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Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 27, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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What happens when women don’t get attention?

The old adage says men want sex the way women want attention. But attention, unlike sex, seems easier to come by... for now.

As dating grows more complex, and sometimes risky for men, we’re seeing the rise of alternatives: AI girlfriends, VR porn, sex robots. Add to that a growing visibility of trans women in romantic spaces, and a strange new question emerges:

What happens when women can no longer command attention?

We know what many men do when they’re denied sex or companionship. They turn inward or rage outward. Some retreat to forums. Some go monk mode. Some hit the gym. A few, tragically, turn violent.

But when women can’t get even a glance, no matter how they dress, how they walk, or how perfect their makeup is, what then?

I suspect they won't react like men.

Oh, we're doing the meme where women are begging for attention as men replace them with AI waifus?

It's not going to happen because men are also biological units with evolutionary hardwiring. A woman willing to put out is never going to be alone. She might not get the guy she wants, but she can get a guy. And a man who has the tiniest shot at a real girl who doesn't repulse him will prefer her to a digital waifu.

Trans women are a tiny presence for all the noise they make, and if surveys say 3% of heterosexual men would consider dating a trans woman, I'd bet the number who really would date a trans woman is <1%.

I mean if you create a super stimulus, then people will absolutely choose that over real life. There are beetles in Australia who prefer shagging beer bottles to real females. And that happened without humans doing beetle psychology and A/B testing to create the best, most addictive Waifu-bot possible. Humans designing robot waifus would be working overtime to make their version as stimulating of the male mating system as they can.

Just looking at the NEET phenomenon as an example — people choosing to escape living an actual life in favor of internet, TV, and gaming. Is it normal or natural for a person to choose to live an isolated life indoors over going out with friends, accomplishing things, and moving forward in life? But if you make simulated reality good enough some nonzero portion of the population will choose that, and the better the simulacrum, tge more people get sucked in.

I expect robot waifus to eventually be good enough that all but the most successful men who could get supermodels anyway, and the rest will be at home alone wanking into a robot who’s learned exactly how to get him to spend time with it.

Trans women are a tiny presence for all the noise they make, and if surveys say 3% of heterosexual men would consider dating a trans woman, I'd bet the number who really would date a trans woman is <1%.

Given the fraction of men who participate in machismo-based homosexuality in places where it is socially acceptable (American prisons, non-Taliban Afghanistan, ancient Greece etc.) or the demand for ladyboys as sex workers in cultures like Thailand where that is the normative way of being a trans woman, I would say that 3% is on the low side for "What fraction of men would dick another guy if there was a non-gay way of doing it?" I would bet that the real number is in the 3-10% range.

Men don't want AGPs and AGPs don't want cishet men, so if AGPs are more visible than ladyboys (and in the West they are) then surveys are going to underestimate willingness to date transwomen.

"What fraction of men would dick another guy if there was a non-gay way of doing it?" I would bet that the real number is in the 3-10% range.

Well, "date" is different from "dick", and the chief complaint from trans women is that men are willing to have sex with them but not be seen in public.

I recall there was a survey (probably not a great one, but whatever) that something like 1/3 of men had had a sexual fantasy about a transgender partner. There's also a stat that the "trans" section of PornHub is one of the top categories. So you're correct that the level of sexual interest in trans women is higher than is accounted for in the 3%.

But the fact remains that we're still talking about less than one percent of the population, which already regards men being interested in them as highly suspect precisely because of the gulf between that 33% and the 3%. Statistically, any given man that expresses interest in them is around ten times more likely to be looking for an exotic sexual experience than a relationship, and the majority are uninterested in that -- not least because being transgender implies a certain discomfort with one's genitals, around which the sex fantasies often orbit. The minority that is interested in being an exotic sex fantasy is highly likely to be swamped by offers and choosy the same way cis women are.

But also, "having a sexual experience" is only one of the many reasons a man might desire the companionship of a woman. "Being seen as a man who has been chosen by a woman" is also a huge factor -- and it's one that the hypothetical about AI girlfriends doesn't take into account.

I don't disagree that some men on the margins are exploring alternative sexual experiences with gay men or trans women or whatever, but this just isn't a big enough segment of the population to have much of an effect on what straight people are doing.

There's also a stat that the "trans" section of PornHub is one of the top categories

Out of how many? Not a gooner, legitimately asking.

There's a little over a hundred straight categories, and transgender usually ends up in the top ten.

I'll caveat that these aren't really good data. There's a serious lumpers-vs-splitters issue where pretty popular-but-conventional stuff gets divided up into sometimes weird subcategories in ways that probably let transgender stuff punch a little above its weight class -- that's probably while creampie, for example, ends up relatively low.

((For those interested: just under fifty gay categories, and ftm usually coasts in around the mid-20s.

For an even-less-scientific number that's not even measuring the same thing, e621's total post count has male/female at 744k, male/male at 568k, female/female at 113k. Compare gynomorph at 216k, gynomorph/female at 37k, gynomorph/male at 24k, andromorph at 27k, andromorph/male at 9k, and andromorph/female at 0.5k. Gynomorph explicitly isn't the same thing as transwoman, and andromorph explicitly isn't the same thing as transman, but they're probably more revelatory about how furries think about woman-with-dick and man-with-pussy.))

If that's true then what's your explanation for the drop in sex, number of sex partners, marriage, dating etc since the advent of highly engaging and digital entertainment and social media?

When exactly do you have in mind?

All the trend lines I was seeing with a casual search start earlier. Here’s one shocked by the decline by 2010.

As with most new technologies, it destabilizes the economy, leading to outsize gains for those who were already in a good position. The dating market bifurcates, with more and more women using the tech to access a shrinking minority of men. Those guys are doing great. They did great in the sexual revolution, and they'll do great any time women are freed to pursue them en masse.

It's also a heyday for women to monetize their sexuality for the majority of men who are priced out of the dating market. Lots of lonely, horny young men to be milked for cash until they figure out AI chatbots are cheaper.

To be clear, most people are still going to pair up, this is all on the margins. But the margins are where movement happens, and the group of marginal sexual partners is growing.

More people are choosing not to go out and do the work. Porn is easy, people are difficult.

Those who do are still getting laid.

More people are choosing not to go out and do the work. Porn is easy, people are difficult.

and

And a man who has the tiniest shot at a real girl who doesn't repulse him will prefer her to a digital waifu.

don't seem compatible.

Yeah, on the margins technology (or at least something) is clearly having an effect. Maybe it's some chemical in food or water. Or one of those classic social science multifactorial explanations with 50 different causes.

The 'true human love will always prevail' rhetoric is just a story trope. Those bars, nightclubs and third spaces are still shutting down, are they not? We can see the statistics.

https://old.reddit.com/r/Infographics/comments/1c742ed/percentage_of_americans_married_by_birth_decade/ We can see the statistics on marriage like you say.

AI pornography is the worst it'll ever be.