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Notes -
Time for some good old fashioned gender politics seethe:
https://old.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/comments/11of65g/i_21m_asked_my_friend_21f_to_be_fwb_and_now_she/?sort=confidence
A clearly very socially awkward nerdy literal virgin (despite being 21 years old) guy thinks a cute girl in his study group is flirting with him. He takes her aside privately after a study session and asks her… does she want to be his FWB (friends with benefits)? He reasons that he wants to have fun like many young men and isn’t looking for a relationship right now.
The girl is shocked and taken aback. She turns him down flat and appears uncomfortable. He feels uncomfortable too and apologizes to her and leaves.
Over the next few weeks, she doesn’t say anything to him at study sessions. He tries to make contact again, not to proposition her, but just to resume their friendly acquaintanceship. She tells him directly that she doesn’t want to speak to him. He is hurt but understands and leaves her be. Soon enough, he learns that she has told her friends and extended social circle what happened, and he is widely reviled as a creep. He feels hurt and violated. He laments that he has lost a friend, and now feels like he’s being lambasted for an innocent error, and he wishes the whole thing would just end and go away.
My take on OP is sympathetic. He comes off as extremely awkward and clearly isn’t well versed in the endless myriad of opaque and seemingly contradictory rules of modern dating. He wanted an FWB, and he didn’t understand that the socially acceptable way to get one is to ask a girl out on a date (usually through Tinder), then hook up with her, then either stay as vague as possible for as long as possible about your intentions while continuing to periodically fuck, or to sort of half way shrug after a fuck session and say, “yeah, I’m just really not looking for anything serious right now.” OP genuinely thought he was being upfront and honest with another person, and assumed that he was proposing something mutually beneficial.
Yes, it’s not a good idea to outright proposition a girl to be an FWB in a library. It’s awkward and weird and I can see how it made her feel uncomfortable. But all signs point to OP making an innocent error. He didn’t know any better. When he became aware of his mistake, he immediately apologized, gave the offended party space, and only later attempted to reestablish contact in a friendly, non-threatening manner. He made an innocent mistake and responded in the best possible way.
And Reddit’s response to OP is… calling him a massive piece of shit in every conceivable way.
What I find interesting about the overwhelming criticisms of OP is that they split in two completely opposite directions, but seemingly from the same critics.
On the one hand, OP is relentlessly slut shamed. He is accused of treating this woman like a “flesh light,” of feeling “entitled” to sex, of creepily trying to fuck an acquaintance, of pursuing sex with a girl instead of trying to date thine lady like a proper Victorian gentleman.
On the other hand, OP is relentlessly virgin shamed. He’s an incel, a fool, a creepy moron. He’s daring to try to have casual sex when he hasn’t even lost his virginity because he is SUCH A MASSIVE FUCKING LOSER. OP doesn’t understand that casual sex is only for chads who have fucked a bunch of girls, FWBs are an unlockable perk, not a privilege of the sexually unworthy.
Fortunately, there is a minority of Reddit commenters backing OP up, but it is a small minority. Meanwhile, many more posters are saying that OP is well on the way to becoming an incel or Andrew Tate fan, and unfortunately, they’re right, just not in the way they think they are.
I don’t have a larger point for this post, only that it’s incredibly frustrating that a significant portion of mainstream culture has erected these standards for the dating marketplace where one false step not only does, but should result in social and moral annihilation.
The vast majority of 'dating advice' young men are given (by the mainstream liberal feminist zeitgeist) is absolutely terrible and only land them in situations like this if they follow through with it.
I can guarantee at some point someone told OP 'just be honest, straightforward and upfront with women and nothing bad will happen, the worst the woman will do is reject you but respect you for being honest.' And he completely understandably took that advice at face value.
This is combined with the fact we have a sexually liberal, if not libertine culture. The young man probably though that offering some girl to be FwB directly - despite being a literal virgin - was perfectly fine cause media and social media told him that's just how things are. And besides, men and women are the same, so women must think about this hypothetical arrangement the same way he does.
OP is also an actual idiot for thinking his proposal would end in anyway but horribly badly for him and being stupid enough to think going from virgin to FwB playa is in anyway feasible or a good idea. But the problem is that young men aren't allowed to fuck up in a healthy way and learn from the experience anymore, if young men fuck up they're 'literally incels' and a danger to young women who must be ostracised and exiled.
This is what happens when you have a social environmental where the social rules are poorly defined if they exist at all, the advice the young men get is terrible and contradictory, and the consequences for men are astronomical and completely at women's mercy.
Yeah, this is "Nice Guy Syndrome", something that absolutely I would argue is pushed by that zeitgeist, combined with the modern sexually libertine environment. This is what you get. Actually, it's not even that unreasonable if you ask me, although certainly it's not a route I'd actually recommend, depending on what advice/worldview you're seeing. Let's say that you wanted to be in a relationship with someone, you might feel the need that you need to prove your sexual abilities in a non-committal way. Thus, FwB.
There's always going to be danger for the neurodivergent who take the world at its word rather than trying to read between the lines.
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Perhaps this too is a feature, not a bug: only the resilient and determined - and the attractive - do well.
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Then they shouldn't have set the bar on making approaches so high that only Chad can pass it, and set the penalties so high for failure that only someone who thinks he's Chad, or is utterly clueless, dares try in an environment other than among strangers (e.g. online dating).
Or, more realistically, they should make a man commit to them before he can get his dick wet.
What does commitment even mean these days? Marriage? Getting a fiance ring or something?
Anything that entails the contribution of one's time, effort and patience, plus a willingness to compromise.
I imagine back in the olden days it was socially difficult if you suddenly broke up with your relationship, there'd be all these rumors and voices and your family would be very angry with you. When King Edward VIII wanted to marry an American divorcee it was just not on. He was made to pay a price for that decision.
But what is there now that can prove your commitment? What can be socially enforced? What is commitment in the relationship sense? Nothing.
Well, yes. I suppose I understand what you're getting at.
Times have indeed changed. There was a time when men were responsible for their wives / female relatives, and women were accountable to their husbands/ male relatives. Those times are gone. Dismantling patriarchal monogamy has consequences. I'll argue that proving your commitment is still easy, as it has signals that should be bloody obvious to the other party, but generally speaking, commitment can only be elicited and incentivized, not enforced. That's the social reality today.
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That would be part of the problem- see my earlier comment about there are no standards anymore.
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In reality, I suspect the immediate result of lowering the bar is to keep getting pumped and dumped, just by less attractive guys, even if this does increase her long-term odds of finding a good relationship,
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But they aren't. The situation you describe is exactly why we figuratively started to hand out loaded guns to women in the shape of sexual harassment allegations.
It's the Wild West alright, but every woman carries a nuke.
Fair points all around. Some nitpicks:
Oh I bet. But that was not the question. The question was whether the current social regime leads to more or less "less than princely behavioor" by men. And that very much depends on what we compare the current situation with. I would hazard the guess that the current risk-reward structure results in much less inappropriate behavior than any other after the sexual revolution.
Two caveats though. One is that what is commonly regarded as inappropriate behaviour has shifted dramatically. This might result in more women feeling victimised than ever before, especially since we started to hand out social and professional rewards for victimhood.
The other is that the punishment for missteps is affecting the behaviour of those least likely to misstep much more than those who simply don't care. The inappropriate-behaviour-per-social-interaction counter may actually go up as a result as the shy and gentle nerds stop trying and the Chads keep on chadding as before.
I'd say there's a fair share of recreational use over fairly trivial matters. Of course, it will be mostly the sociopaths running around using that weapon while those who truly need it to defend themselves will hesitate to use it. As always.
Well said.
I think this is why it's interesting that a segment of Gen X women has such a weird dislike for the more communal actions of Millenial and Gen Z women. Like yes, it's a cool story that you slapped the drink out of the hand of the guy that grabbed your ass, but guess what, he went down to the next bar down the street and did the same thing. Meanwhile, the next generation of girls is posting on some private Facebook group/shared Google doc/etc. about creepy guys is far more likely to lead to the creepy guy being shamed, and more importantly, other creepy guys deciding a single ass grab isn't worth it.
I could make a more general political argument about Gen Xers being split in their political views as young people, while Millenial's and Gen Zers are far more left-leaning.
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Giving terrible advice to men does in fact make the woman's job easier. Her job is to discern who is worthy and who isn't. Social intelligence is a big part of that.
The OP in the story clearly doesn't (yet) have what it takes. He therefore should be rejected. Giving him advice on how to fake having what it takes is terrible because it dilutes the signal.
Men do in fact receive very good advice. But it is not them the advice is meant to be good for.
Yeah except this falls apart when men aren't also allowed to improve and be given a second chance. Because a significant portion of men, probably a majority, will fail this torturous mind game at some point. This level of sabotage against men leaves only a small portion of successful men. This is how you end up with the implicit polygynyous relationships of today.
The deck is completely stacked against (young) men now. In the past, there were social conventions and explicit courtship rituals even a social inept but otherwise good man could follow and be reasonably successful. Now it's the wild west, men have no idea that there are no rules, no guidance, the publicly acceptable advice is sabotaging you and you don't even know it, you as a young man assume all the social risk and put at the mercy of a woman's reaction who can utterly destroy you. This is not a stable arrangement.
This arrangement isn't even good for women in the long run either, because it sabotages the formation of long-term stable relationships which both men and women benefit from.
Maybe with respect to a specific woman but there are a lot of fish in the sea.
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I don't disagree.
By and large, that seems to be the arrangement preferred by women relative to the available alternatives, going by their revealed preferences. A significant portion of women seem to prefer sharing a top man over having a sub-par specimen for themselves. And of course, having the option to utterly destroy a man who slights them.
That's what (non-top) men think is best for them and for society. They are probably right. Alas, we live in a longhouse.
Which women? Where? Based on what empirical evidence?
This seems to be one of those things - it has plenty of counterparts on the SocJus side of things - that's said because it follows from a theory someone is attached to, not because of any particular evidence that it's true. Outside of a very small number of poly arrangements, in which men at the top of the attractiveness scale aren't that overrepresented based on the ones I'm familiar with, I can't think of any cases where this is true. Yeah, it would logically follow if a lot of the ideas that float around the "manosphere" were true, but so much the worse for those ideas. But it's not something I actually see happening at any significant scale.
If I'm right, a small number of men should have a lot of sexual partners and a much larger number of men should have very few. Women should be somewhere in the middle and a lot of them should go without sex for longer periods of time despite having every opportunity to do so. This matches my general observations in my social circle, but I am not sure how I would go about finding statistics that aren't hilariously skewed by social desirability bias working in different directions for men and women.
What should we observe if your model were right and how would we find out?
Bit late, but:
I mostly see people monogamously pairing off. There's a small number of eternal singles, mostly men, but the norm is long(ish)-term serial monogamy. Getting a new partner generally involves the guy sticking his neck out to much greater extent than the girl but the gender balance isn't off by that much. Almost no-one in my social circles has multiple partners on the regular (even the theoretically poly people have mostly broken down into straightforward two-person relationships).
There's certainly nothing I'd be tempted to describe as "women... sharing a top man". Which for that matter, seems largely absent from your description of the state of play, as well; and this is especially true when you fill the ellipsis back in, because I certainly can't think of anything that could plausibly be described as an active preference for this on the part of women, even of the revealed variety. As has been pointed out before, ideas often assumed here, like that and the whole "alpha fucks, beta bucks" notion, IME exist primarily in the minds of incels and MRAs, and hardly at all in real life.
It's possible my crowd and I are older than the people you have in mind, but the pattern doesn't change that much when you go back to our teens and twenties. Far more frequent changes of partner, certainly, and more (but still not all that many) actively poly arrangements, but only one that I would be tempted to describe using anything close to the text I quoted.
Ah, I think the issue is a loose use of terminology on my part. I certainly didn't want to insinnuate that poly relationships are becoming anything other than fringe any time soon. But an arrangement where a large portion of women seek out only the top portion of men for sex or relationships and otherwise stay single would satisfy my description of "rather share a top man over having a sub-par specimen for themselves".
From my observation, all the good men are paired off, the loser men stay single, and the women who didn't snatch a good man get a cat rather than one of the loser men. I exxegarate, but there is a pattern.
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What "dating advice" outside of porn movies tells young men to introduce themselves: "Hello sweetie. Wanna fuck?"
I do recall a section of one of Feynman's books that amounts to this -- I think you need to be in an environment where people might reasonably want to fuck for this to work. (and you need to be ready to accept being shot down in flames ~95% of the time, which this guy probably was not)
Yes. Feynman was hitting on women in bars, not asking women at Caltech if they were up for it.
I originally wrote "asking women scientists at conferences", but then I realized this might not be the worst place for casual hookups, just don't pick someone from the same field, lay it on thick, but with mutual plausible deniability.
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There was definitely an era in the 2010s where the default advice was "Let her know your true intentions. You don't want to be friendzoned." I don't tend to see that too much anymore though.
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The case here wasn't an introduction. The dude had known the girl and was friendly with her for a long time. He we told by society to be fully open and honest about his intentions with women and when he did this was lambasted for it. Totally predictable and the dude made a mistake believing what society says rather than seeing what society does, but this discrepancy is very much real. I hope he takes this as a learning lesson.
Not the same as being friends. Imagine a casual acquaintance or someone you work with. You get on, you're friendly, but you don't consider yourselves to be friends. Then one day this guy/girl/whomever asks you "Hey, wanna have a casual sexual relationship where we fuck sometimes, no strings attached?"
Maybe you would consider "Oh Horace, flattered as I am, I'm not ready for a relationship" as a response. Or maybe you would think "Where the fuck did that come out of? We're not that kind of intimates!" Possibly you might even feel uncomfortable around them and try to avoid them.
Or maybe you'd go "Sure, I'm up for a knee-trembler in the stationery cupboard, see you in ten!"
Sure, but that's still not the same as an introduction of "Hello sweetie. Wanna fuck?". I absolutely agree this man broke a ton of unspoken social rules and it's bad, but society as a whole was also telling him (on the face at least) that what he did would be fine and was the right thing to do relative to "try and become friends with her with an ulterior motive".
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Yeah, but I hope he takes the right lesson from it as well. Poor bastard might end up like Scott Aaronson.
Happily married, if neurotic and insecure?
That only came after the "I seriously considered castrating myself because I was so terrified of causing a girl to accuse me of rape" paranoia the poor divil went through as a teenager.
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