This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
I keep engaging with the gender wars/fertility crisis topic even though its slowly driving me mad. But its too important to ignore.
Actual title of a paper published today in the Cambridge Press, by a Norwegian research team:
Toward individualistic reproduction: Solving the fertility crisis could require a further marginalization of men
Not paraphrased or exaggerated. Apparently published by a team of two males and a female. I don't even mean to attack the authors, the paper doesn't seem to be 'slanted' in its presentation... and this implied solution just appears to be the sort of blunt facial honesty that Norwegians are known for. I'm not attacking this paper.
We had the discussion just yesterday where a German Police Chief (himself male) says women should avoid relationships with men for their safety. My commentary is on the larger cultural trend.
Now, the paper itself draws some specific conclusions using data from the last ten years. (i.e. when the gender wars really accelerated) From a twitter thread:
Women's freedom is strongly correlated with declining fertility.
About 60% of female sexual partnerships are with the 10% most promiscuous men. I have to interpret "most promiscuous" as "most attractive," because very, very few men are able to be promiscuous without being hot. Likewise, this looks VERY suggestive of a broader 80/20 rule in place.
Women can't all form relationships with this top 10%... so more women are single... so they are less likely to have kids.
Ultimately they suggest that solving the TFR crisis means getting single women to have more kids. Hence the 'marginalization' of men.
This paper so readily confirms almost everything I've talked about in here I'm worried its designed precisely to trigger confirmation bias in me, specifically. Read it and decide for yourself, I guess.
As I've said, going off of the last 10-20 years of data:
Women probably only view about 20% of men as 'people' worthy of attention.
Women who got to college and enter careers tend to have the highest standards... regardless of their own suitability as a mate.
Lotharios exploiting the current gender dynamics for low-commitment sex are a problem.
Of course I note that every single bit of this is explained by shifts in female behavior, which is to say there's not much shift in men's behavior, so the overt focus on men's alleged failures seems... odd.
I do not find it pleasant to believe all these statistics and their implied conclusions, but no matter how much I ask for challenges, every bit of data just adds on to the pile of confirmation.
I'll throw out hope spot because there is a small bit of data that contradicts the overall narrative... South Korea is actually seeing a bump towards increased fertility!. I am watching this very keenly to determine if there is much hope of pulling out of the spiral.
I've genuinely got very little new to say on this topic. Its beaten to death. Its a bloody pulp, we're standing ankle-deep in the putrid mix of entrails of this topic as the waterline slowly rises every day. I've very interested in workable solutions, though.
I am a very reasonable person. I do not get angry at mere insults easily. Call me whatever you want to my face, your words have no power. But what sets me off is when someone pisses on my leg and tells me its raining, when I can look up and see there's not a cloud in the sky. "Men are horrible, and it is socially good and necessary to marginalize them." The insinuation against my person doesn't bug me. Its the blatant lie contradicted by all available information. It is simply false (especially in the West). It is epistemic malpractice. And it seems intentional and malicious, on some level.
Every. single. day. I am faced with a loud cultural message that (unattractive) men are expendable, mostly unwanted, dangerous, useless, and generally deserve to be lonely, poor, and depressed. And, as a kicker, that 80% or so of men are unattractive to women, so its the majority of them who are marked for evolutionary failure.
Today its this paper.
Yesterday its Mr. German Policeman.
The week before it was that Manosphere documentary.
Last year it was that British Miniseries.
It is a neverending cascade. And of course there's zilch, zero, nada content produced in the mainstream that examines if female behavior is becoming more toxic and suggesting intervention.
Me, I have the mental fortitude to put all this in context and ignore it as an influence on my individual behavior. I have my internal locus of control and the self-confidence to believe I will succeed anyway.
Yet there's millions of young males who are vulnerable to this message, and it is killing them, metaphorically and often literally, and nobody with any authority is doing anything about it or even talking about it without also piling on with the exact same rhetoric.
I simply don't see how one can claim that there's any true 'Patriarchy' in the Western World when government officials, scientific papers, nationally broadcast documentaries, and general everyday people can happily proclaim that men ought to be marginalized for everyone's good if they can't accept a lot in life that amounts to being a second class citizen in their own country... while women are elevated to the level of landed aristocracy on their backs.
Meanwhile the main voices speaking on the other side are inherently outsiders like Andrew Tate and Nick Fuentes.
I don't even think we have a matriarchy to be clear, it really does just seem like society is organized around the "women are wonderful effect" and the average person is psychologically incapable of deviating from this programming.
Where does this end?
From the abstract:
So the authors are suggesting that, as women seem increasingly unwilling to couple up with men, the solution is to rid ourself of the nuclear family entirely. If you no longer need a committed relationship to have kids, and having children is economically incentivized by the state, then the problem is solved.
This is certainly a refreshing take, compared to what we usually see here. Not returning to tradition, but moving towards further individualization and reliance on government. Is that what this is really about? Increase the power of our leaders by making people completely dependent on the goodwill of the state?
Skimming through it, this article reads almost like an overall warning rather than a genuine suggestion. Is this actually a veiled way for academics to criticize feminism and individualism? Show clear evidence of all the harms caused, theorize that things will become much worse, then propose a solution that is compliant with the ideology while at the same time obviously inhuman for anyone giving it serious consideration. It is almost like they are looking at the slippery slope of current dating norms and suggesting we move to its logical conclusion as an attempt to shock us out of it.
Its hard to tell these days.
I also have to suspect they added the female author on there to pre-emptively deflect certain types of critiques that would arise when people see what their data says.
Its why I suspect that we'll eventually, finally see a politician try to place male's concerns front and center.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Aella Twitter poll: If you ended up in a romantic relationship just like that of your parents, would you be happy?
Yes - 31.2%
No - 68.8%
The decline in marriage makes a lot more sense with this datapoint. Does anyone have any idea what is going on here?
Total guess: A majority of marriages from the boomer generation are actually at least somewhat unhappy. Marriages lead to children pretty reliably though. Given lack of social pressure to marry, people choose not to marry, believing it will lead to greater happiness.
More options
Context Copy link
The divorce rate for American parents with children is somewhere between 40-50%. Aella's Twitter followers might select for kids of divorced parents so the result may reflect straight forward thinking that they'd much rather be in happy marriages.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Notice the slight of hand there. 60% of partnerships with 10% of men. Not 60% of women sleeping with 10% of men, but 60% of partnerships.
Because those men are sleeping with...the most promiscuous women. Chads aren't monopolising all the girls, it's more that the frat boys and sleeping with the sorority girls and the young men and women who don't leave their rooms aren't hooking up.
Quick question. If these young men and women were to leave their room, which would have an easier time getting laid?
Also dating apps means you can locate a hookup without leaving your room, funny enough.
Guess what dating app dynamics look like. What % of men would you guess are getting the most matches?
Even if your point about kids not leaving their room is correct, it doesn't actually refute the core issue.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
As ever, I am going to request the original source. You link to a tweet, which sticks in a graphic of a pie chart and says "In US data over the past decade, a tenth of men accounted for 60% of female sexual partnerships."
I can't see the chart very well, but it seems to be 95th-99th percentile of men with 58% of sexual partnerships, so whatever that is in the "percentile bin" measure they seem to be using? Which seems to be "guys self-reporting how many women they've had" and that's not the same as "most promiscuous" (and not even "hottest guy", you would be surprised at the guys who apparently have no problem getting a trail of girlfriends).
The data is "mean number of female sexual partners since age 18 by male percentile bin" and the 99th percentile bin are claiming a mean number of 287. I don't know how much I trust that number, but also we don't have ages to go with it. Is this a 60 year old guy saying that over 40 years of being sexually active, he has had 287 partners ranging from one-night stands to long-term relationships?
The tenor of the original post seems to be "a few guys RIGHT NOW are banging all the women" and I don't think that's necessarily so. I agree that sex, romance, children and marriage is a mess right now, but we put ourselves right there because this is what we wanted. We wanted freedom, we wanted to throw off the restraints of the past, we wanted to have sex without needing to get married for it (men) and we wanted sex without childbirth being the consequence (women, but men also) and we wanted casual sex to not be stigmatised any more but taken as a normal, natural need and indeed a human right (hence the complaining about not being able to get girlfriend/boyfriend) and we wanted living in sin to be renamed as cohabiting and accepted as "it's just sensible and reasonable to test out if you're both ready to commit to marriage first".
Thank you, I am going to have to dig into this more later, but I was immediately suspicious as well.
This topic is just too perfect for everyone to project their pet issue onto it as the "dominant factor" and everyone gets so deep into motivated reasoning to get there. And its so complex no one can prove anything more than handwave vibes and because it's so complex, no one can be totally "wrong" while still failing to explain the issue in a useful way.
Personally, I think it's all because housing
More options
Context Copy link
Well, the data is in the actual study.
And the data they are using is drawn from the last 10 years (as I emphasized).
And I think the last 10 years is when the gender war trends became most pronounced.
The similar trend is that More young men are reporting having less sex. Young women are having about the same amount, although there is decline.
Women also report more sex partners prior to marriage then in decades past.
Who are the young women having sex with.
I don't think you can finagle out of this one.
Women having more sex partners.
More men reporting less sex on average.
Women's self-reported standards for partners being raised.
Solve for X.
Perhaps there is an increasing number of celibate women... but this doesn't help with the actual problem in the slightest.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Where does it end? Dunno, but my magic 8-ball says 'outlook not so good". You, alone are not responsible for civilizational decline. Attempt to guide your friends and family to take advantage of the situation as much as possible. Women of repute will continue to be in high demand, and should be reassured of this and protected. Men should emulate Lothario. Alternatively, join a social/cultural/religious group immune to the current trends.
More options
Context Copy link
In the short term, robo-caretakers for the ballooning aging population. In the medium to long term, artificial wombs for mass production of wards of the state. Sexbots will help top off the bread and circuses. AGI will pay for all of this of course.
Or, continued mass migration from the wellsprings of fertility. One seems more realistic than the other.
Bad news there, even Africa is on the decline
This is why I consider the problem too important to ignore. The "organic" solutions are not solving.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I've already written a several write ups about how to solve this. The solution to the current problems are likely combination of getting non-college educated men decent paying work, and increasing socialization. We'd also need women to be more receptive to approaches, in an era where there are too many people attempting to demonize it.
Another thing too add that I think is fascinating, that is even a blind spot of myself, is that we don't really uphold womens end of the social contract in the same way we do with men a la Lauren Chen. Its more permissable to say that men have social/moral obligations (get a job (well, yes, a bum women isnt necessarily praised either, but I think its clear that men have more pressure on them in this regard), military service, etc), but not women, (get married, obey husband, have kids.) Perhaps this double standard should be reconsidered, and applied to women as well. If one wants to shift the needle in the other direction, change material conditions (automate the jobs, build skynet, etc) and "male liberation" would follow.
Personally, I favor the former over the latter - though I would emphasize partner cooperation over just blindly obeying your husband.
I think most of your suggestions are spot on, however, one that im concerned about is the lack of incentive and ability for young adults to meet other young adults in person. The decline of cheap or free activities specifically for young adults to meet other young adults is a huge problem. Even something as simple as meeting for a meal often requires a minimum of $50 and add $10 each if you’re having wine or a mixed drink. Movies are not cheap, but also not great for getting to know the person you’re dating. Most places that people used to meet other young adults before college became the default are gone. Dances no longer happen except for in junior high. Parks are hard to get to without a car. Clubs are expensive. So then where do people end up hanging out?
Add in that people are spending more time online and more time alone at home, and it’s just hard to get the ball rolling toward family formation. If you’re isolated in your home and mostly gaming, watching TV or doomscrolling there, it’s not very likely that you’ll meet someone you want to have children with. Especially given that everyone is working and doin* chores after work. It’s like, you don’t do things with people in the real world outside of work, you don’t meet the opposite sex, not love, no marriage, no babies.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Doesn't research claim women are unhappier than men? That recent UK polling data certainly claimed that, despite women officially doing better than men. AFAIK being unhappier makes you worse off, period. So don't sweat it!
Correct.
All that extra freedom and they're less satisfied than ever.
Its almost like the female gender is an inverse utility monster. Almost.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I was intrigued, so I clicked through. This statistic appears to be derived from randomly-chosen men's self-reports of the number of their sexual partners on the GSS. It also appears that the sexual-behavior portions of this survey are entirely self-administered.
So I guess if you believe guys are always scrupulously honest about their sex histories, and there's no way that 10% of men, filling out a survey in the privacy of their own home, would ever vastly over-report their number of partners for the lulz?
Oh so we'd expect most surveys on the topic to be an over-report on the men's side.
Okay.
Interesting that young men are claiming fewer sex partners and less sex, recently.
What changed? Why'd they suddenly stop overreporting?
By your logic, the sex recession among men is EVEN WORSE THAN IT SEEMS from this data.
(women remain more steady on this, btw)
I have yet to see a SINGLE data point that goes against the "lots of women are actually hooking up with relatively small portion of men" talking point. And the dating apps seem to have exacerbated it.
China saw it as such a huge problem so they've taken drastic action.
Yeah I've discussed this before too.
That does not follow. For example, there could be an overreporting recession, rather than a sex recession.
If there's any reasonable explanation for why it would be relegated entirely amongst young males, I'd be interested to hear it.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Oh, I'm not disputing that everybody's having less sex lately. Everyone's very lazy and anxious, young people seem pretty undersocialized, AI will feed your delusions, videogames are more entertaining and porn's more extreme than ever, and dating-app interactions seem custom-designed to drive everybody into celibacy.
I'm mostly disputing the Chads-and-sluts narrative, because every time I look into cited evidence for this it seems to be built around long screeds and BS evopsych rationalizations, propped up by just the flimsiest social science imaginable.
Yes, and you've got an actual piece of research saying that 10% of the promiscuous men are accounting for 60% of the sexual encounters women have.
You've also got the data that shows fewer young men are having, young women are reporting about the same amount.
And the additional factor of women having more sex partners on average than years past.
So whomst are the young women having sex with.
Then of course you can watch a Clavicular stream and see that exact dynamic play out in real time.
I dunno what type of evidence you would find convincing, but it is likely available.
Can you just give a direct link to the academic paper from that first posted link? I've heard concerning things about the safety of archive.is lately. As to the "actual piece of research" about the 10%/60%, well, I also could butcher a rabbit and read its entrails and get back to you, but bad methodology yields bad conclusions, full stop.
Clavicular is practically a child, with what seems to be a serious abuse history leading to addiction problems and terrible body dysmorphia? I think the dude needs an intervention more than anything else. I have no idea who donates to him and no intention of trying to find out, but I'd imagine there's a fair proportion of gay men and Russian bots in there. What is his relevance to the claim that women are sluts who only sleep with Chads?
If there is some pristine piece of data out there that doesn't rely on self-reports and somehow peers into people's sex lives directly to make conclusions about the rates of pairings I'd love to see it.
I've sure looked.
But when all the extant stats point approximately in the same direction, I feel pretty confident drawing the most obvious conclusion.
Especially when you account for dating app disparities too.
Do you think there's any downstream effect of some small % of men getting the highest % of matches on such apps? Would that increase or decrease the amount of sex partners they'd have?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Seems fine to me and it seems like a self solving problem. Women have more negotiating power and they are using it.
Eventually the next generation would have woman with lower standards and males with superior genes. Because everyone else would have died off.
This would also lead to cultural shifts so that both sexes are more accepting of each other.
Hell it may even improve women genetically because only the hottest women would get laid with hottest men.
Sadly since genes for autism and IQ are correlated we may see a slight decrease.
It's a single generation so it should not matter much.
With AGI lots of people are not needed. I don't see any wealth redistribution happening. People with money would have kids and equally distribute their wealth among them.
Besides in south korea the wealthy have a high fertility rate not replacement level but it's double the normal average.
Eventually a better culture would emerge out of all this, especially with AGI because the remaining people won't need to work that hard and maybe they would have more time for family and romance with a cultural inclination for those things.
Well unless we go extinct which is pretty likely too.
Which makes it odd that they're
Less satisfied with their status in society
More mentally ill
More medicated
Have more debt
Are more likely to be single and childless
And are overall less happy than they were 50 years ago
(married women are happier, BTW.)
Oh, and a huge portion of them claim to hate men even though the reverse isn't true.
Does that seem fine to you?
All that negotiating power and they claim they're worse off than before. Odd.
That would require them to have actual children. As it turn out, if women control more wealth, they have fewer kids.
I think the opposite of what you're expecting is happening... since as stated in my original post, more educated women have fewer kids. So the most genetically fit women are the ones burning the most time on education and careers.
Whoops.
Anyhow, What do you think happens if 50+% of the males in a society are no longer bought in to its success because they have no stake it future generations?
Who fights your wars, builds your machines and buildings, maintains your power plants and roads.
I beg you, I PLEAD with you, consider second and third order effects. We have built the most functional and successful society the planet has ever seen on the norms you're asking us to discard.
Best justify it.
Yes, I've had every single iteration of this discussion a dozen times by now, I think I can address any argument by simply pointing to data I've already cited and comments I've made in the past.
I don't know if it would be for better or for worse. I was being descriptive rather than prescriptive.
As for your points, I think you are overestimating how disenfrinched the average male is. I don't think there is going to be gender war or slow crumbling of society. South Korea still lives on.
No matter how disenfrichesed men get, it won't matter because I am betting on AGI.
I am not even saying woman are acting rationally in their own interests for happiness.
My main opinion is that a lot of people are going to be very unemployed and die without ever having kids.
A lot of cultural change is going to happen because cultures where men and women reproduce survive.
I also don't think much can be done about this.
Honestly this low reproduction rate seems like an artifact of rapid technological advancement and cultural change which is going to fix itself eventually in a century.
Me too.
Descriptively, women are, on average, miserable (especially millenials and Gen Z). What good is all that extra leverage doing them?
If you limit it to men under 30, They sure feel that way.
Objectively, they will not be a functional society in <60 years without something historically unprecedented occurring.
Well better hope the AI thing works out then.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Someone on this forum pointed out that the ability to make more people without men and women having sex at all is technologically possible. So don't sweat it!
Well that's even better isn't it. With gene engeneering we would have humans which would age slowly, get sick less, have higher IQ and fitness. Even if somehow HBD turns out to be true we will simply fix it.
People might just start to have AI companions for romance and human race continues in baby fabs.
Though I find it unlikely, doesn't seem culturally feasible yet but maybe in two centuries.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link