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"Donald Trump is a misogynist who has no trouble attracting women" is quite a subjective statement in my opinion. As I said below, no sane, healthy person wants to be in a relationship with someone who fundamentally does not see them as equal. The women who date misogynists likely have a lot of self-hatred, or are not very emotionally intelligence, or all of the other various reasons why people get into abusive relationships.
To use the fisherman metaphor that seems to be popular here; is a man really a good fisher when the fish he catches are sickly? I'd say no. Those men you say are successful with women I'd say are not successful, just good at finding insecure people with low self-esteem.
My anecdotal experience is every single conservative man I know in my life who is in a relationship is miserable. My father and mother's relationship is full of vicious, childish fighting, and so is my boyfriend's parents to the extent my boyfriend is afraid they will shoot eachother with their many illegal guns. My brother's girlfriend is obsessive and controlling and forced him to move in with her. My boss admitted to me she only married her husband because he caught her in a moment of weakness when giving birth, my other boss is telling strangers at work about her husband's various failures, and my boyfriend's ex-best friend's girlfriend threatened to cheat on him regularly. Both of my roommates' girlfriends fight with them about menial things like going to get fast food together to the point they are slamming doors and screaming, my roommates' mother is begging her husband for cocaine, and the lady I met at my job the other day mentioned her husband bought her clothes to encourage her to lose the baby weight and she was secretly returning them because she didn't want him to know she hadn't lost it.
All of these people, though, would be adamant that they are in love, that their relationship is fine, they're happily married, etc. And yet is it so further from the truth, and I feel quite sorry for them that they don't know how to leave these toxic relationships and find people who actually make them happy. I think if you think Donald Trump's relationships are the definition of happiness and success in relationships, then it shows. So, my personal response to your anecdote is that your three conservative men are dating attractive but unsatisfied and unhappy women, and your feminist friend is not dating the first neurotic, self-hating girl he finds, so understandably he will have "less success". Or, to be more charitable, your three conservative men are very good liars, and may have landed self-respecting women, but that will fall apart when their disrespect inevitably shows, and they will end up like all the other conservative men I've witnessed, and your feminist friend has bad luck. I firmly believe no sane, healthy person wants to be in a relationship with someone who considers them lesser or who they consider to be lesser.
Additionally, I didn't say, "if you just started respecting women then women would be falling over themselves to date you". I said, "I would recommend that loveless men consider one solution to their lack of success in the dating market is to re-examine their overall attitude about women and see if that isn’t playing a part as to why women are not responding the way you want them to." Certainly not the absolute statement you make it out to be. I cannot speak for the context of every man, but I can say that, in general, finding women lesser than you is going to lead to lesser relationships.
Where to begin.
I don't know what's subjective about it. It's a matter of public record that Donald Trump has been married three times and has had multiple extra-marital affairs: whatever else you want to say about the man, he's not an "incel". Some people might not characterise him as a misogynist, but I highly doubt you fall into that category. Therefore you must agree with every component of that assertion.
Which puts them head and shoulders above incels/Nice Guys™ etc., who aren't even able to find insecure people with low self-esteem.
I don't. My point was not that Donald Trump has had many happy successful fulfilling relationships. My point is that, unlike sexually and romantically frustrated incels, attracting women is not a problem for Donald Trump. Perhaps he's only able to attract insecure women with low self-esteem, but, again, that puts him head and shoulders above incels who can't even do that.
That would come as news to them. I have to say, your comment comes off as extraordinarily condescending to women. "Any woman who dates a man who doesn't share my political worldview must secretly hate herself and be miserable, without knowing it" is quite the blistering take. And how, exactly, can this hypothesis be falsified? "Any woman dating a non-feminist man must be insecure and miserable. If by all accounts she appears happy, satisfied and fulfilled, she's just in denial." What would it take for you to consider the possibility that the apparently happy and fulfilled woman dating a non-feminist man actually is happy and fulfilled?
What, precisely, do you think we are lying about?
If you're using such an expansive definition of "someone who considers them lesser", then most of the human race isn't sane or healthy.
Fair enough, I was misrepresenting your opinion somewhat. I just want you to appreciate that this suggestion isn't new: internet feminists have been bandying it about for over a decade. Sexually/romantically frustrated men hear the suggestion "if you can't get a date, try respecting women more". They look at themselves and notice that they respect women (in many cases they're just as well-acquainted with feminist theory and vocabulary, if not more so, as anyone else in their social circle, including many women). They look around and notice that there is no shortage of men in their vicinity who are able to attract women despite being unacquainted with feminist theory, or even treating the women in their lives inconsiderately or disrespectfully. They (quite reasonably) surmise that, while respecting women is a good thing, it seems to be orthogonal to one's ability to attract women. "But the only women those guys are attracting are neurotic self-hating women with poor self-esteem" OKAY, but a sufficiently sexually/romantically frustrated man is not going to turn up his nose at a woman just because she's neurotic or self-hating, and you're still left with the question of why a non-feminist but attractive man is able to attract (allegedly neurotic and self-hating) women, but an incel can't even do that. There must be some factor other than misogyny/disrespect for women which explains why these two men have such disparate outcomes in the sexual/romantic marketplace. (Hint: it's that adjective "attractive".)
I don't know if being able marry is the baseline for "success" in a relationship. I don't think men dating people they find to be less funnier, less empathetic, less intelligent and less capable than them are head and shoulders above people who are single.
I didn't say "Any woman who dates a man who doesn't share my political worldview must secretly hate herself and be miserable, without knowing it." But I do believe anyone who is with someone that fundamentally disrespects them and thinks they should be subservient has low self esteem, and could be happier.
There is nothing that would make be believe a woman dating a sexist man is happy and fulfilled, any more than what it would take to convince me a man dating a sexist woman is happy and fufilled. It doesn't help I have anecdotally seen dozens of women with sexist husbands who claim they have a wonderful marriage while behind closed doors their husbands are calling them whores in screaming matches or badmouthing them to their children, and dozens of men who claim their girlfriends are wonderful while secretly their girlfriends are threatening to cheat on them with their friends.
I think you are lying about how much you respect the women you are dating. I think, assuming they are healthy, if they knew the full extent of how the three of you felt, they would leave ya'll out of self respect. If they do know the full extent of ya'll feelings, then I'd say they have very low self esteem to stay with someone who sees them as lesser.
I know my suggestion isn't new, but neither is making broad generalization about women based on anecdotal bad experiences. Women are not a monolithic them any more than men are. And yes, I think a sexually frustrated man should not have sex with the first woman who wants to have sex with him if he thinks she is dumber than him and more emotional than him. I would find that would lead to a toxic attitude about sexual relationships.
The other factor I would say is bad luck. Unsatisfying, yes, but success in the dating sphere largely depends on finding someone compatible romantically, and that is as guaranteed as finding someone compatible platonically. If I were to renounce making friendships with other women because I had some bad fallouts in my past, my friends would tease me rightfully for thinking all people are the same.
Good, me neither, never said that. I don't know how I can make my point any clearer. I'm not saying that every man who gets married is in a successful relationship. My first comment directly mentioned men who beat their wives - surely you don't think a physically abusive marriage is my idea of "success"? My point is that incels and romantically frustrated men are complaining about a chronic inability to attract women, and this is not a problem which married men suffer from.
Okay well if there's literally nothing that could convince you, then we're dealing with a religious belief, not a political or philosophical one.
What does "respect" look like to you? I think ultimately what you're doing is falling for the oldest logical fallacy in feminism. The normative belief "I believe that women should have the same rights as men" does not presuppose the factual belief "I think men and women's brains are alike in every way (and any observed differences in behaviour, temperament or personality traits are solely attributable to social influence)". So when you're asserting that I don't "respect" my girlfriend, I think what you're really asserting is that I don't believe male and female brains are alike in every way. Cards on the table: I don't (although I do believe women should have the same rights as men). If a precondition of genuinely respecting women means believing (or pretending to believe) that female brains are exactly the same as male, then I guess I don't respect women, although I don't really understand why. No one thinks that a precondition of respecting Japanese people means pretending that Japanese people are exactly as tall as Swedes.
"So you're saying female brains are worse than male" - nope, never said that. I said different. There are certain traits in which I think men tend to perform better than women, and other traits in which I think women tend to perform better than men. There are other differences which can't really be mapped onto a "better" or "worse" hierarchy: men tend to be more interested in abstract systems and women tend to be more interested in interpersonal relationships, and I wouldn't say that one of these is "better" or "worse" than the other.
And let's leave gender aside from this for a minute: you keep talking about a partner that "sees them as lesser" or similar phrasing. Are you claiming that a mutually respectful relationship is one in which the two partners believe that they are equally skilled in all domains? Such a relationship doesn't exist and never has: it's a category with zero members. In every relationship, one person will be the better cook, or be funnier, or have better social skills, or be better with money, or will be more even-tempered. If you're conflating "a relationship in which one person believes they are better than the other in certain respects" with "abusive relationship", then I'm sorry to say that all romantic relationships in all of human history have been, are and will be abusive.
True, but the fact that every member of a set is different doesn't mean that it's impossible to make accurate generalisations about that set, and it's weird that you get so offended when people do so. For example: men are all different, we are not a monolith. Nonetheless, the statement "men are more aggressive than women" (or "men tend to be more aggressive than women" or "men are more prone to aggression than women") is inarguably true. I am not insulted by this statement, even though it's a generalisation about a set of which I am (through no fault of my own) a member. I know that the generalisation isn't true of me personally, even though it is true of the set of which I am a member. In this thread you've repeatedly made the non sequitur that a man who says "women aren't as funny as men" therefore believes that he, personally, is funnier than you personally. But that logic doesn't follow: the statement doesn't imply that interpretation. Hell, the statement "men are more aggressive than women" is true even if asserted by a violent woman (say, Aileen Wuornos) to a non-violent man.
[As an aside: I expect I'm likely to be misinterpreted here, so I'm emphatically not claiming that "men are funnier than women" is as obviously true an assertion as "men are more aggressive than women". My point is that the statement "men are funnier than women" does not imply that literally every man is funnier than literally every woman, or that every man is funny, or that no woman is funny. Those readings of the original statement are just as much non sequiturs as interpreting the statement "men are more aggressive than women" to mean "literally every man is more aggressive than every woman" or "every man is violent" or "no woman is violent".)
Now: is a woman who (accurately) asserts "men are more prone to aggression than women" therefore a "sexist" who "sees her husband as lesser"? Is she obliged to believe (or pretend to believe) that men and women are equally aggressive, in order to protect her husband's feelings? I don't think so. If a man got really bent out of shape every time his wife made this inarguably true assertion and interpreted it to mean that his wife was accusing him personally of being aggressive, I would think he was a thin-skinned numerically illiterate narcissist.
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