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