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Notes -
Young Prudes: Are sex norms mostly a manifestation of sex ratios?
Aria Shrecker of Works in Progress puts forward an interesting hypothesis. What if the sexual revolution of the 1960s was driven not (primarily) by the pill, but by a growing population?
The thesis rests on a few key points:
1 is fairly uncontroversial, 2 is a mathematical derivative of 1. The only part of contention is whether 3 is true, and if so, how strong the effect is.
There is definitely a correlation between the ratio of men to women at US colleges and its sexual culture. And the mechanism is pretty intuitive. This would also explain the current sex-negative turn among young people. There are fewer 21 year-old zoomettes than there are 23 year-old zoomer boys, and so with the 'upper hand', the young ladies are turning the sexual culture towards their preferences.
The greatest weakness in the hypothesis is that it predicts that a higher male:female ratio should increase commitment (marriages, having children, buying houses together) and all those things are declining. Of course, its possible that atomisation caused by smartphones is simply too strong of an effect and swamps the influence of sex ratios. Peter Foreshaw Brooks points this out in his review of her article.
If Aria is right, then we're soon in line for a marriage boom. Watch this space, folks!
This issue has been fairly extensively discussed on Manosphere blogs back when they were still a thing. I can recall the main arguments more or less. Shrecker's analysis is fundamentally right with one important caveat. If the sex ratio in question becomes even more imbalanced, the effect starts to reverse. What apparently happens is that even men of lower social status start exploring opportunities for casual sex which is something they otherwise never do. This nauseates women and they respond by rejecting such advances wholesale and essentially forming a new sex cartel, waiting for the Chad with a heart of gold to show up.
Generally speaking, the average age of marriage is low and the marriage rate is high when women outnumber men, but only slightly - which has normally been the standard state of affairs. This means women in general are imbued with a sense of urgency but are at the same time not getting demoralized/dispirited.
When there are much more men then women, the general attitude is 'why should I bother settling down, all guys are available'. When the reverse is true, it's 'why should I bother settling down, no guys are available'.
My experience trying to get young people to pair off is that you want between fifty and sixty percent women- a huge female supermajority and they just clique together and talk to their friends, if it’s not majority female they get scared and one or two over aggressive guys run amok.
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