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I'm not sure why you expect your experience as an older gentleman to have much to do with the experience of twenty somethings which is more central to the original point, family formation. Things change greatly as you age.
The repeated insistence by posters of all stripes and their refusal to engage with the central argument, the crux of the matter is really making me just about fed up with this body of ideas.
Post about young male sexlessness -> Post about TFR
Post about young male sexlessness -> Post about older male sexfullness
Post about young male sexlessness -> Post about women's rights
Post about young male sexlessness -> Post about how to pick up ladies
No one wants to discuss what can be done about the fact that young male sexlessness and datelessness have both gone up by 100% compared to the historical base rate (female remains roughly same with a slight increase recently), and what are the implications of this.
Seriously let's go back to the fucking basics. Refute the central point, not some weakman or weak proxy of it.
I'm about to get real uncharitable here but here's my true unfiltered thoughts on the matter;
My cynical side says that no one but the group getting fucked actually has any incentive to fix it. And by that I don't mean the obvious personal incentive, but all of the other groups greatly benefit in the short term from not fixing it, at least on a superficial level. Old men have a wider pool to choose from, younger women don't want to temper their expectations, older women also don't want to temper their expectations. So all you are left with is token condolences and strawmen just getting beaten often brutalized to absolute shreds. This asymmetry in incentives doesn't allow ones minds to honestly tackle with the arguments (even if their hearts are in the right place) because that would be a stupid way to operate for a human. Why understand something if your livelihood relies on you not understanding it. I also think there is a signalling play here, you make a post about widely discussed {problem} and feign disbelief or obliviousness, it's letting everyone know you are high status enough to not only not have that problem, but to not be able to comprehend its existence.
I would be interested in hearing what your proposals to "fix it" are. I think the reason few to no people offer solutions to the issue is that there are not any solutions people operating in a broadly liberal framework would find permissible.
From my own liberal perspective, nobody is owed a girlfriend, or relationship. If you (or a lot of young men) are unable to get someone you want to be in a relationship with to also want to be in a relationship with you, that's a you problem. Relationship formation is that good old double coincidence of wants. It's not enough that you want to be in a relationship with someone, you need to find someone who also wants to have a relationship with you.
There are plenty of things that could hypothetically work, depending on one's analysis of the causes. If it's only the outcome of online dating/social media norms, you could regulate their negative characteristics. If it's porn and vidya, same. If it's economic inequality, you could push policies to reduce economic inequality. If it's a lack of masculine role models for young men, you could encourage the presence of fathers. Etc.
There is a massive space between discussing solutions or giving empathy to people struggling and wanting to pass a "incels can enslave women" law. And there doesn't even need to be a solution for it to be a problem worth discussing and analyzing, but people turn to the implication that anyone wanting to discuss it wants to implement that kind of illiberal law.
As a point of comparison, consider a group afforded sympathy in the social and political discourse: women. Particularly, let's look at the "wage gap." The large majority of it isn't due to discrimination, but to the choices women make with regard to mate choice. Single, childless women face virtually no wage penalty, and it's later intramarriage economic specialization choices that lead to what we call the wage gap. Those choices can be and are constrained, and many women reasonably want partners who'll support their careers and do more housework. But that runs afoul of the "nobody is owed a relationship" perspective; why is it that women who can't find the partners they want are given sympathy and deserve political and social activism to remedy the ill (unequal earnings due to gendered division of household labor), but men who can't find the partners they want are monstrous?
What does "regulat[ing] [the] negative characteristics" for dating, social norms, porn, or video games look like in a way that is compatible with liberalism?
I agree, but somehow I rarely see things in this space proposed and much more often see the "we need to take away women's rights" kind of solution.
I'm not sure I understand. I can be, and often am, sympathetic to men who have trouble finding someone to date them. Being sympathetic to someone in such a situation is quite distinct from thinking that this is a problem that demands a social or legal or political response. Where that sympathy ends is where those individuals advocate violating liberal principles to get what they want. I suspect women generally get more sympathy with their inability to find a partner because they are less likely to promote forcing society to provide one for them as a solution. Certainly less likely than similarly situated men are.
Perhaps I've missed them, but I've never seen anyone here propose any laws that take away women's rights to choose their sexual partners.
To be more succinct, we offer women social/legal/political responses to remedy problems that arise due to their inability to create a particular interpersonal relationship. We don't offer men social/legal/political responses to remedy problems that arise due to their inability to create a particular interpersonal relationship.
Fair enough, I'm not sure I've seen it so explicitly here but I feel like plenty of people have Darkly Hinted in that direction.
What are the responses we offer to women? Outlawing gender based discrimination in pay? That seems... fine to me? Again, I'm open to hearing what kinds of responses we should offer to men, but the people oft complaining about this seem light on actionable solutions.
There is little gender discrimination based on pay; it's a gap that opens up when women choose to enter into relationships with men, have children, and enact gendered labor norms. My objection is to the idea that women who do choose to do just that are entitled to the same income as men, despite e.g. working fewer hours or in more flexible jobs than men in order to care for kids. The "pay gap" is largely a relational issue, driven by personal choice (and unfortunately constrained by gendered norms).
More broadly, we make a big deal of women doing more housework than men, but why should that be a social or political concern? It's a purely relational issue, similar to how men not being able to find a partner is a purely relational issue. We can very easily say to women, "get better!" and attract a mate who'll do equal amounts of housework; but we never do that and instead start hurling invective at men. But when a man can't attract any kind of mate, we stop at "get better!"
I've no objection to purely economic anti-gender discrimination laws. When laws and social attention get into the realm of structuring interpersonal relations, either everyone is worthy of protection by them (with equal emphasis on different gendered protections) or no one is.
The housework thing always seems odd to me -- these are consensual relationships. If it bothers the people they should talk about it, or leave.
(Also, apparently the leisure time of both is about the same, men are working longer, or doing things that don't get counted. I tend to be skeptical of these things, for the reasons noted in this thread).
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