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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:
One of these things is not like the other.
For men:
For women:
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.)
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.
Very fair summary and counter. I will not relitigate anything but this:
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.
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.
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