site banner
PaperclipPerfector  7mo ago (text post)   27775 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 18, 2023

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

11
Top Bottom New Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Continuing on with The Motte's theme of the week, the Australian Federal Government has given the online dating industry a year to implement a 'voluntary' code of conduct in the face of 'online sexual violence' or presumably face regulation.

This ultimatum seems to be motivated by “An investigation by the Australian Institute of Criminology last year found three-quarters of online daters had been subject to some kind of online sexual violence in the past five years.”

Finding the referenced report 'Dating App Facilitated Sexual Violence' (their term, not mine) seems to include amongst other acts:

  • Pressured the respondent to give them information about their location or their schedule
  • Continued to contact the respondent even after they told them they were not interested in having a relationship with them
  • Pressured the respondent verbally to perform unwanted sexual acts (eg making promises, lying, repeatedly asking or insisting etc)
  • Sent the respondent an unwanted sexually explicit message
  • Sent the respondent an unwanted sexually explicit photo or video of themselves
  • Pressured the respondent to meet them in person when they did not want to
This would include dick pics or non-consensual sexually explicit language sent through a dating app, along with other mundane dating activity. The march to broaden the definition of sexual violence to include 'making women uncomfortable' continues.

Australia, is usually a follower of countries like Canada and the UK when it comes to these sorts of policies, but it does occasionally become the first mover when there is the chance of getting a cheap political win (and to seem like it is doing something in the face of more serious issues such as the housing crisis).

The linked news article is kind of buried down the state news media's front page and references the federal government's karen social services minister who has previously worked on 'cyber safety' committees. There is a fair chance this is a complete nothing burger that will blow over and is just the govt making noises rather than actually intending to follow through, but time will tell.

Yeah there's a lot of 'voluntary code of conduct' government-control-laundering going on. They also proposed legislation for social media to come to a voluntary code of conduct on misinformation, without defining misinformation. The social media companies have to decide what to censor. Certain organizations can't be censored, like govt, licensed academic orgs... The whole thing seems like an excuse for govt to say 'oh its nothing to do with us, the companies are censoring' and the companies can say 'oh its the government's laws, out of our hands' and nobody can get to the bottom of the matter without losing 95% of their readers because it's too complicated and boring. I think I might've misremembered some of it already, perhaps some of the companies were already in a code of conduct and this wouldn't affect them. Anyway, a total vacuum of accountability, amongst other problems.

Frankly the notion of online sexual violence is pretty ridiculous. They really mean 'obscenity' but don't want to sound like a fuddy-duddy.

"There could be clearer communication around what happens when you report an unwanted contact or a questionable or threatening contact, and what the app does with that information," Professor Albury said.

"There could also be a clearer sense of how fast you can expect to get feedback or a very personal response from the app if you report an issue.

"One of the things that dating app users are concerned about is the sense that complaints go into the void, or there's a response that feels automated, or not personally responsive in a time when they're feeling quite unsafe or distressed."

But on the other hand, if they put a bunch of onerous penalties and regulations on dating apps, that's not all bad. Maybe it will undo some of the damage to society if it imposes costs on these apps? On the other hand, they might just move towards more aggressive subscriptions, advertising and general pay2win (pay2fuck?) mechanics...

I'm so sick of the word "violence" being used in this figurative manner. Pestering someone with messages when they've made it abundantly clear that they're not interested - call it "harassment" if you like, or even "cyberstalking" if you must. It's certainly not "violence".

It was bad enough when it was just woke academics and activists (but I repeat myself) describing the act of someone disagreeing with you or calling you by the wrong pronouns as "violent" - now it's making its way into legislation too.

In the newspeak memetic calculus of the 2020’s, being mean implies someone with “a tough skin”, good coping skills, or good mental defenses won’t be harmed by someone else being mean to them. But of course, if someone hasn’t been harmed, “no harm, no foul”. Therefore, all “being mean” should become “violence” to make harm unavoidable: “sticks and stones can break my bones, but words can truly hurt me.”

being mean implies…

I don’t think this is true.

no harm no foul

I don’t think this is true, and I doubt you do either.

all “being mean” should become “violence”

I am quite sure that this doesn’t follow from the premises. Who is complaining that harm is avoidable?

The point presumably is that using the phrase "He was mean to me" suggests that you yourself are weak in a way for allowing meanness to get to you, whereas "He used violence against me" lays all presumptive blame on the violent. At least that's how I read it.

Mostly, yes. The power plays are the key: weakness vs strength, or even power over someone in a way which overrides consent and free choice.

  • “He was mean to me”: “Why are you whining, didn’t you know people would be mean?” “I bet she did something to deserve it.” “Here are some ways to be less susceptible to meanness.” Mistake Theory: This terminology should be replaced because it feels like victim blaming. Conflict Theory: This terminology doesn’t emphasize the power disparity in a way which allows for social movements and government intervention.
  • “He was violent to me”: “Oh you poor dear! Let me help you!” “Someone should lock him up for that!” “The governor has declared a public health emergency to curb a surge in violence…” Mistake Theory: This terminology should be used because it emphasizes how helpless a “survivor of verbal violence” feels when someone’s mean to them. Conflict Theory: This terminology justifies use of force against someone who is now seen as using force.

(A previous edit of this comment used “Motte” and “Bailey” instead of Conflict and Mistake Theories.)

It makes sense to me. It's a useful abstraction of the word for a world where all evil is perpetuated via the 'rules of the game'. but we continue to see the consequences of that evil. The issue is there are still people killing each other with knives in some places, so the overlap is confusing.

https://quillette.com/2019/02/14/the-boy-who-inflated-the-concept-of-wolf/

Paragraphs 2-4 are particularly relevant.

https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/07/16/against-lie-inflation/

A few months ago, a friend confessed that she had abused her boyfriend. I was shocked, because this friend is one of the kindest and gentlest people I know. I probed for details. She told me that sometimes she needed her boyfriend to do some favor for her, and he wouldn’t, so she would cry – not as an attempt to manipulate him, just because she was sad. She counted this as abuse, because her definition of “abuse” is “something that makes your partner feel bad about setting boundaries”. And when she cried, that made her boyfriend feel guilty about his boundary that he wasn’t going to do the favor.

We argued for a while about whether this was a good definition of abuse (it isn’t). But I had a bigger objection: this definition was so broad that everyone has committed abuse at some point.

...when everyone is an abuser, nobody’s an abuser.

Right now, if I hear that someone is an serial abuser, I would be less likely to date them, or I might warn my friends away from them, or I might try not to support them socially. The world is divided into distinct categories – abuser and non-abuser – and which category someone is in gives you useful information about that person’s character. I’m not saying that every abuser is an awful person who is 100% defined by their misdeeds and can never be redeemed. But I think the category contains useful information about a person’s character and likely future actions.

But if everyone used my friend’s definition, and we acknowledged that everybody is an abuser – the category stops being informative. “John is an abuser”. So what? Doesn’t mean you should worry about John, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t date John, doesn’t even mean you shouldn’t set your single friends up on blind dates with John. It just means John is a human. Maybe he cries sometimes. So what?

Broadening the definition of “abuser” this far doesn’t help fight abuse or make anybody nicer. It just removes a useful word from the English language. I can still eventually warn someone that John is cruel or violent toward people close to him. I just have to circumlocute around the word “abuser”, in order to find some other word or phrase that hasn’t been rendered meaningless.

Nagging someone on Tinder to meet you for a drink may be obnoxious or irritating, but I don't think it has anything meaningfully in common with stabbing someone. The idea that if a guy nags a woman on Tinder to meet for a drink, and another man violently rapes a woman at knifepoint, both women are therefore victims of sexual violence - well, I just find that preposterous and insulting. To be a real concept, "violence" has to mean more than just "inconsiderate behaviour".

She told me that sometimes she needed her boyfriend to do some favor for her, and he wouldn’t, so she would cry – not as an attempt to manipulate him, just because she was sad.

I agree this isn't abuse, but it's definitely concerning behavior. An adult human being that gets sad to the point of crying because they were told "no" when they asked someone else to do something for them? Apparently on a regular enough basis to be considered a pattern of behavior worth discussing? If this person isn't lying to themselves (or Scott) about their motivation for crying, they have the emotional fortitude of a 5 year old.

they have the emotional fortitude of a 5 year old.

Agreed. Definitely not abuse though.

How would you define "emotional abuse", in particular from female to male? I agree that the situation described isn't violence in any reasonable sense of the word, but if you consider the toolkit of many women, this sort of tears-as-weapon has to be categorized as something, (or I suppose it doesn't, but if it were...) For me, emotional abuse seems to fit. From my point of view she is right to feel at least a pang of guilt (though if her bf is older than a certain age he should at least have an inkling what's going on).

Maybe in place of "abuse:"Manipulation? Manipulative behavior? Where a man might resort to strongarm--which only fails in the presence of a stronger arm or someone willing to take the pain--many women, when faced with a situation where they need to ply their partner in ways where for example seduction won't be effective, do not have the confidence or strength to be physically intimidating, and thus resort to these emotionally manipulative tactics. And let's be frank: Guilting someone in this way can take its toll. Boymen everywhere whose mothers pulled this stunt are walking around with serious neuroses (this kind of talk is outside my wheelhouse but hopefully you know what I mean.)

If a mother did this to her child, would you consider it closer to abuse? I'm just trying to clarify my own opinion here.

If we take the woman at her word and she's genuinely just crying because she's sad, then it sounds like she's just really immature and bad at emotional self-regulation. Describing this behaviour as "emotionally manipulative" implies that it's calculated and deceitful - some people can consciously choose to turn on the waterworks on command, and abuse this skill in order to get what they want from other people. If that's what she was doing, I would have no problem describing the behaviour as emotionally manipulative, maybe even abusive. But if she really is sincerely bursting into tears because she's sad and it's not calculated and intentional, then it's something else.

I think "selfish" or "inconsiderate" might be better words, and neither one is as grave an accusation as "abusive" or "manipulative".

As to the broader question of what constitutes emotional abuse from a woman to a man, I think that most of the red flags people are warned about are gender-neutral. Harsh insults, extremely harsh criticism, controlling behaviour, attempting to isolate your partner from their family/friends, paranoid jealous behaviour, gaslighting, failure to respect boundaries, lashing out, threatening suicide if you don't get your own way - women can be just as guilty of all of the above as men.

Ok, clear. Yes, it's possible she is just a hair-trigger weeper, but I suspect that's learned behavior with a touch of lack of self -awareness. Like the polar bear who hits a button and a fish cake falls out the chute might grow to just like red buttons.

I had a student (female) once whose boyfriend, if he realized he had offended her, would become violent... against himself. Like punch and slap himself until she became vocal enough to get him to stop the self-harming--often this took the form of her acquiescence to some need of his. Very bizarre dynamic.

More comments

Violence does have a real meaning in this abstraction. It's the antitheses of alignment. Anyway I agree it's early to extend the word like that, and I suppose if you had your way we'd use a new word? But the implication that we extend the old cultural unacceptability to the new concept here is intentional.

I think everyone here knows that and this is precisely what they do not want to do yes?

No idea what you're trying to say, sorry.

If I drop something on the floor indoors, but I say “I dropped it on the ground,” everyone knows what I mean.

If then I say of my childhood, “Every night I went to sleep on the cold, hard ground,” but a moment’s research shows that I slept indoors, in a middle class household in a bed, it would be obvious hyperbole or straight-up lying, depending on how charitable my listeners decided to be. If I said it was a metaphor, perhaps some people might consider it a valid part of the class war against the ultra-rich.

If then I play the role of an activist, defining anyone who sleeps on less than a queen size mattress to be sleeping on the ground, and defend it not as a metaphor but an abstraction, anyone who is poor enough to actually be forced to sleep on the floor and anyone homeless who sleeps on the ground would rightfully be angry at me for minimizing their struggles by putting my meager suffering at the same level of theirs.

This ultimatum seems to be motivated by “An investigation by the Australian Institute of Criminology last year found three-quarters of online daters had been subject to some kind of online sexual violence in the past five years.”

Given that most online daters are men (who are the majority on straight apps, and in the case of gay men are obviously much more interested in hookups than lesbians) this is a pretty large percentage of them.

I didn’t believe that statistic, so I looked up the report itself. The respondents were 42% straight men, and 40% straight women (only 5% of people contacted completed the survey, so plenty of room for self-selection effects). 61.5% of heterosexual men reported “sexual violence” compared to 79.1% of heterosexual women.

Here’s my theory: most dating apps will show trans women to straight men. My guess is that’s where most of the “sexual violence” against straight men is coming from.

I straight up don’t believe that their 61.5% stat for straight men is capturing anything meaningful. I don’t understand how to reconcile that number with the claim about how dry it is for the average man on OLD. I’ve had thousands of OLD chats and hundreds of OLD dates and I’ve experienced “violence” only twice, both of which were completely harmless stalking incidents.

The trans theory is interesting but I think there aren’t enough trans women to cause that and for the most part the HSTS male attracted trans women aren’t very aggro.

If anything I'd expect Trans-related violence to have a lot more to do with Trans individuals insufficiently communicating their status and individuals reacting poorly when surprised in person, as opposed to it being especially MtF Trans-perpetrator.

Especially in multicultural societies in which there's a whole spectrum of attitudes to, and awareness of trans people, in which non-clear communication can lead to... friction.

Just to point out that as per usual, this is a case of the researchers being a lot more reasonable than the media summarizing them and the politicians exploiting them.

The actual title of the paper is

Sexual harassment, aggression and violence victimisation

And I think it would be reasonable to call all those things either harassment or aggression, depending on the circumstances.

And also, while the government is obviously overselling the findings to justify their policy with the 75% interpretation, I think you're also underselling the findings to make your point about slipping definitions.

10% had their drink spiked for the purpose of sexual assault, 19% subject to stealthing or someone lying about having an STD before sex, 11% had someone take photos or video of them during sex without knowledge/consent, 14% experienced in-person stalking.

I'm obviously against these regulations, that's a dumb way to handle this problem, but I do think those are very real harms and those numbers are scarily high.

If you wonder why there are so many incels, consider how justified women are in being afraid of dating men. It's a pretty strong disincentive, especially when you can already get vibrators online and be very safe. It's a problem that is in everyone's interest to solve.

I know too many women who seek out and stay in relationships with shitty men that already do this stuff to them. For people so afraid of sexual assault and abuse, they're really, really bad at avoiding it.

Okay, and?

"women have it so tough because men are so evil" falls flat to me. I have no sympathy for it. I spent my entire youth being told that women's #1 priority is to avoid "abuse" and that any time a woman lied to me or flaked on me or was less than honest with me it was because I made her "feel unsafe." I'm reeeeealy tired of hearing it.

Funnily enough, women lying to you, flaking on you, or being less than honest with you could very well have been because you made them feel insufficiently unsafe: Guy who likes you, but you're not quite attracted to him starterpack: Somewhat cute, non-threatening appearance.

Then you can say that, rather than list an anecdote that doesn't look very related and leave your post at that.

Anyway.

Yeah, people lie. Lots. Oldest problem in the world. I'd appreciate if we might all be sincere as much as the next autist does, but we've got to live with the world we have. So it goes.

You keep getting warned and banned for low effort antagonism. (8 mod actions, and looking through your post history, plenty of posts that get reported and left untouched) This post isn't an egregious example. But its another example in a long list of them.

Do you not know how you come across? Or do you know and don't care? I suppose that is a rhetorical question. If you can't learn we will head towards a perma-ban eventually. If you don't care to learn then maybe the motivation hasn't been sufficient up until now.

I'll give you ten day ban to lurk and read more. Hopefully that will provide either the motivation, or the space to learn what behaviors we don't like.

Theme of the week? What did I miss?

There were a few dating/sexual assault related top level posts in last week's thread.

Well, if you followed the implied rules here, dating apps would be completely useless for men -- just that last point is enough; there's not much point in dating if you're not going to meet in person and there will 99% of the time be some reluctance expressed to take that step. But of course rules or not, Chad isn't going to follow them (and he'll usually get away with it) so nothing changes.

What does it matter what the rules are in the dating app? The actual rule is "don't creep your match out and she won't report you". That's also why most internet venues implement rule 0 usually phrased as "don't be a dick". That's the only real rule, the rest are guidelines on what to avoid.

You think women come on Tinder to read their rules and strive to enforce them on their matches in a literal manner like the nerd in school who makes sure the teacher doesn't forget about homework?

The actual rule is "don't creep your match out and she won't report you".

This is the current rule, but the subtext of these articles and initiatives is that the apps need to be more proactive. This means having some bureaucrat or “community manager” reading your intimate messages, automatic AI photo identification, and other dystopian goodies.

That would be a problem regardless of how lax, or in which gender's favor, the rules are.

You’re 100% right that it’s just a generic “dislike” button. I think you can tell when you get reported on a dating app you get a little pop up that reminds you of the rules, be appropriate, etc. The only time I’ve ever get those messages are after I’ve ghosted or otherwise not engaged with some woman I was talking to/met up with.

Although where the actual guidelines probably have teeth are where the admins review complaints. Nothing ever happened when some ghosted woman mashes the dislike button, but if I were sending unwanted* dick pics or threatening messages presumably they would’ve done something about it.

But of course, it still means when some hot guy sends dick pics he won’t get in trouble but when a creep does he will. But that’s sort of what we want right? People don’t want to see a creep’s dick pics and the creeps should learn not to send dick pics!

Reluctance…to meet in person? In 99% of cases? Please tell me that’s hyperbolic.

Reluctance to meet in person 99% of the time? What do you mean by this.

No one wants to meet in person on a dating app. You can tell from how they're so busy.

there will 99% of the time be some reluctance expressed to take that step

If someone doesn't want to meet in person, why not just move on?

Because women on OLD apps don't say they aren't interested. They say they'd love to meet up, but they can't this weekend. Or the day after. Or next weekend. But they'd love to see you and grab coffee. Then they just stop responding.

A well intentioned man might think this is a problem to be solved. Meanwhile they just did a harassment.

I completely agree, I think most women on apps use it for attention and have zero intention of ever meeting up with a man they meet on it. But that's exactly the reason to discard any interaction with someone who doesn't enthusiastically want to meet up in real life, surely?

Because a lot of men are naive enough to take a woman at her word the same way they would a man. She said she'd love to meet up. Surely this is just an honest scheduling conflict. Its the most attention the average schlub has gotten in the last 100 messages he sent.

There are women who are merely playing hard to get and there are women who have profiles only to boost their ego with the attention given to them. If one takes the first "no" given, the former women and the man ceasing contact, are both worse off than if he tried harder.

But that's exactly the reason to discard any interaction with someone who doesn't enthusiastically want to meet up in real life, surely?

Sorry but only a woman could have written this.

Why won't they eat cake?

I'm a man with a successful online dating and hookups history prior to getting married and would agree with that poster that if someone doesn't enthusiastically want to meet up irl* you should just move on. If a woman actually wants to go out with you, they will not make it difficult.

*caveat being most people would prefer a short conversation to establish a little familiarity first before asking to meet irl rather than that being your first message out the gate.

I'm a man with a successful online dating and hookups history

Yes, that is the issue.

I do not understand your comment.

More comments

What's the complaint here? I've gone on hundreds of fun, successful dates with the following formula:

  1. Match
  2. Chat back and forth a couple texts (5 each, 10 if she seems shy)
  3. If the conversation doesn't feel like pulling teeth, suggest a meetup, otherwise let it die.
  4. If she enthusiastically joins in making plans, make them, otherwise let it die.
  5. Go on the date, if she cancels she wasn't that interested, and let it die unless she goes all out to reschedule.

For me (and I think for most guys) the real bottleneck is at (1) and (2). In my experience the journey from "decent convo" to "fucking" is extremely smooth sailing and if it's not then there's something broken (but likely fixable) in your approach, like trying to drag someone who isn't actually interested in you out on a date. Just because this woman is more interested in you than other women doesn't mean she's actually interested in you.

4 is always where things fall apart for me.

I should add that I have been off the market for a very long time and have hence no experience in online dating whatsoever (and I thank my lucky stars for that).

I have, perhaps unfairly, pattern-matched 2rafa's comment to a type of reaction that is extremely common among women and betrays that they cannot possibly fathom the male experience of seeking sex and failing.

For a lot of women (under ~40), it is part of their reality that they could arrange a sexual encounter with a reasonably okayish playmate within a few days or even within a day if they wanted to. Most don't, of course, but many could. For many men, it is part of their reality that they go on month- or even year-long dryspells. On top of that, men are usually hornier and lonelier than women which means that there really is a lot of difference between the experiences of the average guy and gal when it comes to chasing sex. Add to that that a lot of guys measure their self-esteem in terms of their ability to get laid, and you have a recipe for disaster.

I agree that the rational course of action is to not pursue potential partners who are less than enthusiastic. Good advice. For someone with options. From what I gather about how online dating works for men, that less-than-enthusiastic person might be the best chance a lonely guy on a month-long dryspell has. So he discards that good advice because he has to.

Of course, none of that could ever happen to us, handsome successful devils that we are. I am talking about all the other loser men out there. Of course.

In my experience the journey from "decent convo" to "fucking" is extremely smooth sailing

I would suggest that you should consider the possibility that you are an outlier but I suspect you know that already. Well done, you are very desirable.

I agree that the rational course of action is to not pursue potential partners who are less than enthusiastic. Good advice. For someone with options. From what I gather about how online dating works for men, that less-than-enthusiastic person might be the best chance a lonely guy on a month-long dryspell has. So he discards that good advice because he has to.

I think the right advice for people like this is to modify the strategy before they get to this point. For example, meet people some other way, make themselves more desirable for OLD, make their OLD profile better (people laugh at this but I've seen guys' profiles, they are often really bad but really improvable!), or just match with uglier women.

I would suggest that you should consider the possibility that you are an outlier but I suspect you know that already. Well done, you are very desirable.

I think I'm desirable to the women I get to that stage with, because a lot of filtering goes on to get there.

It's good advice for someone without options, too. It's not a job or a meal (hell, some jobs are worse than nothing unless you're literally going to be out on the street, and some meals are definitely worse than nothing). You won't die from not securing a date. I haven't, and a "month-long dry spell" sounds like a luxury to me.

On the other hand, when I try to talk to someone who isn't returning the effort I often wish I was dead. Small talk is already a chore for me as it is. Going on a date with them for a 95% chance of more of the same? No thanks, would rather have a free evening to myself.

It's less "why won't they eat cake" and more "why don't you drink a good whisky once a month rather than spin the drink gacha every weekend and end up with cheap swill most of the time, without enjoying either the taste or smooth inebriation yet getting a hangover just the same".

Sorry but only a woman could have written this.

This kind of ad hominem does not bring light to the conversation. Don't do this.

Apologies, @2rafa.

The assumption here is that the opportunity cost of continuing to engage with a woman who is... proving difficult to schedule (you can insert whatever Russell conjugation you wish here) is significant enough that the time and effort could be better spent somewhere else. This assumption is wrong. The median man does not have "other conversations" he can switch over to which have a higher likelihood of success. The choice is not between talking to the woman who is playing hard-to-get or talking to the woman who is totally down to meet up. The choice is between trying one more bite at the apple (with full knowledge that it probably won't work) or just giving up and trying to forget that you're going to die alone.

I mean when I was in my Online Dating grind phase, it really was just a matter of 'get myself to a level of attractiveness to ensure a steady flow of new prospects and then don't pursue difficult prospects too hard since there's others on the burner'.

But as somebody who probably went from a 4/10 to a 8/10, mostly due to weightloss and poor presentation of my profile initially, I can sympathize that as a 4/10 the prospects are sporadic as hell and that there's an inherent scarcity mindset involved.

Maybe I’m old-fashioned, but I don’t believe a court would find the man to blame. If she states she’s interested, and he takes that at face value, I’d see that as an absolute defense.

Of course, this wouldn’t be happening in court, with silly things like burden of proof. It’d be a moderator decision in response to reports. In that case I suppose it’s much more likely that the man gets slapped down or kicked off the platform. But that’s all they can do: push an apparently clueless guy off their app and into the real world. I find it a lot harder to get worked up about that than about fines, jail, or the other things a real court can impose.

Unironically this is a male skill issue thinking that communication is only literal and verbal. Men who are confused about this need to get good, not only for dating but because this is an important generalizable life skill.

Women don’t “play hard to get” by failing to make or keep plans. An interested women, shy or forward, slutty or chaste, of any culture or nationality, will make an effort to meet with you. A woman “playing hard to get” will let you in on the game. It’s mutual flirting and it will feel like that.

If she cancels once and doesn’t take the initiative to make a new plan, she’s not interested. Move on, don’t be pathetic.

I think this explanation excludes the reality that often women simply change their minds.

I've been in the exact situation you describe, I asked her out, she ignored my message. I then asked her out again a week later. She said yes, we ended up dating for several years.

Of course, that just makes it even harder for our would be suitor. Her saying she's busy means she's not interested, unless she's genuinely busy but still expects you to take the initiative to ask her out again. Or she's not sure if she's interested and can't be bothered to make a decision the first time you ask. Or she is interested but slightly more interested in another guy, and asking her out after he ignores her texts could go well for you.

God I don't miss the dating game at all.

I think this explanation excludes the reality that often women simply change their minds.

Or just there's a bunch of occluding factors. If dating was a simple peer-to-peer two-player game a lot of this would be more intuitive, but there are so many factors going into success and failure.

Maybe she said no the first time since she was dating another guy, maybe she'd given up on online dating that day and rediscovered her resolve a week later since her best friend met a nice guy on Hinge, maybe she was in a bad mood, maybe you were one of 10,000 messages in her inbox and didn't pitch anything super interesting etc etc etc

Men who are confused about this need to get good, not only for dating but because this is an important generalizable life skill A woman “playing hard to get” will let you in on the game. It’s mutual flirting and it will feel like that.

Of course when a guy like Andrew Tate says this and actively tries to teach males the skills to achieve these he gets hammered.

So I dunno where you expect them to learn the skills if the teaching of the skills is socially verboten, and the opposite message (believe women and take them at their word) is what saturates society.

From their fathers, maybe. But with an increase in the number of men growing up raised by single mothers, there really is no other place they can even see a role model demonstrate this for them.

A guy like Andrew Tate who pimped women? Gee I wonder why his spin on "mutual flirting" got him hammered.

Or Jordan Peterson.

Or Matt Walsh.

They even tried cancelling Joe Rogan.

Good luck finding a personality who takes a 'pro masculinity' approach who isn't vilified in the mainstream.

That is, in fact, the reason Tate is able to find an audience. There's NOWHERE ELSE for the audience to go.

Considering he is facing multiple human trafficking, sex slavery and rape charges a magic eight ball would be a better source.

Good luck finding a 'better source' who is allowed to keep a platform with any reach.

They did it to Jordan Peterson, too.

Which is entirely the problem. "Positive" masculine role models are suppressed, so you end up with ONLY guys like Tate who are willing to keep speaking on the topic and fight through the backlash.

You want Andrew Tate to go away, give us someone who can say what he says without the boorish personality and background to with it.

What specifically is it that Tate says that you find value in?

I'lI give you two people that I have considered helpful positive sources of information on dating, sex, etc - one focused on heterosexual dating, the other LGBT (but often with universally useful advice). I recall former notorious cad and "fratire" author Tucker Max's "Mate: Become The Man Women Want" book and podcast having quite useful advice for self improvement, along with an emphasis on explcitly spelling out how different male behavior can be threatening to women, how to be conscious of and avoid such behavior, what to do instead, and knowing when one has consent. He hasn't been deplatformed for it. Dan Savage is another guy with good dating, sex and self improvement advice who's been running columns for decades. Both dated around a lot before being happily married, have kids, etc. Tucker is more right wing, Savage more left wing.

More comments

You want Andrew Tate to go away, give us someone who can say what he says without the boorish personality and background to with it.

Except why would they do that, when the entire point of "the backlash" is to ensure that nobody can "say what he says."? You spoke above about how "young men are stuck between a Scylla and Charybdis when navigating dating culture." Well, if the movers and shakers of our culture want to remove anyone who would teach how to navigate that gap even as they expand the "landmines," and perhaps even eliminate said gap entirely. If they want to make our society one in which young men face a stark binary choice between "completely passive and let women make all the moves" and likely celibacy, and potentially-criminal "sex pest," what's to stop them (in the short term, at least)?

I guess this is just another example of my go to response whenever someone makes a "they can't do that" sort of argument, which is "what can you do about it?"

I think probably the worst thing about the potential Australian law that kicked this convo off is that if implemented (and I sort of doubt it will be) it probably prevents a lot of necessary learning experiences to help you learn what is actual-mutual-flirting-everyone-is-having-a-good-coy-time and what is weird Andrew Tate rapey philosophy. But I don't think it's that hard. Women do obvious things like talk to you, make themselves available to spend time with you, touch you, kiss you, when they're interested. It's not a big mystery.

I've never seen any Tate stuff so I don't know what he says, but my data-less assumption is it's all tricks to get someone who is uninterested in you to fuck you, which is exactly the wrong, time-wasting approach.

Funny enough, Tate's approach is less about PUA and more about just maximizing your perceived value as a male (by doing things that produce value) so you don't have to trick someone. Now, his actions seem to contradict the message, but where else are men even going to hear that message.

I think probably the worst thing about the potential Australian law that kicked this convo off is that if implemented (and I sort of doubt it will be) it probably prevents a lot of necessary learning experiences to help you learn what is actual-mutual-flirting-everyone-is-having-a-good-coy-time and what is weird Andrew Tate rapey philosophy.

Yeah, I do think that young men are stuck between a Scylla and Charybdis when navigating dating culture. On one side if they are completely passive and let women make all the moves and rarely ever pursue they will never learn how to build attraction, play 'the game,' and eventually lock down a woman, and will lose out to the 'assholes.' And this leads them to loneliness, depression, and possibly lashing out.

On the other, if they try to be too brash and aggressive and don't properly gauge the risk involved, they can get slammed for at least being a sex pest, or at worst grooming and/or sexual assault which can carry severe reputational damage even if they avoid criminal consequences.

I will assert that having a male role model to show them the way is the best possible method of getting them into the 'sweet spot' of being assertive and confident but not stepping on the landmines, but that requires there to be such role models.

It's better to be too forward than to be too passive, since atleast being too forward allows you to get feedback which allows for calibration of your approach for the next time.

Tate is...well. A less than savory role model. If you were being charitable to him he is LARPing as basically a villain. And that's a charitable interpretation of him.

I mean, unironically agree.

But men need space to learn that. Not government regulation treating it as capital H, Harassment.

I do agree that an interested woman will make efforts to meet, but I also feel that dynamic is better expressed after an in-person meeting. Before an in-person meeting, if you're in any sort of metro online dating marketplace, you are one of a cast of 1000s in the inbox of anything female presenting.

The whole interaction really begins after/during the first in-person meeting

Because by the dynamic of online dating you are one of 100,000,000 leads in any female-presenting individual's inbox and therefore don't really exist as something to form an attachment with until there's actually an in-person meeting.

The amount of times that it's gone from glacial response rates prior to a first date to a warm and accommodating human being after a chance to meet is pretty amazing, along with textual chemistry rather frequently giving away to dealbreakers upon 5 minutes of actually meeting.

Pressured the respondent to give them information about their location or their schedule

They want to regulate the bare necessities of arranging a date. Where are you and when are you available is virtually mandatory to ask to actually see a person. "Pressuring" is subjective in the extreme here since women are often passive aggressive, making excuses about how busy they are, sending well intentioned men into problem solving mode.

And when's the last time you were "pressured" by a complete stranger? How much pressure can such people really leverage?

For women, social pressure is more real than gravity.

Yeah, this is an instance where I think the cyber-bullying meme could apply unironically:

Hahahahahahahaha How The Fuck Is Dating App Pressure Real Hahahaha Girl Just Unmatch And Ghost Like Girl Just Do What You Usually Do To Most Men Haha

Indeed. Whether it be from an in-person or online approach, chicks tend to be incredibly passive and aggressively unhelpful when it comes to initial conversations and setting-up the first date, so you have to drive the conversation and—even if they're interested—you often end-up having to play scheduling battleship:

Dealing with female passivity, flakiness, and fickleness is a universal frustration for men in dating, one that transcends space and time.

Your experience is well-illustrated by this roughly paraphrased and translated Latin American Spanish meme:

Guy: So when are you free to hang-out

Girl: Anytime you want 😊

Guy: How about tomorrow?

Girl: No, I can’t tomorrow

Guy: Monday?

Girl: Can’t Monday.

Guy: What about Thursday?

Girl: Thursday? Can’t either.

Guy: When then?

Girl: Anytime you want 😊

Even after getting her number, getting a girl to agree on a time to meet and having her actually show up instead of flaking is like pulling teeth. Girls are so passive that they often won’t offer any assistance at all through the process when they aren’t actively thwarting you, e.g., refraining from disclosing their availability so you have to play scheduling battleship, hoping you can read her mind such that you manage to call out a time that works on the first or second try (because the more guesses it takes, the more desperate you look and the more her remaining attraction for you is killed).

(1) Some girls are interested in meeting up and are passive and unhelpful because that's just how they are and have always been when it comes to dating (since guys like you will do all the lifting). (2) Some girls are passive and unhelpful because they're lukewarm about meeting up, but they want to keep you as a back-up plan or as an orbiter. (3) Some girls are passive and unhelpful and have little to no interest in meeting-up but continue leading you on because they get a kick out of the attention, tormenting guys and seeing guys pine after them.

Prior to if/when she actually shows up for a first date, you don't know ex-ante if a girl is in category (1), (2), or (3). Of course, at any moment and unbeknownst to you at the time, you can get relegated from her being (1) to (2) or (3) if a misstep gives her the ick, some other guy beats you to the punch and bangs her first, or for no reason at all.

The person in that convo is not interested in meeting up, full stop. I understand there's some very small probability of converting that convo to a hookup (your linked comment on conditional probabilities feels about right) but it just seems so not worth the effort. Even if that's the only match someone gets, and even if they're devoting 100% of their time to getting laid, their time is better spent fixing issues earlier up in the pipeline, like making themselves more desirable or finding where to meet more enthusiastic women, than being doomed to these endless demoralizing convos.

I definitely agree that's the case. Back when I was in my grinding OLD phase, I fairly quickly learned that generally if a girl isn't giving you a Yes by two attempts to secure an in-person meeting, you're about to embark on an exercise in frustration. Whether it be due to their disinterest in you, general flakiness, scheduling difficulties or whatever else.

If this comes to pass, it might just kill online dating in Australia. That would be bad in the short term, but might be beneficial in longer run insofar as OLD is no longer really functional for most people yet has made more traditional means of meeting partners harder.

Is it really that bad? I met my wife on hinge; almost everyone I know is more-or-less successfully meeting people for dates (and more if they want) through OLD.

I met my wife on OLD too, but back when it was good (2012). Nowadays I almost exclusively hear complaints about the big OLD services — for median women it provides easy access to casual sex but not relationships, for median men it provides nothing.

I think there’s some serious bias in terms of who is complaining about it online. People for whom it works just don’t congregate online to talk about it.

At least in SF up through 2021 (when I met my wife) it was great and easy for whatever I wanted as a guy and even today in 2023 it seems to work well for all my friends. I have some older women friends who a little bit seem stuck in the “continually hooking up with someone out of their league and being unable to turn it into a relationship” cycle but a lot of them source through non-OLD anyway and I’m not sure whether their counterfactual non-OLD dating life would look better.

Seconding this, I had good success with online dating but tend to pass over these conversations when they arise, which definitely contributes further to the bias.

In my experience when one breaks the flow of negative stories or offers advice, one tends to get ganged up on by people trying to vent their frustrations at you, interrogate your personal qualities and lifestyle for reasons to disregard your input, or seeming to project onto you the role of the people who've rejected them and trying to argue at you about how they posess x qualities and should be a great catch. God help you if you go into R9K or an incel forum and try to help someone out.

It can easily seem like a something is bad for almost everyone involved, while in reality those it is working for aren't inclined to seek spaces to talk and argue about it online.

Would you estimate the distribution of user success?

It's certainly gotten worse as time goes on. Scammers, fake profiles, catfishing, wannabe influencers recruiting followers on the flimsiest of premises ("I'm never on here, hit me up on insta @basicbae"), expired profiles, the list goes on and on. I've seen its worse in cities outside of the West where you can get a large amount of escorts plying their trade (eg Kuala Lumpur and Bangkok).

You can still get results, but the time spent/dates attended ratio is much worse.

The stigma of online dating seems to have evaporated as the fraud in it has increased. No comment on the quality of the dates generated for the users.

Do we really want dating to be decided more or less by proprietary algorithms in Silicon valley and apparently now government regulation too?

OLD's kind of what you make of it.

I've met the mother of my children through it after a year grinding away. It's a good outcome for me.

I met about 50ish girls in person over the course of the year, and based on still having most on social media it's striking that the majority still haven't found a partner. I was mostly dating UMC, intelligent, educated girls with good jobs who allegedly want to have kids within 3-4 years and yet the majority of the cohort seem to be stuck in a purgatory of Icking and not meeting somebody good enough.

So… dating apps need a blocking feature? Why did they not have this already?

AFAIK they do, but the report frames it mostly negatively:

Some dating apps and websites include features that allow users to ‘unmatch’ with or block other users. While these are important safety features that are intended to protect individuals from being contacted by problematic users, unfortunately they can also be used by perpetrators of DAFSV to remove evidence of violence and abuse, specifically conversation histories that can support reports of DAFSV to the platform or law enforcement. Alternatively, perpetrators can also delete their own account on the dating app or website to remove evidence of their conversations with victim-survivors.

Easy solution: save backups of chat histories even when people block users or delete accounts.

Umm, why are the chat logs not accessible to admins when accounts are blocked?

Could it be a right-to-be-forgotten sort of thing, like GDPR?

A casual search suggests that Australians are probably trying for compliance.

From watching the video of one of the authors presenting her findings it is alluded to that smaller apps and sites are not well resourced enough to have proper responses in place to criminal offenses (including archived chat logs).

Here's my tongue-in-cheek (but only just) counter:

How about every woman who signs up for a dating site has to have every person she matches with screened by a designated male 'chaperone' who will also have access to a random sampling of the conversations she's having and if she feels threatened he is allowed to step in and review and take over the conversation. For enforcement, if the male deems the other person's behavior objectionable enough he can request to receive their physical address and may physically beat them (nonlethally) unless they apologize.

I think this sorts all the incentives out and behavior on net improves immediately.

To get at my own position: it is amusing how government is basically reinventing, in much shittier form, the roles that fathers and brothers used to take on in terms of protecting their female relatives from aggressive and uninhibited male attention.

It is possible to maim someone for life while causing injuries that are very unlikely to be life threatening.

An easily avoided risk if you just apologize and refrain from the behavior in the future.

More directly, the reason I am not particularly put off by this risk is that the whole point is we want to filter the worst actors from the dating pool so as to improve the experience for everyone.

Either the threat of possible violence scares them away, or they get beaten to the point they are permanently maimed and thus are less of a threat overall.

Fine. Maybe they can get a large monetary reward to compensate the suffering, then ban them from dating apps for life.

How often do you think such a maiming would ACTUALLY occur under normal conditions?

See also: https://medium.com/michelle-chan/a-modest-proposal-concerning-how-best-to-combat-sexual-harassment-6f4acfdc7a34

And also: http://www.thetruthcounts.com/blogtraducciones/2018/11/14/jugaad-ethics/

I don’t think people are fully grasping what is happening here.

The Australian government is flirting with making it illegal to ask someone on a date.

  • “Pressuring the respondent to give them information about their location or their schedule.”

  • “Pressuring the respondent to meet them in person when they did not want to.”

This is what asking someone on a date is. You don’t know if they want to until you ask.

Some have speculated in these very comments that destroying dating apps is good actually, because then people will start meeting each other and going on dates somewhere else (where exactly this “somewhere else” would be is left unspecified). This is a folly. The kind of government that bans dating apps for allowing and facilitating people to ask each other out is the kind of government which will ban in-person dating scenes too. Think that’s too extreme? This is Australia we’re talking about. I’m totally on Kulak’s side if the Australian government goes through with this. These inhuman totalitarians need to be taken out by any means necessary.

The Australian government is flirting with making it illegal to ask someone on a date.

...Isn't this making it illegal to ask a second time after receiving a non-affirmative response the first time?

It seems to me that the above would be a move toward more legible dating rules, and that a lot of the awfulness of the current situation comes from a lack of legibility. It might actually be an improvement, if there's common knowledge between men and women that if the woman gives a non-affirmative, that connection is irrevocably burned.

It never will be, though, because Chad will ignore the rules and women won't call him on it. So it just becomes another test for men, with high stakes if he loses.

Worse: Not even Chad is immune when The Rules are applied capriciously and retrospectively at women's whim. In addition to it being another test for men in general with high stakes if a given man fails.

That too is a feature: some level of [assholery - power/Chadliness] gets you cancelled.

No, it makes it even less legible. Is this "pressure" or is it playful banter that both parties are enjoying:

Him: "Let's have our first date at XYZ Mini Golf."

Her: "No way, I hate Mini Golf. And if that's your idea of a good first date then you aren't getting a date at all."

Him: "You're just saying that cause you're scared you'll lose."

Her: "Ugh. Fine. But I'm only agreeing because you're being such an asshole about it."

Yeah, inclined to agree that without specificity as to what actually crosses the line, this rule is ripe for malign interpretation.

And, in this particular area of human interaction, I don't think it's POSSIBLE to define the line with specificity.

There's acts that clearly qualify and cross a line, and then there's a huge gray area that depends almost entirely on how the recipient interprets the meaning of the sender.

Is this "pressure" or is it playful banter that both parties are enjoying

It's cringe. I'd be leaving her on read after that first response. I wouldn't be enjoying this "playful banter" and it would be a pressure for me to reply.

I mean that's kind of my point. In text form this exchange can be read many different ways by different people.

If you imagine it as a verbal conversation where both parties statements are dripping with playful sarcasm, then it's clear they're flirting. If you imagine it as a verbal conversation where both parties are being dead serious, then they're both being pieces of shit to each other. It's impossible to create a neutral set of rules to decide which is which, especially when it's happening via text.

You get it. And the guys who have left her on read without responding have, perhaps, saved their own pride, but have also failed the shit test as much as the guys who become bruised and immediately apologize and make a list of other possible fun date ideas. Or worse: Ask her what fun thing she wants to do.

I think considering the woman's perspective is instructive, and as much as straight women generally don't understand what courtship (that's my chosen word, feel free to substitute your own) is like for straight men, men as well I think can't get their head around what it must be like for women. Namely to inhabit a world where one has a) readily available sex basically whenever one wants it, though not without possibly considerable social, emotional, and yes, possibly physical cost 2) a body that can get pregnant due to said sex, pregnancy of course being much different than the flu, or other physical ailment and d) the knowledge that, after the sex and depending upon how early it has been had, how much the man has had to invest to get it (because women are the figurative seller here), and how satisfying it was-- the man may very likely lose any long-term interest, starting you again jarringly quickly back at the beginning with a new prince charmless.

What must it be like for a girl to be treated as if she is in possession of a prize worth all of Africa's ivory and Asia's gold, then, when the post-coital tissue comes out, realize she isn't? The feeling of having been conned must be substantial.

Of course often some spark is kindled, the guy is too busy counting his lucky stars to show or feel disinterest, and a relationship may blossom into something long-lasting, if not quite the place that was promised. Or perhaps something something true love, if saying this unironically will not get me Motte-banned.

The dating dance, once I learned it (far later than would have really benefited me but not so late as to not benefit me at all) I always found exhilarating. Which is not to say I was some sort of record holder. I wasn't and am not. Having written that I also fully understand the frustrations involved, particularly when obsessiveness masquerading as love enters the fray.

Yep. And you can also have WILDLY different cultural norms. I knew a West Virginia redneck whose mom was fat and liked it cold. Redneck preferred it warm. He'd tell his mom 'come on ya walrus it's fucking cold in here'.

He and his mom got along well. Mom's a nurse, he made good and went to Harvard.

Is this "pressure" or is it playful banter that both parties are enjoying

Yes.

Russell conjugations all the way down: He pressured her; you convinced her; I charmed her.

Regardless of the particular example and whether it be arranging the first date, having sex for the first time, or anything in between, the choice of verb to describe the same words and actions from a man can be determined and redetermined retroactively by a woman based on how she feels about the man at the time of the retroactive (re-)determination.

Women generally don't like to take ownership of their actions in the dating/courtship process. This kind of ambiguity, plausible deniability, and ret-conning of their Lived Experience is a feature, not a bug, and helps their ability to say "omg it just like happened" and protect their sense of Wonderfulness.

I think it's a feature, not a bug, in more ways than you're giving it credit for. Saying stuff that makes the other person slightly uncomfortable is an important component of flirting for both sexes. It's a way of testing the other person a little to see how they perform.

It's similar to how a job interviewer might ask "what are your three greatest weaknesses?" That's a completely batshit insane thing to ask in the context of a normal conversation, but it's typical in an interview. The point is to see how the other person responds to an uncomfortable question - can they stay focused and give a socially appropriate response instead of getting flustered?

A woman saying "I hate your first date idea" is basically the same thing. It's (often) not a literal statement. It's about seeing the quality of the response from the other person and communicating that she isn't desperate for a date. "You're scared you'll lose" is basically the same thing. It's a little jab back designed to get a reaction and communicate a certain sense of aloofness. It's a delicate dance because you have to push a little but not push too much, and everyone will screw it up at some point given a long enough timeframe.

because then people will start meeting each other and going on dates somewhere else (where exactly this “somewhere else” would be is left unspecified).

I have to agree with this- the ‘most people meet in person’ ship has sailed, been captured by privateers, and is at this point taking on water quite rapidly after steering into an iceberg. It’s not coming back without a conscious effort to facilitate it, probably by third parties to the ones that would be actually getting dates.

I don’t think people are fully grasping what is happening here.

The Australian government is flirting with making it illegal to ask someone on a date.

No, the government is not making it illegal to ask someone on a date. No, they are not flirting with doing so.

"How about you guys self-regulate so we don't have to get involved?" is the exact same thing our governments have done with television since forever. Guess what? It didn't lead to TV being banned.

The dating apps will put together a voluntary Code of Conduct that mostly says they need to do the things they're already doing, maybe with a bit less tolerance for unsolicited dick pics, and life will go on. No legislation will be drafted, introduced, or passed.

You know what would happen if the government did make it illegal to ask someone on a date? That government would become very unpopular. So they won't do it.

Edit: Also, we already had a regime change since that Kulak post you've linked to. So who are you proposing to replace the current lot of "inhuman totalitarians" with? Back to the last bunch?

So who are you proposing to replace the current lot of "inhuman totalitarians" with? Back to the last bunch?

This seems to be a recurring problem. We might have to write a new constitution, Douglas MacArthur style.

You think Akihito wants a new imperial possession?

Do you think there's any chance at all that maybe invading another country, overthrowing a democratically elected, popular government, and forcibly imposing a new constitution is perhaps a slight overraction to Tinder being asked (with no actual penalty attached) to follow rules that it gets to write for itself?

Australian democracy seems to work just fine, best I can tell, in the sense that they are getting exactly the sorts of government they deserve. This isn't always very nice, but if nothing else, it is absolutely just.

I'd say that the actual issue with Australia is more that things are materially quite good. Politics is full of sleaze and corruption, but nobody really noticed due to the level of material prosperity they had access to. That's starting to fail as the long term consequences of outsourcing, encouraging massive amounts of immigration and encouraging a multi-decade long property bubble start to come home to roost, but life is actually good enough in Australia for most people that they have been largely ignoring governmental dysfunction due to the lack of impact it has on their daily life.

This is actually pretty interesting. Making it so only guys with social capital get to date. I just don't like the State doing it.

This list of acts sounds tailor-made to provide increased latitude and optionality for women by which to anarcho-tyrannically police, punish, or get revenge on men for hurting their feelings or not venerating their Wonderfulness: Brad for giving her the ick, Brad for not knowing his place and staying in his lane, Chad for leaving her on read or flaking on her (in other words, treating her like how women commonly treat men), Chad (or worse, Brad) for pump and dumping her.

"Pressured" and "unwanted" are subjective terms that can be claimed retroactively by women. A man doesn't know if his good faith efforts at coordinating a meet-up could be construed as "pressured" or not, nor does he know if his good-faith efforts at sexual escalation (to the extent such efforts can be made in "good faith") could be construed as "unwanted" or not. Be too vanilla in your texts and you might just get left on read for being boring.

I might regret engaging with this but... to me these rules appear targeted towards stopping sexual harassment. Most women consider pressure after she's said "no" harassment, unsolicited dick picks harassment, etc etc. And it really does feel unsafe. Now, some uncomfortable and unwanted communication just comes with the territory of being female in the dating world. I do think redefining (most) of these things as sexual violence is bad as it weakens the definition of sexual violence. But... a lot of these behaviors really are highly upsetting to many women, and the other comments saying this is just "normal dating" have me pretty worried about what these posters think is normal behavior.

Pressuring women for contact or sex when she has said no should not be normal. Unsolicited pictures of gentitalia should not be normal. Continuing to contact a woman after she's said no should not be normal. Lying should not be normal.

I think this is more an attempt to legislate men into treating women like fellow humans than trying to control dating. The way the sexes interact is complex enough that I'm not sure it really can be effectively legislated. Ultimately, I guess I agree that this law would be bad (or at least not have the intended effects), but a culture should also never be in a position where people think legislation is the only way for women to be treated well.

What's wrong with the men these days that people think this is the only way they will behave?

Pressuring women for contact or sex when she has said no should not be normal. Unsolicited pictures of gentitalia should not be normal. Continuing to contact a woman after she's said no should not be normal. Lying should not be normal.

Then women must stop rewarding these behaviors. If you want to actually impose change from on high, your authority has to somehow punish Stacey when she accepts a date with Chad after she turned him down the first time. Just telling men that 'no means never' isn't going to work if they see that guys who get laid are being persistent and guys who aren't persistent don't get laid.

Then women must stop rewarding these behaviors. If you want to actually impose change from on high, your authority has to somehow punish Stacey when she accepts a date with Chad after she turned him down the first time. Just telling men that 'no means never' isn't going to work if they see that guys who get laid are being persistent and guys who aren't persistent don't get laid.

I'm not going to deny that lying, manipulation, and harassing women get men laid. That's been well documented. But if you think that manipulating, lying to, and harassing women is fine as long as it gets you sex, maybe... just maybe... you're the reason Australia is considering this law regulation.

I'm going to take a step back here: Earlier today, I listened to a podcast on the Free Press, Bari Weiss' site. It was called Are we living through end times?, and was about the signs of social unrest that precede revolution. Our time has many of them. One of the primary signs of impending revolution is “emmiseration of the masses”. One of the things that happens during this emisseration is that people start to see that although their ancestors were able to achieve success playing by the rules, they can't anymore. They come to believe they now have to cheat their way to the top. And indeed, the cheaters win. They win in politics, they win in college admissions, they win at tests, and although the podcast did not address this... they now win in the bedroom too.

But a society cannot function if only cheaters can win. The entire system breaks down. And indeed, our whole sexual system is breaking down. 25% of 40 year olds have never been married, and 6/10 men in their 20s are single. Our birth rate is the lowest it's ever been. The situation is not better for women. I can't find the articles I wanted to cite here, so instead I'll link to an account by a university professor of the confusion she and her students feel when they are told they ought to feel happy about sexual encounters they found exploitative and upsetting. Note that it often takes women years to figure out why they felt used. Do you think Stacy likes it when Chad pushes her boundaries until she has sex with him?

The only winners in today's sexual culture are the small percentage of men who can have dozens of sex partners while an increasing number of men have none at all. We are in the middle of a sexual apocalypse, and we have got to find a way to reverse it.

This bill is an attempt to get men to play by the rules again. There have always been cheaters, but the costs of hurting women were too high for most men when the women they dated were their friends' sisters or people who were going to be in their social circles for years. Now that men can date women none of their friends know, whom they can arrange to never see again, and have a society gaslighting women into thinking casual sex is empowering, men can use underhanded tactics like these to gain an unfair advantage over other men. This is bad for women, it's bad for honest men, it's bad for men who resort to them to compete, and it's really really bad for society. When liars and manipulators win, it corrodes our culture's soul.

We can't function like this. This law regulation isn't the answer. Other posters are right that the worst offenders will find ways to slip through. This law is a bandaid slapped on a hemorrhaging amputated arm. Our sex culture needs a deeper culture change in order to work for most people again, but we have to find a way to fix this! Our whole future is riding on it.

I'm not going to deny that lying, manipulation, and harassing women get men laid. That's been well documented. But if you think that manipulating, lying to, and harassing women is fine as long as it gets you sex, maybe... just maybe... you're the reason Australia is considering this law.

I'm not Australian, so it's not likely. But "lying" and manipulation and "harassment" (that is to say, not taking 'no' or even just evasiveness as 'never') have been part of the human mating dance at least since language was invented. Probably before.

But a society cannot function if only cheaters can win.

That is correct. But what these rules do is empower cheaters more. The normal guy who is just trying to respond to an intentionally ambiguous situation is discouraged or punished. Chad, being Chad, doesn't care and does what he always does. And usually gets away with it.

Note that it often takes women years to figure out why they felt used. Do you think Stacy likes it when Chad pushes her boundaries until she has sex with him?

Yes she does. Perhaps years later after Chad #5 or #10 or more she realizes that chasing that feeling was unwise, but at the time she loved it. And she put up barriers specifically to filter out men who wouldn't push them.

This bill is an attempt to get men to play by the rules again.

It can't fix the incentive structure. It can punish men who do things likely to get them sex, but all that does is empower even more the most brazen ones who for whatever reason can get away with it (i.e. Chad). It can force men out of the game, but the only way to get men to play by "the rules" is if playing by "the rules" can actually result in success.

Laws catch the little sharks while the big ones just bull through. Maybe this is a feature designed to catch horny persistent careless-at-best individuals that aren't Chad.

I entirely agree. Unfortunately, I don't think anyone is willing to make the compromises that are necessary to solve this problem, because even suggesting most of them is taboo. There will need to be a technological solution or natural selection will eventually solve us for it.

What does natural selection solving it for us look? An Amish and Muslim future?

Don't forget the Quiverfull evangelicals!

I absolutelt endorse this future

you're the reason Australia is considering this law.

It's not a law! No one is considering a law!

right-o. regulation. So law by a non-lawmaking agency. I'll update my post accordingly.

(Despite the sarcasm, genuine thanks)

"You do this thing we want you to do 'voluntarily' or we'll do it for you" is the most transparent of fig leaves. That it's regulation by threat rather than code doesn't make it less de facto required.

I mean, I wouldn't even call it a fig leaf. There's no pretense the government isn't driving this. They had an announcement and everything.

But it remains the fact that there is no law being proposed and this remains an important distinction! The government is saying "hey we think this is a problem, come up with some ways to address it". So yes, it is compelling action. But it is allowing the apps to decide themselves on the specific action, it is not imposing penalties for breaches, and it is not putting legislation in place that will endure beyond the term of the current Minister. This is the lightest of light touches.

I agree with you that this is currently not actually a law, but I think you are being slightly dishonest when you claim that "No one is considering a law!" - this is the sort of action which frequently precedes legislation on the topic, as the problems the code is meant to address remain unaddressed. I find it hard to believe that even the most ardent supporter of a code like this actually believes that it will do anything at all to fix the problem of men continuing to propose alternatives when their first data idea gets shot down.

this is the sort of action which frequently precedes legislation on the topic

No, it isn't. I challenge you to provide me with even one example.

More comments

a society gaslighting women into thinking casual sex is empowering

Nice way to pass the buck there, blaming this on "society" rather than "feminist media".

Stereotypical frat kids and the media they consume are not particularly feminist, but they still will find casual sex all kinds of awesome. The issue runs pretty deep.

And your rejoinder is to complain that it doesn't throw enough blame on the ideology you personally dislike?

This is an extreme "mistakes were made" non-apology.

Sure, it's not incorrect to say that "society" sends young women a lot of messages which glamorise casual sex - but which components of "society" are sending these messages, exactly? Presumably young women aren't going down to their local mosque, church, or synagogue to hear preachers gush about the satisfaction of being a bad bitch who fucks a dude then leaves him on read.

To fix a problem, you have to identify its source, and you have to do it with more precision than pinpointing it to "society".

I didn't think it was a literal apology. A "non-apology apology" presents itself as though the speaker is trying to make amends for wrongdoing, but if read closely, the speaker is very careful to avoid admitting guilt or accepting responsibility for wrongdoing (hence the weasel phrase "mistakes were made").

I thought it was a similar kind of evasiveness on /u/CanIHaveASong's part to attribute young women coming to believe that casual sex is empowering as a result of the messages sent by "society", as opposed to any more specific agent or group contained therein.

More comments

Was the sexual revolution invented by women? No, so why suggest it was? Feminism predates the sexual revolution.

I don't recall suggesting that the sexual revolution was invented by women.

I sympathize with your vexation here. I'm not sure how productive these discussions can be if we have to regularly pause for interjections of "you haven't assigned enough (or any) blame to my outgroup". I think he could have made a better post than that.

At the same time, I also think we would be remiss to completely talk around a very obvious link between female promiscuity and popular progressive feminist messaging. A certain subset of men may benefit the most from modern dating/hook-up college, but this culture has never been broadly or enthusiastically condoned by men, at least out loud. A man may be happy that prostitutes exist if only to satisfy his base urges, but he's not exactly proud of it. And since humans aren't consistent, principled thinkers - while he may be happy that some women sleep around if only for the opportunity for him to get laid, he's probably not thrilled to find out his wife/girlfriend had dozens of partners prior to the current relationship. "X in the streets, Y in the sheets" kinda sums up the attempted propriety.

By contrast, it is feminism that has railed against "slut-shaming", argued that women who sleep around are unfairly judged compared to Chads, whitewashed sexual exhibitionism as personal exploration, and so much more since at least I was in Jr High. I'm not even interested in blaming anybody for our current state of affairs - just an admission that there is an obvious (if not clear) relationship between the dashed expectations of young women and this ubiquitous ideological memeplex. I don't think you can assign more culpability to men for herding women towards the Sex Party - gently pushing against their backsides and reassuing them to not worry, this will all be so fun - versus an industry of Grl Power media that is assumedly produced mostly by women.

As such, I am not interested in curbing or punishing legions of cheating/insistent men that potentially threaten the structural integrity of our society. Not until we dial the lens out far enough to indict a few other groups. Zero interest in "getting men to play by the rules again" when both sexes have defected from them (with women running the full sprint, one could argue), and when the fairer one routinely acts like it never has any agency in these affairs whatsoever - which is unacceptable when you've spent decades trumpeting how you know what you want, you are self-empowered, you don't need anybody to hold your hand or 'mansplain' things to you, and being chaste is just an insecure demand from the patriarchy.

Short of actual rape, there's a lot I'd give amnesty to until this conversation space starts looking halfway reasonable. But I'm not optimistic, and it is for that reason I reluctantly agree that this wound may not heal. All the "stitching up" has to happen on the men's side, and women act like they're just oblivious passengers that never saw the dozen road signs warning "POTENTIAL LANDSLIDES AHEAD".

Thanks for expressing the basic point I was trying to make in greater detail. I'm having one of those days where the words aren't coming to me with ease.

More comments

A certain subset of men may benefit the most from modern dating/hook-up college, but this culture has never been broadly or enthusiastically condoned by men, at least out loud

In terms of the views of the 'people', my general impression is that most men are openly very supportive of the increased availability of sex outside of long-term committed relationships, and that many are openly supportive of the availability of one-night stands. In terms of the public statements of 'intellectuals' - I think thrre were a lot of male intellectuals in the past who supported the 'sexual revolution', and there continue to be so today?

I agree that feminism support male and female promiscuity, but male feminists and female feminists both support it.

In terms of the views of the 'people', my general impression is that most men are openly very supportive of the increased availability of sex outside of long-term committed relationships, and that many are openly supportive of the availability of one-night stands.

I don't think it is really possible to get an accurate picture of sentiment here given the overwhelming amounts of social control and messaging on the topic. Most men are in fact openly very supportive of the ideologies that they are required to support in order to remain employed, but I'm not sure how much of that translates to actual, real support. The constant witch-hunting that takes place these days is, to me at least, a sign that this outward support isn't always matched behind the mask.

More comments

This isn't the Motte anymore. Look- I wasn't expecting my post to be accepted with applause and universal agreement, but my thought out, nuanced, cited post gets 4 upvotes, while apologia for sexually harassing women (that dismisses out of hand what I wrote) gets 30+? I used to write things that got a lot of pushback, and I knew to expect some heat, but this is different. It's just unwillingness to engage with what I wrote. This place isn't about exchange of ideas anymore. Oh, there's some interesting discussion, still. You've generated some here. I didn't follow the Motte over from reddit because it had become uncomfortably closed-minded and misogynistic, and it's noticably worse now. If this place is just about people confirming their own worldviews to eachother, then what is it?

I'm disappointed in this place. I don't know what I expected popping in again. I guess I'd expected some resistance, but hoped for open minded natures to triumph. I don't feel like my presence is welcome here anymore. This whole thing confirms to me that my time and my mind are better used elsewhere. :-\

Oh absolutely, this place has become an echo chamber every bit as bad as /r/politics or whatever leftist hangout you care to name, and this subthread has been especially bad. There's just no interest in the actual reality - each event simply serves as a jumping off point to go back to the same old grievances and resentments.

I accept it for what it is and farm the downvotes - I've seen what gets upvoted and want no part of it. If you actually want substantive discussion though? Yeah, you're going to have to look elsewhere.

Yeah, you're going to have to look elsewhere.

And where would that be?

More comments

So why are you here then?

More comments

Look- I wasn't expecting my post to be accepted with applause and universal agreement, but my thought out, nuanced, cited post gets 4 upvotes, while apologia for sexually harassing women (that dismisses out of hand what I wrote) gets 30+?

Yeah and it kinda sucks that he got 30 upvotes.

But I don't believe you don't care about only getting 4, because at the end of the day you aren't downvoted into the ground like with other echochambers.

The best achievement you can get in a place where there are serious debates happening is to go against the groupthink and come out on top, which you've done.

Jfc conventional BBSs like system remains superior to reddits.

What's wrong with the men these days that people think this is the only way they will behave?

You end your post with that and expect pleases and thank yous?

This isn't the Motte anymore. Look- I wasn't expecting my post to be accepted with applause and universal agreement, but my thought out, nuanced, cited post gets 4 upvotes, while apologia for sexually harassing women (that dismisses out of hand what I wrote) gets 30+?

Although subjectively explaining vote counts almost never works out, this one seems to make sense to me (as a lurker throwing around upvotes).

Your first post framed this as exasperated leaders at their wits end just honestly trying to get men to treat women as fellow humans, which apparently doesn't ring true or sound too compelling to people here. "What's wrong with the men these days that people think this is the only way they will behave?" as a question is totally dependent on the legitimacy & good faith of the premise "people think this is the only way", which is the main contention in most of the other top-level replies.

The_Nybbler seemed to cut through right to the key point, that attractive/desirable men are going to keep winning in online dating regardless of how many rules they follow or break. So making more punishments and penalties available to women to use against men they aren't interested in is continuing the same one-sided trend we've been in, which can feel unfair and avoidant of root issues.

Then you spun that into a long and somewhat interesting comment (though with about 3 too many links) about how we're screwed if we just let 'cheaters' win, which also characterized persistence in the most nasty way 'lying/manipulation/harassing to get laid'. But the point wasn't that we let cheaters win, it was that desirable men win online dating whether they cheat or not.

So to an average observer, it looked like you had perfect form and a great-looking swing, but you just whiffed the ball on both swings. Meanwhile The Nybbler had a bit of a lazier swing but nailed the ball square-on. Hence you not being downvoted to oblivion or anything, but just receiving merely mild internet reward points.

I'm disappointed in this place. I don't know what I expected popping in again. I guess I'd expected some resistance, but hoped for open minded natures to triumph. I don't feel like my presence is welcome here anymore. This whole thing confirms to me that my time and my mind are better used elsewhere. :-\

For what it's worth, I made a long series of posts and replies on a topic that went wildly against consensus here (largely on nuclear power, although my takes on the Ukraine conflict aren't popular here either) and most people were actually polite and respectful, with one person even thanking me for providing a contrary perspective. I still got downvoted to hell, but I think paying attention to those funny little internet points is a mug's game. What mattered to me was the quality and strength of the arguments I interacted with, and those were usually still a lot better than other places on the internet. If you think that engaging in debate is fun and worthwhile, I think just ignoring the internet points is a good suggestion and will let you get a lot out of this place.

Perhaps I'm missing something, but your post seems to have 29 upvotes and 16 downvotes, net 13? That's pretty good reception imo. I don't think it should be downvoted, but whatever.

Is the complaint about throwing blame or understanding the nature of the problem?

The 'honest men' losing in post-modern societies are frequently losing because they listen to what women say, rather than watching what women do, as @The_Nybbler suggests.

The current regime of sexual promiscuity was demanded by women a generation ago. Blaming 'society' for the predictably poor outcomes removes the agency of all the people who fought for the current regime. I understand that many may be unhappy with the result, but something something about a fence.

@CanIHaveASong does not address the cohorts in our post modern societies that still marry and reproduce despite men being mean to women on the internet. Many of these cohorts rejected most of the sexual / cultural revolution at least in aspiration if not practice. Many of the most fertile women in America have rejected telephones.

Many of the women who are most unhappy about 'men these days' seem to be the least likely to advocate for a return to traditional marriage and religiosity.

And your rejoinder is to complain that it doesn't throw enough blame on the ideology you personally dislike?

Yes, he's wrong in blaming 'feminism'. It's liberalism, more specifically the ideology of personal liberty and empowerment, not feminism, which is to blame.

Obviously it's not going to heal. ever. Going back to prelapsarian sex relations is unthinkable. There aren't even any places with such left, and the last European country to have had them abolished them to thunderous applause back in the late 1970s.

This is antagonistic and a bit low effort. Do less of this please.

Understood, apologies.

I agree with most everything you say but the way you phrase certain things, as exemplified by the 'triggered' @Folamh3 reply you got, undermines it and makes it seem like you are coming from a point that completely misunderstands why these problems arise to begin with. At least as far as it relates to what I assume is a popular opinion here; that society changed in this way to a large extent because of women's empowerment.

Now, I think it would behoove us, instead of blaming some vague thing like 'society', to recognize just what happened. Why were things allowed to change to begin with? Why didn't the men, who then had power, stop it?

The verbiage in your post is steeped in the sort of meaning that feels similar to what one would hear from a lone brave professor who decided to teach the first woman who attended his lectures despite all the men in the class leaving in protest. Or the rhetoric of a universalist 'egalitarian'.

"Fairness."

"Our future"

There are no 'fair' solutions to this problem. The very idea of 'fairness' and 'equality' between men and women was part of what created it. There is no 'us'. The only 'working' societies in the world subjugate women. The universe does not owe anyone who wanders outside of that dynamic a solution to their self inflicted problems.

To that end, regardless of how highly you think of your post, I don't think you are saying a lot. The impression I get from reading it, for whatever that is worth, is that the drowning mans salvation lies at the bottom of the ocean.

Outside of that I am all ears to an actual solution to this problem that doesn't come from Catholic neo-reactionaries and the like.

Wow I can't remember the last time someone accused me of being "triggered" by something.

But if you think that manipulating, lying to, and harassing women is fine as long as it gets you sex, maybe... just maybe... you're the reason Australia is considering this law regulation.

I'm behind you on "manipulating" and "lying". On "harassing"... I think you may be looking at the problem backwards. I think the stigmatisation of deep love is part of what you correctly decry here, and I think rolling that back in law but also in culture is a necessary part of any reversal. Say what you will about stalkers, they're about the least-likely people to cheat on you.

What's wrong with the men these days that people think this is the only way they will behave?

I don't think there's anything wrong with "the men" these days that wasn't wrong with them 50, 100, 200 or 500 years ago. Men have always done things analogous to this prior to the existence of dating apps or smartphones or even telephones. I think we have plenty of reason to believe that men are behaving much better today than they did in the past - I'm sure the Australian statistics for sexual assault over the last hundred years would bear that out. [EDIT: not over the last thirty years, per /u/AshLael. Would still like to see a chart of the last hundred years.]

I don't think the people behind this bill have exhausted every possible course of action to attempt to remedy this problem and are now throwing up their hands in defeat and trying to legislate the problem out of existence. I think these people are petty authoritarians who want the state to intervene and control every facet of human behaviour. I think trying to legislate the problem out of existence was a first resort for them, not a last resort.

Twenty years ago we would have said that a man who's overly pushy and bad at reading signals needs to learn a bit of empathy and improve his social skills - not locked up. From a rehabilitative perspective, I have a hard time believing that spending a few months in jail for the crime of sending a few rude texts would make a man more respectful towards women.

Can we PLEASE try to stay SLIGHTLY connected to reality here?

No one is trying to

legislate the problem out of existence

No legislation has been proposed, no legislation is being drafted.

Likewise, there is absolutely no prospect of any man

spending a few months in jail for the crime of sending a few rude texts

What has happened is dating apps have been asked to write a code of conduct for themselves. This does not involve any legislation, it does not involve any penalties, and it CERTAINLY does not involve any new criminal offences applied to users.

Okay, fair enough, I was being hyperbolic.

No legislation has been proposed, no legislation is being drafted.

This is an example of the government laundering legislation through private entities by pressuring the private entities that if they don't obey, they will be faced with legislation. If they do obey, then the government can claim to have nothing to do with it because it's "just private entities, surely they can do whatever they want".

That may or may not be so, and it still means nobody is going to jail for suggesting a date.

Are you sure? Because I can easily see this "voluntary" code including mandatory reporting to the government, so after Mr. short-pasty-and-ugly gets shot down (by different women) for the thirteenth time, he ends up facing cyberstalking charges.

'I can easily see' is the very weakest phrasing known to God and man alike. Is that all you've got?

I don't have a crystal ball. I don't even have the text of the demand sent from the government to the dating sites. But I am certain that if this comes to pass, those who say this won't happen now will be at the forefront of saying the defendant deserves it then.

More comments

If someone were to be charged with cyberstalking in New South Wales, it would be under section 13 of the Crimes Act:

A person who stalks or intimidates another person with the intention of causing the other person to fear physical or mental harm is guilty of an offence.

"Stalking" in this context includes "contacting or otherwise approaching a person using the internet", so you could certainly make out that sending messages on a dating app constitutes one element of cyberstalking. But, as I continually remind everyone, to find someone guilty of an offence you need to prove ALL elements of the offence.

In this particular hypothetical, that would include proving beyond a reasonable doubt that Mr. short-pasty-and-ugly intended to cause the women he was contacting to fear harm. There is no way to prove such intent of a man who is just trying to get a date.

In short - you're talking out of your arse.

In short, you just agreed with me. I didn't say they'd be convicted (though I have less confidence in the Australian justice system than you do, and inferring the mens rea from the actus rea is something courts do all the time), I said they'd face charges.

More comments

I think we have plenty of reason to believe that men are behaving much better today than they did in the past - I'm sure the Australian statistics for sexual assault over the last hundred years would bear that out.

Also, this is wrong. Data only goes back to 1993, but it's shown a clear upward trend in the 30 years since then.

Thanks for the source. Apparently Australia only outlawed marital rape in 1990. I wonder how much this contributed to the increase.

I'd have actually put "immigration from extremely misogynistic cultures" up on the list as as a much bigger contributor. There've been a lot of scandals with regards to explicitly ethnically motivated sexual abuse and I've even posted about some of them here on the Motte before as well. It got to the point that in the 2000s we actually had race riots over islamic sexual harassment in public places. To be honest I'd be rather surprised if we didn't have a proto-Rotherham waiting to be discovered too.

I hadn't thought of that. When I think about immigrants coming to Australia I immediately think of Chinese and Vietnamese, but I suppose there are a lot of Lebanese as well, aren't there? Would you happen to have stats on the most biggest immigrant groups by source nation over the last few decades?

The Lebanese were who I was thinking of with regards to the ethnically motivated assaults, but I don't have the stats on this front unfortunately.

After recovering from yesterday's hangover I've got a bit more to say about this.

I suspect that one of the major drives behind this is the push to get more resources for addressing domestic/sexual violence treatment in society. The author of the paper has written other papers on domestic violence and seems to be undertaking a PhD on the subject. I've also tracked down her discussion of her findings at a criminology conference. She seems to wish to move towards de-anonymization (identity verification via 'government ids') and the ability to report perpetrators of DAFSV on the apps to the police which would clearly have a chilling effect on the use of the platform based on the nebulous definitions above.

When asked why LGBT+ people experienced higher rates of abuse under the definition she admits that 'they were perhaps using the apps differently' than heterosexuals and speculates that they were perhaps getting 'targeted because of their sexual identity by catfishing' (which I find incredibly doubtful).

Finally when asked whether the survey respondents might self select because of their attitudes towards sexual violence, she admits that that might be the case as they need to inform potential respondents what the survey is about. I find this last point very interesting because besides the 'thumb on the scale' with loose definitions of violence, it seems that the large numbers of positives could be due to a polluted sample. It just reinforces my belief that this is a motivated effort to get resources/attention for the domestic/sexual violence agenda.

Dating App Facilitated Sexual Violence

Even the term is incredibly misleading. It suggests a man who uses dating apps to meet women in order to rape them, but they're using the term to refer to something else entirely.

Also, after the miserable dating flashback that led up to my current miserable dating life passed, a few things occurred to me that make this doubly pointless.

Lots of communication on dating apps happens OFF APP. It's common wisdom that moving to text or instagram DMs or the like is the next step of "intimacy" in a match; typically where you go once you've gotten a Yes to the date, but before the woman turns out to be mysteriously busy. Supposedly it sets you apart from the competition; in order to see you, she doesn't have to open up an app full of other dudes. This is universal advice given to men, the only disagreement I've seen from women is whether they prefer text, facebook messenger, instagram, or snapchat.

So of course the last time I checked Reddit's Hinge and O.L.D. subs, the advice being given to women was that men only want to move off-app so they can freely abuse you and send dick pics. Only the app is safe, which is fucking terrible advice to women AND men (men who take it seriously find their matches flake even more often, women who take it seriously would turn down men making perfectly normal courtship overtures). The people saying this seemed very distinct from the local "dating gurus," just an odd little set of commenters that would chime in whenever moving off app came up.

I suppose makes sense if your goal in using a dating app is to never see a dick pic rather than using it to date. It's just frustratingly ass-backwards.

Also, the apps themselves don't allow the sending of random pictures from a device's drive. You'd have to send an Imgur link or something. There isn't really a way to receive dick picks, wanted or not, on Hinge itself.

All this together makes the legislation even dumber and harder to enforce; since it'd mean reporting someone for behavior that happened on a totally different platform. My last experience of Tinder was turning up for an agreed-upon date only to be stood up; going back to Tinder itself revealed she had unmatched me right when the date was supposed to start, so I couldn't have reported her if I wanted to. The last thing I heard from her was she was "just leaving the house."

This means that all the people you've ever been matched with need to be visible to you after they've unmatched you so you can report them for off-app behavior, even if they've unmatched you themselves.

All this together makes the legislation even dumber and harder to enforce; since it'd mean reporting someone for behavior that happened on a totally different platform.

Say it with me people: There is no legislation.

One of the (very good) reasons why the government would prefer to see a self-regulatory system here rather than a legislated one is precisely because the dating apps can design it to take account of how they actually work. Yes, governments making dumb rules about things they don't understand is a problem in many areas - but self-regulation is a good way to avoid that problem!

The fact that Hinge doesn't allow men to spam dick pics at women is surely intentional - and quite likely that's the sort of thing that will end up in the industry-designed rules.

Say it with me people: There is no legislation.

I was already saying it in my head when I read that line, just due to your previous posts.


What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats