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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   10399 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 26, 2025

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I'm dragging up the gender, dating, and fertility discourse for one last rodeo.

The below analysis is a possible infohazard for young single males. It contains analysis done by LLMs, but I solemnly swear I drafted this through my own brainpower, using AI only for the analysis I was too lazy to do myself.

I'm following upon a comment I made about a year ago that pulled out some raw numbers on the quality of women in the U.S., and how this might impact the desire of men to actually develop themselves and find one of those women and settle down.

At the time I didn't bother doing the work to produce an actual estimate of how many women would match the basic crtieria, given that these are NOT independent variables. The though occurred to me that AIs are the perfect solution for exactly this type of laziness, and now have the capability to do this task without completely making up numbers.

So, based on my old post, I chose 9 particular criteria that I think would ‘fairly’ qualify a woman as ‘marriageable.':

  1. Single and looking (of course).

  2. Cishet, and thus not LGBT identified.

  3. Not ‘obese.’

  4. Not a mother already.

  5. No ‘acute’ mental illness.

  6. No STI.

  7. Less than $50,000 in student loan debt.

  8. 5 or fewer sex partners (‘bodies’).

  9. Under age 30.

And ask both ChatGPT and Grok to attempt to estimate the actual population of women in the U.S. that pass all these filters, accounting for how highly correlated each of the variables are.

Notable criteria I omitted:

  • Religious affiliation

  • Race

  • Political affiliation

  • Career

  • Drug use

  • Sex work/Onlyfans

I argue that a reasonable man would NOT want to ‘compromise’ on any of the original criteria, whereas the omitted ones are comparatively negotiable, or alternatively, are already captured in one of the original criteria.

Would you accept a woman who was carrying $50k in student loan debt into the relationship? I guess maybe if she was a doctor or lawyer or made enough money to justify it. Much higher than that and it starts to suggest financial recklessness.

5 as a body count is definitely an ‘arbitrary’ number, but again, you get much above that and it implies more bad decision-making. Ditto for being STI positive.

The age one is probably the most ‘unfair,’ but if having kids is a goal then this is pretty close to the ‘reasonable’ cutoff given the ticking fertility clock. Adjust upward if needed, I guess.

Here is the ChatGPT conversation. I used o3 in this case.

Here is Grok, specifically Grok 3.

In each case I used the “Deep Research” mode for the main query. I used identical prompts to start them off, they each seemingly did slightly different interpretations of the prompt. I was not using any fancy, complex prompt engineering to try and force it to think like a statistician or avoid hallucinations.

ChatGPT Gives this conclusion:

Bottom line: We estimate roughly 1 million women age 30 and under, equivalent to approximately 3-4% of that demographic (with a plausible interval of 2% on the low end up to about 5-6% on the high end), meet all eight of the given criteria simultaneously.

Grok comes to quite the similar conclusion:

Based on available data and statistical techniques, it seems likely that approximately 1.1 million biological women in the U.S. meet all the specified criteria, representing about 0.64% of the total female population, estimated at 171 million in 2025. The error range, reflecting data gaps, is ±0.3 million, or 0.8–1.4 million in absolute numbers, and 0.47–0.82% as a percentage.

Then I asked the truly cursed followup question: “how many men in the U.S. might be seeking these eligible women and thus how much competition is there for this population? How many are likely to ‘fail.’"

ChatGPT:

• Low-competition scenario (optimistic) – if male seekers are only approximately 9 m and women at the high end 1.4 m → approx. 6 : 1.

• High-competition scenario (pessimistic) – if male seekers hit approx. 16 m and women only 0.6 m → approx. 27 : 1.

Even under the friendliest assumptions, there are at least five single straight men pursuing every woman who meets all eight hurdles. The modal outcome is closer to ten-plus suitors per eligible woman.

Put bluntly, only about one man in ten who is actively hunting for this ultra-specific ideal partner can succeed; nine-plus will strike out.

Emphasis Mine.

Grok:

• Number of single men seeking women meeting all criteria: Approximately 4.5 million single, straight men aged 18–30 in the U.S. are likely seeking a partner, with an estimated 2.3 million (±0.5 million) specifically seeking women meeting all specified criteria (unmarried, not dating, straight, not a mother, not obese, age 30 or below, no acute mental illness, ≤5 sex partners, no STI, ≤$50,000 student debt). This is about 2.7% of the male population (171 million).

• Competition ratio: With approx. 1.1 million women meeting all criteria (from prior estimate), the ratio is roughly 2.1 men per woman (2.3 million ÷ 1.1 million), indicating moderate competition.

• Failure rate: Approximately 48% of these men (1.1 million out of 2.3 million) will fail to secure a partner meeting all criteria, assuming one-to-one pairing and no external factors (e.g., men seeking multiple partners or women remaining single).

Then the followup, when I tell it to extend the age range:

About 4.9 million single, straight men of all ages are likely seeking women aged 18–30 meeting all criteria, facing a 4.5:1 competition ratio. Roughly 78% (approx. 3.8 million) will fail to secure such a partner, driven by the scarcity of eligible women, age-related preference mismatches, and modern dating dynamics. Competition is high, particularly for older men, with failure rates varying by flexibility in criteria and dating market conditions.

The error bars are pretty large on this one... the 9-out-of-10 number doesn't quite pass the smell test... but I think the point speaks for itself.

I don’t want to say that this is bleak, per se. I mean, 1 million or so women in the U.S. with some decent marriageable bonafides. That’s not a small pool! The problem stems from noticing that said women will have somewhere upwards of 5 men, possibly near 27 who will be competing for their affections, or more if they’re near the absolute peak of physical attractiveness.

Hence my increasing annoyance with the bog standard advice proffered to young males “become worthy and put in some effort and you will find a good woman” as it becomes increasingly divorced from the actual reality on the ground.

It’s not wrong. It is incomplete. Insufficient. If we increase the number of “worthy” men, that’s just intensifying the competition for the desirable women… while ALSO ensuring that more of those ‘worthy’ men will lose and go unfulfilled, DESPITE applying their efforts towards “worthiness.”

You CAN’T tell young men both “be better, improve, you have to DESERVE a good woman before you get one!” and then, when he improves:

“oh, you have to lower your standards, just because you thought you deserved a stable, chaste(ish), physically fit partner doesn’t mean you’re entitled to one, world ain’t fair.”

That dog won’t hunt.

Thems the numbers. I’m not making this up wholesale or whining about advice because I find it uncomfortable. No. The math is directly belying the platitudes. I’m too autistic NOT to notice.

So where am I going with this?

First, I’m hoping, praying someone can actually show me evidence that this is wrong. All of my personal experience, anecdotal observations, research, and my gut fucking instinct all points to this being an accurate model of reality. But I am fallible.

If I’m wrong I want to know!

I’m also not particularly worried about ME in general. I am in a good position to find a good woman, even though I’m sick of all the numerous frustrations and inanities one has to endure to do so. I get annoyed when someone, even in good faith, tries to suggest that my complaints are more mental than real. I can see the numbers, I've been in the trenches for years, this is a true phenomena, the competition is heavy, the prizes are... lacking.

And finally and most importantly, I genuinely feel the only way we keep the Ferris Wheel of organized civilization turning is if average women are willing to marry average men, and stay married, and help raise kids. I’m all for pushing the ‘average’ quality up, as long as actual relationships are forming.

Objectively, that is not happening. And so I’m worried because if society breaks down... well, I live here and I don't like what that implies for me, either.

(Yes, AGI is possibly/probably going to make this all a moot point before it all really collapses)

5 as a body count is definitely an ‘arbitrary’ number, but again, you get much above that and it implies more bad decision-making.

Very arbitrary. A 26-year-old woman who became sexually active at 16 and slept with one guy every two years would exceed it.

It's much more likely to reflect the reality of serial monogamy than bad decision making.

Not ‘obese.’

Not unreasonable to include, but remember that obesity is an equal opportunities offender. Most non-overweight men aren't going to want a fat wife, but then most men are fat too.

This is also true, to a lesser extent, with mental illness. Women have more mental illness than men (or at least they say they do) but the numbers for men aren't zero.

In fact, we can really apply this filter to most things you've listed. Men have high levels of obesity, student loan debt, mental illness, existing paternity and STIs. We can't apply it to everything of course. Men want a woman below 30 for obvious biological reasons that don't apply exactly to women, but broadly the way you've framed the question implies an average eligible man and an average ineligible woman. Whereas in reality, most of these things affect the numerator as well as the denominator. Loads of women are fat, but so are an equal number of men, which reduces the competion for the slim women.

A 26-year-old woman who became sexually active at 16 and slept with one guy every two years would exceed it.

And statistically she'd be more likely to divorce her partner later. You've kind of underscored how simple it would be for a woman, starting at 16, to rack up comically large numbers, and there is almost ZERO external pressure to NOT sleep around.

And it didn't used to be this way, women are just sleeping around more on average. We went from about 64% of women having 0-1 partners by marriage... to 27%. So hey, you've got about 1 in 4 shot if you get married. But your granddad had a 2/3 shot.

Unless you think this is a good thing the best you can argue is that its neutral and can be ignored.

Most non-overweight men aren't going to want a fat wife, but then most men are fat too.

Sure thing.

But men don't have to bear kids.

And men can make up for this issue in a lot of other ways.

I do hope that Ozempic comes to help out with this.

Oh, and guess what, obese women won't settle for an obese man, even though the reverse isn't true.

So the problem is, ONCE AGAIN, that men are told to 'get better' but women aren't pressured to settle for the so-called 'looksmatch.'

Loads of women are fat, but so are an equal number of men, which reduces the competion for the slim women.

Not precisely. This is my point about competition.

Any attractive women are a target for men of virtually all ages.

The sheer amount of choice she'll have, thanks to this competition, makes her less likely to settle.

Add in the effects of hypergamy and this explains almost ALL of the current strife in the dating market: Women get bombarded with attention during their most attractive, fertile years, decline to settle, and as time comes on become less marriageable overall.

  1. Every single major cultural institution, Hollywood, Academia, Tikok/social media, dating apps(!) and every U.S. Corporation is telling them to never settle, never compromise, and they should delay marriage and kids so they can have money/career/travel etc.

  2. Aside from the Catholic Church there are zero large cultural institutions sending the message “you should settle for a man who is decent and forgo other opportunities to bear children."

Not a huge surprise that the former message is internalized.

Look at the graph in the link you shared that shows divorce rate by number of premarital partners. It shows that the divorce rate for women who had 2 partners exceeds that of women had 6-9!

There is a 10 percentage point difference for the arbitrary cut off of 4-5 and the maximum at 10+ partners. The difference between 4-5 and 6-9 is negligible, maybe 1 PP.

This makes the choice of 4-5 very hard to justify. After all, you should also rule out women who have had precisely 2 partners by the same logic.

Note that you also need to account for the fact that a minority of people divorce multiple times and drive up the average.

I've linked the image in question here.

/images/1748284134725351.webp

This in particular was addressed here for example:

The interesting thing about this study is the way that it shows how the second-greatest risk is marrying a woman with only 2 partners; the researcher's theory is that this might be the result of over-emphasized comparisons; the woman has just enough experience to realize that there is something else out there, but not enough to realize that most of it isn't an improvement.

https://alphagameplan.blogspot.com/2016/06/n-matters-lot.html

The images in the post are no longer available as it's from 2016 but it doesn't matter much.

There's food for thought in the comments as well such as:

The odds doubling for the 10+ set likely is due to a woman who has that many partners has some other mental short circuit that causes her to either seek personal validation through sex, daddy issues, follow and unquestioningly accept some nonsensical ideology like slut feminism, is bipolar, or has some other issue not listed here. Where the n=2 may be a relatively normal woman who has a basis of comparison, the n=10+ is a strong indicator of some kind of mental/emotional instability.

///

I wonder if "2 prior partners" is the sexual equivalent of "just 2 beers".

///

Two theories:

1) Those may be fairly conservative religious girls who were brought up being told premarital sex and divorce was bad and held off sex to an extent, but went nuts with the divorce as an adult. But they didn't have enough time to accumulate 4-5 partners like the secular women did.

2) Women with 4-5 partners are less likely to get married AT ALL than those with 2 partners, choosing cohabitation instead. If marriage and cohabitation are considered together, those with 4-5 partners are still higher breakup risks than those with 2.

The images in the post are no longer available as it's from 2016 but it doesn't matter much.

Here you go.

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