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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   20173 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 26, 2025

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I'd say "cishet" and "no college debt"

Now now, I specifically gave them a $50k ceiling. "NO" College debt is a pipe dream, I know it.

This ceiling is safe for like 95% of women, according to the LLMs.

And women are less likely to pay off their debt than men are and so be carrying it years later. So its kind of an important factor, men will have to absorb this 'bride price' when he marries her.

when your post is primarily on how the average woman is apparently unmarriable.

Well, I can add in my point that THE SOLUTION HERE IS TO PUT PRESSURE ON WOMEN to actually choose a guy relatively early, and offer some guidance on choosing one that will stick around. And, presumably, disincentivizing those who delay.

Because You also have to increase the pool of desirable, wiling women for this to play out favorably.

But I felt that would distract from the more neutral data I provided.

Also, not sure what criteria is "acute" mental illness judged by.

In my mind it would be less than a "severe" mental illness that is actually debilitating, but still serious enough that it impacts their daily behavior. You can peek and see how the LLMs chose to interpret it.

In either case, you can look at the raw numbers and see young women are showing INCREASING prevalence of mentall illness. Something around 30% for the under 30s.

Its fair to say things have gotten 'worse.'

And suppose that we agree on a final set of reasonable criteria - how many men, of those who are looking to marry and restrict the search set in such a way, meet a similar set of reasonable criteria? (I'll let women of themotte decide what that would be).

Sure.

But I will go ahead and place my bet that the number of men who meet this has probably been steady for the last couple decades, whereas the ratio of women who are marriagable has been decreasing.

See my point above about the pressure being on the wrong gender.

In either case, you can look at the raw numbers and see young women are showing INCREASING prevalence of mentall illness. Something around 30% for the under 30s.

Jump on the SzaszWagon bro. My paternal grandmother was never diagnosed with a mental illness; she was a complete nutter, who drove my paternal grandfather away, and then completely broke down when he died. My father was raised primarily by my great-grandparents, because my grandmother couldn't take care of him.

Who is diagnosed with a mental illness is first and foremost a measure of who has contact with the mental-health industrial complex, secondarily a measure of what advantages one gets from being diagnosed with a mental illness, and only a tertiary measurement of any underlying mental functioning.

Well, I can add in my point that THE SOLUTION HERE IS TO PUT PRESSURE ON WOMEN to actually choose a guy relatively early, and offer some guidance on choosing one that will stick around. And, presumably, disincentivizing those who delay.

As an old school sexist, I would strongly disagree. Women have much much less agency than men and pressuring them to enact major social changes is essentially pointless; men act, women are and all that.

Yes our society goes about it wrong. But single women are already more marriage minded than men. The 'living together for years' thing is driven by male preferences.

In either case, you can look at the raw numbers and see young women are showing INCREASING prevalence of mentall illness. Something around 30% for the under 30s.

Yeah but this is mostly depression and other stress-responses that our society tries to treat with SSRI's because it's too politically correct to admit that women need to be taken care of by men. If she married a man who loved her it would go away in most cases.

But I will go ahead and place my bet that the number of men who meet this has probably been steady for the last couple decades, whereas the ratio of women who are marriagable has been decreasing.

Ah, but for men you need to include another criteria- plenty of emotionally stable adult men who could support a family simply don't want to. How many marriageable and marriage minded men are there?

Women have much much less agency than men

If you were to give a rationalist-style quantifiable estimate of the agency gap between men and women, what numbers would you give for the SD gap, overlap percentage, and percent of women at or above the male average? I agree with you directionally, but I think that the actual biological difference is closer to the gender IQ gap than the strength gap, and in any case I believe that agency and general virtus is a nearly unalloyed good and should be more prevalent among the fairer sex.

The 'living together for years' thing is driven by male preferences.

That's the one thing that drives me mad when I see women complain about "so we've been living together for ten years and I think it's time he proposed but he says he's not ready for marriage and now he's talking about breaking up".

Of course he's not! He's been getting the benefits of marriage without being married for ten years! And you enabled that! If you're not planning on marrying within a couple of years, or if you're not one of the people who don't ever want to marry because it's just a piece of paper/it's a repressive relic of the patriarchy/our arrangement suits us as it is, then you should ask him to put up or move on. Don't hang on for ten or more years hoping that one day out of the blue he'll decide to move out of his comfort zone and do the romantic proposal, because he won't. Why should he?

This is why the #1 piece of dating advice to young women should be 'don't move in without a ring'.

Yeah. But of course we've had it dinned into us "oh marriage is a big commitment, you need to be sure you're (sexually) compatible, live together first to find out". Maybe that worked out when the end goal was "probably going to marry this person" but now it's "well of course we'll live together, might get married, might not, probably we'll break up and move on to new partners".

I'm not going to say "slippery slope" but social conditions erode over time if not maintained, or if weakening of the boundaries happens. Back when cohabiting was rare, there was still the expectation of marriage as the end point. So living together was expected to end with a ring and kids. Over time as cohabitation became more accepted, marriage moved more and more out of the picture. You can't change something and expect it to remain at that one single change point forever, because it won't.

How many marriageable and marriage minded men are there?

At least twice as many as there are marriageable and marriage-minded women are out there.

That's my bet.

Women have much much less agency than men and pressuring them to enact major social changes is essentially pointless; men act, women are and all that.

Except most cultural institutions and pressure are actively PREVENTING men from 'acting' and punishing them for doing so.

So we're still hitting the same problem.

At least twice as many as there are marriageable and marriage-minded women are out there.

Well yeah, if every guy from twenty to eighty is only willing to marry a woman aged twenty to twenty-nine, there's gonna be a shortage of Jills for every Jack.

I wonder. Your engagement here, and especially about the age thing, does sound bitter. But I think you were the asexual one, no?

It doesn't sound so much bitter as sarcastic. Ah, yes, someone has run the numbers on heavily selected women 20 - 30 vs much less selected men 20 - 40, and found that there are more men. Shocking. Who could have guessed?

It doesn't sound so much bitter as sarcastic.

This one yes. Theres another, which you dont see easily but she would know. I replied to this one because it was the second one I saw. Though I somehow thought that other one was in direct response to someone talking about the difficulties of children over 30.

But I think you were the asexual one, no?

I believe he describes himself as ex-gay (but that he has "never been a sodomite").

Well then men should overcome that.

And your average man is a porn addict, which it's at least as reasonable to be worried about as a woman's body count, so I kinda doubt that there's twice as many as reasonable marriage minded women.

In either case, you can look at the raw numbers and see young women are showing INCREASING prevalence of mentall illness. Something around 30% for the under 30s.

My semi-informed opinion is that this is at least partially confounded by increasing awareness of mental illness as well as easier diagnosis or more relaxed diagnostic criteria. Borderline Personality Disorder was not a recognized condition not very long ago, for example.

I've seen strong evidence that this is the case for autism, and some for ADHD. These people were considered a mild curiosity, and managed normalish lives without classification. I will grant that rates of anxiety and depression have increased significantly in the last few decades.

Edit: Anorexia is a largely culture-bound/ mass psychogenic illness, so a massive increase in incidence can be expected. But even then, most people can deal with a skinny chick with body issues barring the worst cases.

You're not wrong.

And yet.

Mental illness rates among women are drastically higher then men (particularly for YOUNG women).

So if it were merely 'awareness,' why aren't we seeing a surge in men?

So either women are more likely to get incorrect diagnoses.

Or, women have been this way all along.

Or women are actually suffering from more mental illnesses now than before.

We've seen increases in men? Can't say off the bat if it's proportionate to the increase in women over the same period. I'd look that up if I wasn't sore af after the gym.

So either women are more likely to get incorrect diagnoses.

Or, women have been this way all along.

Or women are actually suffering from more mental illnesses now than before

I'm not sure if you're using an XOR there, but my understanding is that it's a bit of all 3. Women are more likely to seek help with their mental health (and have less stigma around it), are more prone to some kinds of mental illness (schizophrenia has always been more common in men), and have an overall increased disease burden in recent decades.

These mental illnesses are mostly stress responses to living outside their gender roles. If these 'anxiety patients' were married to a good man who took care of them instead of worrying about earning a living themselves it would go away.

Also if they had their own kids to worry about instead of foreigners.

Yes, and if they had homes to be arranging instead of trying to arrange society, and if they would spend more time talking to God and less to their therapists, and if....

This, but unironically.

(It's been noted that talking to a therapist about your problems is just the modern version of going to a priest to talk about your sins, but at least the priest doesn't ask to see your insurance).

Thé priest also will not spend time validating your objectively stupid decisions.

Therapists don't do this. This is only a concept popularized by online therapy discourse.

I'm leaning towards "women are more likely to get diagnoses, at all" and "everyone have been this way all along" more than "women in particular are more crazy".

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