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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.
I know a couple who met on a dating app which then failed almost immediately because it’s customers were all getting in serious relationships and canceling their subscriptions.
A new economic model is necessary, because dating apps are designed to not work- because otherwise they’ll go under.
I personally think this is a place for a public option to step in, and I say that as a libertarian. Society has a vested interest in solving this problem. One of the sole purposes of governments is to solve collective coordination problems. This is absolutely a collective coordination problem. There is just no profit mechanism for a private company to match people well, it destroys their usebase, and I don't think there is a solution to that, one that also doesn't act as a roadblock to users joining in the first place.
Obviously the traditional approach is to do this at the local community, but that ship has been sailing for awhile now. It's hard to create local communities that last if nobody is getting married and starting families. It also requires members with social prestige/authority in the community to organize it, and so runs afoul of the same problem third-spaces do, too many free-riders not enough organizers. And lastly it ignores the simple fact that we are just that much more socially atomized in this day and age.
Hell I'd make the app/algo if anyone knows a hookup to the FedGov to get it funded
Just administer a college requirement that for a passing grade you’re obliged to attend a campus party serving massive amounts of alcohol to every student. There will be a pregnancy boom in the country in no time at all. There are lots of obvious solutions to these problems that governments are too limp wristed to shove down the throats of their populations. Jim had an interesting view on this question recently. When the point came where communities collapsed and third spaces dissolved, that meant that the attendant social controls that went along with them got washed away.
The girl I’ve been spending time with is still a holdover of the previous era, much like I am. She’s very Catholic (naturally not in the I don’t believe in sex before marriage type, but absolutely the “I don’t believe in birth control type.” She was very hesitant to take Plan B after we had sex a few times recently and felt very shameful for using it, and I may go back to using condoms.) Plus she’s a paralegal and knows quite a few things about the law, and she’s very intelligent. You don’t encounter a lot of people like that here anymore. I’ve been in group settings with others in the past where the topic of relationships have come up and when I express my views I’ve got replies back from women who say, “It’s like you’re from another world…”, and I’m just thinking to myself, “What? Reality?” There was a place and time in this country where my views weren’t considered abnormal or strange. What’s changed has been two primary things: people’s value systems and lifestyle inflation. That’s what’s causing the crisis IMO.
My value system is completely indifferent to the existence of social media; and my lust for material consumption and flashy distractions haven’t hit steroidal levels yet. So trying to ‘technology your way out’ of this problem is only going to produce very limited results at best. It’s not going to buck the larger trend, short of coercion. You’ll see pockets of people who have the right approach to things, but those who are already caught up in the popular anti-natalist wave of “live life only for today,” are a hopeless lot and won’t be reached.
smh my head when hoeflation has progressed enough such that a girl who merely feels bad about taking Plan B after getting rawdogged a few times too many could very well be considered a TradCath relic.
Reminds me of how abortion has been decriminalized/legalized in several LatAm countries despite their supposed Catholicism. Hoeflation > Religion. Islam in Arab countries perhaps remains the exception.
Being a sinner’s exactly why you need Jesus in the first place.
Turkish girls are known for the anal sex loophole. A lot of them hoe it out from the ass so they keep their hymen intact for their husband on the wedding day. Yeah. I was surprised when I was told that too. It’s apparently some kind of standard knowledge leaked from the “girl code.”
In my girl’s case, we’d had sex before a long time ago when she was in her 20’s, and she’d had a couple relations with others before that, so she knows she can’t hold me to a higher price and demand commitment if she’s given it away at a lesser cost to worse people. That’s one reason (among several) why I say she’s an intelligent girl. Because she’s very aware of how people will read her behavior and she’s incredibly perceptive. If I look to a model of pure moral consistency from a woman, I’ll never find it for the rest of my life and neither will most men. Can’t hold someone to a standard I won’t hold myself to. And she isn’t a hoe. She’s only had two serious relationships in her life and has never had sex outside of it (except with me and that was after she’d broke up).
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