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Notes -
"I prefer the hands-on touch you only get with hired goons."
or
"'Abstinence for abundance' is like 'fighting for peace'"
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There's a Harper's article making the rounds, and before I link it, I'll let you know what it's about lest anyone click through to a level of detail they'd rather not get. It's about an online subculture ("gooners") who not only watch pornography, but veritably worship it: reveling in how addicted they are to it, often communally. If you want much, much, much more detail than that, here's the link.
I'm not here to dig into any lurid details, myself. (The biggest thought that comes to mind is how, though Abrahamic proscriptions against pornography usually fall under "thou shalt not commit adultery," this behavior seems to be edging
[ahem]its way under the prohibition against worshiping images, as that seems more literally what's happening.) I'm not so much interested in meta-voyeuristically gawking at the porn-viewers--Instead I am here to point a finger at Ezra Klein.
Now, the author of the Harper's article (who is not Ezra) muses at the end on what brought about this porn-obssession subculture in terms of the pull-factors of modern technology. Is this not just another example of algorithm-driven addiction? Are we not all gooners these days? But he only briefly touches upon push-factors driving people away from the healthy alternatives he laments, such as:
And that evokes this article of Ezra Klein's. Pull-quote:
Well, here we are.
And is this not better, from that point of view? Aren't we better off, from the perspective of preventing rape, for each could-be rapist neutralized somehow? Doesn't each man taken off the street and holed up in a cave, never to be met in real life again, give women less to fear? I doubt it. For one, it's not the right kind of neutralization: male sexuality being indulged in any way at all (much less this extremely) without supervision always keeps the fear alive that it might one day burst its banks and turn into real rape. For two, the hoped-for outcome was clearly to scare men into being appropriately respectful of consent while still being willing. Unfortunately, there turned out to be a path of lesser resistance.
All this leads to the question of What Is To Be Done. To venture a very safe prediction, I predict that, if self-proclaimed decent human beings have their shot at fixing this gender-relations mess, they'll use the only method they know for such problems: turning some weapon against male behavior. (It's a patriarchal world, after all, which means that women are suffering more than they deserve and men are suffering less, so it would be unjust to use anything other than the carrot on women and anything other than the stick on men.) Blocking off this path-of-least-resistance to try to herd them back where they're wanted. Of course, that could very well just open up a new path-of-least-resistance other than what they want, and who knows what new horrors that will unleash.
If I had to make some suggestion - and this is always harder than making some complaint - all I would say is that perhaps some tactic other than inflicting fear or shame or pain might be called for at some point. (It is also probably a bad idea to use such tactics if they disproportionally work on the conscientious, like threats of long-term consequences always do. Discouraging the conscientious from sex and reproduction will have bad consequences, evolutionarily.)
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For a topic like this, I know that disclaimers are necessary:
Do I think that Ezra Klein or other feminists are primarily or even substantially responsible for a subculture of porn addicts? No, but the force they apply does push in that direction.
Am I recommending "men being allowed to rape" as being better than this or that social ill? No! But the thinking that supposes that that's the only alternative is going to be increasingly destructive.
Do I think that "gooning" as a subculture or practice has any redeeming qualities that should spare it from destruction? No, but rather: I think, for the would-be destroyers' own sake, and the sake of what they're trying to preserve, that they might not want to be so destruction-minded.
Do I think that "Spishak" motives can't really have anything to do with conscientiousness/neurosis, because anybody who'd engage in such disgusting practices can't possibly have any possibly-sympathetic motives, and so he must be lying? I do think it's possible that such feelings are real, though I of course know nothing more about the individual in question.
Do I think it's fair to hold that article against Ezra Klein's modern agenda of technocratic growth-seeking, even though 2014 was an eternity ago in the culture wars? Well- I admit I do.
Do I think that I've throat-cleared enough here? Of course not! Do I think that it's possible to throat-clear enough here? Of course not!
I have to ask, what's the problem here? To society, a problem is only a problem if it's a problem for women. Women still get their stud guys who will fuck them, and their nice guys who will marry them - not every man in the world will become neutered at all ages, there will still be outliers. No one cares enough about men, especially not... INCELS <gasp!> to want to change this situation in any way. There's far more then enough men around to ensure the human population keeps going and even if we have a bit of an Idiocracy effect, I'm sure it's mostly self correcting.
The left-liberal consensus is schizophrenic about pornography on a number of axes. Women producing it is good / empowering / entrepreneurial… but men consuming it is icky / pathetic / sexist, and you best not point out the logical contradiction in lauding suppliers while condemning consumers.
Scott wrote an article once about good personal evopsych behaviours in the ancestral environment (e.g. I shouldn’t marry a non-virgin woman because I’ll get STDs and questionable paternity) become enshrined as global cultural mores once civilization develops (e.g. all female purity is morally virtuous, even in women I have no intention of marrying, yay chivalry). My suspicion is that the low status of pornography consumption stems from a similar trajectory: (A) women don’t want their own mate-providers to abandon them for a younger prettier more fertile upstart, and this mutates over millenia into (B) a cultural more that coveting thy neighbours’ wife is morally wrong, and further into (C) that (any) male’s lust for anyone but their long term partner is evil, even if the man is an incel she personally would never touch, who doesn’t have a partner, and is lusting over a CGI woman who doesn't even exist.
The general heuristic is a lossy telephone-game from the actual evopsych concern, but false positives are better than false negatives from the XX POV.
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No there aren't. South Koreans will be an endangered species by 2100 if the 100% gynocentric sexual culture continues.
South Korea, Japan, and, yes, Poland have a serious fertility crisis right now. Maybe these women want to be with “chad”,[1] but those women contributing to Poland’s fertility crisis sure seem to complain when men from other countries, i.e. “Passport Bros” come to Poland and get together with them
[1] I have posted on my blog that the notion that 20% of the men are having sex with 80% of the women is not true
You've got a rather bad typo in that heading.
Fixed.
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