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The politics of male envy are interesting. Everyone knows how women act around sexual competition, around women more beautiful, younger, more skilled at seduction. It’s a meme, a joke, a retold story, a familiar motif. Men are more private about their envy, they redirect it, channel it in different and sometimes more subtle ways; they are more embarrassed of it, more shameful of it. One of the most interesting things you can see is a man interact with a man who has fucked his girlfriend or wife, or even with any man who has fucked more than him. There are things men yearn for but can never admit. I will refrain from further judgment, given the demographics of this forum, but I find it fascinating.
I very much enjoyed the Rivals show on Hulu (Disney+ in the UK). They advertised it very heavily here, but it did very well; everybody was talking about it.
Men buy sex, women sell sex. (This is just the way incentives work, not a moral judgment.)
The buyer dynamic is that being openly envious of people who have more money than you (and can afford better than you) is a signal you're poor. It is embarrassing and shameful to be poor. As an extension of that, if that man fucks your girlfriend or wife, he is walking proof that he is (and perhaps always will be) richer than you.
The same is not true of sellers; being envious of people who can command a higher price than you is not a signal you're poor in the same way. It is shameful to be outright undesired, but having to mark your body down to get the buyer's money is not quite the same thing.
Rather humorously, the last time I made this point it was a woman complaining about it... yet that only served to prove my point further.
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I have a handsome younger brother, and a handsome best friend. At times it bemuses me how eager so many women are to throw themselves at them. And that's in a relatively sexually conservative country like India. That's despite doing pretty well for myself, but whereas it takes me effort, they're turning down more advances because they're full or can't be arsed.
I'd be lying if I said I wasn't jealous/envious, but I don't think I've ever behaved in a counterproductive manner. It's not my experience when observing how other men behave either. I've been in friends groups with gross deltas between how successful the guys are with the opposite sex, and beyond the occasional joke, they get along fine. Of course, there's an assortative component, and a group of male friends are looks/success matched more often than not.
The former? Perfectly true, but rare is the woman who takes well to being introduced to an ex. The latter? Half of men have fucked more than the other half, and it's really not a big deal.
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I mean, posters here aren't shy about analyzing women even though we have women who participate. It seems only fair if you ladies do the same to us, so I say go for it.
Likewise, plus I think it is a fundamental piece of the puzzle that @FiveHourMarathon's op was missing - the female perspective. I didn't want to say anything in reply to five, because the op was insightful in other ways and I didn't want to put our few women on the spot, but since it's been brought up I think it would be great to talk about, because I also find it fascinating. Also you are at your rhetorical best on two subjects imo @2rafa, class and gender dynamics, I am always keen to hear what you think about them, even when I find what you say upsetting or even degrading.
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