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I’m a trans woman but before that I was a man and dated women and men. My experience isn’t typical but I know a decent number of straight men and I have trouble believing an actual average guy can avoid having a single date for years, unless they’re avoiding all social situations with the opposite sex.
If you’re a regular straight person, everything is basically designed for you. You can ask out basically any single member of the opposite sex. People try to set you up with their friends/co-workers/whatnot. You can hook-up with random strangers at a party if the chemistry’s right without having to worry if they’re in the <5% that’s attracted to you, if you’re sexually compatible, or if you’re trans and passing, that they won’t react violently.
You don’t have to deal with people hiding your relationship, you can just follow a preset script, introduce your partner to your friends, meet their parents without fear, etc. And as a man the bar is honestly pretty low and it’s ridiculously easy to set yourself apart in terms of fashion/being a decent partner/a decent father, and your attractiveness is dictated by a multiple of things rather than just your rapidly declining physical appearance.
Plus most straight men seem to be attracted to most women? I don’t understand it but it should make your life easier to not be picky.
If you're autistic and not otherwise impressive or a "supercrip" it's rather gross for you to want to be anything other than a celibate and prosocial monk. As for fashion: I suspect that the schlubby straight guy is countersignaling some kind of social grace stuff. At least in some places. At my hospital: the medical students dress better than the residents, who in turn dress better than the attendings. One attending I mistook for a janitor or laborer at first!
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In other instances, (gynephile) trans men reported that they found dating as a man was a lot harder.
do you realize that this is exactly how women see average man? median woman considers median man repulsive. This is only advantage for cishet males who are in top 5-10% and/or in low population density. Homosexuals have had their solutions to dating which serve average gay in big cities better than average heterosexual.
"script" used to be, now it's gone along with arranged marriages.
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I'm one of the many, many guys who grew up with the bedrock knowledge that I should never display romantic interest in a member of the opposite sex, for fear of creeping them out.
I can entirely believe that on balance, your analysis here is more or less accurate. I'm pretty sure Trans people do in fact have it significantly harder than straight men, and certainly much harder than straight women. But straight men have it pretty hard, and a lot of them have achieved common knowledge that approximately no one is interested in helping or even sympathizing with them in any way. The bitterness this produces is severe, and mixes poorly with claims that "everything is designed for them".
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Jeez I have no idea why you got downvoted so hard.
If you follow the upvote/downvote patterns you’ll notice that a fair chunk of the motte’s lurkers are pretty stereotypical internet right-wingers these days, of the type who are likely to read “I’m a trans woman” and instantly downvote. And/or the type who are wont to react with instant negativity to anyone saying that “the straight man dating world/heterosexual relations aren’t that bad, actually”. Sad but true.
Edit: plus some good old-fashioned identity elements. The straight men lurking the motte presumably didn’t take kindly to a queer person talking about them from outside their Lived Experience.
I was talking about my own Lived Experienced™ though! Maybe I should have cleared that up more. Oh well.
I think blackpill/manosphere/battle-of-the-sex discussions benefit from queer viewpoints as they can bridge the gaps between the sides so to speak, so I’m happy to give my two cents regardless.
I mean I'm pretty transphobic but the whole reason this place exists is to be an open forum where people of widely-divergent viewpoints can have conversations and consider each other's perspectives. I upvote effort and sincerity. Downvotes are reserved for bad form, not for disagreement. This is basic stuff and it bugs me that even among our much-smarter-than-average userbase people can't seem to figure it out. Downvoting you for your perspective is the equivalent of rating an item on amazon one star because USPS delivered the package late. Real trog hours.
Also @TheDemonRazgriz since I'm coming back late.
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As a bi guy, I've dated both men and women. And it is multiple orders of magnitude easier to get a date with a man than it is with a woman. Quantitatively, my inbound like/match rate online was literally 100x when matching with men (I'd get a number of likes in a day with men that it'd take me almost a year with women).
Sure, a fair bit of that was just casual sex. But even if 75% were just looking for casual sex, that's still an order of magnitude more ease dating men than women.
I suspect this mismatch is that your "average man" encompasses a lot of things that make him substantially above average.
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No one's is. I think the intercontinental, intergenerational (intersectional? a dirty word around here) scale of the internet makes comparisons nearly useless while also allowing almost any reasonably credible explanation to find enough support to pass as "true".
"You could meet someone at work" say 1000 people who work at bars in LA.
"I can't meet anyone at work" say 1000 guys who work in provincial warehouses.
"You can meet people at parties" say 1000 people who like to go clubbing in NY.
"I don't go to parties" say 1000 guys who like programming.
"You can meet people through friends and family, or at church" say 1000 Mormons in SLC.
"I was raised by 4chan and social workers after my dad abandoned my alcoholic mum and the only people who go to church are old or weird" say 1000 guys from the underclass.
"You can meet young, fun, attractive women online" say 1000 20somethings who live across the street from a middle tier university.
"Apps are full of divorcees and single mums" say 1000 40somethings who live in low turnover commuter towns.
Then a statistician comes along, shoves them all into one box and finds that 50% of people find someone at work/at parties/at church/online/etc.
It's like the blind men and the elephant. They're all true but without the full context people are talking past each other. This thread itself is a microcosm of this phenomenon.
On the other hand the internet is the only place where we can discuss this at length because workmates, party goers, friends, family, parishioners and statisticians alike are neither keen nor useful for sitting around IRL bemoaning one's dating woes at length, and maybe even less for proclaiming one's dating success. "Hello boss/barkeep/buddy/cousin/sir/professor, care to share some fully generalisable insight into why some people are struggling with dating? Not me though, I'm swimming in pussy. High five!"
Choose ten separate and unaccompanied strangers and then actively confirm which ones aren't single. As a trans woman you might have an intuition how different your approach and the results would be asking as a man or as a woman.
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I think the major difference is people who have monosexual friend groups vs mixed friend groups. If all your friends are nerdy guys you're probably not going to the kinds of parties where there are lots of single ladies to hook up with and you're relegated mostly to cold opens. People have been making less friends now than ever before so it's pretty common to not have one member of the opposite sex that you see regularly and platonically, and if you meet your friends through mostly male hobbies then, lets just say monosexual friend groups aren't rare.
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I have to ask what you're basing your statements off of because none of these statements are true for the "average" man, and they haven't been for at least the last 10 years. Full disclosure, I'm a late millennial/early zoomer (late 90s to early aughts) straight male.
You can do that in the same way that you can run through a minefield and not get blown up. The fact of the matter is simply that the consequences for running into a vindictive, cruel, or simply insane woman is now much greater than it ever was in the past. They used to tell you that the worst thing they can do is say "no" (this was never true, but it was true enough to be good advice maybe 15 years ago) but now the worst thing they can do is pull out their phone and start blasting your face all over the internet. And that's not even the worst thing they can do. If she calls the cops on you, you'd really be in hell.
First of all, dating at work is on of the worst things you can do to yourself. Again, it's simply not worth the risk. You're not putting just your reputation on the line, but your career as well. Secondly, maybe this is just because of my circles, but I've only ever once seen someone else even attempt to set up their friends. It happens so rarely, that I have to seriously doubt that it ever happened at all, even before the current climate.
You can hook up with strangers at a party (Personally, I'm not sure where these parties are or who's going to them. I haven't been to a single party outside of work events after college). This is one that might be colored by my own experiences, but I have never hooked up with a stranger at a party, even when I was going to them back in college. I have to assume that it's due to my deficiencies because it apparently happens enough to other people for it to be a prevalent thing.
In my experience, it's not my pickiness that's the problem. Or maybe it is. I don't consider myself unattractive (I give myself 6/10 simply because I'm tall and not overweight and I don't have any physical deformities), but according to at least a sizable minority of women, most men are unattractive, so in reality a 6/10 is probably actually a 2/10.
All in all, I legitimately don't know on what basis you're making your claims because they run almost completely counter to what I've experienced as a straight male. I have to assume that they must have been true in the near, or even distant, past, otherwise they wouldn't be so oft repeated. The only people who talk about how supposedly easy it is to date are either old and out of touch or have at least one attractive trait that is above average (looks, charisma, or money). None of the people who I consider "average" have the experience of dating being "easy".
Essentially, dating is a hock like challenge, good luck in the boreal forest and tundra.
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This is my own lived experience as a bisexual man (at that time), and this was in the last 10 years as well. I’m not American though, so perhaps it’s different and more cut-throat in the US?
I was no “chad”, just a short skinny effeminate guy. I had an awful personality, little interest in women and still a few hook-ups and flings just happened from going with the flow. Getting set-up at work was a real thing that happened to me.
Nice humblebrag. Now I understand that was most likely not even meant as one, but that's how it comes across because that's how awful it is for most men nowadays. I'm not going to rehash Radicalizing the Romanceless, but it's even worse nowadays than when that article was written. Men are suffering.
And I think you're right in that it's worse in America, especially compared to East Asia, where I and my family were from originally, but with how widespread the American ideological contagion has become, I don't see thing getting better any time soon.
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When I was younger I hooked up with multiple women at the local club, which is kinda like a party that regularly happens in one place. Or used to be, about twenty to ten years ago. No idea what it's like now.
There are also music parties (usually techno) that are petty much designed for taking drugs, showing off your physical abilities through dance, and then hooking up.
University parties were also a thing, but I was too busy studying.
Actual house parties, I'll admit, I haven't seen since school.
Office parties exist, but hooking up there, as you said, can be tricky.
Clubbing is just another thing that gen z has killed, I'm afraid. I've never been to a club in my life, so I can't relate, but if you just search on youtube, you'll find dozens of videos that lament how the clubbing culture from the 10's is completely dead.
I've been to a single music party (concert?) though, and I have to say that I don't think I've ever felt more out of place than I did when I was there. The music was alright, but I don't take drugs and I don't dance so it was just awkward for me to be there. Didn't help that the friend that actually invited me canceled at the last minute.
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It's easier for straight cis guys (or even people like myself who are bi), but I think you overestimate how easy it is to walk into a relationship, depending on social class and work/life balance. This is an older poll, but you still end up with sizable percentages of unmarried adults having never had a date, and a much bigger group struggling to try to get a relationship; it's only gotten worse since.
Straight men can ask out anyone... kinda, and there's pretty strict social norms against doing so anywhere near work and several different classes of enthusiast hobbies. People try to set up straight men with friends and coworkers... if you're already the sort of person who has. You can hook up with random strangers... if you're in the tiny percentage of straight guys that can get a tindr date. There's a lot of ways for straight guys to set themselves apart to women... in the negative sense as easily as the positive: (het, cis) women are far more likely to get the ick for single 'red flags' that can end up being. Straight guys don't have anywhere near the expectations of attractiveness... but they're also dancing a very narrow line between coming across as too aggressive or not forward enough.
((and... straight guys are picky in a different way. The expectations are lower, but anything under them is far more strict limitation, in extreme cases to the point where even a guy that wanted to muscle through it in the interest of an orgasm or a relationship would find themselves 'pushing rope'.))
If you're able to make the first move, a lot of those problems disappear, but in turn a lot of the ways (straight, cis) men were allowed to make the first move have disappeared too. Of my social environments, there's maybe one in which asking someone out on a date would be accepted (and, uh, coincidentally this is also the gayest one, thanks FFXIV), and maybe three where it's not explicitly ban-worthy. I can't speak on straight guys getting set up by friends or family from personal experience, given the bi bit, but from what I've seen second-hand there's a lot of people where that either doesn't happen, or it only happens in situations that have developed the various taboos.
Some of that's downstream of selection effects as I've aged and been in a relationship for a while, but it's very different from the gay world or from what I can see of most of the trans-friendly dating world. A number of gay writers are pretty strong advocates of that model replacing the classical one for hets, but I'm not sure it's working out great for the gays: I have a hell of a time when quite a lot of my options are split between bars or dances, down2succ-level 'casual', or online stuff that's never going to graduate beyond RP and hard to even keep time synced. Where these options are unpleasant in a gay context, they seem unsolvable in a het one.
((And the dodges are so common that Scott Alexander had a post on how "you can tell why from like a 5 min conversation" explanations radicalize a lot of people who are very far from the central example of what I'm hoping are your actual focus, over a decade ago.))
Again, I'm not saying that het (cis) guys have it worse or even anywhere near as rough as you do, but I think you're running into a version of the lemon market problem in things like comp sci hiring; it's really easy for the absolute worst to get vastly over-represented, while a lot of those who are either slightly under-par or who are not as assertive won't show up much on your radar.
A nitpick, but it’s tinder, with an e. Grindr dropped the e — I guess because “grinder” sounds more like a meat processing tool than a dating app. (Not that dating apps don’t grind people up inside!)
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The stats are what they are. Do you reject this information, or doubt its accuracy? I'm in that category, AMA.
This would be an appropriate time to provide those stats.
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