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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   34126 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 19, 2026

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I was catching up on the quality contribution threads for last month (yes, I'm very late...) and I ran across this post from @Amadan.

I found this part specifically was interesting in the broader context of the discussion:

Assuming, of course, that their standards are not too high... You don't want fat Sally the checkout clerk or carousel-riding Cathy, fine. You insist on a 20-something slim attractive virgin who is agreeable and submissive? Hmm, good luck if you're not a 6/6/6. (Or a Mormon.)

One of these things is not like the other.

For men:

  • Six figures: quite difficult to do. Statistically only a fourth of the men in the US achieve this (and of course this assumes that the requirement won't change if all men achieved this).
  • Six feet: mostly driven by genetics and childhood nutrition. And only achieved by 14.5% of men in the US (according to Google).
  • Six pack: this presumably any man could achieve with sufficient exercise (and diet control) though it might be difficult to do concurrently with a six figure job.

For women:

  • 20-something: every woman will be a 20-something for ten years of her life.
  • Slim/attractive (they're mostly the same thing): partially driven by genetics? But still, exercise and diet go a long way here.
  • Virgin who is agreeable and submissive: these are all completely within the median woman's control. As they say, manners cost nothing.

Is it just me or is this scale a bit tilted?

(Apologies for responding so late and in a top-level comment; I didn't want this getting buried in a weeks old thread.)

Side note: Unpack the word submissive. Lots more girls are interested in being their man's pet than their man's maid.

I assume Amadan is being sarcastic here, because it’s a silly comparison.

I have a hard time when discussions of dating come up because my personal experience is just not that women’s standards are unreasonable.

Despite being socially awkward and not meeting any of the 6/6/6 qualifications, I’ve been able to meet and date my fair share of athletic, attractive, interesting 20-something’s. (Not so much submissive and agreeable because I find those unattractive.) Many of my friends have as well.

We have all agreed that our greatest difficulty is finding women who are sufficiently interesting with good chemistry. It is genuinely hard to find people with compatible lifestyles (My most specific gripe is that many women (and men!) spend most of their time consuming shortform videos and very few actually live intentionally, but I have found plenty who care about life.), but my rejection rate among women I’m interested in is not unreasonably high. I’m not bragging here, certainly I’m not having crazy success, but my experience leads me to believe the problem doesn’t lie with either gender, and are more a result of broader weakening of social ties. (Or geography. If you don’t live near a city then it is harder)

If I can offer any thoughts, I think many men and women don’t know their market. Most people don’t want ‘most people’, they want a more specific type of person. If your standard for a woman is ‘young + hot’ then you will be rejected more often by that pool not because they have unreasonable standards, but because it’s too broad. If you pool is ‘young, hot, outdoorsy, wants a family, reads, etc.’ then you will have more success, (provided you fit in with that pool of course) In the first you get rejected 19/20 times, while in the second it may only be 2/3 times. Even though it’s smaller, it’s significantly more productive.

Six figures: quite difficult to do. Statistically only a fourth of the men in the US achieve this (and of course this assumes that the requirement won't change if all men achieved this).

I think you’re leaving out age. If we assume give men five years of extra peak eligibility over women in this scenario(which seems simplistic but fair), then you’re looking at the percentage of men under 35 making six figures- which is far lower. On the other hand thé percentage of men who earn six figures at peak earnings is much higher- if we take these requirements as non-literal(earns in the upper half of the income stratum, physically fit, taller than her), then most men have the ability to meat them.

Of course, doing this for women creates a similar exercise.

if we take these requirements as non-literal(earns in the upper half of the income stratum, physically fit, taller than her)

If we go the non-literal route, the situation could be even more amusingly dire than literal six figures and six feet:

  • Where "six figures" means young men who work well-paying, prestigious jobs like big law, medical doctor, front office tech, front office finance—jobs that can clear well above $100K even at the entry-level but are a far smaller subset of jobs than those that "merely" clear $100K and up. The "finance" in "6'5, blue eyes, finance, trust fund" likely isn't referring to some Joe working in the Finance department of XYZ Boring Corp., after all.

  • Where "six feet" is a necessary but not sufficient condition, given the positive returns to male height out to 6'6" and the non-negative returns to male height out to 6'10". That is, 6'6" men were found to be more attractive to women than 6'4" men, but men between 6'6" and 6'10" fared similarly.

Six figures: quite difficult to do. Statistically only a fourth of the men in the US achieve this (and of course this assumes that the requirement won't change if all men achieved this).

It’s absurd that some subset of Very Online young men believe something as diverse, dynamic, and multifaceted as women’s preferences in men can be reduced to simple numbers such as “six figures,” which in and of itself would already cut the desirable pool of men down to the 25% of men who make $100,000 or more...

...When the number should be at least $125,000 to account for inflation, given “The Triple Six Standard” has been Noticed for at least six years now. I have memories of reading/hearing of it going back as far as mid-2000s, perhaps even earlier. I suppose “six feet, six inches, and six figures (in inflation-adjusted 2020 dollars)” doesn’t have the same ring to it.

Is it just me or is this scale a bit tilted?

Such is life. Eggs are expensive; sperm is cheap. Hence variations on other sayings such as:

  • Women live life on tutorial mode
  • Men have the burden of performance
  • Women are; men become
  • Women are human beings; men are human doings

Young women are attractive by default. They just need to “don’t,” to not fuck it up through things such as tattoos, obesity, single-motherhood, being too insufferable, hoeing around too much or for too long. And if they fuck up—even fuck up colossally—given male thirst and tendency to simp, they can still find some chump to serve as their retirement plan, although he may not be as attractive as the guy she could had bagged in the absence of fuck-ups. Women have built-in plot armor; they can just exist and have good things happen to them.

Young men—and men in general—need to do. Merely existing means social and sexual death, perhaps literal death soon thereafter. Unless they are unusually tall or at-least-not-short + unusually good-looking face-wise, men have to earn their attractiveness through status/income/achievement/working out, being funny/interesting/entertaining/courageous. And even if they are unusually tall or at-least-not-short + unusually good-looking face-wise, that can be canceled out by lack of status/income/achievement/working out, being insufficiently funny/interesting/entertaining/courageous.

The general male burden of performance is well-allegorized by the classic “amount of work required to look good” meme. For women, it’s “nothing, just don’t eat like a fucking hippo every single day.” For men, it’s “years of hard work at the gym many times a week and a strict diet with enough proteins and little fats and sugars.”

Walk around a sorority house and you’ll find lots of girls who have physiques similar to Brie Larson or Scarlett Johansson in the Avengers series, despite a diet of pizza and Franzia and a workout regimen that consists solely of sometimes teeheeing around in a sports bra and volleyball shorts.

Walk around a fraternity house and you won’t find any guys who have physiques similar to Avengers Chris Evans much less Chris Hemsworth, unless they have a robust workout regimen and a diet sufficiently high in protein and sufficiently low in carbohydrates—and perhaps some pharmacological assistance as well, especially for the second Chris’s physique.

Walk around a sorority house and you’ll find lots of girls who have physiques similar to Brie Larson or Scarlett Johansson

True. Find those same girls ten (or fewer) years later and they will all have physiques similar to pre-semaglutide Melissa McCarthy. The frat guys may or may not have gained beerguts.

Chris Evans definitely took steroids, too. It's all over Hollywood, man. I bet it's scrambling the brains of tons of women to see every movie have men like that. Kind of like how anime gooners eventually can only get hard for anime girls because they are exposed to them so frequently, except like, on a society-wide involuntary basis.

There was a huge rebellion on the part of women for unrealistic body standards, but no such project was taken up on the part of the men, where those bodies are pretty much just literally impossible without 'roids. Especially if you're in your 40s, like Chris Evans is. Or like Ryan Reynolds is. Yeah, totally natty achievable for a dude in his 40s.

Chris Evans definitely took steroids, too.

Exogenous testosterone? In my Captain America?

It's all over Hollywood, man.

Yeah, my default assumption is that when it comes to male Hollywood actors with good physiques, it's "likely juicy" even when "natty attainable"—including Evans, as there's been ample debate as to the extent his physique was enhanced by CGI in Avengers films during key moments, especially the first Captain America film. Good for them, if a large part of their job is looking good shirtless or in a tight shirt.

Kind of lame, though, when almost all of them consistently lie about it. Even juiced to the gills, it still takes hard work for a man to have a good physique.

Yeah, totally natty achievable for a dude in his 40s.

50s! He just eats clen, trens hard, tests himself, anavar gives up.

To be fair, Captain America's origin was the result of Super-Soldier Serum the experimental formula developed by Professor Abraham Erskine during World War II.

There's a reason dating is often analogized to a market. The relevant question is how many people do the desirable things, have the desirable traits, not how many theoretically could. Even if every women, in principle, could become highly desirable in this sense if only a few actually do those who do are going to have a lot of power to choose a highly desirable partner. The point is that if you want to date a woman who is 80th percentile (or whatever) for desirability then you yourself probably need to be 80th percentile for desirability.

20-something: every woman will be a 20-something for ten years of her life.

This is true but, according to the US 2020 Census, only about ~13% of women are currently in their 20's. Making "woman in her 20's" rarer than both your examples of "man over 6ft tall" and "man who makes six figures." The shape of the US population pyramid also suggests this fraction is going to shrink over time. Age is also transitive, as you note, while the latter two are much closer to permanent.

Dating is a market, but it's a matching market. Unlike ordinary markets, matching markets tend to be hellscapes. Ask anyone trying to get a medical residency.

There's a reason dating is often analogized to a market. The relevant question is how many people do the desirable things, have the desirable traits, not how many theoretically could. Even if every women, in principle, could become highly desirable in this sense if only a few actually do those who do are going to have a lot of power to choose a highly desirable partner.

I agree, but it's still reasonable to point out that the current dating market is heavily skewed in favor of women.

IMO algorithms have changed dating in recent years, as feeds will present women with highly attractive men outside of their extended social network at a considerably higher rate than in previous half-decades. In the past, a highly desirable man within one’s extended social network would be vetted to see whether he is dating half the town; if you are now being shown men outside of your network, there is no vetting possible outside of dedicated apps (which most women will never use). So an attractive man who goes viral on algorithmic feed social media can easily find 100 or 1000 dates across his state. If you are 18-25, very healthy, irreligious, why wouldn’t you do this? And for a woman, the idea of dating a man who is both attractive and famous (and with whom she can obtain fame herself) is as irresistible proposition. I think this explains why more young adult men than young adult women describe themselves as single:

63% of men under 30 describe themselves as single, compared with 34% of women in the same age group

This doesn’t apply in reverse. A highly attractive woman does not typically have an interest in dating more than two or three men at the same time. Affluent women where prostitution is legal do not typically pay for whores, but many men would enjoy meeting hundreds or even thousands of women. A man’s fantasy novel may involve dozens of partners, whereas a woman’s involves only 1 or 2 high quality partners. This is one of the strictly-biological asymmetries at play in our brave new decidedly-non-paternalistic world. A similar asymmetry is that women have higher standards for men in online dating than men do for women, and that political polarization will mathematically prevent lots of progressive women from ever finding a husband.

There is no quick solution to this problem. The solution requires bringing back the cultural technology that we lost, the rules that shame promiscuity and teach women to be humble and teach men to settle down early and not date half the town. The women who have been misled into thinking that they deserve the hottest man in the world will be miserable at the realization that their destined match is Literally Just Some Normal Guy With a Bad Haircut. For men who have exhausted their dating prospects, the best solution is probably just to look at different countries, where “American” adds extra points in dating. It is no more abnormal for a foreign woman to fall for an American man as it is for an American woman to fall for a Frenchman or British aristocrat, or a Midwestern girl who watched too many K-Dramas to fall for a Korean. There was a funny tweet that went viral the other day about American GIs finding European women more agreeable than American women, so much so that American women had to launch organizations and campaigns to stop all the marriages. But ultimately I think that should be a last option, and imho you should pick a woman from Europe or the Middle East or whatever your culture is, over anywhere else.

agreeable and submissive: these are all completely within the median woman's control. As they say, manners cost nothing.

This is untrue. Agreeableness is a largely fixed Big 5 trait, like extroversion. Many, perhaps most, classic women's and children novels are about this. Female writers tend to be more introverted, disagreeable and high openness than average, and are always writing about that experience.

But more than that, agreeableness is a trait with more utility for a woman's parents, husband, boss, and babies than for the woman herself, so it's only worth cultivating if circumstances reward it. Circumstances do not currently reward it. They often punish it. If you've got to work a job on the open marketplace (as most women do, even once married), best not be too easy to get taken advantage of. Also, very high submissiveness invites abusive relationships.

Many, perhaps most, classic women's and children novels are about this. Female writers tend to be more introverted, disagreeable and high openness than average, and are always writing about that experience.

Do you have any famous examples of this off the top of your head

Anne of Green Gables

Little Women(? I haven’t read it).

Jane Eyre

A Room of One's Own (we're starting to get explicitly feminist here so maybe doesn't count)

If your argument is that eligible men that are prone to reward it are out there but are fewer in number than in earlier times for various reasons, I agree with you. However, if it is that female agreeableness has somehow lost its value even among men that are open to marriage because times have changed, then I disagree. And I think that female agreeableness is generally as rewarded by parents and children as ever.

If we’re specifically discussing the scenario where an ambitious young middle-class or upper-class woman wants to have a fancy career and get dream promotions, then her agreeableness will indeed be punished.

I mean that agreeableness, in the Big 5 sense, is a core personality trait, which affects things like

  • How likely is she to let her baby cry it out, vs practice gentle parenting?
  • How likely is she to get involved with trying to protect immigrant families from ICE, and shame people who disagree (more likely if agreeable in Big 5 sense)
  • Is she going to have sex with men even when she doesn't want to, then feel upset about it afterwards (more likely if agreeable)
  • Will she stand up for herself at work? Why would you think this is only a striver concern? Plenty of people have to negotiate with their bosses, or they'll end up terribly stressed out over trivial stuff. There are plenty of bosses in low end service jobs who will abuse their servers or cashiers it the employees allow it. Will she quit if she needs to?
  • In some cultures: will she become the slave of her mother in law?
  • Once married, will she tell her husband what she really wants when their interests conflict, or will she just do what he wants but quietly be upset about it?

In the short term, perhaps these traits are "rewarded" with more romantic interest and attention. But in the long term, women who are very agreeable need to learn to be more assertive, or they become the kind of person who's always taking shit in person, then writing self pitying screeds behind your back.

I man can "reward" her with romance, but then in the medium to long term fail to reciprocate by guessing her true desires and responding accordingly. Having to guess all the time can be frustrating.

If you've got to work a job on the open marketplace (as most women do, even once married), best not be too easy to get taken advantage of. Also, very high submissiveness invites abusive relationships.

This. Who here is a father of a daughter? Who here would really raise their baby girl to be a “20-something slim attractive virgin who is agreeable and submissive“ to whatever douchebag she unwisely ends up tying herself too, instead of an emancipated independent woman who can stand up to the world? Yeah, thought so.

whatever douchebag she unwisely ends up tying herself to

Are you referring to a man who's only interested in casual sex with her or a man who's open to marrying her but then turns out to be some useless lazy bum?

...the other factor is that she's presumably willing to defer to the Father's judgment as to who she should date and marry, which gives dad a large say in selecting a worthy man and scaring away the Lotharios.

After all, he has an EXTREME amount at stake and thus has incentive to help her select the best as possible... and possibly to punish those who do commit abuse.

We still do that whole "Father walks the bride down the aisle and 'gives her away' to the Groom" at weddings. WHY DO YOU THINK THAT IS?

In places with functional matchmaking systems. In America, they're just as likely to end up old maids.

Of course, those fathers raising an "emancipated independent woman who can stand up to the world" conveniently neglect to teach her not to abuse her partners, while supporting raising sons to be agreeable and submissive and thus easy for her to take advantage of...

an emancipated independent woman who can stand up to the world

It would not be the first time that parents raised their children in a way that sounds like it will make them happy but actually won’t.

Is it just me or is this scale a bit tilted?

There seems to be a slippery equivalence being drawn between a market being tilted, and it theoretically being easier to do abc than to do xyz. Strictly speaking, these things are unrelated. We have had this discussion before

To summarize:

@faceh contended that there were about one million American women who met the criteria he considered marriageable: Single and looking (of course). Cishet, and thus not LGBT identified. Not ‘obese.’ Not a mother already. No ‘acute’ mental illness. No STI. Less than $50,000 in student loan debt. 5 or fewer sex partners (‘bodies’). Under age 30. Therefore there aren't enough good women for all the men.

I countered that there were approximately 617,000 American men under 40 meet all these specified criteria: Single, Earning at least $65,000 annually, No felony convictions, Exercise at least once a week, Attend religious services at least once a month, Have not used drugs other than marijuana in the past year, Not classified as alcohol dependent. Therefore, there aren't nearly enough good men for even that small number of women.

I picked 65k because it's about what you could make as a Cop/Teacher, or a forklift operator at a local warehouse that's always putting up billboards for workers if you pick up a little overtime. Quite simply, I have trouble caring about the sexual outcomes of men who fall below the standard where they could reasonably become a cop, teacher, or forklift operator. Those are people who are always, throughout history, going to have to accept substandard outcomes.

Now you can look at it in terms of ease of doing ABC vs XYZ, and say that women don't have to do anything to achieve most of their standards. The female standards Faceh set were mostly of the negative variety. Don't sleep with anyone, don't eat too much, don't get into debt, don't get too old before you find a man. While the male standards I set were mostly active and positive: go to church, workout, get a decent full time job. So it is reasonable to argue that women have it easier in a sense. But frankly, I find it easier to lift weights than I find it not to eat Oreos. And I would find it infinitely easier to get a job at the local PD than I would to be "agreeable and submissive" to some of you chuckleheads.

Regardless of the overall market, it's not actually hard for an individual man to tilt the market in his favor. The vast majority of people might be unfuckable, but you don't have to fuck them. If you get your life together as a young man, you will be fine in the dating market, it will very quickly be tilted in your favor and not hers.

If you get your life together as a young man, you will be fine in the dating market, it will very quickly be tilted in your favor and not hers.

I think that sounds correct on paper but it's wrong in reality. These young man that have their life together have marketing/distribution problem. Once you're out of college, and most men don't go to college at all so that opportunity ends for them even earlier when they finish highschool, they are just not naturally exposed to enough women. Their job is probably male dominated, and even if it isn't they are unlikely to make moves on their coworkers anyway. Their hobbies are male dominated too, so chance of meeting someone there is low. Social drinking, going to bars, clubbing is not in anymore, so they don't do that often enough either. So what's left? Dating apps - select for top 10% men by appearance, even if you're decent looking, your failure rate will be high, you need to put effort into your profile, need to have some social skills and understand what you're doing. What else is there? Cold approach? Purposefully seeking out female dominated hobbies? Church (be for real)?

There's a specific type of content that occasionally goes viral on social media. It's a woman posting pictures of her (usually average-to-slightly-above-average in looks) male friend with captions like "Look at my friend MOST_AVERAGE_MALE_NAME. He's such a good person, he is a DECENT_MIDDLE-TO-UPPER_CLASS_JOB, likes to SOCIALLY_APPROVED_MALE_HOBBY, loves traveling, has an adorable CUTE_NONTHREATENING_DOG_BREED named Archie and he's SINGLE AND LOOKING FOR A GIRLFRIEND" and the post goes viral, women are surprised how such a good guy doesn't have a girlfriend and are asking how to get in contact with him. Men that come across such posts often ask why she (the girl that posted this) doesn't get with him and usually he's either in deep friendzone or she already has a boyfriend, but that's besides the point. I don't know the success rate of this type of attempt at matchmaking, but I'm certain it's better than such dude trying his luck on hinge. My point is this - in the current environment, men like this just disappear off the radar unless they actively put in effort to get seen, but it's pretty much a part time job for most unless they get lucky and pair up with someone quick.

Once you're out of college, and most men don't go to college at all so that opportunity ends for them even earlier when they finish highschool, they are just not naturally exposed to enough women. Their job is probably male dominated, and even if it isn't they are unlikely to make moves on their coworkers anyway. Their hobbies are male dominated too, so chance of meeting someone there is low. Social drinking, going to bars, clubbing is not in anymore, so they don't do that often enough either. So what's left?

Isn't the overall situation more or less similar for women though?

I think it's more or less similar, but not entirely. Women are more socially oriented, so it's more likely for them to have a network that would eventually produce some potential candidates. Women's hobbies are also more social and communal compared to men. They are more likely to get approached in the wild (although I heard this is rare these days, I guess it depends on one's attractiveness). Social media is also a strong source - men slide in DMs with zero shame. So there's a chance for a woman to be completely passive in her pursuit of a relationship and still get opportunities. I'm sure there's plenty of women out there that just bedrot after work, women have higher screen time than men after all, which would put them in a very similar predicament as men. But just posting a reel or two on IG would expand her dating opportunities far more than anything an average man could do.

Very fair summary and counter. I will not relitigate anything but this:

If you get your life together as a young man, you will be fine in the dating market, it will very quickly be tilted in your favor and not hers.

It has of course recently been discussed (at long last) just how hard the deck was stacked against young men over the last 15 years.

https://www.compactmag.com/article/the-lost-generation/

Motte Discussion Here

So I simply point out that the things guys are supposed to achieve to make THEM seem marriageable are dangled further out of reach of many of them based on nothing but their gender and color of their skin. They are not imposing these restrictions on themselves.

Whereas, as I point out on occasion, literally every change in gender-based policy in the U.S. for the past 50 years has been in favor of women. It has put more of them in education, the workplace, and granted them outsized political power. (this also has NOT made them any happier).

So these men are expected to work harder than ever just to overcome the systemic bias, with the reward of pulling from a pool of women who are less appealing than ever, whilst the entire legal/economic edifice of their country is trying to slow them down.

So I think it is absolutely hard for an individual man to tilt the market in his favor unless he he lucked out in rolling his stats to have high charisma, rich parents, and good genes for height/aesthetics.

"Get your life together" is one hell of a lift for, I'd say, 60% of young men, especially because it'll take like 5+ years of solid work to hit the point where they'd be noticeable as a potential partner, and even then its not a guarantee.

And this shows up in the fact that many men just opt out of dating rather than accept constant psychological damage they're powerless to change.

Noticing that tendency is pretty much why I'm not in any kind of corporate work today. Because I figured there was a quota system in place and I didn't much want to find myself participating in it at the wrong moment. Today, of course, it could just as well be the opposite, but I don't want to be at the mercy of the wheel.

But this very much didn't stop me from achieving the goal of making a decent living.

Most advice that revolves around either women or men just losing the weight or just putting in more work or just settling for what they can get falls into the fundamental problem that everyone has never just and they won't do it tomorrow either.

I just don't like seeing my people blackpill.

The huge irony is that my boss is a woman, and my workplace overall is slanted towards female employees. But since she's an utterly remorseless businesswoman who grinds it out in the trenches alongside her employees, she is EASILY the most meritocratic employer I've ever worked for.

I don't rock the boat politically (thanks to having an outlet here, I suppose), I put in the work and bring in the cash, I keep my personal life separate enough that it rarely bleeds over.

My friends in White Collar corporate jobs seem to be navigating byzantine labyrinths where the goals are ever-shifting, the ability to progress uncertain, and the actual rules for personal conduct are opaque in places. Loyalty doesn't exist, of course. Thankful to have avoided that for most of my life.

Noticing that tendency is pretty much why I'm not in any kind of corporate work today.

Yeah, when I worked in corporate America, I noticed that women at my level got significantly better treatment and better opportunities than men. It's funny because women are constantly told (and seem to believe) that they must perform much better than men in order to keep up with them, but this claim is about as wrong as wrong can be. (Of course blacks were in a different world completely.)

One of the great things about quitting and starting my own business was that this totally flipped the script. I sold my services directly to customers who could be as racist and sexist as they wanted. Being a white man was suddenly an advantage.

It has of course recently been discussed (at long last) just how hard the deck was stacked against young men over the last 15 years.

Your daily reminder that countries other than America exist.

The collapse in coupling is a global phenomenon, it's happening everywhere. America went crazy with race and sex discrimination during the Great Awokening, but basically nowhere else did. Even in the UK, there was nothing like what was detailed in the Compact piece. Wokeness was always mostly an Anglo phenomenon.

The second article you link highlights the real issue. It's the phones (where phones are a stand-in for atomised, digital, addiction-driven daily life).

My personal thesis is that its the algorithms, not explicitly the phones (obviously the phones are a prerequisite).

Early Facebook was fine. It was a chronological feed consisting solely of what your friends posted.

Early online dating was also fine. You could navigate and search out people you thought were compatible, message them directly.

The rise of curation via opaque algos is when we saw things shift towards optimizing attention, ad dollars, and ragebait and brainrot. And in dating they removed the ability to filter directly and just gameified it and blew up the 'organic' nature of the environment entirely.

This is reaching an apotheosis now with gambling integrated in everything we do.

Twitter/X just open-sourced their algorithm, and I've been seeing people pointing out some of the direct factors in there that would lead to 'toxic' feedback loops and demolition of organic communities.

Have to assume its the same on every other site, too.

A lot of that article was for a relatively thin slice of upper middle class men looking to make it in creative professions. So yes, if you were a straight while male who wanted to be a literature professor or TV writer over the last decade it was very unfair toward you. I don’t know that the average American, especially blue collar, saw the same pressure.

Still talking about white collar work, but pretty much any corporate or government job faced some of the same pressures.

I think there's a (relatively thin) slice of Blue Collar skilled professional who has made out extremely well due to a relative dearth of competition for a smorgasbord of work in the trades. Lot of dudes getting rich off working in oil fields or, more recently, Data Center construction.

But... we can't ignore the immigration surge exerting pressure on e.g. construction work, trucking, unskilled trades.

So different pressures... but still impact that would fall primarily on males. And still arguably coming from the same source (political favortism for groups other than white males).

Anyhow, they're still struggling on the partnership front.

https://wng.org/roundups/study-shows-working-class-men-arent-getting-married-1749503094

Arent getting married or arent acquiring partners? These are, especially since the rise of cohabitation, different things.

If they're younger guys, its not acquiring partners at all.

I feel like a lot of these population-level filtering attempts fail to capture the correlation between factors and therefore exacerbate the scarcity of certain attributes.

Fermi estimates are the best we can do for now.

But when you START with the fact that 40% of women are obese, you've already shrunk the pool considerably, and every criteria you add shrinks it further, you start to see the shape of the problem.

(Yes, about the same % of men are also obese. There's research that obese men are fine settling for obese women but the reverse is not true. This is borne out by my personal observations.)

Then you get the spike in mental illnesses, the increasing amounts of debt held by women, the spike in LGBT identification, the increase in sexual partners (I'd wager this is anti-correlated with obesity but who knows), and the decreased prioritization of marriage and you can visualize how each of these is narrowing the non-obese pool significantly.

Even if the error bars are pretty huge, I have little problem believing <10% of single women out there are really 'appealing' as partners.

I don't really think the math works out the way either my good buddy @faceh has it or the way I do, chatgpt and grok estimates are garbage, my purpose in the example was using the same tools to show contrary results.

In reality men and women don't filter by these nice lists of attributes. "Don't ask fish how to catch them" and all that jazz. Men for the most part aren't really looking for chaste, demure, young, uneducated virgins to marry in two months; the few that are often have little trouble finding them at church or in high school.

I'd argue online dating actually makes it more practical to hard filter by attributes like this, which is why people aren't forming relationships as much. They're not placing themselves in the position to have chemistry override quibbles at the rate that prior eras did. People are inherently fungible and easily replaced on apps, you can even literally filter for a lot of these attributes on major apps and just not see people who don't meet your criteria.

You're missing the underlying point because I was being sardonic. Most women do not, in fact, refuse to settle for anything less than a 6/6/6. Even nice and pretty women!

I do not believe the incel exists who couldn't find a woman, and probably a pleasant enough woman, to be a partner. What they generally can't find is a woman who meets their various standards of attractiveness, personality, virginal shy-yet-freakiness, and willingness to be a bangmaid.

Somehow having standards that may be out of your league is evil and unjust on the part of women, but reasonable and tragic on the part of men.

I do not believe the incel exists who couldn't find a woman, and probably a pleasant enough woman, to be a partner.

Ahem.

Any advice on how best to ask out homeless alcoholic women?

Invite them over for a beer.

Tell them they can crash at your home with the well stocked liquor cabinet.

Sounds more like a recipe for getting robbed than a path for meeting the future mother of my children — but then, didn't we have someone on here (it might have been the "Hock" guy) who argued that getting stabbed from time to time is just the price some men have to be willing to pay to get a girlfriend?

Edit: plus, I don't have a well-stocked liquor cabinet, for reasons of both lack of money and medication interactions.

Something approaching half of them are projected to be single by 2030

If that's not a result of 'refusing to settle' en masse then what could it be.

And my basic reminder, I am more than happy to look at data you present that contradicts my point, or accept any argumentation pointing out where my analysis is flawed.

Anyway, here's testimony from a matchmaker (also a female) about the standards put forth by a 31-year-old single woman. "There are a decent number of profiles like this."

It could be a lack of trying on the male end. People spend more time online, which takes away from stuff done in the real world. They still have to work though, so the time is taken from recreational activities. If I am on social media 4 hours per day, work for 8 + transportation, sleep at least 6, 2 hours for chores, food, exercise, and other daily necessities, and use the weekend on family or friends, I might not really want to spend what little time I have left on dating. It is kind of tiring compared to chilling on the couch, and I can always just watch porn to take the edge off.

Add to this that for many, their social life has moved online as well, for example in the form of MMO guilds and discord communities, and there are even less reasons to leave the house. Going out just to date and nothing else feels super awkward. People want to meet others through their daily activities. But if no daily activities take place outside, then what are you supposed to do? Taking dating online as well is an option, but that has its own issues.

You could meet someone through work, but many might consider the risk of drama to not be worth it. Especially if they have little romantic experience due to what I described above.

It could be a lack of trying on the male end.

Sure.

Incentives have to be sufficient.

If the reward for 'trying' is you get rejected 90% of the time, ghosted another 5-9% of the time, and the 'win' condition is you get a woman who is overweight, in debt, doesn't know how to cook, and is iffy on if she wants kids.

Where's the appeal to putting in the effort?

I think a lot of guys are accurately assessing that their odds of winning a real prize are lacklustre, and so efforts spent on themselves pay off more.

You could meet someone through work, but many might consider the risk of drama to not be worth it.

This became a fairly explicit minefield after #metoo. Even if the woman is welcoming the advances or even advancing herself, HR is going to try to kibosh it to avoid their own liability/publicity issues.

40% of young men have never approached a woman for a date, right?

The places where it's acceptable to ask a woman out keep narrowing. Can't do it at work - HR complaint. Can't do it at the gym. Can't do it at her work thats icky.

Worst of all, you go to ask her out and she films her rejection, and its put online for you to be mocked - Some Gen Z Men Are So Scared of Getting Filmed They’ve Stopped Dating - People are using others’ dating fails to gain clout — and it’s having a chilling effect on young mens’ love lives [https://metro.co.uk/2025/12/05/millennial-men-blamed-dating-crisis-one-lazy-reason-25146072/]

Oh, have the wrong book and she won't be dating you https://www.dazeddigital.com/life-culture/article/66662/1/liking-any-of-these-10-books-is-an-immediate-red-flag-lolita-american-psycho

Or maybe she just wants you to spend an excessive amount on her https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/relationships/sex/the-2000-dating-rule-to-avoid-frightful-sex-syndrome-from-men/news-story/e22cb2c108507d006ceaa2629fa9a3e9

Have an awkward date, then she might badmouth you on tea app to every woman around. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-08-30/one-of-the-most-popular-apps-in-the-us-is-fuelling-a-gender-war/105706068

But, yeah its mens fault dating is a mess ....

Have an awkward date, then she might badmouth you on tea app to every woman around. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-08-30/one-of-the-most-popular-apps-in-the-us-is-fuelling-a-gender-war/105706068

It’s my understanding that the Tea app was removed from the Apple store. Has that changed?

It's been removed because it was hacked. No doubt there are other apps being used for the same thing.

Oh, have the wrong book and she won't be dating you https://www.dazeddigital.com/life-culture/article/66662/1/liking-any-of-these-10-books-is-an-immediate-red-flag-lolita-american-psycho

Thanks for the recommendation list!

Or maybe she just wants you to spend an excessive amount on her https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/relationships/sex/the-2000-dating-rule-to-avoid-frightful-sex-syndrome-from-men/news-story/e22cb2c108507d006ceaa2629fa9a3e9

lol @ spending $2,000 on used goods. A whore that fucks like a prude, indeed.

From "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!": Adventures of a Curious Character by Richard Feynman:

“OK,” he says. “The whole principle is this: The guy wants to be a gentleman. He doesn’t want to be thought of as impolite, crude, or especially a cheapskate. As long as the girl knows the guy’s motives so well, it’s easy to steer him in the direction she wants him to go.

“Therefore,” he continued, “under no circumstances be a gentleman! You must disrespect the girls. Furthermore, the very first rule is, don’t buy a girl anything –– not even a package of cigarettes — until you’ve asked her if she’ll sleep with you, and you’re convinced that she will, and that she’s not lying.”

“Uh… you mean… you don’t… uh… you just ask them?”

“OK,” he says, “I know this is your first lesson, and it may be hard for you to be so blunt. So you might buy her one thing — just one little something — before you ask. But on the other hand, it will only make it more difficult.”

Well, someone only has to give me the principle, and I get the idea. All during the next day I built up my psychology differently: I adopted the attitude that those bar girls are all bitches, that they aren’t worth anything, and all they’re in there for is to get you to buy them a drink, and they’re not going to give you a goddamn thing; I’m not going to be a gentleman to such worthless bitches, and so on. I learned it till it was automatic.

Then that night I was ready to try it out. I go into the bar as usual, and right away my friend says, “Hey, Dick! Wait’ll you see the girl I got tonight! She had to go change her clothes, but she’s coming right back.”

“Yeah, yeah,” I say, unimpressed, and I sit at another table to watch the show. My friend’s girl comes in just as the show starts, and I’m thinking, “I don’t give a damn how pretty she is; all she’s doing is getting him to buy her drinks, and she’s going to give him nothing!”

After the first act my friend says, “Hey, Dick! I want you to meet Ann. Ann, this is a good friend of mine, Dick Feynman.”

I say “Hi” and keep looking at the show.

A few moments later Ann says to me, “Why don’t you come and sit at the table here with us?”

I think to myself, “Typical bitch: he’s buying her drinks, and she’s inviting somebody else to the table.” I say, “I can see fine from here.”

A little while later a lieutenant from the military base nearby comes in, dressed in a nice uniform. It isn’t long, before we notice that Ann is sitting over on the other side of the bar with the lieutenant!

Later that evening I’m sitting at the bar, Ann is dancing with the lieutenant, and when the lieutenant’s back is toward me and she’s facing me, she smiles very pleasantly to me. I think again, “Some bitch! Now she’s doing this trick on the lieutenant even!”

Then I get a good idea: I don’t look at her until the lieutenant can also see me, and then I smile back at her, so the lieutenant will know what’s going on. So her trick didn’t work for long.

A few minutes later she’s not with the lieutenant any more, but asking the bartender for her coat and handbag, saying in a loud, obvious voice, “I’d like to go for a walk. Does anybody want to go for a walk with me?”

I think to myself, “You can keep saying no and pushing them off, but you can’t do it permanently, or you won’t get anywhere. There comes a time when you have to go along.” So I say coolly, “I’ll walk with you.” So we go out. We walk down the street a few blocks and see a cafe, and she says, “I’ve got an idea — let’s get some coffee and sandwiches, and go over to my place and eat them.”

The idea sounds pretty good, so we go into the cafe and she orders three coffees and three sandwiches and I pay for them. As we’re going out of the cafe, I think to myself, “Something’s wrong: too many sandwiches!”

On the way to her motel she says, “You know, I won’t have time to eat these sandwiches with you, because a lieutenant is coming over…” I think to myself, “See, I flunked. The master gave me a lesson on what to do, and I flunked. I bought her $1.10 worth of sandwiches, and hadn’t asked her anything, and now I know I’m gonna get nothing! I have to recover, if only for the pride of my teacher.”

I stop suddenly and I say to her, “You… are worse than a WHORE!”

“Whaddya mean?”

“”You got me to buy these sandwiches, and what am I going to get for it? Nothing!”

“Well, you cheapskate!” she says. “If that’s the way you feel, I’ll pay you back for the sandwiches!”

I called her bluff: “Pay me back, then.”

She was astonished. She reached into her pocketbook, took out the little bit of money that she had and gave it to me. I took my sandwich and coffee and went off.

After I was through eating, I went back to the bar to report to the master. I explained everything, and told him I was sorry that I flunked, but I tried to recover.

He said very calmly, “It’s OK, Dick; it’s all right. Since you ended up not buying her anything, she’s gonna sleep with you tonight.”

“What?”

“That’s right,” he said confidently; “she’s gonna sleep with you. I know that.”

“But she isn’t even here! She’s at her place with the lieu —”

“It’s all right.”

Two o’clock comes around, the bar closes, and Ann hasn’t appeared. I ask the master and his wife if I can come over to their place again. They say sure. Just as we’re coming out of the bar, here comes Ann, running across Route 66 toward me. She puts her arm in mine, and says, “Come on, let’s go over to my place.”

The master was right. So the lesson was terrific!

When I was back at Cornell in the fall, I was dancing with the sister of a grad student, who was visiting from Virginia. She was very nice, and suddenly I got this idea: “Let’s go to a bar and have a drink,” I said.

On the way to the bar I was working up nerve to try the master’s lesson on an ordinary girl. After all, you don’t feel so bad disrespecting a bar girl who’s trying to get you to buy her drinks — but a nice, ordinary, Southern girl?

We went into the bar, and before I sat down, I said, “Listen, before I buy you a drink, I want to know one thing: Will you sleep with me tonight?”

“Yes.”

So it worked even with an ordinary girl! But no matter how effective the lesson was, I never really used it after that. I didn’t enjoy doing it that way. But it was interesting to know that things worked much differently from how I was brought up.

And from "Be A Skittles Man" by Chateau Heartiste:

Reader Fabian linked to a funny entry on the ‘Don’t Date Him Girl’ blog:

He had several “lady friends” who stayed the night at his house and he claimed they were “Just friends”. He frequently forgot important details about me, such as the fact that I had a sister, my birthday and what sorts of hobbies I had. He blew me off constantly, would return calls a week later with the excuse of “I was busy.” I often spoiled him with gifts, rides and sex only to receive a bag of Skittles in return. (I don’t even like skittles!) That was the only gift I ever received from him! I met a new friend and we were bonding over “worst ex-boyfriend stories” and suddenly we realized “boy, a lot of these sound the same… Was his name ____?” IT WAS THE SAME GUY!!!

In an unintentional juxtaposition for the ages, reader joel left a comment in my Pimp Slap post about a wedding he attended:

I just attended a wedding the  bill for which, paid mostly by the parents of the bride but with substantial input from the groom’s parents, would easily pay for the private education of several children. It could have paid for a modest but nice house in a good neighborhood in many parts of the country. Hint: The flowers cost about $15,000.

It is amazing what the matriarchy does. The Darwinian purpose of this, I believe, is to keep the husbands working their asses off, and keep them broke, so they can’t go out and buy a younger woman for their next wife or keep a concubine.

Really. There is no other logical explanation for this excess.

Two men, two vastly different experiences with women. One man gets all the pussy he wants for the bargain basement price of a bag of Skittles, while the other man marries a woman in a wedding ceremony featuring flowers that cost $15,000.

How much you want to bet the first guy’s rotation of girlfriends is hotter than the second guy’s $15,000 flower wife? How much you want to bet the first guy gets all the anal sex and blowjobs he desires while the second guy will be begging for his once-a-month sex as soon as the vows are exchanged? If one of these guys is a herb, who is it more likely to be?

FACT: Odds are good you will enjoy a bounty of pussy and love if you act like Skittles guy. FACT: Odds are good you will spend the rest of your life begging for tepid sex from the same old boring pussy if you act like $15,000 wedding flower guy.

Be a Skittles man. Don’t be a $15,000 wedding flower man.

The biggest tragedy of the whole PUA scene is that all those guru book authors learn all those tricks that work on women, but then many of them fail to learn tricks that work on men. So they come off as blowhards with their heads so far up their asses that few want to learn anything from them.

My working theory is that PUA/TRP is unpopular largely not because men don't want to be the Skittles guy. They don't want to be like Chateau Heartiste.

Been reading some insistent advice on twitter that you can meet women out at dance classes or in book clubs.

I've tried the dance classes, and the gender ratio tends to be skewed towards males... and the women tend to bring their own partners.

So you've got a small pool of available women with a circling school of dudes trying to elbow in. I can see why that'd be daunting for single women, and potentially drive some of them away.

The book club... that's asking for quite a bit of commitment for something that has very small odds of working out, and has some small chance of backfiring.

And even if those were two viable options, its still an indictment that we've so severely narrowed the acceptable arenas to meeting others outside the apps.

When a man discloses such a thing in mixed online spaces, common reactions are:

  • Ugh, why would you join dance classes to try to meet women? Women are there to dance, not to get pestered by men.
  • Ugh, why would you join book clubs to try to meet women? Women are there to discuss books, not to get pestered by men.
  • You were unsuccessful because women could sense you were attending the dance classes and book clubs in bad faith.

A man is not supposed to approach dating strategically or with premeditation, for it tarnishes women’s Disneyian conception of romance as a spontaneous, magical phenomenon that Just Happens.

Ding ding ding.

You also have to obscure your motivations... which makes you behave even sketchier!

"Oh no, I just REALLY like discussing early 20th century Gothic literature with this lovely group of 30-something ladies. It has NAUGHT to do with the two hotties sitting over there in the corner wearing the black lipgloss, my thoughts are as pure as the driven snow."

Because as you say, if they dislike the attention, then they have the option of saying "don't invade womens' spaces just to date them, you have to respect their boundaries!" and exiling you without fanfare.

Doesn't matter is some subset of the women absolutely would accept your advances.

That said, I find it painful to dive into activities where the sole motive is trying to partner up. If the activity isn't enjoyable by itself, then I'd just rather not participate.

What a depressing article on red flag books. Talk about high on your own supply.

https://www.dazeddigital.com/life-culture/article/66662/1/liking-any-of-these-10-books-is-an-immediate-red-flag-lolita-american-psycho

I'm not going to read the article, but just in the URL I can see my wife's two favorite books she made me read.

The book thing is so weird. A female friend has commented that she would kill for a man who doesn't play vidya and reads real books (where real is defined as non-YA and non-self-help). To then try to filter based on whether a man is reading the "correct" non-problematic books is hilariously picky.

I think this is one of those cases where the things people complain about in romantic partners (problematic beliefs in men, women being "crazy" or demanding) are actually more like revealed preference in favor of associated attributes than they are negative judgments.

People complain about downsides belonging to partners they made love to, they aren't even aware of the downsides of those they don't.

"Be politically involved and have your own opinions!"

[Does this]

"No, not like that! You're only supposed to be able to do that if it's going to lead to a conclusion that I'm already winning in!"

Doesn't seem that complicated to me. There are a bunch of ancillary skills can that make this tolerable, but people who have to take the book advice thing from social media generally don't possess those nor can they realistically develop them at this point.

But leading with that is just kind of a symptom of, like, just being low-quality in general. At least the 6/6/6-seekers [with few other qualifications] are honest about how naked that self-interest is, and are selecting for people who also do that, as they should. It doesn't make for a great marriage, but neither do the "you read wrongthink books" people.

I am simply trying to create an alternative narrative for what might be going on. Likely it is a combination of several things.

Let us say female standards have increased to the point where "just" 5-10% of young men are actually just shit out of luck basically no matter what they do. Then add worsening social skills due to spending less time in person, which makes it so interactions between the sexes are more awkward, further reducing the chances of them leading to anything. A portion of men probably got rejected a handful of times in a row, and generalized that to mean they were undateable. Dating being replaced by hookup culture probably also explains some of it. Young people might report being single and childless but still have casual sex on the side, which would not always be obvious from the statistics. And then the people who are only looking for something more serious could easily give up because finding someone who wants to commit is so hard. Finally add what I wrote above about just not wanting do date, and I think we start to have a plausible-sounding explanation.

I just do not believe that all of it should be blamed on women wanting an unrealistic fantasy.

I just do not believe that all of it should be blamed on women wanting an unrealistic fantasy.

Its okay, woman blame men for all of it:

apparently men don't update their dating profiles enough - https://metro.co.uk/2025/12/05/millennial-men-blamed-dating-crisis-one-lazy-reason-25146072/

I don't even need snark with this one - How The Rise Of Healthy Dating Standards Is 'Screwing Over' Men https://www.yourtango.com/self/how-healthy-dating-standards-screwing-over-men

oh they want an emotionally open man, until they don't https://www.huffpost.com/entry/mankeeping-dating-burnout-goog_l_688bd9dde4b041333e5b84ea/amp

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/21/magazine/men-heterofatalism-dating-relationships.html

after all dating men makes woman's lives worse https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2025/sep/27/us-women-single-dating

oh, and having a boyfriend is embarrassing these days https://www.vogue.com/article/is-having-a-boyfriend-embarrassing-now

I just do not believe that all of it should be blamed on women wanting an unrealistic fantasy.

Can we blame the social forces/media that women are susceptible to for inculcating those unrealistic fantasies?

Maybe regulate those factors a bit?

China Did.

Sure, but good luck with that. The US are so against social media regulation that they threatened the EU, a collection of sovereign foreign nations, for doing exactly that.

Well, there are caveats.

Likewise, sports gambling and gambling ads were banned for a long time. Tobacco ads were banned in living memory b/c of health implications.

Me, I think it would be simple enough to just mandate that every social media site that hits above a certain userbase size must open-source their algorithm.

To a degree this is similar to mandating 'Nutrition Facts' on food. People are consuming content from a source that is completely opaque about how that content is selected and curated.

Hard to see a 1A concern there.

consider the risk of drama to not be worth it

I mean, that's kind of the thing right there, isn't it?

Wirehead's gotten a lot better, as you described (MMO guilds/Discord communities, [both gender's preferred] porn, etc.), and women are more openly hostile to men than they were in the generation that's [hopelessly outmatched when] trying to advise them.

The market clearing price has raised to the point low-quality personnel on either side just can't compete, which is what "6/6/6 or bust" (and the fuzzier/less clear-cut ways men express this) is ultimately an expression of.

Ironically it's the unearned hostility from women that's keeping prices higher than they would otherwise be, which of course is why the rich want them to be raised that way.

From a matchmaker. Almost as convincing as your old OKCupid survey.

We've been over the flaws in your analysis before. You won't accept them because one cannot be reasoned out of a position one did not reason himself into. Your personal disappointment over my lying eyes, obviously we will both trust our respective sources.

  • -10

Almost as convincing as your old OKCupid survey.

Still waiting on data to contradict it.

Have you seen the extremely comprehensive data from tinder that shows basically the exact same thing?

Here's a youtube video based on that data if that's more appealing.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=3pvkgUc9Zbc?si=Tktvaz4PBg-Vsr5K

Your personal disappointment over my lying eyes, obviously we will both trust our respective sources.

You can keep saying this, but I sincerely suspect you don't actually believe it.

I just like to believe true things.

You can keep saying this, but I sincerely suspect you don't actually believe it.

I'm sure it's a comforting cope to believe that, but I do in fact mean what I say. Your "data" is not meaningful, any more than that Times of India article. (Women today choose not to have children for many reasons besides "Chad wouldn't give me one" and while you can argue their choices are bad, they aren't for the reasons you insist.)

I just like to believe true things

No. No, you tell yourself that. But what you like to believe is things that reinforce your sense of injustice inflicted upon you by the world. You construct just-so stories that reinforce a particular narrative, you take surveys as "data" and you dismiss any other model of human behavior because it doesn't fit your priors.

Reported for being antagonistic and uncharitable — not that it matters, since, as a mod, Amadan is Above The Rules.

Quis purgabit ipsos janitores?

Your "data" is not meaningful

I don't think you're the one who determines that, actually.

You could convince me otherwise, but that would require laying down some kind of groundwork.

But what you like to believe is things that reinforce your sense of injustice inflicted upon you by the world. You construct just-so stories that reinforce a particular narrative, you take surveys as "data" and you dismiss any other model of human behavior because it doesn't fit your priors.

This is so wildly incorrect about my mode of thinking I can't even take offense to it, its like you threw a rock at my head but it flew off into the thicket of trees about 100 feet to my right and scared a Bobcat.

I genuinely have no sense of 'injustice inflicted upon me by the world.' Its just people, treating other people in ways they might not want to be treated in return, if anything.

Its rather interesting, however, that you think my data about large scale social trends leads me to wrong conclusions...

But you think your assessment of the inner workings of another person's mind is going to be spot on based on limited interactions.

Genuinely, explain your epistemic philosophy that lets you make confident conclusions about individual psychology whilst ALSO denouncing data-based analysis of trends. I want to hear it.

You don't do* "data-based analysis of trends." You post surveys and magazine articles that reinforce your opinion. But to give you a bit of allowance here, the problem is not so much that the surveys don't have meaningful data ("the dating market is a disaster and everyone is unhappy"), but the conclusions you draw from that.

I'll indulge your demand to explain my "epistemic philosophy" when you stop confidently declaring that people don't really believe the things they say because you disagree with them.

You post surveys and magazine articles that reinforce your opinion.

See, you seem to think I search out these studies specifically because I already formed a belief.

You can look back through years of posts and you might notice my opinion is the result of finding dozens upon dozens of various surveys, studies, anecdotes and data that all pointed to where I'm at now.

The data is the reason I developed this particular opinion.

And I will develop it further if you, or anyone else, can give me some reason to reach a different conclusion.

It DOES reinforce my opinion when I tell people who disagree with me that I am willing to look at their data and change my mind and they don't provide any.

It STRONGLY SUGGESTS that you are forming your opinion from... what, exactly? What feels better to believe? I have a few hypotheses.

But the longer you go without providing any data in response, the more I conclude that contradictory data does not exist.

Because I've looked.

when you stop confidently declaring that people don't really believe the things they say because you disagree with them.

That seems to be the standard you're applying. I'm game to play along.

I think you don't believe that I'm disappointed with the 'injustices' allegedly heaped upon me or that I have some deep-seated bias against women, because I can assure you I have never said any words to that effect, and I've often said the opposite.

I've never claimed that the world owes me, or that something I'm entitled to has been taken, or that I blame the opposite sex for my misery. Also, I'm not miserable. If I felt that way... I'D SAY IT.

I understand if it seems frustrating, but you're in one of the few places on the public internet where one is expected to stand by their beliefs as stated rather than hop back and forth between your true beliefs and the beliefs that are easy to defend.

I'm stating exactly what I think, why I think it, and inviting the attacks on it. I can even lay out pretty specific terms for what would change my mind on this issue.

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A professional matchmaker is almost by definition dealing with very picky clientele; refusing to settle is a reason to wind up with a matchmaker to begin with.

If the data were based solely on matchmaker reports sure.

But its in the survey data. More women are college educated these days. College educated women are VASTLY more picky.

Its literally women saying it themselves that they can't find partners who meet their expectations.

When the data, the anecdotes, the personal observations and the testimony from 'experts' end up all pointing at the same direction, I am just inclined to Occam's Razor that they're probably pretty accurate.

There is another possibility- that acceptable men are genuinely less common.

Drug, gambling, and video game addictions are vastly more common than they were, for one thing.

Drug, gambling, and video game addictions are vastly more common than they were, for one thing.

So are alcoholism, drug addiction, addiction to pornographic literature and trashy YA fiction, obesity, mental illness, prescription drug abuse among women.

We could try that chicken/egg argument. (Which phenomena came first? Would guys turn to drugs, gambling and video games if they believed they could land a wife by not doing those things?) I'll stipulate that there's a feedback loop. I will not stipulate that if men were to quit drugs, gambling, and video games that women would find them attractive by default.

Once again we have that data I just posted. Non-college-educated women tend to have 'reasonable' standards. But there are more college-educated women than before, so on average women's standards have risen.

There are also more college educated men now than there were before. If we think men have gotten worse, then that's suggesting that college education doesn't make you a better partner.

And if you make that argument, then explain why women getting college degrees makes them want better partners.

So no, I'd say, in the education department, men have generally gotten better on average.

And the blaring piece of evidence where obese women won't settle for obese men.

I think that's the obvious asymmetry. Both genders have (on average) gotten less physically appealing. Only one isn't willing to adjust their own standards to this fact.

Six pack: this presumably any man could achieve with sufficient exercise (and diet control) though it might be difficult to do concurrently with a six figure job.

This is the first time I’ve not heard the third 6 referring to inches. Is this a common alternative? 6 ft, 6 figures, 6 inches. Is how I’ve always understood it

It's actually Adm/Dip/Mil

I would assume that guys insecure about their cock list it as inches, while those insecure about their fitness list it as pack.

Hey, don't give the single ladies any ideas. 6/6/6/6 is gonna be even more rare

I've seen both examples before. It's nothing really new.

Unless we’re talking about a young single female member of some religious conservative subculture (in which case she’s scarcely relevant to this discussion) then developing agreeableness and submissiveness as personality traits is a completely countercultural step for a young woman in the current social reality. She’d have to assert iron will to remove herself from her social circle, basically sever contact with most of her friends, classmates, family members etc. and reject mainstream cultural messaging. This’d entail a level of human agency and anti-social traits most women don’t have. And we haven’t even addressed all the guidance and knowledge she’d need.

Decadent modern society normalizes and incentivizes unhealthy behaviors which erode women’s ability to stay slim: binge-watching streamed material, snacking, drinking, pigging out, being a couch potato etc.

The average women reaches peak fertility and thus attractiveness roughly between the ages of 19-23. It then plateaus out and enters an ever faster decline after the age of 27 or so. We’re talking about a few years only, and those go by fast. You’re not getting them back. Most women spend those years either in college or being newbie employees, usually in a situation where they are removed from the social circle they grew accustomed to as teenagers. The modern world buzzes and spins, the culture pulsates around you, offering a million distractions.

This’d entail a level of human agency and anti-social traits most women don’t have.

And it also is correlated against being pleasant and agreeable.

It then plateaus out and enters an ever faster decline after the age of 27 or so.

That's it, 28 year old women of the globe, may as well throw yourselves off a cliff! The 50 to 80 year old man looking for the new squeeze is not even going to look at the side of the road you're on! 🤣

This is, in part, why I laugh about male sexuality being so goddamn easy. You can't really blame women for exploiting something that you leave wide open like that. "Dye my hair blonde, put on a corset, a pair of high heels, and twirl my hair at him - profit!"

LOL. Why the snark? I stated that female fertility starts declining at the age of 27 on average and that this decline has an ever faster pace. What's so controversial about that?

Yeah I don't get this either, America has plenty of submissive virgin white women but they all belong to conservative religious denominations and why wouldn't they? What's in it for a secular women to remain a virgin until marriage? Why would she do that our entire culture is set up against that both men and women are expected to have relationships in high school and university. And while the social penalty is much less than for men make no mistake a modern secular western woman who remains a virgin too long does receive a social penalty from both women and men. Furthermore a young woman who has abstained from sex and relationships into her mid-twenties likely has a low libido or hang ups about sex, otherwise why would she be ok waiting? Men online who want this are just setting themselves up for disappointment.

Men who want a wife like that should join a conservative religion or look abroad because searching for a chaste virgin on the apps is like hunting penguins in the Sahara why in the world would they be there?

  • And while the social penalty is much less than for men make no mistake a modern secular western woman who remains a virgin to long does receive a social penalty from both women and men. Furthermore a young woman who has abstained from sex and relationships into her mid-twenties likely has a low libido or hang ups about sex, otherwise why would she be ok waiting? Men online who want this are just setting themselves up for disappointment.

My wife and I were gossiping the other night about friends of ours from college, and a pattern emerged that women who "waited" for non-religious reasons often wound up missing the window when they could have locked down a good husband.

Slim/attractive (they're mostly the same thing): partially driven by genetics? But still, exercise and diet go a long way here.

You can diet and exercise to be slim and as toned as necessary, but if you're horse-faced or just don't have that 'current standards of what constitutes attractive' features, it won't help. "Plain Jane" is a term, for a reason. It doesn't necessarily mean "short, fat, otherwise objectionable", mostly "not hot".

Men and women do judge things differently; yeah you'll be 20-something for ten years, but then you turn 30 from 29 and now suddenly you're a hag? Leo DiCaprio is probably the extreme here, but note his rotating list of girlfriends who get swapped out for a younger model when they age out of what he clearly deems an acceptable age range, while he continues to get older (seems he's been with the current squeeze a whole three years! Just another three years to go before she hits 30 and we'll see if the relationship continues or not).

You can diet and exercise to be slim and as toned as necessary, but if you're horse-faced or just don't have that 'current standards of what constitutes attractive' features, it won't help. "Plain Jane" is a term, for a reason. It doesn't necessarily mean "short, fat, otherwise objectionable", mostly "not hot".

In 2026 I'd submit that just being not fat actually goes a long way even if you're a bit mid facially. Obesity and interesting bodymod decisions have reshuffled the attractiveness deck a fair bit from where it would have been 50 years ago.

Consider this please: picture Sarah Jessica Parker from the first season of SaTC. Now imagine her as a fatso redneck woman. Does it not make a difference?

You can diet and exercise to be slim and as toned as necessary, but if you're horse-faced or just don't have that 'current standards of what constitutes attractive' features, it won't help.

This is just my personal opinion and there probably aren't any rigorous surveys on the topic, but I strongly disagree. Skinniness is among the largest components in a woman's attractiveness (though probably rivaled or surpassed by the skin elasticity of youth), and having a big chin or a "horse face" (or, for that matter, large breasts) pales in comparison.

This is just my personal opinion and there probably aren't any rigorous surveys on the topic, but I strongly disagree. Skinniness is among the largest components in a woman's attractiveness (though probably rivaled or surpassed by the skin elasticity of youth), and having a big chin or a "horse face" (or, for that matter, large breasts) pales in comparison.

Agreed. Unless the woman looks like the guy in "Mask," if she is fit and in her fertile years, she'll have lots of male interest.

It's an interesting fact about modern America that 99% of women can choose to have a period of 15 to 20 years in which they can make an excellent living off of their looks alone by being an exotic dancer. Or if they don't want to go that route, 99% of women can obtain a lifelong financial commitment from a man of substantial means.

99% of women can obtain a lifelong financial commitment from a man of substantial means.

This is, of course, untrue. 99% of women can probably bang a man of substantial means, but that's not the same thing at all.

This is, of course, untrue. 99% of women can probably bang a man of substantial means, but that's not the same thing at all.

I disagree. I regularly work out at the gym and see just how attractive a plain woman can be if (1) she is in her early 20s; and (2) she is in great shape. Such a woman would have no problem getting a marriage proposal from some lonely but successful tech bro.

I doubt this. She can probably get a date, yes, but a lonely but successful techbro is not going to marry his girlfriend on double quick time.

I doubt this. She can probably get a date, yes, but a lonely but successful techbro is not going to marry his girlfriend on double quick time.

I disagree, there are a lot of lonely guys out there who have money but zero success with women.

What do you make of the experiment I proposed a few posts over:

You create an online dating profile of a young woman who is plain in terms of facial attractiveness but in excellent physical shape. You say in the profile that you are interested only in financially successful marriage-minded men and that you will entertain only detailed replies which make clear that the man is both financially successful and marriage minded. I'm pretty confident that such a dating profile would get lots of serious interest. I take it you disagree?

She'd get a lot of interest. How much of it would be serious is a different problem, and one that is impossible for even the men messaging her to assess neutrally.

Besides the basic problem of a man stringing her along, one of the great tragedies of human life is that your hypothetical desperate tech bro is lonely and has zero success with women, but the moment this girl starts dating him he will not be lonely and he will not have had zero success with women.

Human relationships are so difficult because the deal is changing in real time as it is being executed. We say to the hot girl, go date the lonely techbro niceguy, he'll worship you because he can't get anyone else. But sometimes, by showing interest in the lonely tech bro niceguy, the hot girl improves his status so much, that he isn't lonely and he isn't a niceguy anymore, and he takes his new found confidence on the road.

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No. Young, thin, athletic women with excellent social skills, in an economically vibrant area might, I suppose. I've never known anyone like that, the tech bro is probably lucky to have her.

No. Young, thin, athletic women with excellent social skills, in an economically vibrant area might, I suppose. I've never known anyone like that, the tech bro is probably lucky to have her.

In theory, this issue should not be extremely hard to test. You create an online dating profile of a young woman who is plain in terms of facial attractiveness but in excellent physical shape. You say in the profile that you are interested only in financially successful marriage-minded men and that you will entertain only detailed replies which make clear that the man is both financially successful and marriage minded. I'm pretty confident that such a dating profile would get lots of serious interest. I take it you disagree?

I don't have a very clear image of either a 2nd percentile female face, or of what the app scene is like, but the latter sounds pretty dire from reports, so sure, she might get some serious interest there. Or LLM approximations thereof. And then if she generally behaves well, doesn't ghost serious men, makes good choices, is actually compatible with a man who wants marriage, then she might in fact find a well off husband. Or maybe he would string her along for a few years hoping he could do better but still enjoying the sex, and eventually they would break up, and they would be both be a couple of years older, but it would mean more to her than to him.

It's not that the marriage and family version of the story never happens. It's just that there are a lot of ifs and uncertainties, a lot of places where it might not work out, after investing quite a bit of effort. Which happens to men as well, but I'm not arguing that men have it easier.

So my argument isn't that she won't get interest, or even a relationship, but that many of those 99 thin but ugly women will just end up in a relationship that wastes their youth without obtaining a commitment, unless they have a lot else going for them. Especially if the man is sensible and realizes that if they marry and have kids, her body will change, and she will probably become fatter and more sedentary over time.

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Women in their 20's who work out regularly do not make up 99% of women.

Women in their 20's who work out regularly do not make up 99% of women.

Agreed and I have not claimed otherwise.

(And should 99% of 20yo women magically start working out and seek techbro husbands, said techbros would become much pickier.)

(And should 99% of 20yo women magically start working out and seek techbro husbands, said techbros would become much pickier.)

Agreed and I have not claimed otherwise.

Yes, this.

Exactly. I haven't been on a dating app in a few years due to finding a wife and settling down, but a good 30-40% of the dating pool is obese or very overweight in most places. Plainness is a thing but simply being able to see your feet as a girl is generally going to get you into the 7's tier in the modern dating market if you're just a mid. Also modern medicine/surgery/makeup means a lot of the stuff that'd mark you as 'plain' 100 years ago has been reasonably combatted in modernity whilst it's comparatively difficult to hide obesity in person.

You say that now, while surrounded by fat women, but clearly in times and places where most women were thin, they weren't all equally attractive.

This is true, plus in those times there was less makeup and mild corrective/cosmetic surgery. However in 2026 skinny goes a long way

Indeed, in some past times, skinny women were being encouraged to put on some of those voluptuous, curvy pounds.

Most of the "ideal" women in these ads would count as "skinny" in 2026, with the "skinny" versions being called "anorexic".

It's still the case that women's thinness is virtually always mentioned negatively in older writing (often because it's linked with looking old, but not always), while "plump" is a universally positive descriptor with no ceiling I'm aware of. There are pre-20th-century novels that feature fat girls, even, and while it's sometimes a mean shorthand for the character being morally shallow, there's not a lot of implication that these characters will be repulsive to men. By contrast, having smallpox scars, having thin hair, having "a squint" (seemingly a lazy eye?), a horse-face or a hunch, these are features that seem somewhat common and are called out as unattractive, although not strictly in a dealbreaker way.

I'd imagine that more structured clothing might have made a difference, since everybody has a nice WHR when they're in a corset while modern thin knitwear looks bad on anyone 20+ BMI. But still, the fact that all the unattractive-coded features I mentioned above have now been pushed into "actual deformity" territory says something about the relative nature of beauty standards over time.

There's a big difference between being thin by choice, and being thin because of malnourishment. This says much more about nutrition than beauty standards.

Indeed. I have commented on this before:

Maybe women now do have ridiculous standards. But so do men.

Women's marriage standards are "six feet, six figures, six inches." Men's marriage standards are "teenage virgin". These are not the same. Every woman was a teenage virgin once (modulo the few who got broken in as lolis). Most men never meet the three sixes. There isn't a possible world where most women get what they want (becoming the exclusive wife of a top man); there is a possible world where most men get what they want, and we lived in it from the abolition of polygamy until the sexual revolution.

Never forget what they took from you.

And:

Yeah, great post. If you want a hot, relatively chaste, young, smart right-leaning woman, that’s not impossible, but you better be the equivalent of that as a man, namely a successful, attractive, charming, relatively young guy who probably has similar values, which in the case of chastity is likely some kind of religious conservatism. Young Mormon men seem to have no issue marrying chaste(ish) pretty blondes who will vote for Romney and deliver 3-4 children, because that’s their milieu. Too often some chubby suburban secular engineer whose primary hobbies are video games and online political discussion thinks he deserves the same.

The fact that you think these are equivalent requirements shows how ridiculously lopsided the sexual marketplace is against men. All a woman needs to do is be young and chaste, which is something every girl was at some point, and vote for a party that half the country supports. Meanwhile, a man who has spent decades studying and working to become an engineer or a lawyer is told "whoops, sorry, that's not enough, you also need to have interesting (to women) hobbies, be physically fit, and have a handsome face; I'm sure you will find time and energy to do all while you are working at a ridiculously demanding intellectual job, and also you better get all of that done way before you turn 35 because otherwise the idea of you marrying a 23 year old is just creepy!"

In other words, every aspect of a man's life, from his career to his hobbies to his body, must be optimized for attracting women, and it is no one's fault but his own if he fails.

"Women don't care about your struggles, they wait at the finish line and fuck the winners." -- Richard Cooper, The Unplugged Alpha

I know it's tempting to go meta and do some kind of both-sides moral equivalence thing here, but I think that's just wrong. Female sexuality is fundamentally stupid and evil in a way that male sexuality simply isn't.

Female sexuality is fundamentally stupid and evil in a way that male sexuality simply isn't.

This kind of comment reminds me oddly of feminist arguments that men are evil because they're, well, men. And I suspect that to some degree a statement such as this is borne of years of exposure to precisely such arguments (though I'm speculating.)

I'm more sympathetic to railing against individual women than against the entirety of the dance. At the risk of breaking into parody, you have a choice: Accept the dispassionate world as it is and deal with it as best you can, or complain incessantly against the unfairness of it all.

To some extent the railing against female sexuality in the western world is done by the very people who suggest that the asexual/androgynous model, where we eschew our roles and meet in some vague middle and ignore the elephant of sexual differences in the room, is equally unpalatable and goes against nature, or whatever.

It doesn't have to be one way or the other. We've created the current monsters of dating apps and optimizing romance (or sex, if you prefer). This model will then fail to the degree that it is unsustainable, leaving the bodies of a lot of lonely hearts, newly minted lesbians, or angry incels in its wake. Or it will transmogrify into something worse. I think, however, that as reassuring as it may be to lay it all on women, it is not particularly helpful.

I don't think wanting a harem of hot nubile young women is more stupid or evil then wanting one hot guy to commit to you. Also I don't think that most modern western men actually want a teenaged virgin. Hot young woman sure, but most men these days are not that into virgins. Nor commitment part of the what they took from you is a family plenty of men and women don't want kids these days and judging by the number of single moms with dad nowhere in the picture , rampant among the lower classes plenty of men don't care much about their kids or families.

The fact that you think these are equivalent requirements shows how ridiculously lopsided the sexual marketplace is against men. All a woman needs to do is be young and chaste, which is something every girl was at some point, and vote for a party that half the country supports. Meanwhile, a man who has spent decades studying and working to become an engineer or a lawyer is told "whoops, sorry, that's not enough, you also need to have interesting (to women) hobbies, be physically fit, and have a handsome face; I'm sure you will find time and energy to do all while you are working at a ridiculously demanding intellectual job, and also you better get all of that done way before you turn 35 because otherwise the idea of you marrying a 23 year old is just creepy!"

No you're missing the point. Mormons get to marry hot virgin blondes because chastity is part of the culture. You don't need to be an engineer to live that life you need to be a Mormon. The basic requirements in Mormon culture to get a slim virgin wife is to have served your mission. So no, if your goal is to marry a virgin and have a traditional marriage all that time being an engineer is a waste of time because that's not how modern secular western culture works, a women who is a virgin too long sees her sexual value decrease, guys don't want to hook up with virgins because they're "too clingy" and even her girlfriends would judge her eventually. Waiting for marriage is just not a thing in modern secular culture. But as a Mormon or half a dozen other conservative religious subcultures you only need a job that can rent an apartment and a good reputation in the faith and there you go you can easily marry a teenage virgin.

Our fictional engineer is not out of luck, however, he simply needs to to open Filipina.com and he'll have dozens of young pretty women falling all over him.

the idea of you marrying a 23 year old is just creepy!"

This will still exist but are you really telling me you'd turn down a marriage with a hot 20 something because it would annoy some of the most Who annoying people in the world? I actually feel that you are letting the most annoying women possible set the tone. If you look at the marriages actually happening 6/6/6/ isn't really the standard and the father you get away from tiktok and the apps, the better. Who really cares what the tiktok girlies think?

I don't think wanting a harem of hot nubile young women is more stupid or evil then wanting one hot guy to commit to you

I agree, but I think there's an important difference, which is that society has no problem telling men that their fantasy of having a harem is stupid, unrealistic, unreasonable, and will lead to social disapproval if actually pursued. In fact, I was discussing this issue with another poster a few weeks ago, and as a result of that discussion I checked out the /r/polyamory subreddit. They have an explicit rule against men asking for advice on how to set up this kind of poly relationship.

And I think most men in the West have internalized this social norm. Like most straight men, I like the idea of having a harem. However the prospect of being with one and only one female partner doesn't leave me feeling cheated.

By contrast, society is unwilling to tell average women that their fantasy of exclusive commitment from a highly desirable man is just as unrealistic and unreasonable as an average man's fantasy of building a harem. If Mr. Tall Dark and Handsome won't commit, it's because men are bad people. And women are encouraged to feel angry and cheated that their primal desires have gone unfulfilled.

Modern culture includes porn. By what standards is modern culture not telling men that their desire to have lots of consequences free sex with a variety of low commitment partners is OK? I’ll wager by those same standards it’s telling women than they shouldn’t get too hung up on a man’s height/income/fitness.

Modern culture includes porn. By what standards is modern culture not telling men that their desire to have lots of consequences free sex with a variety of low commitment partners is OK?

Umm, by the standard that this is what men are generally told? I mean, it's easy enough to test - just pick a mainstream online forum in which dating is discussed. Say that you are a man and that you would like to have a harem of women, kind of like Elon Musk, or that you would like to jump from young woman to young women, kind of like Leonardo DiCaprio. Say that you are having trouble making this happen, express some frustration, and ask for advice. See what kind of response you get.

By contrast, society is unwilling to tell average women that their fantasy of exclusive commitment from a highly desirable man is just as unrealistic and unreasonable as an average man's fantasy of building a harem. If Mr. Tall Dark and Handsome won't commit, it's because men are bad people. And women are encouraged to feel angry and cheated that their primal desires have gone unfulfilled.

I'd love to see something more concrete than the mere assertion that 'society says this', because from my experience, women are intimately aware of how they rank in the dating market and are able to adjust their expectations accordingly. Indeed, that's why most people were able to couple up - at least until smartphones caused us to stop socialising in person.

If 'society' is truly telling women they are perfect and deserve perfection, why did 'society' only start doing this around 2014 or so?

I'd love to see something more concrete than the mere assertion that 'society says this', because from my experience, women are intimately aware of how they rank in the dating market and are able to adjust their expectations accordingly

In principle, this is not too difficult to test. Pick out a mainstream online forum which discusses sex and relationships such as /r/datingoverthirty; make a post as a young woman who is stuck in a "situationship," -- she is seeing a man whom she finds attractive but he's not interested in formally becoming boyfriend/girlfriend etc. Have her express frustration with the situation and see what the responses are. How many people tell her that the problem is she is trying to date out of her league? Of the people who do give her that kind of advice, what happens to their comments?

Alternatively, just do a Google search and look at the myriad mainstream articles complaining about men being "commitment-phobes" or "Peter Pans" or whatever. Almost all the time, when a woman complains about men being unwilling to commit to her, it's because she is trying to date out of her league, but this is almost never said in these types of articles. Rather, the problem is blamed on men.

If 'society' is truly telling women they are perfect and deserve perfection, why did 'society' only start doing this around 2014 or so?

I think it's always been a problem, but it's gotten worse in the last 10 or 20 years.

I understand this is a useless thing to say, but you're probably getting to the root of the problem here: modern secular culture sucks, and Mormon culture is way better. If you're a modern secular man wanting to wait for marriage, you're mostly going to be out of luck unless you get very lucky somehow. I suppose that goes for the modern secular woman, too

I know it's tempting to go meta and do some kind of both-sides moral equivalence thing here, but I think that's just wrong. Female sexuality is fundamentally stupid and evil in a way that male sexuality simply isn't

I wouldn't go that far but I do think that polygamy is the male equivalent of unreasonable female sexual desires. Just as it's unreasonable for an average woman to want commitment from a highly desirable man, so too is it unreasonable for a man to want a harem. Unreasonable in the sense that the math simply doesn't work. It's not achievable for more than an ultra-small minority.

Even so, we are all descendants of (1) men who did in fact have multiple wives; and (2) average women who nonetheless were married to high-status men. And obviously this evolutionary past heavily informs the sexual desires of both men and women.

The difference, though, is that for the most part, men accept that they are not supposed to engage in harem-building. They may still try, but if they publicly complain about their lack of success, society won't tell them that they are perfectly fine and if they are having difficulties it's because women are unreasonably demanding exclusivity.

By contrast, if an average woman complains about not being able to achieve commitment from a highly desirable man, she will be told that her desires are reasonable and if there's a problem it's with men.

So I would say that (1) female sexuality is stupid and evil; (2) male sexuality is also stupid and evil; (3) for the most part, the stupid and evil aspects of male sexuality are kept in check by societal pressure; and (4) our modern gynocentric/feminist society has greatly lessened the checks on female sexuality, so that (5) it does in fact seem like "[f]emale sexuality is fundamentally stupid and evil in a way that male sexuality simply isn't."

How is wanting commitment-free sex from a rotating harem of virgins less "stupid and evil" than wanting commitment from a "chad" who probably won't commit?

Women don't want to fuck a beta who fundamentally despises them. Truly a mystery and an injustice wrapped in an enigma.

But "commitment-free sex from a rotating harem of virgins", pumping and dumping, is not the male fantasy. It is an adaptation to our current circumstances, where there is no secure rights over women. Much like the rational response to a lack of secure property rights is to steal anything not nailed down, and to hell with tomorrow, the rational response to a lack of secure marital rights is to despoil as many virgins as you can, then dump them before they dump you.

If you look at men's romance, you will see that what men want is a non-rotating harem of virgins who they commit to for life. No man wants to know that the virgin he has fucked is going to get fucked by another man; it kills the soul. "She was never yours, it was just your turn" is a philosophy of despair.

From "The Three Magic Words" by the Dreaded Jim:

For the higher races to reproduce, have to prevent women from continuing to cruise for a higher alpha all their fertile years. If not allowed to cruise, property of the first male they have sex with, and compelled to honor and obey.

For about the cost of two dates, you can have a hooker, and it is not an adequate substitute. Hookers are only a marginal improvement over masturbation. What progressives offer men, a rotating series of hookups, is just not what most men want, as revealed by men’s actions.

Yes, a harem is better than just one wife, but a changing rotation of whores is not a harem. The point of having more than one woman is having more than one woman. If I sleep with several women that is really great. If one of them sleeps with another man that is really bad and I will certainly dump her, probably beat her, and might well kill her. I will be very angry and sad for a very long time.

...

A man needs to own a woman, he needs a house, and land and children. A man that does not own a woman breaks, and a rotating collection of sluts is not ownership.

If she is free to suspend cooperation at any time, men are disinclined to invest in her and her children. You pump and dump, so that if you are lucky, you dump her before she dumps you. You spin the plates to avoid being spun. There is always someone more alpha than you are. You pump and dump because it hurts less that way. Evolution shaped you that way, evolution makes it hurt, so that you would not waste time looking after a chick that becomes pregnant with Jeremy Meeks’s demon spawn. Evolution has planted the knowledge in you that investing in a woman you do not own is a bad investment.

You don’t plant trees on land you don’t own, and if you don’t have some land and plant some trees for your grandkids, it hurts.

Roissy truthfully tells us how to operate in defect/defect equilibrium with women. But the point is to achieve cooperate/cooperate equilibrium.

And from "Female Sexual Preferences" by the same:

Men want to bang every fertile age woman. Woman want to be banged by Mister one in thirty.

Women are allowed to successfully fulfill their goal, men are not allowed to fulfill their goal.

Men want to own a woman. Even successful players find it terribly disturbing and soul destroying that the woman that they bang has banged no end of men before them, and will soon bang someone else. This leads to player burnout. Even marginally successful players soon get burnout. The knowledge slowly soaks in that in the game of players and bitches, the bitches are winning, and even successful players are losing. One soon starts feeling homicidal, and is apt to kill the adulterous woman and or her latest lover. Players counsel other players “avoid oneitis” “She was never yours, it was just your turn”. Bullshit. This is the counsel of despair.

If one cultivates a detached attitude “It was just my turn, she did me a favor”, one avoids homicide, but this is not very satisfactory at all. If one abandons one’s telos, one is psychologically broken, hence player burnout. She was not doing you a favor. You were doing her a favor. If you adopt this attitude, you avoid homicide, but develop other disturbingly weird and unpleasant behaviors and attitudes. It is terribly stressful. Homicide is less stressful. There is a reason why the bible counsels to avoid sluts, but today, nothing but sluts, so what is a man to do?

Successful pursuit of telos requires ownership. One despairs or becomes homicidal because even if one get one dick wet from time to time, one is failing at accomplishing one’s telos. Player burnout is a manifestation of despair. One avoids homicide, but in a world with no female companionship other than sluts, loses one’s soul.

I don't think any of this makes sense. Any 'rational' approach to sex in this sense wouldn't involve sex with women you won't have kids with. A non-secure marriage is still the best route to kids, other than sperm donation. Modern women and men have lifetime single digits of sexual partners and most end up in one or a series of long-term relationships if not an actual marriage. Players and pumping and dumping just aren't the experience most people are having. And if players generally burn out, but many people who get in insecure marriages don't, what does that really say?

Not that this is a knockdown argument against patriarchy or legally enforced marriage commitments, there's more complexity there, it's just that Jim is very wrong.

Dude. You need to stop looking at Dread Jim for life advice. Hating women and wanting them to be property is not a recipe for happiness.

I lost my chance at happiness a long time ago; hate is all that's left.

There are things under your control. I doubt you're so old as to have no opportunities for improvement. Anyway, if morality doesn't sway you, a desire for truth should. Jim is mostly wrong about everything. He tells a compelling story to doomers who want reasons for their hatred, but these doom prohets are not actually insightful or wise, they're just crafty tale-tellers.

They are both stupid. The former is significantly less evil in practice in that 1) If it works for you, like Genghis Khan, then it is what it is; and 2) Its not supported by majority narratives, so it hurts far less people practically.

Now, its true that far more women in the world will secure 6-6-6 men than men will acquire 6+ women harems that are functional. But since several orders of magnitude more women expect 6-6-6 than expect 6+, the former is significantly more evil as an idea in the world. Its kinda like how murderers are more evil than ghosts.

If it works for you, like Genghis Khan, then it is what it is;

And if it doesn't work for you, society isn't going to tell you that you're settling for less than you deserve. And chances are you won't feel anything negative about it. Personally, as a man, I would love to have 3 or 4 concubines -- beautiful, youthful, exclusively committed to me, and accepting of my other relationships. But I don't feel any sense of disappointment or frustration over the fact that I haven't been able to build a harem. If I complained about the situation online, I would be (rightly) mocked. The most positive comments I could expect to receive is a suggestion to go out and get a few billion dollars or become a world-renowned athlete or actor.

Its not supported by majority narratives

Yeah, average women are regularly told, in substance, that they are very desirable; that they should never settle; that they deserve the best; that if their dream-guy won't commit, it's because that guy is a jerk; etc.

How is wanting commitment-free sex from a rotating harem of virgins less "stupid and evil" than wanting commitment from a "chad" who probably won't commit?

There is an important difference which is that society has no problem telling men that their primal desire for a harem is stupid, unreasonable, anti-social, and unrealistic for all but a very small minority of men. And most men have internalized this message. If a man has one wife, at some level he may desire a couple concubines as well but he won't feel outraged or cheated if this desire is not fulfilled.

By contrast, society is very reluctant to tell average women that her desire for exclusive commitment from an extremely desirable man is similarly stupid, unreasonable, and unrealistic. One of the most common female dating complaints is that the woman is in a "situationship" with a man who keeps stringing her along. Outside of a few dark corners of the internet, most of the reaction she will receive is that the man in this situation is a bad person; she won't be told that almost certainly it's because she's an average woman chasing men who are out of her league.

Women don't want to fuck a beta who fundamentally despises them

Fortunately for women, men are much less likely to despise a given woman than the reverse.

Women may despise individual men, but the few who despise men as a class don't want to fuck them.

Incels despise women as a class but still want to fuck them.

I agree men and women should both be given better advice about realistic expectations.

Women may despise individual men, but the few who despise men as a class don't want to fuck them.

Completely disagree. You just need to search social media for women who post things like "I hate men" or "kill all men" and then check up later on their relationship status.

Incels despise women as a class but still want to fuck them.

Well, they despise women BECAUSE those women won't have sex with them. In a hypothetical world where things were arranged so that the vast majority of men could have a respected, socially approved sexual/romantic relationship with a woman, there would be far less of this type of hate.

I agree men and women should both be given better advice about realistic expectations.

It seems to me this is a bit of a cop-out because there is a world of difference between what society says to men and what society says to women as described in my previous post. Generally speaking, society is far more accommodating of female desires and far more eager to blame men for any problems with romantic/sexual relationships.

The women performatively "hating men" mostly do not, by revealed preferences, hate men. Incels really do hate women, and while you can cast them as victims, they are victims only of their own inadequacy and self pity. Society isn't making them feel that way , and society isn't obligated to reorder itself so women who don't want them will want them.

As for their being such a difference in how society treats women, yes women have their own pressures men don't, which many of them find very unfair and oppressive.

I don't think society is as hard for either one as they say, and find whiny feminists and loser men equally insufferable, mostly victims of their own mindset.

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society isn't obligated to reorder itself so women who don't want them will want them.

Completely avoiding the moral judgment, if we don't meet a post-scarcity society soon, societies that wish to continue, or at least, continue supporting the elderly, may begin to attempt this.

Whether they succeed or not is another story entirely, but the desperate flailing may be extremely torturous. When women can achieve status in ways other than marriage, they won't marry, and the baby bust trends with marriage bust.

The women performatively "hating men" mostly do not, by revealed preferences, hate men. Incels really do hate women,

Strong disagree. What percentage of incels do you think would accept a romantic/sexual relationship with a reasonably attractive woman? (In fact, incels regularly tease each other over the fact that most of them would "ascend" if they had the opportunity.)

while you can cast them as victims,

The question is what is the source of their hate, not whether they are victims.

ociety isn't obligated to reorder itself so women who don't want them will want them.

Assuming this is so, so what? Have I stated or implied otherwise?

As for their being such a difference in how society treats women, yes women have their own pressures men don't, which many of them find very unfair and oppressive.

Again, assuming this is so, so what? Does this contradict anything I have said?

I don't think society is as hard for either one as they say, and find whiny feminists and loser men equally insufferable, mostly victims of their own mindset.

Again, assuming this is so, so what? It seems reasonably clear that in the area under discussion, society is far more accepting and accommodating of women's unreasonable desires than it is of men.

Of course every incel would leap at the chance to score an attractive woman. That doesn't mean they actually like women.

Does society have more sympathy for women? (The "women are wonderful" syndrome?) Yes, generally so (at least in the West). That doesn't mean incels deserve sympathy, any more than the proverbial carousel rider does.

More comments

Female sexuality is fundamentally stupid and evil in a way that male sexuality simply isn't.

Them's fightin' words, and we could get into a real fight over this. Men have done stupid and evil things for sex, and so have women. Male sexuality will happily fuck six year olds, is that fundamentally smart and good?

Male sexuality will happily fuck six year olds,

Do you mean 16 year olds? Because preying on teenagers is definitely the dark side of male sexuality in a way actual pedophilia generally isn’t.

Male sexuality will happily fuck six year olds, is that fundamentally smart and good?

What the hell? This is not male sexuality. Men are attracted to fertile-age women, because there is no point in fucking a female who can't get pregnant. That means teenagers and twenty-somethings, not prepubescent kids. Pedophiles are a tiny minority of men, and universally despised by the majority.

My friend, it is entirely possible to get a ten year old pregnant, and some men have done so. Remember the case with the furore over abortion rights?

I'm very much cynical about "no X would do Y" because I'm reading cases in the news every damn day. No father would rape his daughter for years. No father would help his new partner cover up the murder of his child. No woman would beat a four year old to death.

Oh yes they bloody well would.

What the hell? This is not male sexuality.

Come on, you should know better. You're responding to your direct distaff counterpart.

Claiming all men are inherently evil attracted to children is part and parcel of female sexuality, as a way to provide cover for the "make sure anyone in an age group more attractive than mine is prevented from selling sex to men in exchange for resources" impulse that produces this answer, so that's what's on display.

Male sexuality will happily fuck six year olds,

I would have to disagree with this -- if you are talking about men in general, I think it's pretty clear that your typical man's sexuality focuses on entities perceived to be fertile human females, which excludes 6-year olds.

To be sure, there are sickos out there, but I think it's pretty clear we are talking about men and women in general.

Male sexuality will happily fuck six year olds, is that fundamentally smart and good?

That is rather fundamentally unusual and unacceptable behavior in any remotely modern society I can name. There is a massive difference between ~most men being attracted to 16 year old women, but denying that attraction because of laws and socialization, and attempting to sleep with literal small children.

I might as well claim that "female sexuality" involves peanut butter and particularly attractive German Shepherds, since that has been documented at rates >0.

if we're going to say X sexuality is more evil than Y sexuality, then it is going to invite "here are instances of Y sexuality being pretty damn creepy". Both sexes, and sexuality, and fetishes/perversions/kinks, can be pretty damn creepy.

'Women are attracted to what they see as hotness in guys' is no more, or no less, creepy than 'men are attracted to what they see as hotness in girls'. That male sexuality does seem to be a very simple on/off switch of "young, big booba, big ass = dick go sproing!" is not the fault of women. Nor is it the fault of men if women can be attracted to older men who are more interesting/have a broader or deeper range of experience and, yeah, money/status.

"Good provider, good genetic material for potential offspring, attractive, dependable, funny, 6/6/6 = pussy wet" is not the fault of men. Can we stop saying "your preferences are evil" unless those preferences are actually evil? It's the male equivalent of "you should find tattooed, pierced, fat women just as attractive as Sydney Sweeney" - "no, just because I'm short, balding and not particularly well-paid, she's a bitch for not giving me a chance!"

Can we stop saying "your preferences are evil" unless those preferences are actually evil?

Evil is kind of a loaded word, so let's just say that everyone -- male and female -- has sexual desires which are unreasonable and/or destructive. And by that I mean that (1) it's not mathematically possible for everyone's sexual desires to be satisfied; and (2) if people pursue these sexual desires anyway, it's bad for society.

So for example, most men, even average men, instinctively want a harem but there simply aren't enough women in existence for every man to have a harem. At most, only a few extremely elite men can have a harem -- e.g. Elon Musk or the King of Saudi Arabia.

Similarly, most women, even average women, instinctively want a committed relationship from a highly desirable man. This is similarly unreasonable. There just aren't enough highly desirable men in existence.

As I mentioned in a couple other posts, the difference is that men are told (and have internalized) that their instinctive desire for a harem is unreasonable. By contrast, society is very reluctant to tell women that their instinctive desire for commitment from a highly desirable man is just as unreasonable.

As I mentioned in a couple other posts, the difference is that men are told (and have internalized) that their instinctive desire for a harem is unreasonable. By contrast, society is very reluctant to tell women that their instinctive desire for commitment from a highly desirable man is just as unreasonable.

Seems to me you can make the case that the female desire is downstream of the male one, at least on a macro timescale. There do exist many naturally monogamous animal species, and while their courtship involves some mate selection where everyone tries to get the most attractive partner possible, it seems like things shake out so that most individuals have a mate. It doesn't make evolutionary sense for a monogamous animal to prefer sterility to a sub-10% mate; I don't know how that trait would be preserved.

"Harem" animals are generally ones where the male has enough aggression to kill non-affiliated females/ kill their mates/ kill their offspring, and at that point the calculus does shift to make it questionable whether any given female should make a virtue of necessity and try to affiliate with Chad before he swoops in, murders their children, rapes them and pillages all their resources anyway. As you point out, most women would still prefer monogamy with a reasonably mid-status man, but all of the lurking "girls like bad boys" instincts that men deplore can be explained by women needing a partner who seems like they'd be able to defend against marauding other males.

There do exist many naturally monogamous animal species

But humans are not one of them, and neither are most primates. 90% of bird species are monogamous but only 3-9% of mammals.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monogamy_in_animals

To put it another way, male-on-male aggression is adaptive for males in a polygamous society, and so is the female tendency to go for the strongest male because making babies is expensive and time-consuming and making sperm is free.

I would caveat that "naturally monogamous" in animals isn't exactly what humans would interpret that to be or to mean. In mammals, complete genetic monogamy is extremely rare and usually tied to things like votes; coyotes are one of the largest 'strictly' monogamous ones, and that's still got one-in-twenty extra-couple mating. Even a lot of monogamous bird species aren't genetically monogamous: something like one in eight swan babies aren't genetically tied to the mother's 'husband'.

It's a meaningful category, still, to contrast species that where serial mating (eg, raccoons) or outright multiple paternity is common (eg, housecats), or where mating is 'indiscriminate' (rabbits), but the extent that the line gets fuzzy makes it hard to categorize humans, even before considering what extent humans have drifted from their historic environment.

To put it another way, male-on-male aggression is adaptive for males in a polygamous society, and so is the female tendency to go for the strongest male because making babies is expensive and time-consuming and making sperm is free.

I was suggesting that in evolutionary terms, it's more plausible that the causal arrow should have run from the development of male aggression, to polygamous society and women driven to affiliate with "bad boys," than the other way around.

For one thing, your argument about the adaptive advantage of infidelity/ hypergamy should be true of monogamous bird species as well as mammals, but the birds have retained the monogamy. For another thing, humans are pretty weak overall, so our male strength and aggression is much more useful for intraspecies conflict than for pure survival via inter-species defense or resource acquisition. Chad's ability to beat up the dweeb in no way translates to Chad's ability to take down a buffalo or fight off a lion, so it's not clear how there'd be a strong-enough adaptive advantage to females breaking monogamous coordination to pursue Chad en masse unless you have an existing culture of violence where Chad might just beat up your man and rape you anyway. Thus, it seems like the precipitating factor is more likely the emergence of battle-males in conditions of plentiful resources.

Of course, once that's in place you certainly get positive feedback loops where the polygamy increases the aggression and vice-versa.

It's not really accurate to say that humans are 'not monogamous'. We are not perfectly monogamous, but we are mostly monogamous. The modal human reproductive unit is, and always has been, one man and one woman.

There are some cultures that allow a degree of polygyny for elite men, but those cultures are being outcompeted by monogamous ones because polygamy reduces fertility.

To say 'humans are polygynous' because a small minority of societies allow a small minority of men more than one wife, is a bit like saying Japan is a violent country because some small percentage of the population commits violent crime.

More comments

A man's teenage virgin immediately stops being a virgin and rather soon stops being teenaged, and observing men who were able to fulfill their preferences fully shows that they want not one woman who is a teenage virgin at one point, but more teenage virgins.

I'll say this: very few sexual preferences strike me as being so evil as the man who has a preference for virginity paired with a disinterest in marriage. At that point you've got a fetish for burning the commons for no reason.

All of this assumes that 6/6/6 is true and that even an unattractive woman will only date a cute guy who is 6/6/6/6 (six foot, six figures, six pack, six inch long reproductive organ). This all comes from the myth that only a small number of men have sex with the majority of women.

That isn’t true.

If this were true, then we would see married women secretly having sex with other men while ovulating, and cuckolding their husbands. However, multiple genetic studies show a very low level of cuckoldry in western societies. Most of the time, the husband, the “beta provider” if you will, is the father of a woman’s children.

What surveys show (the information from surveys is collaborated by STD rates) is this:

  • About 20% of men and women both are very promiscuous
  • It would appear that, since most women aren’t promiscuous (if all of those “nice girls” were sleeping with “Chad”, we would see a lot of them have STDs from “Chad”, but we don’t), those 20% of “Chad”s are sleeping with women who, in turn, sleep with a lot of men.
  • There is a slight polygynous shift, but it’s nowhere near 80% of the women sleeping with 20% of the men.

It is true that women are very picky on most dating apps, but that’s because dating apps are about 70% men and 30% women. Fortunately, even though there is a single graph from one Dr. Michael J. Rosenfeld at Standford which claims everyone now meets on the apps, most people do not use the apps to meet partners.

Point being, women being super picky and things being hopeless for 80% of men is just a myth. For myself, I now have a girlfriend again, it was a lot of work to find her, yes, but we’re working out quite nicely.

I don't know how true this 6/6/6 thing is (I never heard of it until that stupid balloon popping ad for Kamala Harris) but even if so, it's the ideal, the same way that men want the blonde blue-eyed slim waist and big tits and shy coy virgin who's a nymphomaniac in the bedroom but for them only, yeah?

Then you find the ordinary person, man or woman, whom you settle down with. Nobody gets to marry movie stars and models routinely, only a few people. Ordinary people get with ordinary people. And mostly they're happy.

I was just recently thinking about the guys I know (from a various social circles) that have had a lot of girls and how what they have in common, moreso than looks, is just that they're generally lively, charismatic and fun to be with, the sort of guys that guys also generally want to have as friends. When it comes to lotharios I've known short guys, tall guys, thin guys, chubby guys (even at least one morbidly obese guy), muscular guys, non-muscular guys, whatever. I'm not saying looks are unimportant, just that looks more affect the attractiveness of the girls you can get with rather than the basic ability to be a promiscuous guy if you wish. (And also that heterosexual guys genuinely don't always understand what girls find physically attractive.)

Men are also naturally drawn to women that are, as you put it, generally lively, charismatic and fun to be with, especially shy, undersocialized men.

My pet theory is that the wonders of modern technology allow men (already naturally inclined to prefer things to people) to remain undersocialized, to replace social interaction with books, discussing the culture war, video games, watching porn and entering into parasocial relationships with generally lively, charismatic and fun to be with streamers.

If there's anything we need to retvrn to, it's the limited entertainment in a premodern village. When your only options for entertainment are singing, dancing and physical games, you can't avoid socialization. When you literally know everyone of marriageable age around you, you know your general ranking and what your chances are.

Sure, so long as we symmetrically destroy the wonders of modern (social) technology that enables women to create a social environment that pushes men away from socialization due to their extreme levels of unchecked social aggression. Men wouldn't be so inclined to remain "undersocialized" if we didn't enable women to abuse them so much in their intragender status games while denying men the ability to complain or often even talk about it, let alone retaliate without instantly jumping on them to "protect" the women in question--granting the women the status gains they were going for in the process.

Please elaborate, because I didn't quite get what you mean. How would the women abuse the men in the context of a village?

Relational aggression. For various reasons (eg, feminism, male intragender competition), we've been systematically eliminating the checks on this when practiced by women.

Six pack: this presumably any man could achieve with sufficient exercise (and diet control) though it might be difficult to do concurrently with a six figure job.

Wasn't it a six-inch penis? Which makes your claim about the dice being loaded against men even stronger.

On a tangential note, I recently learned about the "average SEC couple" meme, which shows that not all hope is lost for those who don't meet the standard.

average SEC couple

Never heard of this. What does the "SEC" stand for?

It refers to the Southeastern Conference of the National Collegiate Athletic Association. Basically, a group of colleges in the United States that regularly play certain sports against each other.

“SEC” in this context refers to the “Southeastern Conference”, a division of US college football. Its members are predominantly large public universities in the Southeastern United States. It is used as a humorous metonym for “upper-middle class small town/rural Southerners”, as these are the people who stereotypically attend these schools.

I assume it's some sports club or association judging by the photos, not the securities commission.

As the two comments above yours outline, it refers to the 'Southeastern Conference' in college athletics- specifically college football, the sport of choice of the red tribe elite(professional football has no cultural or class connotations). It's made up of large public colleges in solidly red states, which- as you may remember from the top level comments on sororities- are used by the red tribe elite to ensure their children marry class and cultural equals.

The SEC couple meme refers to the stereotype that elite red tribe men are fat but their wives aren't. This is... basically accurate.

The "average SEC couple" meme is interesting. The reaction I've seen from some quarters is "What the heck is going on down there? Why are all these average looking dudes paired up with these dolled up 9/10s?" As anyone who went to school in the SEC knows, you can have a dumb or average looking face but if you've got some attitude ,swagger, a nice truck, and the right friends you can absolutely pull a girl who looks like that. Dudes are allowed to be dudes, you don't have to be what used to be called "metrosexual" to get laid. The other part is that the majority of girls actually just look like that, they go out of their way to wear feminine clothing and lots of makeup so they looks better** than your average frumpy non-SEC girl.

**according to the taste of many but not all -- personally I'm not a fan of the look though I can imagine the appeal

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