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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?
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.
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