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Notes -
Here are some thought on the current relationship recession going on.
I've always felt like our society has had a hard time talking to young men about dating, sex, and what it means to be a man. We are basically just throwing them them to the wolves and and having them figure it out for themselves. This results in bad outcomes for both parties: Men being seen as "creepy" for not being able woo a woman smoothly. & women being disappointed in the interactions and not being able to find a prince charming.
On top of culture being abysmal at talking about the problem productively, we now live in a service economy that requires social skills and knowledge to move up the ladder. Gone are the days where one could get a factory job for 40 years and call it a day; those jobs have been automated or offshored to china. But increasingly, young men have fallen behind young women in education: creating a situation where they essentially are locked out of this service economy due to the credential requirements.
Now, being in this young male category myself, ive been pondering solutions for a while now, and i've also notice that this forum doesnt really talk about solutions to the many cultural issues, so im throwing my hat into the ring on what i believe willl be effective, based on the research and data ive collected.
"New Masculinity"
So its apparent in the majority of cases, that societies judge men (primarily) by one large metrics:
The ability to climb up social hierarchy to obtain status.
Most of the other judgements that we place upon men are downstream of this one thing (virgin men being losers/incels, calling men broke, being called a pussy or a weakling ect) Being weak, lacking confidence, hinders once ability to obtain status. Being a incel/virgin indicates that you have skill issues with women. Homeless men are often looked at as "lazy" or "bums". Im not saying i agree with these - but thats how its perceived.
Old Masculinity: being overly independent, not wanting help, being a misogynistic tough guy, or shunning emotion ("boys dont cry") are things that arguably need to be left behind, and didnt serve us in the past and they dont serve us now. But there are obviously elements worth preserving: Being strong, tough, courageous, protective, ect.
If you can make things happen, be socially savvy, be dominant & soft, you will find success. Some of these are within our control, some arent. But i think individuals might be able to tilt the needle enough to find some success individually, minus the obvious changes to society.
1.) Obtaining "Status"
Women desire men with high status. The easiest way to obtain status in society is to get a higher education or to obtain high income (these often correlate). If you can get into Harvard, go for it, but for most cases, a local community college or state university is sufficient. People often meet their spouses there as a matter of fact. Now, if for whatever reason, you find that you can't obtain a degree, there are other options, my father did real-estate (this job can earn a decent living and has the plus of sharpening your social skills!), my uncle had a mechanic shop (Its worth noting here, however that most evidence still points to the degree being the best shot you have). Raising mens income has a positive effect on birth rates - so whatever you job you get, make sure it pays somewhat decent. On top of this, build other skills: learn how to dance (my personal recommendation, ive done this myself and ive gotten some positive attention and even some dates!). This will increase confidence and get you socializing, and if your good, you'll be the coolest guy in the room. Which leads to my next point:
2.) Social Skills.
This new variation of Masculinity needs to focus heavily on social skills. Men as a group are more likely to be poor in this area (higher autism diagonsis, ect). Believe it or not, many men who are single or are having trouble havent even attempted asking out the girl. I know, I know - #MeToo and all, but in my experience if one approaches with kindness (and humors!) it will be received positively. One easy way that worked for me is ride-share driving. Take little step, ask someone about their day, how they feel about certain things, ect. Join a comedy club and try to sharpen your humor! (Incredibly attractive to women in my experience). Charisma and Social skills will positively affect both your dating life, and your career success. Much of the drop in relationships and birth rate are amongst the poor and less educated, partially because of the shifts in the economy towards the service sector jobs that require the ability to talk to others. So sharpening this skill is of utmost importance. You'll probably get the hang of flirting and the like once you conjure up these social skills.
3.) GYM. GYM. GYM. GYM. GYM. GYM. GYM. GYM.
This is so insanely understated by many of people, but as someone who was 240lbs and is now 155 (im 5"6 for reference). Pretty privilege is a real thing. People respect and admire you more when you look good, for men this means wider shoulder relative to hips, and being fairly lean, you dont need to look like Arnold Schwarzenegger. But if you look like this dude in the thumbnail, your pretty golden. Being tall helps too, but thats not something within your control. Easy way to get thinner: Eat less calories than maintaince (around 2000) and burn said calories via exercise (running on a treadmill, ride a bicycle, lift weights, jump rope). For building muscle, you'll need to eat around ~1lb of protein per body weight, in a slight caloric excess. You''ll have to go through cut and bulk phases where you are basically eating less to burn off fat, and then eating around or in slight excess to build muscle. Get 8 hours of sleep for recovery, drink water, remove suger from your diet if possible. You'll need to be patient as the process is slow, but once completed: your options for mates increases, your status increases, and people will treat you with more dignity and respect. Looks matter.
4.) If you are overly "nice" or sweet, masculinize yourself a bit
This will probably be more controversial, but this needs to be said. Society does have a bias towards men who are more conventionally masculine, shorter men have higher suicide rates, gay men are hated more then lesbians. I've also seen this several times anecdotally and learned this from personal experience: My own mother told me not to cry in front of women, because you'll be seen as weak. My ex told me that being more manly would probably get me further with women. I think a better middle ground here, especially if your a man who is on the less manly side of things, is to masculinize yourself a bit. Best way to do this? Learn martial arts (or do some tough sport - rugby or football) - the mindset thats built from martial arts will help masculinize you to some degree, as well as proving to women that your capable of protecting them (Trust me - they care about this). This part might sound like im trying to change you, perhaps to some extent, i am. But this is in most mens best interest, in my experience - not having some manly-ness to you will hurt your perception, at least a little bit. You can still be soft and sensitive, as a matter of fact, it works in your interests much of the time, just have some "umph" and know when to pull out the sensitive, and tough sides.
One of the main reasons that bad faith actors like Andrew Tait are so popular is because many people in our society dont want to confront various hard truths, that many in red-pill spaces actively expose: Looks, Money, & Masculinity matter. The more we lie and refuse to ack-knowledge this the worse the current social ills become. Its also important that a sort of guide map of masculinity be given (the one ive layed probably would produce positive results individually) so that young boys dont go searching for a road map else-where. Telling people to "be themselves" isnt gonna be sufficient advice in the majority of cases.
Finally, there are societal trends that make some of these harder to achieve today. People do not socialize and gather as they did in the past, meaning many women (though not as much as men) likely are going to have not so good social skills themselves or be more difficult to meet. And as stated before, our economy favors those with educated service sectors skills over those who dont. Sadly, i haven't thought of a good way around these barriers.
Take note that this is something ive written up after thinking about this for a bit, so im open to critiques or flaws in my proposals or reasoning. (As a matter of fact, Its welcome!)
It seems like you are approaching the situation from the perspective of an individual man who wants to improve his love life. Which is fine, but I'm more interested in solutions for society as a whole. There are a lot of issues involved, but I think that ultimately man is a tournament species. So in the absence of laws, traditions, social norms, and so on, there are inevitably large numbers of males of the species who do not get the opportunity to have a female mate.
I think, as far as society goes. Raising young boys, especially those coming from bad family backgrounds with these points in mind + some sort of government intervention policy would help shift the needle.
We'd also need to raise wages for men who can not attend higher education, whatever the reason.
We'd also need to crack down on the american food industry so that people can be skinnier, much of the increase in obesity is basically both the quality of and the amount of food we consume. Becoming attractive physically will help a lot. Thats 3 i can think off of the top of my head.
What's your reason for assuming the interventions needed should target men and male behavior.
Is there something that men have started doing differently that we need to correct?
I think this touches on the biggest stumbling block in any societal effort to address the "relationship recession," such as it exists. Any proposal is going to affect men and women differently. If there is any perceived disadvantage to women; or if the perceived advantage for women is less than the perceived advantage for men, then women will freak out and society will have a very hard time adopting such a policy.
Here's an example:
I agree that this is a good idea. When a man's finances improve, he is more likely to get married; when a woman's finances improve, she is more likely to get divorced (or stay single).
Ok, but suppose there was a policy proposal to create good jobs for men. Kind of like the Hoover Dam project in the 1930s, except with better safety standards. I assure you that feminists would freak out. The whole thing would be revised and water down until the majority of the benefits were going directly to women.
I think that absent some huge technological shift (e.g. artificial wombs; robot waifus; etc.) the only real solution is to wait for more traditional (and more fecund) subcultures to grow in influence.
I still struggle a bit with the mechanics of it all.
The reason things that upset women are political nonstarters is because they will have a disproportionate freakout, they'll get on TV shows and cry (exploiting DEEP biological wiring), they'll march in the street and scream, they'll directly confront people (knowing they won't be physically assaulted!) and they'll, ultimately, show up at the polls and vote against whomever dared make the suggestion in the first place.
But on the flip side, all you need to do in response, as a male politician, is say "no, we're doing it anyway." The women have no recourse beyond more screaming. They don't enforce the laws, and they can't actually go on strike and bring society to a halt. I note that when Roe v. Wade was overturned there was a similar massive freakout... and a few places passed some new laws, but generally speaking things normalized pretty fast. Abortion remains THE primary voting issue for women, but that's all they can do is cast votes and scream. You can plug your ears.
So I suspect we're just waiting to achieve a critical mass of men who are capable of saying "no, we're doing it anyway."
Either because they're just that Chadly or because they've got absolutely nothing left to lose.
There are just a lot of men out there who are obsessed with female validation. But I agree that on the current trajectory, it's almost inevitable that women will lose their disproportionate influence over public policy.
The "simp" problem is hard to quantify.
I've come to believe that a lot of it isn't really Western Men obsessed with female validation. Thanks to the internet, its actually millions upon millions of third world males obsessed with bobs and vagene. But for the receiving woman... attention is attention. Money still spends.
I also note how many prominent 'male feminist' types keep getting outed as wanton sex pests and then devoured by the very mob they courted. We are selecting for guys who are able to avoid that trap.
Men really could use a better, coordinated method of keeping each other from pedestalizing women who don't give a crap about them, and, ideally, ostracizing the guys who defect hard and try to become good 'allies' as a means of gaining sexual access.
I would say that American society was very gynocentric in the 20th century, i.e. pre-Internet.
Most importantly, the trend of forcible transfers of wealth and social status from men to women was in place long before the Internet. The idea that men suck; that women don't need men; etc. was also well established by then. The taboo against saying anything negative about women as a group wasn't firmly established yet, but it was still floating around.
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