uncomfortable to find a partner.

Your competition isn't Chad, it's Netflix.

I don't know any women who would settle for being part of a harem in favor of being married to a comparatively lower status man.

Lemme help you out here:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/in-the-name-love/202006/why-sugar-daddy-relationships-are-the-rise

Do you ever wonder how Leonardo DiCaprio is able to just keep dating a series of young women? Why do they put up with being his arm candy for a few years rather than marrying a 'lower status' man?

I think reality is more like: both the man and the woman in the equation are picking a more convenient way to pass the time and unwilling to make themselves uncomfortable to find a partner.

Surely a factor. However, I don't think it obviates the fact that women can leverage their sexuality to their advantage from an early age.

Especially if women have virtually no obstacles to finding a partner of virtually any age or description if they so desire, whereas an average man is going to have to leap through a dozen hoops just to get considered.

Consider:

https://www.ipsos.com/en-us/news-polls/age-gap-dating

Men are more likely to have dated someone 10+ years younger than them compared to women (25% vs. 14%). Meanwhile, women are more likely to have dated someone 10+ years older than them compared to men (28% vs. 21%).

And when it comes to actual marriages:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_disparity_in_sexual_relationships#Statistics

Approximately 8% of married couples feature a male who is 10+ years older than the female. For the reverse: 1.7%. A 4x disparity.

This really, REAAALLLY strongly implies that the group that is least able to find partners is young males, and possibly older females.

And that likely means a large disparity in who is having sex, with a certain subset of the population likely have none at all, despite wanting to.

Why do they put up with being his arm candy for a few years rather than marrying a 'lower status' man?

Because Leo was in Titanic and gives them a ladyboner. I imagine that's also the reason Leo goes after a particular demographic-he finds them attractive. I assume that most of those partners will eventually end up married.

Especially if women have virtually no obstacles to finding a partner of virtually any age or description if they so desire

And yet they... don't. So either they have very particular preferences, they aren't motivated to call your bluff, or there are some obstacles that you don't see, such as social consequences.

the group that is least able to find partners is young males, and possibly older females.

Young men will eventually become old men, old women were once young women. Have people become less patient?

And yet they... don't.

Many many do. This is why the term "Sugar Baby" is now mainstream. This is why Onlyfans is a multi-billion dollar company

And the larger point is they have this as an option.

Many men don't even have the option.

Young men will eventually become old men, old women were once young women. Have people become less patient?

I already did this discussion here:

https://www.themotte.org/post/120/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/18954?context=8#context

But the point is, you're expecting young men, who are at their horniest and least capable of making good judgments at this age, to be able to wait a decade before they can have a chance at having a committed partner.

That is, you're saying that the very guys who need some kind of healthy outlet for their sexual and other impulses are finding it increasingly difficult to obtain a healthy outlet, and saying this won't show substantial behavioral effects?

committed partner.

In my experience the majority of young men don't profess a desire for a committed partner, young women do. Maybe that's changed since I was a young man.

wait a decade before they can have a chance

Hyperbolic. Plenty of young men end up in relationships.

Also, while I agree that OnlyFans probably isn't a healthy outlet because of the parasocial aspect, there are plenty of others like pornhub, Literotica, HBO, and the power of imagination.

I think you’re right that women aren’t consciously joining “harems”, but the competition isn’t just Netflix, it’s Netflix+Tinder hookups when they get sufficiently lonely, as a replacement for relationships.

And who do they go for on tinder? The same guys as all the other single women. It’s not a “harem” because they don’t know or have a reason to care about other girls the guys might be getting with, but to lonely single men, the effect is the same.

But as soon as you start letting attractive people leverage their attractiveness to gain popularity, you necessarily compromise the basic factor that allows people to engage in conversation on a 'neutral' playing field.

Why stop at attractiveness? We know tall men do better - this is plainly unfair leveraging of a physical trait that compromises neutrality. Intelligence, also, does away with neutral playing field.

Bring in the world of Harrison Bergeron? Or is it only female sexuality that needs to be controlled? Ah, the poor, poor men who only want to sit around discussing Aristotle, were it not for the brazen hussies enticing them to indulge in base sensuality by flashing their ankles at them!

It's funny how talk about "reigning in female sexuality" seems to boil down to "make sure attractive women will sleep with me when I want, and that I get a hot young wife when I'm finished sowing my wild oats". Genuinely reigned-in female sexuality, e.g. virginity until marriage, no unchaperoned contact, no dating or time spent together unless courting, needing to win the approval of the family before courting could start, and the older forms of controlling interaction between men and women would not suit men who talk about "women trading on their sexuality". Are you ready to be married at twenty to the only woman you will ever have sex with (unless she dies and you remarry), and start having kids that you will support?

I have no objection to rolling back the Sexual Revolution, but it needs to apply to men as well - it takes two to tango, after all.

Or is it only female sexuality that needs to be controlled? Ah, the poor, poor men who only want to sit around discussing Aristotle, were it not for the brazen hussies enticing them to indulge in base sensuality by flashing their ankles at them!

Male sexuality is generally expressed in a different way than female sexuality, which implies different methods of constraining it.

Guys generally try to actively get laid and will spend copious amounts of time in the gym, then find a location where eligible women are located, then flirt as best they can, engage physically, and try to close the deal with whichever woman they find most responsive. The end goal of all that effort is to find one woman who he can get into bed.

If they are left completely unrestrained, they may just engage in straight up sexual assault. Policing that is relatively straightforward if we're willing to allow for trusted chaperones. Tricky, if we're not.

For females, literally all they need to do to leverage their sexuality is set up an instagram and show enough skin to tantalize thousands of men at once, whilst giving minimal attention to any of them in exchange. No physical contact required, minimal effort invested, and HUGE outsize effects are possible.

So we're dealing with a situation where social media has created a severe imbalance/asymetry in each gender's ability to use their sexuality to gain what they want.

This is mostly a consequence of how men are wired for sexual attraction vs. women. Men tend to respond to the simple visual stimulation. Women generally need more than that.

And obviously, clearly, without a doubt we condemn men who step out of line and cause discomfort, fear, or harm to women in the process of trying to get sex. As well we should.

But if you try to suggest that maybe, just MAYBE having millions of women posting thirst traps for the attention of tons of horny men is creating an unhealthy situation for both men AND women, and that this behavior is increasing mental distress for no real reason...

Well, that's just beyond the pale! How dare you! Women should be able to post whatever they want at any time and receive no judgment or criticism for it, ever.

Because, as stated, female sexuality is different than male sexuality.

It's not the men's sexuality that is growing unrestrained and is being amplified by current social media technology. So you see why I might focus on female sexuality as a larger contributing factor, no?

It's funny how talk about "reigning in female sexuality" seems to boil down to "make sure attractive women will sleep with me when I want, and that I get a hot young wife when I'm finished sowing my wild oats"

Holy cow I DARE you to show me where I implied that.

I have no objection to rolling back the Sexual Revolution, but it needs to apply to men as well - it takes two to tango, after all.

What does 'rolling back' the sexual revolution require of men, in this instance? What behavior do they engage in now that they need to stop?

"Oh dear, you'll have to be willing to settle down with a partner and provide them with support and affection for richer or poorer, in sickness and health, until death do you part."

Well, its not men initiating most divorces, so I SUGGEST that men, on average, will find this state of affairs quite acceptable.

So it implies that women are the ones who might have to be cajoled into getting with the program. And I use 'cajole' purposefully, to suggest it might have to be a social pressure/shame thing rather than a legal reform that achieves it.

I have no objection to rolling back the Sexual Revolution, but it needs to apply to men as well - it takes two to tango, after all.

I’m not the GP, but yes, of course. As you point out, restraining the sexuality of one sex implies restraining the sexuality of the other. I want a world where both sexes value chastity, understood in the classic sense of sexual virtue.

It’s great that so many denizens of the manosphere (or whatever it has turned into) have come to see the effects of feminine promiscuity. It means that they have found an important piece of the puzzle. It behooves those of us who see the other pieces to help them fit it together. And some of them do get there! The former pickup artist Roosh is a famous example.

I’m not old enough to remember the years before the pill. But it’s easy to see that the relationship between marriage, sex, and children was obvious then in a way it isn’t now. The relationship was important for more reasons than pregnancy, but pregnancy was a reason that any horny doofus could see.

I keep seeing Christian kids who should know better sacrificing their principles to their libidos and calling it nuance. It’s refreshing to see secular people who notice the burns on others. It raises my hopes that they will come to see how marrying the only woman you will ever sleep with at twenty could be a joy and a blessing.

I didn't realize Roosh was still kicking around. Always hilarious to see people follow a basic-ass secular "have my fun then settle down" path then call it conversion.

I certainly don’t know the man, and I haven’t read enough of his writing to draw broad conclusions. But I read one or two of his pieces after his conversion, and they sure pattern matched to “New Christian” for me.

I'm only familiar in a decade old memory way with his PUA blog circa like 2009-10 when I was a teenager and easily fascinated by that sort of thing. Among other things he wrote travel guides to getting laid as a sex tourist in different European countries.

But he was an early example of a PUA blogger you saw go from lighthearted "let's all have fun and get laid" vibes to weird misogyny and self hatred in real time.

Which, in charity, pattern matches with him being unhappy as a hedonist whoremonger and finding God, the prodigal son. He has, according to your link, taken his old books out of circulation.

But for me it also pattern matches with a guy fucking through his 20s and 30s, noticing his hairline is receding and his erections lack rigidity and girls look at him like he's their dad; then settling down, and rather than look at life as a graceful series of changes he says everything he spent 20 years advocating is 100% wrong and changes direction completely to Holy Roller. Not just maybe I overdid it a little, but the full mullah.

From teenage me to now, I've kinda resented born agains who have their fun then switch teams and tell you not to have yours.

Yeah, I can sympathize with that.

Eh, I don't think the view needs to be misogynistic. Both sexes are to blame somewhat for the dynamic as much as people can be blamed for doing anything that comes naturally. The internet was better when no one knew you were a dog.

It's funny how talk about "reigning in female sexuality" seems to boil down to "make sure attractive women will sleep with me when I want, and that I get a hot young wife when I'm finished sowing my wild oats".

I'm not really sure where you got that impression, the sexual revolution shot was fired from blue tribe and this critique was not. I have mixed feelings, I was brought up in a catholic household and nearly every catholic I grew up with would "yeschad.jpg" in response to the whole paragraph, although maybe some of the courtship formalities modernized. The sow your wild oats thing has never really appealed to me that much, I have somewhat libertarian social stances and wouldn't advocate for this being enforced despite recognizing everyone would probably be better off if it were.

Why stop at attractiveness? We know tall men do better - this is plainly unfair leveraging of a physical trait that compromises neutrality.

This feels right to me, but I wonder if it has ever been examined in a way that controls for correlates of height. Height is likely correlated with good nutrition during childhood development, which one would expect in turn to correlate with all manner of endpoints, including many that constitute merit in a Western capitalist society. Apparently it is weakly correlated with intelligence, and my hunch is that you'd also find positive correlations with conscientiousness, extraversion, etc.

seems to boil down to "make sure attractive women will sleep with me when I want, and that I get a hot young wife when I'm finished sowing my wild oats".

Spot on except for this. TradCaths, the most prominent voice for "reigning in female sexuality", repudiate such a lifestyle. Though let's me honest, they were very unlikely living such a life beforehand.

On a side note, this is also tying into my experience of becoming quietly convinced that the inability of society to 'reign in' female sexuality in a healthy way contributes to almost every form of social dysfunction we observe.

Depending on the specific object-level claims being made, I might agree with parts of this, but I'm going to push back slightly here.

I think there are a lot of ways that the sexual revolution screwed over both men and women.

Whatever other issues the paternalistic approach to women had in the past, it almost certainly limited the number of vectors of attack from men. If all coed college parties have chaperones, then the risk of a woman being raped on a college campus is almost certainly lower than the modern anarchy of college party culture. This is not to suggest that chaperoning was always successful at protecting the people involved, but my intuition is that when society put more of the burden on men to protect women from other men, women were safer in a number of contexts than they are now. Now, we give women all of the legal freedom of men, but they still take on most of the risks of sex and are thus more vulnerable than they were before.

There are no solutions, only trade offs.

I am sure there were trade offs we made when we decided that society should have the shape that it does today. Porn is freely made and shared online, porn-adjacent professions like Twitch pool streamers exist in "kid-friendly" spaces, and even though fewer people are having sex, the general attitude is a permissive one. All of these things come with trade offs for men and women. Men slowly learn the lesson to never give money to begging women - basically, reality slowly burns the simp out of them, but there are new foolish young men born every minute. Women learn that they have value in society and on the dating market, but that the value is of a very limited and proscribed sort.

However, I don't necessarily think that the trade offs we have made are more bad than good. Society certainly looks different than it did in the more paternalistic, puritan past. Rich people are more shielded from the consequences of sexual license and hedonism than the poor - as it has always been. But I think we should seriously consider whether making people more miserable in exchange for freedom is worth it. Certainly, a strict utilitarian might say "we crunched the numbers and traditionalism is the better overall system", but not everyone is a strict utilitarian and if we value human flourishing more than simple pleasure it might be the case that our system empowers more people to flourish, even as it factually causes more suffering than other ways of arranging society that make different trade-offs on the freedom-risk spectrum.

If all coed college parties have chaperones, then the risk of a woman being raped on a college campus is almost certainly lower than the modern anarchy of college party culture. This is not to suggest that chaperoning was always successful at protecting the people involved, but my intuition is that when society put more of the burden on men to protect women from other women, women were safer in a number of contexts than they are now. Now, we give women all of the legal freedom of men, but they still take on most of the risks of sex and are thus more vulnerable than they were before.

It seems almost axiomatic to me that women would be safer, ceteris paribus, if they have a male who has an extremely vested interest in her wellbeing in the vicinity to provide some physical security.

Husband, brother, father, whatever.

I think the 'tradeoff' in this case is mostly that having intimidating male relatives scares off some potential suitors who might be otherwise compatible. Note that this is, arguably, a factor that reigns in/polices MALE sexuality!

However, I don't necessarily think that the trade offs we have made are more bad than good. Society certainly looks different than it did in the more paternalistic, puritan past.

Right, and we're seeing some interesting tradeoffs result from new technology making life 'easier.'

We have more access to cheap, healthy food than ever before, and obesity has become more prevalent than ever before, with various implications for human health and flourishing. This seems like something worth noticing, commenting upon, discussing, and maybe 'fixing.'

We have way more access to safe, 'consequence free' (not counting the emotional component) and pleasure-oriented sex than ever before and yet many people seem less satisfied with their romantic relationships and there seems to be more intersex strife than ever before. This seems like something worth noticing, commenting upon, discussing, and maybe 'fixing.'

It's not inherently an argument that we must go back to traditional ways of doing things... but I think we shouldn't be afraid to say "hey we made some progress in many areas but there have been some unforeseen effects that have arisen." The default assumption should not be that all progress is inherently good.

We have way more access to safe, 'consequence free' (not counting the emotional component) and pleasure-oriented sex than ever before

Do we really? Then why is every generation having less of it, and people taking longer to lose their virginities? Why are the most developed countries the most sexless?

Yeah, this reminds me of an old joke which I will shamelessly steal:

Tradition won't take off in the West cause everyone is a temporarily embarrassed hedonist.

Everyone loves the idea of being a free spirit. Free to do whatever you like. That's the image sold by the media too about the liberal world and many liberals value this image. The old suffocating religious strictures were supposed to dissolve and we'd all be having guilt-free sex.

But what we've actually learned is that the sexual marketplace is like the other one; inequity proliferates, except perhaps even worse because "redistribution" is practically much harder.

The average male especially would probably benefit more from having a long-term marriage, sex-wise, but everyone is fantasizing about "freedoms" most of them will never practically get to exercise that much.

Why are the people injecting chemical happiness into their arms so consistently among the least-happy people in society? Why has the invention and proliferation of cheap, ubiquitous chemical happiness coincided with a general decline in overall happiness?

The world wonders.

How do we know that there has been a general decline in overall happiness over the period you have in mind?

I could point to surveys of self-reported happiness, rates of substance abuse, mental illness, suicide, crime, divorce rates.... but generally, I'm skeptical that there's actually a way to determine the answer to this question in any sort of rigorous fashion. If you see it, you see it. If not, feel free to dismiss the above argument out of hand. After all, "I'm happy. I'm happy every day."

Yeah, I don't want to be annoying about asking for evidence about these things, but I haven't seen a partic vivid trajectory personally except for unhappiness having to do with recent Covid issues of course. I just don't attach much weight to this personal impression given that I am in a relatively well-off context.

I do think one can easily support claims about general unhappiness in terms of objective statistics for 'obviously bad things that make people unhappy', like poverty, drugs, crime, etc (although it is tricky with regard to people taking say, happiness drugs, as they could have been unhappy before and just not taken drugs, when there is a recent pervasive marketing of them). Maybe there are indicators one can find elsewhere in culture, media that more unhappy people are liable to consume to see their feelings reflected back at them.

More comments

I think the truly happy, CONTENT people are harder to detect because they're just out there enjoying life and not complaining.

But the rates of drug abuse, suicide, and all the other ills you mentioned are really hard to ignore as social red flags.

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I didn't say otherwise, I am also asking these questions.

There's access in the sense that the tools and understanding and opportunities to engage in the casual sex with minimal risk are ubuiquitous. It is counter-intuitive that people wouldn't be exploiting this access.

But the apparent slump in younger people actually having sex is one of those weird side effects I'm curious about.

Isn't this just young males having less of it and females having equal or more than before while sharing an ever decreasing number of "desirable" partners?. I think this is the case at least in the US dating Market.

I've seen statistics that reflect young people of both sexes having less sex, though if I recall correctly it is the males who report having less sex than they would like to have.

https://www.aei.org/articles/more-faith-less-sex-why-are-so-many-unmarried-young-adults-not-having-sex/

https://gssdataexplorer.norc.org/variables/5057/vshow

Is it always females and males you discourse with, or do you ever talk to women and men? Or is that only for us ordinary types who don't know nuthin' 'bout no smart person stuff, Miz Scarlett?

EDIT: Apologies, it may be down to English as a second language that you use "females and males", I see that you do use "women" further down. But using "I speak to males" sounds like a bad attempt at a social science experiment, not how people generally conduct themselves in ordinary life.

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I think consistent use of either "male"/"female" or "men"/"women" is alright. The only use that really trips my red-flag-o-meter is the mixed "men"/"female" usage, which isn't here.

I am not an English Native, and in my language male-female is a normal thing to say or write.

This is a good post, but just as an aside - any female between 17 and 30 you should call a woman, and any female over 30 you should call a girl. As you say, youth is a more important thing for women than men, a lot of the time any way you bring it up will feel like a judgement, because they are so used to seeing women being judged by society along the age axis.

So for ladies under 30, calling them young makes them suspect you are patronising them, or implying incompetence, because the media tells them this is how it is used. Over 30 though, it goes the other way - the media tells them that 30 is too old, that no man will want them and that being called a woman isn't a sign of respect, it's a way to differentiate between the fuckable and not. So if you want to add more happiness to the world, call ladies under 30 women, and ladies over 30 girl. And call all men matey.

This is a totally meaningless thing to get upset about, saying females and males is fine.

While I think this seems like an overreaction, I strongly disagree that using "males" and "females" instead of "men" and "women" is "fine."

It might not be worth starting fights over, but it's a weird drift happening for no good reason

"Male" and "female" are often preferable when you don't want to imply that you are excluding certain ages, as man/woman/boy/girl does.

What language is that? Because yeah, that definitely sounds like it could bias you. I don't disagree with you that it is wrongly believed more sophisticated than it is, or that it's not particularly appealing aesthetically, but it definitely feels like those who object to 'male and female' as descriptors are way more aggravated than ugly word choice or psuedo intellectualism usually inspires.

It seemed pretty obvious to me that Armin was a) not speaking his native tongue and b) trying to reduce the emotional load of the discussion by using dry language. In English male and female are just synonyms for men and women - generally kind of clinical synonyms, but the opposite of emotionally loaded. Also we already have too few synonyms for men and women, male and female is better than outies and innies.

In English male and female are just synonyms for men and women

No, they're supersets. And the aggravation is because they're ambiguous supersets. "Male" also includes boys and "female" also includes girls (which makes them tempting words to use when you need to refer to a wide range of ages and "guys" or "gals" sounds too silly) ... but "male" and "female" also include non-humans (which means it's just about impossible to remove at least a tiny level of insulting connotation from them).

I'm not sure why the level isn't always tiny; at some point after the Scopes Monkey Trial we should have become able to occasionally notice that Homo Sapiens is a subgroup of Animalia without anybody rushing for smelling salts. But instead the popularity of "males" and "females" is going down after little popularity increase, and the old usage of the terms to talk about homologies has fallen way behind the Overton Window.

You're right, and I shouldn't have said they were the opposite of emotionally loaded - that's how it used to be in some places (that was how I was taught to use them in school in the nineties) but it isn't the case these days. It annoys me that I can't readily use terms that are accurate and widely understood because some people react (in my eyes) bizarrely to them, and I want to understand where the disconnect lies without assuming they are just over reacting.

The term "white male" appears quite a lot. This may be where some of it comes from.

This is pointlessly heated and antagonistic. Don't do this.

My political discussions with young women have been centered on their feelings of moral obligation to an issue of victimhood. This comprises a good 80% of all political discussions. Immigration is simply about what is best for the brown migrants that the media has painted as victims, which young women are now to sympathize with (to the exclusion of the domestic population). This sympathy is definitionally a bias, a form of emotional bigotry that prevents any objective assessment. For immigration it’s what is best for brown migrants, for policing what is best for blacks, for picking a cabinet what is best for women and minority representation. The political messaging that targets young women is like Nazi propaganda films that successfully painted Germans as victims with pure stories, but more potent and all-encompassing. To turn one of these propagated young women into a supporter of less immigration, as an example, you simply need a potent story of some ugly criminal immigrant abusing a beautiful poor disenfranchised Native American or black girl or something, and if that story catches on (and they consume it in the zombified state that they often consume media) then the political transformation is complete. This is my honest view, you are welcome to disagree, a huge chunk of women I know think entirely in terms of social sympathy for victims, and some men do too.

Women care a lot about victimhood—yeah, plausible. I think it’s far more socially acceptable in America for women to express that sort of sentiment. Hard for me to say whether it’s downstream of political affiliation or the other way around. Have you discussed with any red-tribe/trad/reactionary girls? Do they also tend to frame beliefs this way?

Your framing of immigration rhetoric scans much more like a strawman. Maybe you actually know people with those opinions—my anecdotal evidence goes the other way. I don’t see women talking about scare/uplifting stories of immigrants. If I had to boil it down to one argument, it’d be more a sense of “just deserts.” But I wouldn’t want to make that generalization due to the complicated back and forth between principles and tribalism.

If I had to boil it down to one argument, it’d be more a sense of “just deserts.”

Mind expanding on what you mean? Because it seems to be implying that women are purposely supporting mass immigration to hurt their host nation.

Oh, no.

The sentiment is something like “given what these people went through to get to the border, they deserve to be let in” or “everyone deserves the quality of life we have here.”

As someone who is very annoyed by what one might call the 'attitude of victimhood', I've come to be persuaded victimhood and privilege are the defining characteristics of any discussion about ethics, and by extension politics. I've done so reluctantly, using objective assessment.

While the manifestations of Wokeism are often clumsy and wrongheaded and outright ridiculous for some of the reasons you cite ('emotional bigotry' makes some sense), the beating heart of the movement seems to have the correct moral intuition that life isn't fair & there are things we can do to correct the most egregious outgrowths of this in order to alleviate suffering & expand flourishing.

Ever since Aristoteles there are broadly three categories of rhetoric/arguments: logos, pathos and ethos.

I'd say that at least during the last decade the discourse shifted more toward pathos/ethos side of things and this distinction does not even have to be gendered. At the base you have encounters which you described: you make me feel discomfort therefore you are a bad person doing bad things. There is whole slew of rhetorical arguments that are basically ad hominem seeped in pathos/ethos, to use some classic examples they are for sure things like who hurt you that you say this or only fascists think that and so forth.

You can even see it even in language change. For instance if in the past if there was something problematic it meant something practical - it is problematic to tighten a screw without screwdriver or in general accomplish some task without some necessary preconditions, that was what was at the core of the problem. Nowadays problematic may mean that process of tightening a screw is perpetuating some social injustice. In fact to problematize is now a verb that even has positive valence and denotes exactly this: look at something and find some way this may harm somebody or a way it transgresses some principles. It is a moral duty to do this and then relentlessly criticize that thing until it is changed only to then target it with even more rigor until that new thing changes in a cycle with hope that at the end of the process of this negative thinking something good crystalizes.

I have to add that your conclusion of evading this stuff is absolutely reasonable one but with one caveat. Even if you do not care about politics, politics may suddenly care for you. It is worthwhile to get in contact with this stuff from time to time so you are not caught with your pants down so to speak. You can train your resolve to adopt fuck you I won't do what you tell me stance when needed, not getting yourself emotionally or morally extorted by such a rhetoric.

Despite being generally very pro biodeterminism, I actually feel like this is a product of western culture moreso than innate biology. Have you ever talked to women from a non-western nation? They often have a completely different mindset. I'm currently dating a Russian woman and I can talk quite freely with her about political matters, even sensitive topics like HBD or feminism. It's not just her, many Russian women I've found are far more open to criticisms of the values that Western women hold sacred.

Of course, you can make the argument that Russian culture is still designed to suppress the opinions women would otherwise naturally tend to have, and that it takes a liberal nation to reveal their true colors. But for once, I think the blank slatists actually have a point. What you believe is largely a product of the society you were born in, and the west has simply gone off the deep end with feminist/SJW/woke theory. If anything, you can argue that women are merely more naturally susceptible to whatever the prevailing dogma is in the nation they grew up in.

Church ladies enforce the values and morals of the civilization they are in. The biggest slutshamers are often women, they are usually less tolerant of bad manners and people breaking the consensus. In Saudi Arabia women are probably policing their kids who are skipping going to the Mosque more than fathers and women were bigger Hitler fans than the men in the third reich. Your girlfriend probably can freely talk about issues that aren't really enforced in Russia but try bringing up issues that are out of bounds in Russia and you will probably have an easier time with a Russian man.

Generally policing the values and norms of a society is a positive thing and bad behaviour should generally be checked. The issue is when the values being enforced are almost the anti-thesis of traditional values.

They often have a completely different mindset. I'm currently dating a Russian woman and I can talk quite freely with her about political matters, even sensitive topics like HBD or feminism. It's not just her, many Russian women I've found are far more open to criticisms of the values that Western women hold sacred.

It does not mean that Russians are more open minded, it means what is "sensitive" and "sacred" widely differs between cultures.

Try to criticize the values that Russian women (and men) hold sacred, if you want to see some fireworks.

(for example: is Ukraine really Jewish Nazi homosexual country that unprovokedly attacked Russia? is Crimea really ancient Russian land? was Russia/USSR really the good guy during WW2?)

To be clear, I'm specifically addressing the claim that women are somehow naturally more interested in "immigration, equality or similar topics", but also the concept of cancel culture, witch hunting and woke ideology surrounding it. (i.e. the idea that dissidents must be quickly rooted out and chewed to shreds)

"It's a big mistake for women to talk to men the same way they do among other women because then he often..." takes it as an attack or plea for him to do something.

My husband came home early from work yesterday because the internet was down. I took the opportunity to ask him to walk to get lunch with me (I work from home). On the walk, I first asked him about the internet situation - he was upset because the IT department didn't bother telling anyone the internet was down while they've known since 4 AM, some people have 1 hour commutes and essentially wasted prime work hours, etc.

Once that conversation topic ran its course, I told him that after lunch I had a lot of copy/pasting to do - someone made a workbook where I could input different values to get the quantities of items, and I needed to put in 50 or so values and copy/paste into a format a customer wanted. He immediately started asking me details about the workbooks, what format they where in, what format the customer wanted, trying to solve the problem. I had to tell him to stop - I didn't expect him to fix the excel copying problem any more than he expected I'd be able to fix his office internet situation.

Or sometimes I'll say something like, "Man, the kids are wild today," and he'll assume I'm asking him to go in there and yell at them, instead of just making small talk. And then he gets frustrated with me because he thinks I'm being lazy, or making him the bad guy who has to punish the kids. Sometimes I'm just talking to talk.

Possibly this wouldn't happen if women would just straightforwardly ask for help with things when they want it, instead of dropping hints and dancing around the subject, assuming their interlocutor will swoop in and fix their problems as a personal favor. With men, I simply don't offer help with anything unless they ask for it. With women, they will take this as gross indifference or deliberate rudeness.

Reminds me of this comedic (Informative?) sketch.

Still I wonder what a reverse observation may look like, as in a woman saying "it's a big mistake for women to talk to men the same way they do among other women because then he often..."

...thinks you want to sleep with him.

There's a related and well known pattern in relationships, where men focus on fixing things while women talk to feel listened to, understood and valued. Similarly, it's much easier to debate a man and even vehemently call him wrong, and then pat him on the back and grab a beer afterwards. With a woman it usually gets interpreted as an attack on a deep personal level.

I have noticed a similar pattern among people I interact with, but it also overlaps strongly with the divide between those in STEM (especially engineers) and those in more Humanities-adjacent fields.

I like to categorize the patterns of discourse as "n-dimentional social chess". Imagine that you are part of a group of people who together are playing chess against an online opponent. The group discusses strategies for their upcoming move.

  • "Zero-dimensional social chess": you focus solely on the merits of the proposed strategies in defeating the online opponent. It doesn't matter who proposed which strategy; you evaluate each proposed strategy solely on its own merits.

  • "One-dimensional social chess": you keep track of who said what. You are doing this to help you evaluate the merits of proposed strategies (like, giving more weight to strategies proposed by people with more experience playing chess).

  • "Two-dimensional social chess": you keep track of who said what, and how they said it. You are doing this because you are aware that, within your group, people are jockeying for social status. So you keep track not only of who said what, but what that means for everyone else in terms of social status within the group.

  • "Three-dimensional social chess": you not only keep track of who said what (and how they said it), but also who didn't say what (and how they didn't say it). You are doing this because you are aware that the group members are jockeying for social status, and you also assume that they know that everyone else is doing it too. Therefore you expect to see shifting alliances, communicated subtly through the phrasing of support, or withholding support where it was expected.

  • "Four-dimensional social chess": you not only keep track of who said what (and how they said it), but also who didn't say what (and how they didn't say it), but also have a good working theory of the level of n-dimensional social chess that each person in the group is at.

I find that (at least in my social circles) most engineer groups (and majority-male groups) tend to play two-dimensional social chess; most humanities-adjacent groups (and majority-female groups) tend to play three-dimensional social chess. People who move fluently between engineers and humanities circles either play four-dimensional social chess and code-switch, or play one-dimensional social chess and are blissfully unaware of the status games.

The trope of a frustrated girlfriend saying "If you don't know what's wrong then I am certainly not going to tell you!" would be my example of a situation where the girlfriend by default plays three-dimensional social chess and can't imagine that others (including her boyfriend) don't. So she's definitively not playing at four-dimensional social chess, since she fails to have a good working theory of her boyfriend's level.

[Edit: Edited the lower categories, upon further reflection. Zero-dimensional social chess is just chess, with some pooling of strategies. One-dimensional social chess takes relative expertise into account, but it's still all about the chess. With n>1, the "social" part becomes a competing goal.]

This reminds me a bit of Ben Hoffman's version of Simulacra levels.

Four-dimensional social chess

So which of any group routinely plays Four-dimensional social chess?

"If you don't know what's wrong then I am certainly not going to tell you!"

I view this as the girlfriend trying to force the boyfriend to maintain a detailed model of her emotional state, and to proactively make sure he knows what he needs to do keep her happy. Simply telling him when and what she's unhappy about is much less work for him, but more work for her, and there will inevitably be opportunities to make her happy that neither will notice unless he's paying attention.

That phrasing might sound retarded, and sometimes girlfriends massively overestimate how easy it is to guess their emotional states, but sometimes I think it's a reasonable bid for more consideration.

I view it as the girlfriend trying to get the boyfriend to make her tell him what’s wrong when she doesn’t want to do it voluntarily for whatever reason.

Heh, could be. I have fights with my wife that go: Me: Just tell me what you want! Her: I can't, because you don't want to listen!

Or she just wants to go in a fishing expedition to ready the troops when the next discussion (fight) happens.

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