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Culture War Roundup for the week of November 14, 2022

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For any of you who's familiar with New York Times's Wirecutter, which publishes products reviews and lists hot deals:

As of right now, among deals on toys, subwoofers, and mattresses, there are also two vibrators, both around $100.

As far as I can tell, there are no deals on sex toys for men (I'm ignoring vibrators' cross sex appeal here, or how men may use toys to pleasure their female partners).

I don't expect this observation by itself to generate much new insight, as it seems fairly obvious that culturally, men tend to be viewed as perverted or losers for pleasuring themselves with tools, while for women it's fun and almost virtuous (well, certainly less slutty than finding a casual partner). I can see a Wirecutter staff member publishing a review of her personal experience testing various toys, but cannot fathom a male staff member talking about how this particular lifelike doll had very full lips but that one has perkier breasts, and this third company makes ethnic dolls for your fantasies. If you Google Wirecutter and sex toys, all the articles that come up are exclusively focused on women or gay men (i.e. anal stuff).

So my question is more about a prediction for how culture may evolve along this front. By what year do you think Wirecutter will publish reviews and deals on sex toys targeted at straight men looking for thrusting fun?

The year that I'll pull out of my ass is... 2032

My prior is that our culture is shaped according to the preferences and interests of professional upper-middle and upper-class women. Sex toys for men becoming widely accepted would lower women's value in the sexual marketplace in the same fashion that a UBI puts upwards pressure on the lowest wage.

Not sure about that, because the men those women want don't masturbate, watch porn, or think sexually about other women. Hence, if a guy would use a sex toy, he's not desirable anyway.

Would male sex toys being widely used be a problem for that?

But why would that happen?

But are they on the same axis? I talk more about this in a post above. I don't think that men chase after women to have orgasms. I think that men mostly chase after women for several reasons:

(1) Desire for women's bodies and companionship.

(2) Using women's approval as a condition for their self-acceptance.

(3) As status symbols.

(4) As entertainment, because relationships are preoccupying and often interesting.

I don't think that better masturbation, technologically enhanced or not, is an inferior good for any of those things. An intelligent sex bot could be a substitute for (4), and there are AIs that already serve this purpose to some extent (Dating Sims are relatively popular examples).

My preference is that men stop doing (2) and at least de-emphasise (3) if they regard the approval of other men/women as crucial for not rejecting themselves. That would leave (1) and (4), since pursuing these is often both good for the individual man (making him happy and giving meaning in his life) and the human race (inspiring the man to good deeds, courage, creativity, compassion, fatherhood etc.).

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On the other hand, the kind of man who only is interested in women for sex dropping out of the dating market might be an improvement. That would hypothetically leave men who were interested in long-term and/or committed relationships, up to marriage and having children, be the ones engaging in dating and pursuing women.

The men who only want to bang chicks and have no other interest in them, not even friendship, would be sieved out and the problem of "I got a hundred replies to my dating profile on this app, how do I sort out the ones that are time-wasters?" for women would be simplified.

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