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Notes -
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
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.
They may not want companionship or sex with those men, but they do desire things from them--notably "pro-social" behaviors that maintain those women's privileges. They want those men to be starving for sexual attention so they can exploit that starvation. It's nothing more than the conservative argument against welfare applied to sexuality.
I don't see it as being the opposite at all--I predict that men having more options for dealing with their sexual desires that aren't gated by women makes them "less of a simp in attitude", whether that is indulging in masturbation or making a conscious effort to focus on other things instead.
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Right, but if those men were using sex toys rather than masturbating, they'd still be starving for sexual attention. Sex is primarily attractive to them as an indicator of approval and as a connection with a human being. Neither of those is offered by a fleshlight.
Neither of those is offered by a fleshlight, but neither of them are necessarily offered by those women either. Sex toys (and porn and non-pornographic sexualized media more generally) raise the bar for the amount of effort those women have to put in to exploit the desires of those men. It doesn't raise it very high, but high enough I think to have an impact.
I'm not convinced. I think that the main reason that most men care so much about sex (to the point of incel culture in some extreme cases) is as a proxy for approval from women, which in turn they choose (generally without thinking much about it) to make a condition for their self-esteem. Hence, the possibility of masturbation, porn etc. does not seem to have stopped men from being exploitable in this way. In fact, I know of no balance of evidence that men are less pussywhipped in the modern world in the past, nor that masturbation, porn, sexualized movies etc. are countervailing influences against this tendency.
As long as men link sex closely to their self-esteem, then they will always be vulnerable to exploitation, except insofar as they are rich/attractive/talented enough to have sex on tap. And even then, a man can put themselves in chains by insisting that THIS woman or this TYPE of women or this MANY women or this SEX ACT by woman is necessary or else that "I'm a piece of shit/I ain't got it no more/I am worthless etc." I once read Mike Tyson's autobiography and it was fascinating how a man who could have sex any time he wanted still ended up obsessed with the approval of women, because he was insisting that female approval (and even a female orgasm, of all things...) was a condition of his self-worth.
These are deep philosophical flaws that lead many men into misery, and no amount of social approval for a Fleshlight 3000 is going to help. On the other hand (pardon the phrase) if men were all persuaded tomorrow that they don't need to depress themselves if they can't get laid, then that would be a great step towards both men's happiness and the reduction of their exploitability. Ironically, I think it would help a lot of men get sex and love, because low self-esteem is both intrinsically unattractive to good-hearted women and extrinsically useful for almost all the things (working out, making money, dressing well, smiling, and yes, showering) that can make men more attractive.
Men care so much about sex because they have much stronger sex drives and more of a desire for novelty and they have this because they're the more disposable sex: if they aren't motivated to make significant effort they may fall through the evolutionary net into genetic oblivion, like so many men historically did.
Nothing about this was chosen.
Now, obviously, there's a social element in that: if you are totally unfuckable that likely creates anxiety about your social status (particularly in "sex-positive" societies). But the species is also programmed to deeply care about social standing!
I don't even disagree that said men will still get exploited. But the reason for that is not that men collectively took a turn and made a bad decision about valuing female opinion: it's cause real sex and women are still preferable to any substitute like masturbation, even with a (relatively crude) aide and desperate men will risk being exploited (or go in with full certainty that they're being exploited) for the chance at one.
I think we can both think of an evolutionary reason this would be the case.
That won't help because it's not a philosophical problem. That just seems evolutionarily naive to me at best. Or, at worst, treating men like defective women who must have simply not gotten the memo on the right way to act and think. This line worked for feminists, I don't think it'd work for men.
I get that that theory is attractive because none of the solutions that accept that men are naturally this way seem good (I remember the huge backlash against "enforced monogamy") but c'est la vie.
I actually agree with this, but we are the species we are.
It's true that most men have a strong desire to have sex with women and that this has an evolutionary origin. It's also quite plausible that seeking approval from women also has an evolutionary origin, and it's conceivable that using women's approval as a condition of one's self-esteem has an evolutionary origin.
However, while the strong desires for sex and female approval are more or less unchangeable (though they can be integrated better or worse into one's life) I don't think that using women's approval as a condition of one's self-esteem is unchangeable, because it's a set of philosophical beliefs ("I am a loser if I am not approved of by women" "I am a piece of shit if I am not approved by the RIGHT women" "I am worthless if I am not approved of by THIS particular women out of billions" etc.) that seem to be as changeable by reason and experience as any others.
It's biologically possible that an individual gives up these beliefs, but retains the strong desire. (This is true for status/approval anxiety in general.) The desire is one thing, the linking of self-esteem to the approval of women (and usually the "right" women or "this" woman if you want to really mess up your life) is another. An unsatisfied desire can have many emotional effects, but not a sense of worthlessness, except insofar as it occurs alongside the philosophical belief linking the satisfaction of that desire to one's self-esteem.
As for it being a choice, I think it's an unthinking choice, like fat people buying junk food. Do they have a biological desire for high calorie food? Yes. Do they think consciously about the choice? No, not in general. Can they retain the desire but give up the beliefs like "I must always satisfy my desire?" Yes, at least if they're fat rather than obese. (Obesity seems to require, at a minimum, surgical interventions in almost all cases.) The same is true for approval addiction, from women, or your parents, or your colleagues, or a homeless guy in the street.
I know these things, because I have had times when I've been fat or addicted to approval, then changed my beliefs and behaviour. The best single thing was giving up on rating myself at all (negatively or positively) which really opened up most of the good things in life to me (sex, money, and rock 'n' roll).
Anyway, this is all a tangent, since I think we both agree - for different reasons - that sex toys are not substitutes for sex with women, and hence there is no particular rational reason why women would be afraid of them being normalized. Of course, there are women who have the irrational belief that they need to use sex to gain men's affection, but that's because they don't realise that their fundamental offer to men in relationships are things like approval and a disposition to care, for which sex is mainly a proxy.
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