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Hoffmeister25  American Bukelismo Enthusiast  8mo ago (text post)   5104 thread views

In which I pine for a monastic escape from the sexual rat race

I live pretty close to the university I attended roughly a decade ago, and I’m very frequently on or near campus. Over the past couple of years, especially since we’ve had some nasty hot summers here in San Diego, it has become somewhat common for me to see young women walking on public sidewalks wearing skimpy bikinis, including occasionally thong swimsuit bottoms. Like, ass cheeks fully out for the world to see. When I see this, obviously my lizard brain is thoroughly captivated, but my higher-functioning brain is then immediately scandalized and appalled.

When I attended this same university, it was strange and tantalizing enough to see so many women walking around in sheer leggings and booty-shorts. This was not allowed at my high school, and I doubt that many of the girls would have availed themselves of the option even if it had been allowed. So, for me, being surrounded by women in (compared to what I was used to) revealing clothing made me feel frustrated and constantly distracted. It also, as I continued through college without having any romantic/sexual success with women during that time, began to make me feel desperate and invisible. Look at all of these hot people all around me! Am I the only person on campus who is not attractive? Does anyone even notice that I exist? Like a penniless man walking down a bustling commercial boulevard arrayed with shiny advertisements of wonderful products I couldn’t hope to purchase, I felt like having all of these unattainable women showing off their bodies to me but not giving me the time of day was infinitely worse than not having women around at all.

Still, it would have been unheard of at that time for one of those young women to walk around in public in broad daylight wearing nothing but a thong bikini. Regardless of any legal penalties or school policies regarding such an action, it would have been seen, by both women and men, as simply unacceptably slutty. I can imagine that such an act would have led dozens of captivated male passers-by to walk head-first into trees or crash their cars while rubbernecking, like when Sue-Ellen Mischke walked down an NYC sidewalk wearing a bra as a top. Now apparently this is normal behavior in 2023.

When I see one of these women, I’m struck by the thought, “The Taliban are right about women.” Now, this is not a rational and considered policy endorsement. It’s just an atavistic cri de couer of a man who does not want to have such a thing dangled in my face unexpectedly while trying to have a normal public outing. It honestly makes me a tiny bit sympathetic to the Middle Eastern and African guys who come into Europe and end up sexually assaulting local women because they misinterpreted the women’s loose and revealing manner of dress for an obvious and intentional public invitation to sexual contact. Where those men come from, no woman would dream of dressing like that, unless she were a particularly brazen prostitute. Having made it to adulthood without cultivating any coping mechanisms for dealing with the level of sexual frustration generated by being surrounded by countless beautiful unaccompanied women in revealing outfits, they lash out in a brutish act of desperate catharsis. Now obviously I do not actually condone the actions of these men, and I wish to see them punished unimaginably harshly for their depraved violations of European women; I also wish that immigration policies were such that these men were not in Europe in the first place to experience such a brutal culture shock.

Still, I can’t help but think that the Islamic world basically has the right idea in terms of their approach to strictly enforcing conservative female attire. I can quibble with the specifics - certainly a burqa is excessive, and I’m not sure that things like niqabs and hijabs are really necessary. But, of course, that’s my western culturally-liberal background talking; I’ve been born centuries after the multiple turns of the ratchet which normalized women walking about with exposed hair and legs and arms, so it seems normal to me, and with the way things are going it looks like in a few more decades the ratchet will have turned here in America such that people will be seen as wildly prudish for thinking it off to see women with their entire asses out on the sidewalk. Hell, perhaps by 2050 American women will be strutting around like the women of the early Bronze Age Minoan civilization, -titties out for the world to see, if their vases are accurate - and the prudes of that era will be asking why we can’t just go back to when women were classy and didn’t wear anything more revealing than a bikini.

Speaking of the Minoans, they are one of the few ancient civilizations for which we have any concrete persuasive evidence that a matriarchal order may have prevailed for a substantial length of time. In Neolithic European civilizations, prior to the Indo-European (Aryan) conquests, a harsh sexual order appears to have prevailed in which the vast majority of men did not reproduce, and may have simply been worked to death in salt mines or massive farm complexes while the women could spend their time advertising their beauty and sexual competitiveness to a small elite of men. I’m far from the first commentator to notice that our societies appear to be lurching in a similar direction; the woman strutting around my local sidewalk in a thong, with no fear of repercussions nor even social censure, content that any frustration or angst she generates in nearby males is highly unlikely to redound negatively toward her, strikes me as symptomatic of this development.

In such a sociosexual regime, assuming we don’t have any massive salt mines for all of our sexually-unsuccessful beta males to expire in, it seems that it may be high time to reintegrate into our society a male archetype which has decidedly fallen by the wayside over the past few centuries: that of the monk or ascetic. While rightwing Twitter (uh, sorry, “X”) embraces the total hegemony of the conquering warrior archetype, it remains the case that there are hundreds of millions of men like me who are never going to ride a chariot into battle or build a homestead from the ground up. For guys like us, maybe it’s time to look toward the monastic lifestyle as an alternative option.

I recently spent a week visiting the U.K. I spent a substantial amount of my time there visiting cathedrals and abbeys. While all of them were breathtaking, I found myself particularly captivated - haunted, really - by Tintern Abbey. Walking within the shattered exoskeleton of a once-thriving monastery is a truly unique experience. Reading more about the Cistercian brotherhood of Monks who founded and operated Tintern for centuries, much about their lifestyle sounded quite appealing to me. To live apart from the world of carnality and temptation, sequestered away with your geeky and serious-minded brothers, translating old Greek and Latin texts, tending a garden, eating simple meals and enjoying simple but meaningful pursuits while the outside world roils and burns around you… what’s not to like? I can imagine how I would fit in with the other monks; I think I’d have a solid chance of being the best singer in the Gregorian chant choir, and I bet I’d be appreciated for giving the most spirited reading of Bible passages during dinner of any of the monks there. I wouldn’t conquer any lands or hear the lamentation of my enemies’ women - ideally I wouldn’t encounter women at all - but maybe I’d end up being the primary author of some groundbreaking historical compendium that would still be useful to people a millennium in the future.

Of course, no such life is really available for western men in our age. Sure, Buddhist monks still exist, as do the Hare Krishnas and other assorted oddball ascetic cults, but they remain the sole province of foreigners, and only the oddest of western oddballs would join one of them. Far more importantly, I have already tasted the fruits of modernity. I have been with women. I know what it’s like to have an infinite universe of porn and other superstimuli at my fingertips. Giving that all up to go withdraw into the monastic life would be impossibly difficult and depriving, because I would know what I’m missing. Sure, it would be a blessed release from the sexual rat race, in which I have fallen far behind, but I would never be able to escape the nagging feeling that I could have done better for myself. The only way to make the monk life work is to identify, early in life, the boys who would be best served by that life path, and plucking them away from the temptations of the world before they’ve developed any strong taste for them. For those of us who’ve already been exposed to modernity, the genie is out of the bottle and he’s not going back in.

If the monastic option is going to make a real return in our culture, it will have to be undergirded by a genuine status infrastructure undergirding it. Such men must not be seen as losers and washouts, crawling in shame away from a life of failure and grasping tightly a pathetic consolation prize. It must be seen as a noble and important life path, every bit as valid as the warrior’s role, and genuinely rewarding in and of itself rather than simply an escape from suffering. It seems like for shape rotators, the life of the shut-in programmer, the “digital nomad”, or the mad scientist are still viable life paths that offer real status and material rewards, but for male wordcels who wish to check out of the lottery lifestyle of academia or entertainment, the pickings seem significantly slimmer. What is the modern wordcel monk to do? AI seems to be rapidly devouring what few paths had remained, leaving beta wordcels no path forward but to cope and seethe, dreaming of living a simple but failure-proof life in an abbey which now lies in ruins.

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To live apart from the world of carnality and temptation

Interestingly enough, when this lifestyle was much more common that it is now, the popular image of the monk, at least as we can see in the literature, wasn't somebody who necessarily avoids all the carnal pleasures. Of course, sexual pleasures (at least, ghm, of heterosexual nature involving more than once person) would be rare, but other things? Eating, drinking, etc.?

Such men must not be seen as losers and washouts, crawling in shame away from a life of failure and grasping tightly a pathetic consolation prize. It must be seen as a noble and important life path, every bit as valid as the warrior’s role, and genuinely rewarding in and of itself rather than simply an escape from suffering.

Could you elaborate on why you feel this is the case? IMO it would be nice, but people who are looking at dropping out of society are likely already low-status, becoming marginally more contemptible isn't a deal-breaker if, as part of the bargain, going forward you get to largely disregard outside social pressure.

The only danger I can think of is irritating the majority enough that they destroy you. In the west, violent pogroms against 'incel cults' are concievable but not very likely. Some form of lawfare might be more practical, but I'm not really seeing a big risk, people walk away all the time and mainstream society is largely indifferent unless they start causing a ruckus.

While I don't experience your angst as an autistic shape rotator, I think your writing is pretty neat!

Consider me to have given the usual unasked for advice that works but is unhelpful: "Have you considered just not being sad about stuff? Perhaps simply will yourself into relational confidence?", etc and so forth.

* Slaps forehead *

"Just lift more than you can lift, it's easy!" Maybe for you bro.

I can't help but point out that a mid 2010s term in Red Pill online communities was "monk mode." The idea being that a self-improving man abstain from all hedonistic pleasures (sex,porn,masturbation,alcohol,other drugs) and exclusively pursue career/school, physical training (mostly lifting), and intellectual development. Unfortunately, what passed for "intellectual development" was as simple as listening to Jock Wilinck's podcast and reading the easier modern translations of Meditations. But, I digress. The deeper point to "monk mode" was putting mental distance between yourself and the Object of Desire (women, in this, and most, cases). Although the science behind so-called dopamine detoxes isn't really there, the mental concept is still useful enough. Stop over-stimulating your reward pathways, and a more level headed thinking should reemerge.

I don't think monastic life should be looked at as a decision to leave the sexual rat race. After watching the documentary The Holy Mountain Edit: Athos (thanks to a commenter for pointing this out!) I became far more convinced that monks who go monastic and stick with it are totally committed to growing closer to God and are willing to endure what is a brutal existence to do that. Watch the film, these guys are living in what looks like working poverty and often reflect on loneliness, doubt, depression, existential crisis. The myth of being a happy monk contentedly brewing beer with your homies covers up what is a life of constant spiritual work. Dealing with the sexual marketplace can't be anywhere near the center of that way of living.

The modern monkish retreat is what is now endemic to young, single western men; porn and substance abuse. The quickest path to satiating a need is satiating it with cheap and freely available goods no matter how short lasting (if the price is sufficiently low). With an internet connection, porn is unlimited and free forever. It may be the cheapest of cheap carbs in terms of mental sustenance, but the price is right. Pair that with an anything-but-minimum-wage job and you can afford beer and or weed. Once you cross about a $50k annual income, you can upgrade that to liquor, sports betting, and impulse buy video games. Consumer culture doesn't lead to meaning, but it can prevent acute personal despair (at least, I think, in a bell-curve majority of specifically men. I don't know about women, but that's for another post).

As far as dealing with and dating modern western woman, the internet is full of resources on how to succeed there. I'd caution that a lot of is written without any concern for classic ethics and morals as well as pro-social behavior at a societal level. If you want to get yours you can learn to do that. If you start to put a high value on pro-social behavior and believe in the traditional conservative case for strong families, you can get to a new level. You start to see overtly sexual displays not as turn offs because, as you pointed out, they hit the male lizard brain full force, but as dangerous or suspicious. I think an interesting and hopefully benign comparison is that of a lava flow - it looks cool as hell, but you don't really want to get closer than a half mile to it.

Many other mottizens have made great contributions to commentary on the sexual revolution and sexual liberalism since the 1960s. My only addition there is that carnal consumption is like any other consumption; we've grown into a society that permits and even flirts with glorifying gluttony. Food, sex, substances, instant gratification purchases, gratuitous "experience" spending, even over consumption of cheap digital goods (doomscrolling) all come with a cost. Fortunately, the individual doesn't need anything from society to practice moderation. It's up the individual to reframe what he or she may see as "abundance I don't have" to "gluttony I don't want."

After watching the documentary The Holy Mountain

The Holy Mountain is an absolutely bananas and surreal 1973 movie by the insane Alejandro Jodorowsky. I highly recommend it. (there's also a 1926 silent movie with the same name about a German mountaineer but it's pretty boring). Googling around I think you probably meant Athos?

Yep! I'm a loser for not getting the title correct. I appreciate the correction as I think the film is very much worth watching.

Many other mottizens have made great contributions to commentary on the sexual revolution and sexual liberalism since the 1960s

Do you have any specific links to share? (I have tried searching with a few of the keywords here, but would be interested in specifics)

The release from the sexual rat race is marriage. At least the rat race portion. It's one of my favorite among many good things about Marriage.

In an perfect world, it would be. I guess if make the right tradeoffs in your partner, some approximation of this might even be true.

Why not just move to the countryside? You don't have to live next to a college campus.

Do you feel the same way about how poor people feel when they see rich people walking around? Either way, why or why not?

I point this out because conservatives tend to have what seems to me to be a double standard about sex and economics. To put it simply, they want sexual communism together with more or less an economic free market.

Free-market sexuality tends to upset them and they want to bolt it down and turn it into some sort of society-controlled sexuality that yields some level of fairness and controls the raw animal heat. But when it comes to everything other than sex, they tend to celebrate supposed meritocracy, "let him who is superior gather the spoils".

Do the rich and the poorly really associate with each other? The only place I can think of where the two might meet are city centers. Otherwise they have separate neighbourhoods, separate services, separate meeting places. Meanwhile women can be found in all walks of life at every social level (unless you're a dude on an oil rig)

I point this out because conservatives tend to have what seems to me to be a double standard about sex and economics. To put it simply, they want sexual communism together with more or less an economic free market.

Do we have a double-standard about sex and economics, or do we just flatly not believe that sex and economics are fundamentally similar? Why not claim that we have a double standard about economics and crime, because we want the one to be free of government interference but want overwhelming government intervention in the other?

I point this out because conservatives tend to have what seems to me to be a double standard about sex and economics. To put it simply, they want sexual communism together with more or less an economic free market.

Conservatives don't want sexual communism. Conservatives want to encourage pro-social positive-sum games, and discourage and sometimes even ban zero-sum or negative-sum games.

The economic market creates value. The status and dating markets are zero-sum at best.

Dating markets allow for better matches, which is positive sum.

better matches

Better than what?

Better than random matches, maybe. Better than arranged pairings? I could be convinced, but am not at present.

Free markets are notably positive sum, and I would note inherently regulated to some degree as private property itself is a kind of regulation. I find the comparison kind of facile if you dig into it all. Not to mention conservatives relationship to free markets is one of those coalitional mirages. The libertarians don't care all that much about the social regulation and the social regulators don't care all that much about economical regulation so they make good partners but one should not model this as one individual who cares deeply about both in search of contradictions.

I don't think this is necessarily true of Hoffmeister, whose professed policies are much weirder than that.

Of course if I was feeling flip, I'd argue that wignats feel consistently between sex with gorgeous women and obvious displays of wealth: their main concern is that they don't like when Black guys do it.

The opposite, of course, has long been pointed out: Liberals want socialist income and trickle down romance. Mainstream liberals are all to each according to their need! Until dudes who can't get laid show up, then it's a mix of get better loser, and hey just wait until she's 40 and gets bored of all those other guys.

And then there's all the interesting aspects of how sexual distribution and economic distribution go together. In several formerly communist European countries, women reported more orgasms under Communism. Meanwhile, it's not clear to me that democracy is possible under polygamy, monogamy strikes me as a prerequisite to any concept of equality. A middle class Republic requires stable marriage as an achievable goal for most people. Economic inequality will no doubt lead to sexual inequality, and vice versa, in the long run.

In several formerly communist European countries, women reported more orgasms under Communism.

Feel like this would be a good paper/article to read if you have it laying around.

Kristen Ghodsee's book: Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism primarily focuses on how capitalism forces dependence on men, but with the state as husband the woman can pursue hedonism(?) which is hilariously what many of the red pill types said, while also blatantly opposing the "sexless" socialist regimes. Famously, "there is no sex in the USSR."

I think I agree with your analogy but, rather than say "both are okay" like you might expenct, conclude "Neither is okay, at least if you're being obnoxious about it." And consistently I support social but not legal sanctions against obnoxious behavior. Someone simply passively being hot, or being rich, is a positive quality that they should be somewhat proud of, but also potentially humble as it's not entirely due to their own merit. And to the extent that it is within your own control, you should strive to be more of both and encourage people who succeed in becoming more of either.

But a hot person (of either sex) flaunting their body in revealing clothing should be perceived and treated similarly to a rich person flaunting their wealth with gaudy expensive jewelry and luxury goods. There might be a time and a place where it's appropriate to display, like at a fancy party or something, and if it just happens to be visible as a side effect of normal behavior that's fine. But if you're going around showing off in public and deliberately going out of your way to exaggerate it in order to make people jealous that's obnoxious and you should be mocked and shamed for it (in proportion to the level offense). It should still be legal, because it's not the government's responsibility to codify what "obnoxious" means, but people should recognize it for what it is and discourage it.

Absolutely! Economic inequality is an inevitable feature of any society above the level of the hunter-gatherer, but I think its emotionally corrosive effects can only be ameliorated by limiting the level of interpersonal contact between the various socioeconomic classes.

Credit to you for being consistent! I will say though, that in the age of the Internet it is no longer possible for any possible envy that the have nots might have to be ameliorated by having limited access to knowing what the lives of the haves are like. It was already impossible, I think, even in the age of the TV.

Personally I do not think that some new feudalism or caste system would be the best approach. Yeah it can suck to see people doing better than one is oneself, especially when they did not have to put any effort into it. But, for all their faults, both the socialist approach (let's make the lives of the have nots better) and the free market approach (if you want to become one of the haves, fight for it) seem better to me than the feudalist / caste system approach.

There's a whole other discussion to be had, too, about whether or not allowing inheritance hurts meritocracy.

I think it very unlikely that you could not find a woman with whom you could fall in love, build a family and have a happy and fulfilling life. There is a lot to be said, especially if you haven't found this so far, for being strategic in your search. If you'd like someone very trad, joining a traditional religious congregation of your choice could be a good idea. There are plenty of shy, homebody women aged 29-32 who don't hang out on the beach in bikinis (and perhaps a few who do!) and who would very much like to get married to a decent man, which could be you. You're a decade out of college, hardly old enough to give up on the simple happiness that many people in much worse condition (both in history and right now) have successfully found.

Without defending sexual liberalism (with which I have many issues), I think the main reason you feel the anguish that you do is that you feel taunted, by people 'advertising' something you think is out of reach for you (or at least largely out of reach). I don't think it's out of reach, necessarily. You're vague about why you feel you're not attractive to the kinds of women you see out on the beach. What exactly do you think you don't have? It is unlikely you will change the system (as you yourself say, you are no leader of men), but it is likely you can find your own happiness within it.

Oh certainly, and I want to make it clear that this post is merely a sort of venting and idle speculation. I had at least a moderate degree of romantic success in my mid-20’s - I was briefly engaged to be married - it’s just that things have dried up to a considerable degree as of late and I’m feeling the sting as the accelerating ticking of my biological clock is juxtaposed against the failures I’ve experienced over the past few years. I hope, and expect, that this malaise will be transitory. I owe it to my family tree to not die a broken branch, so that, if nothing else, keeps me from totally throwing in the towel.

Can’t say I understand you. The superstimuli don’t bother me, I enjoy them.

Such men must not be seen as losers and washouts

Why do you have to demand that society respects your choices, borne out of self-professed weakness, as equally valid? Why adopt their hierarchy and ask for a fake place on it? The sexual hierarchy has no more inherent value than the ping-pong skill hierarchy. Just make up your own.

In Neolithic European civilizations, prior to the Indo-European (Aryan) conquests, a harsh sexual order appears to have prevailed in which the vast majority of men did not reproduce, and may have simply been worked to death in salt mines or massive farm complexes while the women could spend their time advertising their beauty and sexual competitiveness to a small elite of men.

On what do you base this? Is this Y-chromosome myopia again? Just because their Y did not find its way along countless generations to the present, doesn't mean they didn't have kids.

I've seen various claims that most or even a large majority of men historically had no children. You think that is flawed and have an explanation how?

Edit: Got it. https://old.reddit.com/r/science/comments/8nrxzy/about_7000_years_ago_something_weird_happened_to/dzzc4ef/

Where does it make that claim? He specifically says the it is not the product of extreme polygamy and sexual inequality Hoffmeister presents.

Let’s say you have 10 patrilineal clans. They have children normally, then on generation 5, clan 1 wipes out the men and takes the women, in clan 2. Then on generation 10, clans 3,4, and clan 5 wipes out clan 6, 7. The diversity ratio between mitochondrial dna and Y-chromosome is now 2:1 compared to the beginning. And on it goes, increasing the ratio through generations, but everyone's having children.

Because patrilineal social organisation sorts males into groups with identical or closely related Y-chromosomes, wars and feuds between such groups, even if it leads to a low level of group extinction per generation, strongly depresses diversity over 60 generations (~1500 years). Put differently, entire branches of the Y-chromosomal genetic tree may become extinct when social groups go extinct. Up to twentyfold reductions in diversity are possible with very little or no change in male population size over 60 generations.

This is the 17:1 diversity ratio that is often touted. It's 60 generations of filtering, not a 'one man to 17 women' harem.

They have children normally, then on generation 5, clan 1 wipes out the men and takes the women, in clan 2.

What happened to the boys of clan 2?

They are released into the magical forest where they build tree houses and sing songs forever.

Kids in Neverland probably never hit puberty, so there's the (would-be) men that aren't having kids.

Or the women who died as infants. Actually, what we're seeing with the matrilineal versus patrileneal lines diversity ratio could also happen if victors killed everyone in the clan, men and women. All it requires is that women occasionally marry out, and are then considered part of the other patrilineal clan (common enough, see new name of the bride), thereby preserving their line after the massacre of their cousins.

probably they get bundled into a hut, and then the hut gets set on fire.

I think to me, the 'problem' is the increasing dissonance between the signal that young women seem to be intentionally sending, and the actual reaction they have to anyone whom responds to that signal at 'face value.'

Throughout most of history, okay, being precise I'll limit it to the last century, wearing clothing that showed more skin than the average person in that area was almost universally a sign of sexual availability. It was considered, largely, an invitation to approach (politely) and engage in a repartee that had a nontrivial chance of ending in sexual contact, or at least a peek at the goods and a pleasant mental image to store in the spank bank.

So in other words, wearing a skimpy bikini in contexts where a bikini is not standard attire (so contexts other than the beach, pool, strip club) is basically saying "please pay attention to me, and if you find me sexually appealing I am open to being approached."

You can of course have guys that read that message into almost ANY clothing a female wears, I'm not trying to pretend that the messaging mismatch is the sole fault of the sender.

There are other messages that could be mixed in there but I daresay they're completely dominated by THAT one in terms of how men will interpret it.

Except that if you were to take that message at face value and approach, you're not just more likely than not to experience rejection, you're probably going to get ridiculed if you don't match some arbitrary criteria, and in the absolute worst case you'll get dragged on social media.

Dave Chapelle said it best: "You are wearing a whore's uniform." Actual prostitutes wear these outfits specifically to attract clients, and they aren't engaging in false advertising, you CAN get sexual contact with them if you approach. And have money.

But increasingly, especially with the way dating apps currently work and the seeming prevalence of Onlyfans, women are sending out messages that are, I'd guess, intended for reception by a very small subset of the actual male population, and while they're willing to accept attention from the remaining contingent, it'd be better if they had fullish control over who they were required to interact with, and can accept material support from ones they aren't interested in and pursue the ones they are.

And in a world where women are empowered to wear whatever they want and control who they can respond to at will, then there's literally no reason for them not to send out the LOUDEST, MOST BLARING signal they can even if it is to the detriment of the vast majority of onlookers.

Throughout most of history, okay, being precise I'll limit it to the last century, wearing clothing that showed more skin than the average person in that area was almost universally a sign of sexual availability. It was considered, largely, an invitation to approach (politely) and engage in a repartee that had a nontrivial chance of ending in sexual contact, or at least a peek at the goods and a pleasant mental image to store in the spank bank.

Still does. For Chad -- the men the women WANT to approach them. For anyone else, it's "eww get away from me you perv". Be handsome, be attractive, don't be unattractive. There's nothing more to it.

Yep.

But also realize, they'd be absolutely happy to accept a drink, a ride, or cold hard cash from other guys, so it's not like they LOSE much by giving off a signal that attracts the less-than-worthy.

Since she can safely reject the sexual advances of guys she doesn't find attractive, there is, as stated, no incentive to do anything other than blare the signal at all times.

Does this only apply to women's attire? i.e. is a man dressed sexy (whatever qualifies as such for this context... shirtless and showing muscles, wearing an expensive suit, etc.) in public also advertising himself as open to advances from any women he might encounter while out and about?

I understand interpreting attempts to appear attractive as an invitation to interact in a context like a bar or a party, but even there, I'd think the more relevant signal would be being at the bar or party without a visible date. Them being more attractive of course would increase your desire to interact with them, but I don't see why it necessarily is a signal of their desire to be interacted with.

Does this only apply to women's attire? i.e. is a man dressed sexy (whatever qualifies as such for this context... shirtless and showing muscles, wearing an expensive suit, etc.) in public also advertising himself as open to advances from any women he might encounter while out and about?

Sure? I mean men don't usually get advances from women at all while out and about. If being approached by women while out an about was something men genuinely wanted to avoid I think there would probably be signaling behaviors, such as avoiding provocative clothing(which may itself be a category of clothing that would need to be worked out in this hypothetical world), that men would be expected to engage in. But we don't live in that world so the turn around seems pretty toothless.

You could make an argument that a more fitting mirror scenario would be men publicly flaunting those qualities that make them attractive to women in redpill monkeybrain land - wealth, power and poise, I guess - and getting approached by lots of women who have none of the qualities that make women attractive in the same domain (think, like, overweight deformed golddiggers). Does this happen in real life, and do those men complain about it?

(It occurs to me that a possible counterargument is that men flaunting wealth/power/poise shouldn't be analyzed as leading women on because the primary purpose of it is intra-male competition rather than signalling to the other sex - which however leaves me wondering if the same argument isn't applicable to women flaunting their looks.)

It occurs to me that a possible counterargument is that men flaunting wealth/power/poise shouldn't be analyzed as leading women on because the primary purpose of it is intra-male competition rather than signalling to the other sex - which however leaves me wondering if the same argument isn't applicable to women flaunting their looks.

Succeeding at intra-male competition is actually one of the traits that women are generally attracted to. A man who advertises his success at dominating other men in social/status hierarchies is doing both at the same time - they're the same action. This doesn't really apply for women - men largely don't care about women's position in female status hierarchies except to the extent that those hierarchies match rankings of attractiveness.

You base your gotcha on the assumption of symmetry in attraction between sexes. This is false. Male and female sexuality are not comparable. Women are inherently sexual in them embodying animality and eros. Both men and women find the female form attractive. This is not the case for the male, who only the woman finds attractive, as she is not him.

Both men and women find the female form attractive. This is not the case for the male, who only the woman finds attractive, as she is not him.

Citation? According to Gallup circa 2022:

Women (6.0%) are much more likely than men (2.0%) to say they are bisexual. Men are more likely to identify as gay (2.5%) than as bisexual, while women are much more likely to identify as bisexual than as lesbian (1.9%).

That's around 8% of women potentially attracted to other women and around 4.5% of men potentially attracted to other men.

I am working on the assumption that if a male were to walk in a public place wearing the Borat Slingshot bathing suit there'd be one of three reactions:

  1. Actively avoiding the guy as he's likely a weirdo.
  2. Anger and outrage, especially if there are young children around.
  3. Laughter and derision.

Unless, perhaps, it is a Pride parade, but that falls into contexts that might be more natural for this outfit.

Or, perhaps take a look at one of various Fitness Influencers who often go out on the streets wearing next-to-nothing for the exact intent of getting attention to their bodies.

Yes, I'd say that's a form of advertising, too. I'd further say they're pretty open to female advances and are pretty much explicitly inviting them. There is not much dissonance between the signal they are sending and how they accept the people responding to those signals.

And the main factor at play is rules 1 and 2. "Be attractive. Don't be unattractive."

But guys have an easier time sending out other signals like wealth and experience, since, turns out, females can also be drawn to those other factors aside from sheer physical attractiveness.

So a guy who puts on an expensive watch, nice suit, and/or a name-brand hat is also doing the signalling game that the woman in the bikini is, but in a way that is much more easy-to-ignore by those who aren't looking for the signal.

I'd think the more relevant signal would be being at the bar or party without a visible date. Them being more attractive of course would increase your desire to interact with them, but I don't see why it necessarily is a signal of their desire to be interacted with.

I'm specifically talking about outfits that are intentionally chosen to maximize attention-grabbing effect. A woman goes to a party wearing a frumpy sweater and 'mom jeans' is probably okay with not being hit on. Contrast that to a woman who puts on a tight, form-fitting, deep neck dress and heels.

The fact that the second outfit takes substantially more effort to put together is a pretty reliable clue that it was deliberately a considered choice made with full intent of garnering the expected reaction, whereas one would guess the sweater and jeans were chosen for comfort and convenience.

Showing up without a date is more ambiguous, and certainly doesn't scream "I'm heterosexual, single, and sexually available" to the same degree, without some accompanying signal to clarify the message.

In Neolithic European civilizations, prior to the Indo-European (Aryan) conquests, a harsh sexual order appears to have prevailed in which the vast majority of men did not reproduce, and may have simply been worked to death in salt mines or massive farm complexes while the women could spend their time advertising their beauty and sexual competitiveness to a small elite of men. I’m far from the first commentator to notice.

Where are you possibly getting this from? It conflicts with sources I’ve read but can’t remember. If I recall, disparities only grew after the extinction of EEF.

You say you yearn for the monastic lifestyle yet you do not even attempt practicing the most basic of the ascetic practices: control over your internal feelings. Stop experiencing envy and resentment, just stop. Then maybe you will learn to enjoy watching a thonged ass for what it is rather than tormenting yourself over the philosophies you have constructed around it.

I want to pick at your vision of history, because I think you are romanticizing both the monastic traditions and their role in a subsistence economy. How many of those monks were voluntary wordcels, vs. second or third sons with no particular aptitude for religion? But I realize this doesn’t address your problem.

Set aside an hour each day. During that period, do not use the Internet. Practice the craft of something you find beautiful. An instrument, a particular painting technique. Whittling. Meditation, even. If it requires reference material, print it out or buy a book so that you can separate yourself from the infosphere. Practice its fundamentals.

No one will pay you for this Art, when they could get something better and cheaper from an expert or a robot. It doesn’t matter. This is about you. The great artists and writers and programmers aren’t opting out of society. They are opting in to something else they value.

Incidentally this method might solve your women problem in the first place. Women are attracted to status, looks etc of course, but genuine ambition is an underrated trait that men can develop. The guitarist seeking fame might do well with women because they are making a rational bet on how much status he might accrue in future, but there are attractive qualities present there already.

Personally I've ended up incidentally attracting women a few times by sperging about the latest book I was reading and the research I wanted to do because of it.

I'm going to with this:

"Why become a monk?"

"Because your oldest brother inherits your dad's estate, your 2nd oldest brother got some sort of paid commission or lump sum early inheritance and now has a career worthy of his status, etc, etc until it comes down to you. Your parents are out of land and money to give to kids. You instead get put into the respectable home for high class lads with no inheritance. People make polite noises about how noble your devotion to God is."

To be clear, I already do something like this - I do worldbuilding and session prep for my homebrew D&D campaign setting, I compile music playlists, I do crossword puzzles and study trivia - so it’s not like I’m spending all day immersed in the internet. I do appreciate the advice, though, and it is correct and useful.

I question whether these specific activities count as virtuously ambitious in the way the op meant, though. At first glance they are all about staying safe by pursuing predictable or inconsequential toy successes in carefully controlled artificial toy environments, whereas at least in whittling or guitar you occasionally have to pit your skills against some kind of real-world physical resistance that might lead to real failure. Pouring passion into toys certainly reads as pussing out to girls, and even though you're seemingly not doing it for sexual display purposes, I suspect on some level your own awareness must make it somewhat anti-character-building as well.

As somebody upthread noted, monks were working on hard spiritual struggles, often with elements of voluntary physical suffering (at minimum, sleep deprivation). I don't think it was quite the comfy life of happy puttering that you seem to imagine.

Alright. I see from your other comments that this isn’t quite as “cry for help” as it first appeared. This makes me feel more free to debate the history!

I tried to find actual statistics for the backgrounds of medieval clergy, but I had little success. All the articles are about the modern era or, rarely, the French Revolution. In a subsistence society, though, I find it unlikely that wordcels got to opt out of some sexual rat race. Instead, I’d expect the deciding factor to be more worldly concerns of food and inheritance.

I’m far from the first commentator to notice that our societies appear to be lurching in a similar direction; the woman strutting around my local sidewalk in a thong, with no fear of repercussions nor even social censure, content that any frustration or angst she generates in nearby males is highly unlikely to redound negatively toward her, strikes me as symptomatic of this development.

I'd be interested in hearing what you make of the possibility that Ireland was an equally lude society in the 16th century, was this also symptomatic of a decline into a Minoan style society or is it a fashion that can have various causes?

From Archduke Ferdinand's visit to Kinsale in Ireland, an extract from Le Premier Voyage de Charles-Quint en Espagne, de 1517 à 1518 (Author: Laurent Vital):

Their dresses have wide sleeves, open the length of the arms interlaced very nicely in a lattice. Generally the men, women and young girls wear their shirts open to the waist, without any distinction between them except the women's chemises, as they are over here, are wide below, tapering into four tails which hit the knees as the case may be. So that most young women and girls have their chests naked to the waist; it is as common there to see or touch the breast of a girl or woman, as it is to touch her hand. And so, there are as many different fashions and customs as there are countries. Over here we would mock this because it is not the usual custom, except in secret when Robin and Marian are in an amorous embrace.

There I saw all sorts of breasts according to age. There I saw nipples of girls aged twelve years; afterwards the nipples that they have when they are fourteen or fifteen years old, until they begin to develop in size and shape. Also I saw some completely developed, so very round and pert that it was a pleasure to see them, as here have the marriageable girls of eighteen years and above. I also saw all sorts of tits, middle sizes, big, shapely and in the open hand one would call them firm but yielding. And I saw some so disgusting and unsavoury that I marvelled where the little children could receive their daily nourishment. Also I saw others which were not at all worth looking at, so ugly and wrinkled were they and only deserve the name of flaccid udders.

Right, so, this is something that I wanted to touch on in my post but started brushing up against the character limit. I understand that different societies have varying cultural norms around nudity. We can see it most obviously when it comes to pre-modern African and Polynesian societies, but I’m also aware that parts of Europe have norms around social nudity that differ significantly from America. Perhaps if I was constantly exposed to the sight of naked breasts in a non-sexual setting, I would not form any erotic association between breasts and sex. As I mentioned in my post, I’ve grown up in a time and place where it is normal to see women’s hair and to not be aroused by this, but presumably if I grew up in a society where every women wears a hijab, I would find exposed hair arousing. It’s difficult for me to imagine not being turned on by a nice pair of breasts, but I acknowledge that it must be at least theoretically possible.

Now, I would have to do more research into the state of Irish society at that time in order to draw any conclusions about the larger social causes and consequences of such a relaxed attitude toward nudity. My naïve sense is that Ireland was a very dysfunctional and hardscrabble society in many different ways during that particular time frame, so it wouldn’t necessarily surprise me that behavioral norms which we now associate with the third world would prevail in such a place.

So you're saying Cork women have always been slags?

It’s difficult for me to imagine not being turned on by a nice pair of breasts, but I acknowledge that it must be at least theoretically possible.

I've been to beaches in Spain where nudity was allowed (I wasn't nude myself). It's surprisingly non-sexual, you can sense that you should give people some privacy and not stare even though they're being seen by hundreds of people.

My naïve sense is that Ireland was a very dysfunctional and hardscrabble society in many different ways during that particular time frame

To be honest I haven't done that much research into that period of Ireland's history either, but this was just before the English (re?)conquest so a relatively peaceful time for the country. Having good conditions for agriculture I don't think it would have compared unfavourably to other rural parts of Europe as far as the average person was concerned, though the only European sized city of note was populated by Englishmen.

I've been to beaches in Spain where nudity was allowed (I wasn't nude myself). It's surprisingly non-sexual, you can sense that you should give people some privacy and not stare even though they're being seen by hundreds of people.

We have a nude beach here in San Diego, and I have been there a handful of times, both by myself and with others. Unlike in Europe, though, the vast majority of people who frequent this beach are gay men, so it’s pretty rare to see an attractive woman, and nearly impossible to see an attractive single woman. I genuinely don’t know how I would deal with going to a typical European nude/topless beach where there are attractive women everywhere.

Also regional burning man events. Frequently there are conventionally attractive women walking around not wearing anything. You get used to it after a while.

Suffice it to say that this has not been my experience when visiting a nude beach. Perhaps I’m just more visually-oriented than you are, or less accustomed to nudity, or I formed some different erotic associations in my formative years, but I found it impossible not to stare and to be at least mentally aroused and excited. I don’t think I’m that atypical in that respect. I’m sure that “susceptibility to arousal at a nude beach” is a normally-distributed trait among men just like anything else is, and modulated by each individual’s cultural background and particular experience with nudity.

Also moderated by a bone-deep fear of appearing creepy and being ostracized...winding up sporting a boner at a nude beach is terrifying and that fear has a way of killing arousal.

What do you mean “deal with”? It’s not like you can’t control yourself, and I don’t see how the fewer clothes women are wearing, the more you’re more depressed about your dating life. Whether you mostly interact with women in hijabs or bikinis won’t make you any more or less single, so isn’t it a positive to be around people you’re attracted to?

The straight men I know seem to enjoy and get cheered up by being in Southern European beaches where a decent proportion of women look like outright models, vs. say the UK where most English women are plain at best; that’s even if they’re married and aren’t looking to cheat. Single men I know are happy just being in the presence of attractive women.

It’s not that I’m not happy being around beautiful women, but I would compare it to the happiness I derive from eating a delicious slice of calorie-rich, nutritionally-bereft slice of cheesecake. It’s a transitory, evanescent sort of happiness about which I end up beating myself up later on because it didn’t offer anything substantial, and merely hacked my reward function, turning me into a slave to unproductive passions. And look, I’m no believer that all activities need to produce tangible positive results - I attend live music events very frequently, and it’s not like I get anything useful or concrete out of those either - but specifically the understanding that sexual success is something which the great majority of men throughout at least modern history have achieved, and which at this juncture in time is eluding me, makes those temptations feel acutely immiserating when taken in context of my ability to capitalize on them.

If just looking at attractive people is being a slave to unproductive passions, then surely making the extra effort to have sex with them is even worse? The recipe for sexual success is relatively straightforward and you probably know what’s involved - on some level I’m sure you’re aware that it would require you to invest a significant amount of time on what is ultimately a vacuous pursuit and you’re choosing to spend it on things you care about instead. So there’s no reason to feel let down.

Personally I was very promiscuous in the past but all my hook-ups were exactly as you describe being around attractive women - transitory happiness, like eating a nutrient-bereft slice of cheesecake but feeling empty despite all the calories, a quick fix of validation to make me feel better when I felt unattractive or worthless. No amount of sex can substitute for genuine human connection, but it’s hard to really internalise that when society is pushing hard for equating self worth with sex appeal - but I hope you’re able to make the leap and go for forming genuine friendships and romantic connections without spending huge amounts of energy at the meat market first.

Being a beta doesn't mean you have to suffer. Nor do you need a monastery or status to live a monk-like life. Have you considered a lifestyle that includes a serious daily meditation practice and the buddhadharma?

It honestly makes me a tiny bit sympathetic to the Middle Eastern and African guys who come into Europe and end up sexually assaulting local women because they misinterpreted the women’s loose and revealing manner of dress for an obvious and intentional public invitation to sexual contact

As a tangent - is this something that happens? I'm having trouble imagining that happening, in the sense of the person genuinely believing the women wanted sexual contact from random people. If you mean 'taking people who were already a bit rapey and putting them in a much more motivating environment than they were used to', that's more plausible

In Neolithic European civilizations, prior to the Indo-European (Aryan) conquests, a harsh sexual order appears to have prevailed in which the vast majority of men did not reproduce, and may have simply been worked to death in salt mines or massive farm complexes while the women could spend their time advertising their beauty and sexual competitiveness to a small elite of men.

Huh? Maybe you're referring to the '17 woman passed their DNA on for every one man that did' study? That ended up not being correct - see here, the DNA looked like that because there was a social system where men lived where their male ancestors lived but women got sent to different tribes, so the women mixed around a lot more than the men did, so it 'looked like' fewer men reproduced relative to the methods used.

I have absolutely no idea what "while the women could spend their time advertising their beauty and sexual competitiveness to a small elite of men." would refer to. Non-elite women (elite women were a very small percentage) in the past had to work full-time doing like spin cloth, weave clothing, help with farming, other household tasks, all sorts of things.

As a tangent - is this something that happens?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_Are_Sthlm_sexual_assaults

I mean, not 'immigrant sexual assaults', but specifically the idea that the immigrants genuinely believe the scantily clad women genuinely want their advances due to their clothing

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/oct/26/australia.marktran

Sheik Hilali was quoted as saying: "If you take out uncovered meat and place it outside ... without cover, and the cats come to eat it ... whose fault is it, the cats' or the uncovered meat's? The uncovered meat is the problem. If she was in her room, in her home, in her hijab [the headdress worn by some Muslim women], no problem would have occurred."

In case you thought he wasn't really representative of the broader culture...

Sheik Hilali, the top cleric at Sydney's largest mosque, is considered the most senior Islamic leader by many Muslims in Australia and New Zealand.

He has served as an adviser to the Australian government on Muslim issues, but has attracted controversy before. In 2004 he was criticised for saying, in a sermon in Lebanon, that the September 11 attacks were "God's work against the oppressors".

Like I said, this seems more like a strict liability view of rape as opposed to actual belief that women in tight yoga pants actually desiring a groping.

It seems more akin to say that a person who left their window down in a shitty neighborhood was "asking" for the car-jacking. Very few people think they actually wanted a car-jacking.

How similar is "asking" to failing to take precautions against?

Windows up and doors locked, is sound practice, as is not wearing expensive jewelry, watches, clothes in crime prone areas.

Other senarios allow for blame sharing, unhelmeted motorcyclists, unseatbelted auto occupants, drunk women (drivers), Darwin award winners.

The thoughts of the victims and their allies should be partiality discounted. They've demonstrated their understanding of the nature of their environment is lacking.

My apologies for not giving you more of the details of the case (I forgot that not everyone lives in this country and I generally find this kind of stuff distasteful/don't like reading too much about it) but this was actually the common perception of the attitudes of the individuals at the time. I can't give you a specific quote, but the parole board said that at least one of the brothers still blamed the victims.

https://7news.com.au/news/crime/notorious-sydney-gang-rapist-mohammed-skaf-fails-in-parole-bid--c-709669

A pre-release report compiled by Corrective Services in 2018 said Skaf “has demonstrated no change in his attitude toward his offences since the beginning of his sentence” and “continues to blame the victims”.

Though that said, "Blaming the victims" could be interpreted as either view, or the explicit racial discrimination espoused by the rapists who claimed that the victims deserved it for being Australian. Ultimately I think that this is a distinction without a difference - the decision to wear revealing clothing in public is the same as consenting to sexual assault and rape from the cultural perspective of the men involved.

Oh, as to that I can't comment.

As a tangent - is this something that happens? I'm having trouble imagining that happening, in the sense of the person genuinely believing the women wanted sexual contact from random people. If you mean 'taking people who were already a bit rapey and putting them in a much more motivating environment than they were used to', that's more plausible

Some men may legitimately believe it but I think the general sentiment is "if you don't want to be treated like those women, don't dress like them"

So yes, already a bit rapey.

It is certainly the excuse that many of these men use; how seriously to take that excuse is a different matter, and clearly it’s transparently false in many if not most cases. I do think there is probably something important and true, though, about the profound culture shock and almost “kid in a candy store” mental space that a lot of them must be experiencing in their new environment, though. If I, a pretty low-T guy with a relatively low sex drive, am experiencing this sort of angst, I can only imagine the effect the same conditions are having on guys who are hornier and more bold than I am.

It is certainly the excuse that many of these men use; how seriously to take that excuse is a different matter, and clearly it’s transparently false in many if not most cases. I do think there is probably something important and true, though, about the profound culture shock and almost “kid in a candy store” mental space that a lot of them must be experiencing in their new environment, though.

I think it is telling that we don’t hear stories about roving gangs of young Amish men on Rumspringa assaulting women. It is far more reflective of Muslim attitudes toward women generally and kafir women in particular that this cope is taken seriously at all.

This is a compelling point! Obviously I think there’s an HBD element in effect here, and I also agree that these men display an obvious contempt for European society.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sydney_gang_rapes

They're actually extremely explicit on that front. Read the texts.

I'm... befuddled by your idea that there's no current Christian monasticism in the West. Here's a list of Orthodox monasteries in various countries; I'm sure a similar list exists for the Catholics.

Of course, they would presumably require something of a better reason to be a monk than just "I don't want to spend my time around vile temptresses".

Right, part of my point is that there’s an inherent falseness or LARPing quality to guys like me who didn’t grow up immersed in these traditions who decide in their late twenties or thirties to dive headfirst into them. They have families and social networks who will see them as weirdos and failures, escaping into something inauthentic because they couldn’t hack it in real life. I don’t know if that’s the general perception within Orthodox and Catholic societies who take that stuff seriously, but it is certainly the perception among secular moderns.

I wouldn’t want to choose a lifestyle that would result in my father, on his deathbed, lamenting that his son was a failure who withdrew from life. Hell, maybe that’s actually how many medieval fathers of sons who became monks felt, and we just don’t have a window into their internality. And maybe I’m just unreasonably asking to have my cake and eat it too; I’m tempted to escape the modern world, but still want that same world to respect me and accord me status. I don’t want to do all of the excruciatingly hard work of deprogramming myself of all of the depravity and dysfunctionality and temptations I’ve accrued as a result of growing up in this society; I just want to go back in time and make it so I never got exposed to it in the first place. I fully cop to how fundamentally whiny it all seems. It even seems that way to me.

I don’t want to do all of the excruciatingly hard work of deprogramming myself of all of the depravity and dysfunctionality and temptations I’ve accrued as a result of growing up in this society; I just want to go back in time and make it so I never got exposed to it in the first place. I fully cop to how fundamentally whiny it all seems. It even seems that way to me.

Traditionally I think the reward is your eternal soul going to heaven. You can still believe that, although it is more difficult nowadays I'd imagine.

I think this is the key piece:

If the monastic option is going to make a real return in our culture, it will have to be undergirded by a genuine status infrastructure undergirding it. Such men must not be seen as losers and washouts, crawling in shame away from a life of failure and grasping tightly a pathetic consolation prize.

The problem is monks are seen as weirdos and have little to no status - if young men today try to become monks their family and friends and everyone they know are more likely to mock them than support their aim.

If a young man I knew became a monk, the even semi religious people I know would respect the hell out of it. Or at least feel too uncomfortable to criticize it. I think you underestimate how many Catholics are left.

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This is actually an excellent point I hadn’t thought of before, and maybe explains why Christianity tends to go back and forth in waves every now and then. Almost like a course correct.

"In Neolithic European civilizations, prior to the Indo-European (Aryan) conquests, a harsh sexual order appears to have prevailed in which the vast majority of men did not reproduce, and may have simply been worked to death in salt mines or massive farm complexes while the women could spend their time advertising their beauty and sexual competitiveness to a small elite of men."

You see the men in the salt mines and the farms, you don't see the women who worked on farms or as servants or at the bottom tiers of society as well. Take the Mahabharata, where at least part of the conflict that finally ignites between the Kauravas and the Pandavas is the treatment of Draupadi, the common wife of the five Pandavas.

She gets gambled away and won as a dasi. This is a term that is translated every way from "maid servant" to "slave" (to even "prostitute", as in "temple prostitute"). But as we can see by the treatment of Draupadi, who is a royal princess by birth, how it would be to be an ordinary woman serving as a maid/slave in those palaces: you can be raped by any of the high status men and have no recourse, because sexual services are taken as a given by that society. Maybe if you're beautiful and appealing enough, one of those men might take you for a favourite, but you'll never rise above your status in life because marriage or the likes is unthinkable. Same with singers/dancers; they may be highly regarded for their art, but they are also treated as courtesans and are highly unlikely to make a respectable marriage and get out of that role.

Not all women in Minoan society had the chance to "spend their time advertising their beauty and sexual competitiveness to a small elite of men"; some of the beautiful women, if they were low class, would be abused due to that beauty.

All very solid points, and I genuinely don’t intend to minimize the suffering that women of that era experienced. I merely brought up the Minoans as a sort of metonymical allusion to draw attention to parts of modern society that I want to criticize. For what it’s worth, a lot of recent archeological/historiographical work has cast a ton of doubt on the whole theory of a gynocratic Minoan state anyway; a lot of that was probably just Marija Gimbutas and her acolytes overfitting to insufficient data.

More effort than this, please.

Well, him and approximately 60% of men in their 20's

He is hardly alone in this particular struggle.

So his point is probably more directed at what he sees as a society-wide issue.

In short, no. he, and literally millions of other guys, are not 'ok.'

If Japan is any indication, half of these men will never find a partner.

And those half of women become aging cat ladies or wine aunts? They also won't find a partner, so long as parter means "husband over the longer term".

Emphasis on "the longer term". There are plenty of single mothers. In Sweden, more than 30% of all households with children are "single-parent households with children"

That's how the numbers work out.

Ding ding ding.

We're got some sad, maybe terrifying precedents of what will happen when a huge portion of males reach 'maturity' without romantic or sexual success.

They fall back on reliable distractions (current iteration being video games and anime), and opt out of social activity entirely. They make money solely to spend it on these trivial pursuits, and they shy away from doing the difficult work of self improvement, much less the work of improving the world around them.

I've made the point before, if your male population has no 'buy in' to the health of society/a nation at large, you can't very well expect to call upon them to leap to said society's defense if needed, or to sacrifice themselves for the good of people who otherwise don't give a shit about them.

I don't think it's even that ODD for some huge portion of men to be functionally cut out of polite society in general. Gangs are fueled by this. I do think it's odd for this many of them, at THIS young of an age, to have already thrown in the towel.

They fall back on reliable distractions (current iteration being video games and anime), and opt out of social activity entirely

I can see one reason to be skeptical about this model. Young men and teenagers fall deep into video game/porn addiction well before the time where it would be reasonable to conclude that they're locked out of the sexual market. It would be ridiculous (in a typical immature way) for an 18 year old to look at his high school romantic failure and say "I guess it gets no better than this", it would be surprising to find an 18 year old who hasn't already spent at least a few hundred hours gaming and indulging in Netflix and some fraction of that watching porn.

There's a real question here as to how demoralizing school must be that men seem to be pre-emptively dropping out of adult life, but there's also the simple fact that distractions are more addicting and ever present than ever before.

Here's a hard bullet to bite: perhaps things don't usually get better. Perhaps those guys who were bullied in high school are going to be such bad partners that it is best that they don't try to date, ever. Sure, there are exceptions - but they're just that, exceptions. If you wind up reaching an adult height of only 5'1" and realize that you don't have what it takes to become a billionaire, you're going to be making some frankly rather nasty compromises if you want a partner.

Here's a hard bullet to bite: perhaps things don't usually get better.

I haven't actually said they will get better. Dropping out of adult life has a cost, someone might have squandered most of their opportunity by the time they decide to change. My point was just that the addictions we associate with 'checking out' come first (whether or not they're causative).

If you wind up reaching an adult height of only 5'1" and realize that you don't have what it takes to become a billionaire, you're going to be making some frankly rather nasty compromises if you want a partner.

There are guys who are 5'1" and there are guys who are so ugly they are hard to look at, but even amongst guys who don't have romantic success or were bullied in highschool, these people are the minority. Even amongst the cohort of sexless young men they are the exceptions.

Yeah. I'd also say that if you know that you will either never have a partner or will perhaps have a partner that needs more than most in the way of support, and you know that early in life (like a guy who's 5'3" at age 16 and whose doctor tells him he's done growing) you had better get to working your ass off to compensate for it. You simply will not get the mutual support that most people get from their partners, and people may well come to some very unsavory conclusions about why it is you don't have a partner. Not a great idea for our pint-sized hero to become a pediatrician and spend his life working for Doctors Without Borders...he can do something like that but better to pick primary care instead.

Yeah, the incel forums and r9k etc all have regular face posts, and while we can probably guess that those who post face consider themselves more handsome than those who don’t, they’re still self-identified incels. Many, if not most, are average or even above average looking.

I largely agree, though I don't think this is what fuel gangs. Japan has no gang problem, neither does western Europe where non-immigrant men who have checked out exist in large but not overwhelming numbers too.

society's defense if needed,

Nuclear weapons really obviate the need for giant militaries for defense.

And with solid drone industry, air defense and artillery, you could probably get around the whole problem of 'not enough young male cannon fodder' anyway. Older men can operate recon drones and man artillery just as well as younger men.

Japan has no gang problem, neither does western Europe where non-immigrant men who have checked out exist in large but not overwhelming numbers too.

This picture sounds a bit too rosy, Ireland and the UK at least have a long history of native gangsters.

It's pretty silly since there's a well-known (in the West) name for a certain type of Japanese gangster: Yakuza.

Older men can operate recon drones and man artillery just as well as younger men.

Recon drones, sure. Artillery, not so much.

I'm pretty sure everyone has that kind of artillery in general use

No, they don't. French army has no towed howitzers. The German army doesn't use towed howitzers either. Chinese don't seem to use them either, apart from maybe air-mobile troops.

ROK army has 1000 in reservers, note that they have 2000 155mm self-propelled artillery pieces in their active army, 1000 of which are superior to anything the US military has as an artillery piece.

Generally, every modern army uses something like this - an autoloading armored vehicle with NBC protection that can set up for firing in seconds, fire off 8-10 rounds in a minute and then move away.

So yeah, I'm 'pretty sure' you're wrong because advanced nations do not use antiquated systems. Even in WW2 it was obvious you wanted self-propelled artillery and it was promptly developed and fielded.

That's Africa tier weaponry.

No one else has this kind of artillery in general use. It's usually self-propelled, very often with autoloaders.

I'm pretty sure everyone has that kind of artillery in general use, and in fact that kind of artillery is the large majority of actual guns in service, plus the large majority of guns that have been fired in the last five decades or so. The self-propelled autoloader stuff is extremely expensive, and totally unnecessary for most of the jobs artillery needs to do.

I'm pretty sure everyone has that kind of artillery in general use

Are you for real.

Towed artillery is an anchronism. You can use against inbred peasants who don' have counter-battery radar or much artillery of their own.

More comments

Japan has no gang problem,

This is... well flatly incorrect. Japan has large, active, powerful gangs. But in true cultural Japanese style, they mostly eschew violence in public and are highly concerned with maintaining order and public cohesion.

I suppose you could say these gangs are less of a problem than they are in other countries. But I think it still demonstrates my point that a surplus of aimless, disconnected men leads to gangs.

But it is more common, now, for it to result in herbivore men.

Nuclear weapons really obviate the need for giant militaries for defense.

I don't think we can nuke drug cartels without significant collateral damage.

Or if a natural disaster necessitates search and rescue, and eventually rebuilding.

Or remember that scene from Chernobyl where the poor volunteers who survived the radiation zone in their efforts to save the world receive a pittance as their reward. Notice there are no females in that scene. I expect that is true-to-life. What motivated them?

Even if we assume that military invasion is off the table, the point is that one can never be sure when having a contingent of guys who are willing to sacrifice life and limb for a cause 'greater' than themselves might be needed. And if you don't have any guys willing to throw in their lot, because they have no meaningful stake in the cause (and thus no possible reward for their service) that may result in losing to the group who DOES have such a contingent.

If Ukraine had the same ratio of disaffected military age men as many other Western Countries do, it seems likely that they've have rolled over already, military aid from the U.S. or no.

The particularly sad thing is that it's those men who are most eager to serve who are most likely to get removed from the gene pool in such conflicts.

But I think it still demonstrates my point that a surplus of aimless, disconnected men leads to gangs.

You really think Yakuza is full of incels?

I don't think we can nuke drug cartels without significant collateral damage.

You don't need to nuke drug cartels. They're not really a problem outside of certain countries. Do you think that Singapore ever uses its military to fight drug smugglers ?

If Ukraine had the same ratio of disaffected military age men as many other Western Countries do, it seems likely that they've have rolled over already, military aid from the U.S. or no.

Ukraine is operating on a conscription model. And it'd have drafted all the 'ineligible' people who are getting exemption in the US had they had them.

You really think Yakuza is full of incels?

No. I think they're full of guys who didn't find the other offerings for them in their society appealing.

Guys that don't have the cajones to be gangsters become herbivore males.

Do you think that Singapore ever uses its military to fight drug smugglers ?

I think that YOU made an assumption that I was referring to military invasion, when I'm mostly talking about the need for men who can enact violence and take risks to combat ALL KINDS of major threats to a civilized society.

I’m much more okay than this post probably made it sound like I am. I’m not suicidal or even particularly acutely depressed. Honestly I just wanted to try my hand at a more confessional style of post, to see if it resonates with people and to get useful feedback.

What's your opinion on dick pics? Cool? Not cool? Assuming the latter, why? What sort of weirdo would object to explicit sexual displays being injected into their ordinary day-to-day routine?

Women object to dick pics because they find most of them unsexy, not because they find them too sexy to function.

There's clearly a level of visceral disgust and taboo / moral shaming around unsolicited dick pics that is not merely explained by 'unsexiness'.

Wouldn’t straight men not also be weirded out by an unsolicited labia pic? Dick pics aren’t the same as a nude or a thirst trap, they’re an impersonal, disembodied close-up robbed of context and personality, and when they’re unsolicited, it’s like they’re intentionally there to shock or provoke; the equivalent of someone flashing their genitals at you but in the digital world.

I recall an article/blogpost from way back when about a woman doing exactly tit for tat, though if you ask me for specifics, I'm afraid it'll take a while for me to find it.

It did not work out the way she was expecting. Spoilers: The guys loved it.

I suspect it as least partially depends on the perceived attractiveness of the sender in a way that is probably less true for women. Swimsuit model sending you unsolicited labia pic? Hot! Seventy year old obese woman sending you unsolicited labia pic? Gross! At least, those would be my own reactions.

the equivalent of someone flashing their genitals at you but in the digital world.

Random men flashing their genitals at women is a crime. Random Women flashing their genitals at men is a common sexual fantasy.

I was under the impression that straight men were into seeing breasts and butts, but weren’t particularly visually into vulvas on their own, as that’s what the (admittedly limited) conversations I’ve had with straight men focused on.

Much of sexual excitement comes from context, not just the pure physical objects. From a pure aesthetic perspective, straight men might prefer breasts and butts to vulva, but the context matters so much that the breasts and butts without context aren't particularly more attractive than vulva without context. Within the context of "random women voluntarily baring a body part of theirs to me," how visually aesthetically pleasing the vulva is doesn't play much into how enjoyable or desirable the fantasy is.

Breasts and butts are what are publicly displayed, so a lot of fit-for-public discussion centers on them. When vulvas enter the picture, the time for talk is over.

I'd be weirded out, but only in the "this is too good to be true, and if it's not true then it's probably up to no good" sense. Even then we know that men have a greater propensity for risk-taking so a lot of them will play those odds regardless if the potential reward is high enough.

A watered down version happens all the time on dating sites when you get unprompted messages from accounts that use what looks like a photo of a professional swimwear model modelling swimwear. Yeah, riiiight.

it’s like they’re intentionally there to shock or provoke

What would you say they're trying to provoke? I think that's the bone of contention and also the disconnect between the sexes. I suspect straight men are limited to being provoked to lust, and thus hope that sending a dick pic will get the same reaction, while women are provoked to... Fear, maybe? As if it were a threat rather than a grossly miscalibrated offer. And it's much the same with the yoga pants and the thongs and the button-popping blouses - I don't think the woman looks cute or slutty or some other moral-aesthetic judgment, I'm too preoccupied with, having been prompted/"provoked" into doing so, thinking about what she looks like under those clothes (and how I shouldn't be preoccupied with that (and how I am anyway, so let's try to be subtle about it instead of gawping like the cartoon wolf)).

If OP's current social setting is frequently little more than two small bits of fabric more modest than a nudist beach I can understand how a monastery might begin to hold some appeal because if I was at a nudist beach then I basically have the option of looking and feeling lustful, or else studiously not looking at all. Outside of more limited contexts like, say, medical exams or such I don't see how I could take a value-neutral look at a woman in no clothes. He can choose not to go to a nude beach but it might feel like short of joining a monastery, or the army, or some other strongly fraternal institution, he can't opt out of this society.

Hmm...I might recommend saturation of some kind. Go to a regional burning man event. Learn to interact with scantily clad and nude women... without it being sexual at all. A healthy dose of fear of offending or being creepy helps. As does experience in the healthcare field or perhaps with dealing with anything disgusting while keeping a straight face. Like... she's not into you, would never in a million years be into you, it's fine for you to appreciate her aesthetic but you are kinda gross for finding her attractive in any way other than the way a sunset is pretty. You just need to keep your eyes focused on her face even if her tits are huge and she's not wearing anything. It gets much easier with practice and willpower.

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It seems to me they find them unpleasant and distressing. I'm not sure why the precise nature of the unpleasantness and distress should be relevant. Certainly there are other ways in which the two instances differ, not least because sexuality is exactly where men and women are maximally different from each other, but the point I'm trying to make is that the concept of sexual modesty has not, in fact, been driven completely from the consciousness of moderns. It is not unreasonable to expect people to be able to find some common ground with the above.

Nor does is "too sexy to function" an accurate description of the core problem being raised; the simple fact is that pointlessly screwing with people's primal reward loops is a fundamentally hostile act. I doubt anyone here has trouble understanding why free-to-play games are bad, or why sugar-loaded fast food is bad, or what a superstimulus is. The only obstacles to engaging productively are ideological commitments to the sexual revolution, and the tawdry status games those commitments generate as a smokescreen.

Hmm, hey there. You are in a dark place right now. But I can share some hope with you.

For one, your fear that AI will obsolete 'wordcells' is valid... it does seem to be what AI is good at, but on the other hand... clearly communicating your ideas with words then generating results with AI is an excellent combination.

As for romance, I think you will find, if you are good with words- you can get very deep into romance online without any need to rely on your looks. Try to master social wordsmithing, by romancing AI if you are anxious or by finding communities of people to talk to, and I think you will find the skillset serves you very well.

If AI ever exceeds humans in this field, then the need, and I would think your need, for a human partner goes way down. If it doesn't, then there will always be plenty of people happy to get a better experience out of talking to you than out of talking to AI.

As for the distraction and frustration of scantily clad women. I can empathize with that. I find extremely shiny people painful at times myself, In an autistic over-stimulation sort of way. But I think letting people freely associate and express themselves is important. I think the best case for things like sexual monasticism are going to be things like augmented reality. Eventually, you will have the power to censor out the parts that are distracting to you. You will have many options. A black box, a person who looks thoroughly clothed but has a floating box above their head that displays all the data about them that you have converted into a non-distracting format. Perhaps even words :3

You are not the only person who likes words. There will be people working on this sort of thing. There's plenty of room for mad science in this field too. And if AI completely surpasses us at everything... human status is going to have to change its form. I recommend figuring out which of these many things you really want... after considering how to best eliminate all the compromises, and being part of the work of working towards those options being available in our world. People like you will flock to you. Your skills will improve. And life will be good.

I'm just back from teaching bible class at a church camp for a week. All the girls and women were dressed modestly (as were the guys, obviously), meaning for physical activity outdoors rather than for erotic appeal. Further, an entire week without someone trying to sell me a car or toaster or a trip to the local casino with gratuitous T&A on a billboard or a banner ad. My voice is shot from singing and hollering and generally carrying on, I'm sore all over and generally exhausted, and feeling great.

I think you're wrong about the genie not going back in the bottle. I appreciate better than most the siren song of porn, but having it removed from one's environment is tremendously liberating, like having the "idiot" setting on my brain switched to "off". The thing is that you actually have to get all the way out of the sewer, or else you're just going to drag yourself back in. And sure, we're sort of forced to live in the sewer now, for certain definitions of "forced". Maybe that will change. And if people don't want it to under the current conditions, well, it seems unlikely to me that the current conditions are likely to obtain for long; AI and robotics appear to be two shortcuts to levels of such perfected self-gratification that the problem might well solve itself.

but having it removed from one's environment is tremendously liberating

.. how can one do that, short of not having internet, data plan for a phone and a workplace that either has no internet or which has such paranoid security settings that browsing over to some big fanfiction archive is deeply inadvisable ?

Public decency laws worked fairly well, before we collectively chose to burn them down. Failing that, I did it this last week by going to a summer camp where privacy was limited and I was too busy doing constructive things with other people to have the time or energy to waste on short-circuiting my reward paths. For those disinclined to spend a week at bible camp, try camping somewhere for a week without net access.

But really, the logistics are trivial relative to the point that the state of not constantly being flooded with arousing imagery is positive and beneficial in ways that our current society refuses to recognize and actively suppresses awareness of.

Public decency laws worked fairly well

In an age of paper. Unless you coupled 'public decency' with a complete ban on encryption and proxies, porn would be easily distributable.

would it be easy to profit off of, if you couldn't legally run a business making and distributing it?

It would be harder. But the black market should work pretty well for porn.

Sure, it works pretty well for drugs too. You actually have to actively opt-in to black markets, though, so it would in fact solve the problem of eros overrunning the commons.

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