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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!
The problem with this argument is that we aren't seeing the now-scarce Zoomettes getting what they want.
The problem with the dating market in 2026 is that it does not clear, not that it is clearing at a price that young men don't like. Both sexes think it sucks, and there are people of both sexes who want to match with MMV peers and are unable to. Most people of both sexes still want marriage, but marriage rates are low and falling. This is a disaster, not a shift in power in the battle of the sexes.
The normie view on what is wrong seems fairly clear - that the main socially acceptable way of meeting strangers as potential dates (subscription-funded dating apps) does not work.
Dating is a matching market. Matching markets just tend to be hellscapes, and the larger they get the worse they get. But that's not the only problem. The change in balance in power is part of it. I just saw a thread on twitter where a man was derided because he said he want on something like 30 dates and they all went the same way: he took the girl out for dinner, they went for a walk, and he waited for them to initiate physical contact because he didn't want to be #metoo'd. Only 2 did (which is higher than I'd expect). You can claim this is merely paranoia on his part, but that requires putting your head in the sand.
From a certain perspective and to a certain limited extent, this is just things working as intended. The men who are stupid enough or paranoid enough to allow themselves to be totally stymied by the propaganda (i.e. undesirable men) will weed themselves out of the dating pool, leaving only the men who are savvy enough to actually navigate complex and adversarial social dynamics (i.e. more desirable men).
The propaganda, however, is true. And the men who can make it through are scarce and often not high quality. It is true that a common female strategy is to put up an apparent brickwall filter -- that is, a filter that no one passes -- and accept only men who ignore her objections. However, that strategy only works when it's possible for decent men to do so. Current culture does not.
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