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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   26660 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 11, 2023

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I'm feeling rather insane right now so I'll post a screed.

Do you ever feel like there are just... too many men on this planet? Not humans. Just men, in particular.

Humans are like 1.05 males: females at birth, so there's a natural imbalance. I can only assume this was balanced in the past because males died more: from war, or hunting animals, or just generally taking more risks.

None of that happens now, in our ultra-safe modern feminized society. So we just have a bunch of surplus males sitting around.. doing nothing... simping for women. Taking up body building, or feminism, or prostitution, or onlyfans, or whatever else will give them a drop of female attention.

Everybody knows "Ender's Game," but did you ever read the sequels? It has one (Speaker for the Dead) where they find an alien race that can only reproduce through a chemical change caused by war. That's... how I feel. Like, our species basically requires war in order to sort out our psychology. Otherwise there will be this latent male aggression caused by intra-sexual competition, and it won't end until we have some stupid fucking war over nothing, just to reduce the surplus male population.

There's too many dicks on the dance floor

Just to clarify, your primary concern is the belief that an excess population of lonely and/or frustrated men will lead to a massive, horrific war? I'm trying to figure out if you consider the fact of men having to (increasingly?) compete for women's attention to be an inherent problem or whether or not you are only worried inasmuch as it will lead to a larger calamity.

I think it's an inherent problem that makes everyone (both men and women) more lonely and miserable. I don't think it will lead to any massive war, it'll just make nightlife and parties really lame for the rest of our lives.

I don't think surplus males are a particularly big problem, not until the imbalance skews well past 1.1, and even then it's hardly catastrophic.

That's... how I feel. Like, our species basically requires war in order to sort out our psychology. Otherwise there will be this latent male aggression caused by intra-sexual competition, and it won't end until we have some stupid fucking war over nothing, just to reduce the surplus male population.

I don't think this is true, but even if it was, what of it?

A war that kills 1-10% of the adult male population is, to put it bluntly, a cure much worse than the disease.

Yeah it's not ideal that we aren't living in society where literally everyone pairbonds off to a single partner for life, but mass murder isn't a suitable solution.

we could use selective abortions and IVF sex-selection to produce larger ratios of girl babies. Most parents seem to prefer girl children these days, anyway, if they have a preferance.

Not really.

Avoid low effort comments that don't add anything.

I ussually agree with mod notes like this one, but in this case, OP was asking a yes or no question about other people's personal experiences.

If someone asks a yes/no question, unless it's clearly a poll, just answering "yes" or "no" is almost certainly not the kind of response the OP was actually looking for.

"Do you think Trump is going to be imprisoned?" "Is the AI extinction threat really something we should take seriously?"

"Nah." "Yes."

Come on. That's not why people ask such questions, and clearly the OP did not just ask a yes/no question, but started a thread.

One of the most striking things reading Takaki's Strangers From a Different Shore, a history text on Asian immigration to the United States from the 1800s to 1980 or so, was that the first wave of Chinese immigrant laborers to the western continental US largely just...died out for lack of wives. Most of the early Chinese immigrants were men, who came over planning to earn money working on construction or mining or in service industries, earn money, and return to China or import a bride. While some brides were successfully imported through various means, the crackdown on Chinese immigration meant that vastly fewer brides ever made it over than were needed, and the realities of exploitation and debt left most Chinese laborers unable to afford to return to China successful. American women mostly disdained to marry Chinese men, for a variety of reasons, and interracial relationships were rare*.

As a result, most of these thousands of men lived out their lives in America and simply died, never having any long term romantic partners, only the occasional mining camp prostitute. An entire population and subculture, it existed and died out, failed to reproduce itself. Contemporary accounts and census figures back up that the Chinese population dipped for a period, before immigration resumed. Chinese-Americans who grew up during that period, the children of the handful of couples who successfully imported brides, report the shade-like presence of these aging men in the Chinese community, dozens of honorary uncles all childless and often filled with regret. White society barely noticed them: after all they didn't have any children or any power of money or language or politics. Politically, legally, and socially, it was possible to just eliminate these men from the "dating" pool.

Another anecdote, reading Lee Kuan Yew's From Third World to First at the moment, he talks about Singaporean students traveling overseas, and disproportionate numbers of Singaporean women bringing back foreign husbands. Talking to Singaporean friends of mine, they corroborated this: Singaporean girls who study in the US are more likely to stay in the USA, and more likely to marry an American either way. Singaporean boys are more likely to stay in Singapore or return to Singapore, because of the social privileges accorded to sons. College educated women find that Singaporean men mistreat them, they don't want a woman who is smarter than they are, they want a submissive wife; as a result women choose other options. Singapore's particularly bad gender balance, despite being a fully formed and wealthy state with sovereignty, is determined in part by this social reality. This is a problem that Singapore must combat to maintain its population. The way the country treats its women, and the way other countries treat their women, makes maintaining the culturally and intellectually open society that Singapore's success was built off of a direct trade against their gender ratio.

The striking point being that the gender balance is socially determined. Thousands of Chinese immigrant men weren't the victims of a gender imbalance per se, though at that time in the West there probably were factually too few women for the white population. Singapore's choices around foreign education weaken its gender balance because of fetishes formed ten thousand miles away. These thousands of men were marked for sad single ends because of a social construct around their race. Society chooses how to distribute women, not in a command economy sense necessarily, but in a broad preferences sense. No matter how bad the percentages are in aggregate, some men will be marked for success and others for failure.

Inasmuch as gender balance is a dial worth playing with, the obvious levers at the national level in a first world context to pull aren't killing off men. They are abortion and immigration. Sex selective abortion is a major issue among certain communities, and should be wildly illegal. In China the ratio of births is 120:100, in parts of India it is little better. While it is less common in the US as a whole, it does happen in some immigrant communities.

Open immigration policies equally lead to gender imbalances, immigrants are more likely to be men. Privilege female immigration significantly more highly, and it isn't hard to improve the balance quickly in the United States or the UK or France. Import Venezuelan or Burmese women by the boat load.

For that matter, first world men have the personal option under the current law to import wives quite easily. The fact that they don't is largely a social choice those men are making. They don't face a material gender imbalance, they choose to face one for the sake of social structures.

These social structures also probably have much more to do with your dating pool than do population level statistics. Middle class American men want equally middle class American wives, shunting aside the opportunity to date poorer or immigrant women. Men often want women less educated and successful than they are, leaving educated women on the shelf. Manage how your society treats women, and you will face fewer parents seeking to have sons instead, you will attract more women from abroad, matchmaking will be easier among your population on class/education/social bases. Social constrictions create the gender imbalance as experienced in day to day life, be ready to violate or manage them and much of the problems melt away.

So in the long run, I do not think we face terminal societal decline as a result of these problems. Historically, societies have dealt with worse, they simply sentence some men to misery, and because the kind of men who can't get a girl are disproportionately "losers" in other ways to begin with it doesn't tend to have much impact on history. The far more important thing to look at is societies like China and India and South Korea and Singapore and Japan, which mistreat their own women to such an extent that their societies fail to reproduce themselves. The wealthy West, by comparison, is doing a great job. We don't need a war, we just need better marriage norms, and the courage to address our problems.

*Interesting contrast: Takaki talks about Filipino men being considered a crisis because they were TOO seductive, too smooth. Newspapers and politicians wrote screeds against the menace of Filipino men seducing white women. Takaki, of course, being an Asian and a liberal, is willing to say directly and quote sources that Filipino men were simply "great lovers" or "more attractive and stylish" or "more attentive" than white men; while he is totally unwilling to state that Chinese men died out because they were ugly or weren't great lovers, inasmuch as this was perceived it was the result of racism.

The far more important thing to look at is societies like China and India and South Korea and Singapore and Japan, which mistreat their own women to such an extent that their societies fail to reproduce themselves.

China used to have very high fertility. As did Japan, India, South Korea and so on... How did they become so populous in the first place if mistreating women lowers fertility? They used to treat their women far worse than they do now. See footbinding, see women being legally property in Japan until 1945... I got into a big argument with some people over whether South Korea is a feminist country, despite gender equality being written into its constitution and an actual govt ministry supporting it... anyway it's indisputable that it's much more feminist now than ever in the past.

Mistreating women is not the cause of low fertility, indeed it's the opposite. If you look at the literature, female education immediately appears as a primary reducer of fertility.

There's a certain kind of mistreatment of women that results in very high fertility - the kind where there are actually intense, binding social expectations about their role in the family, limited education and serious patriarchal norms. Binding social expectations, backed by credible threats of violence. Label this 'actual patriarchy' - Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, pre-1945 Japan and so on. Actual patriarchies have very high fertility, even in harsh conditions Japan was at 4.0 in 1943 and 1944 despite total war, total mobilization, millions of men at the front...

Then there's a kind of mistreatment of women that results in very low fertility, the kind you're talking about. Men not wanting highly educated wives, or viewing women in their 30s as undesirable, or expecting them to leave the workforce once they marry. These aren't binding social expectations, not like in actual patriarchy. You can see that the women choose to ignore them, like you say they have other options. It's paper-mache patriarchy. There's no actual effort to suppress female education like there is in Afghanistan, not in South Korea. In paper-mache patriarchy you see these materialistic efforts to increase fertility by giving a token payment, you see feminist groups that aren't suppressed by the state, you see lip-service to gender equality, laws against gender discrimination. You see lots of men who are unhappy with feminism and hold patriarchal views yet these views are not actually enforced and implemented.

I also note that fertility is not very high in the richest, most feminist states like Sweden. They're around 1.8 which is better than South Korea but probably propped up by births amongst non-assimilating migrants. Canada is at 1.5, Finland 1.4, Germany 1.6... Feminism clearly doesn't raise fertility.

Real pathways to raise fertility:

  1. Return or move closer to actual patriarchy
  2. Mass cloning/AI/eternal youth technical fix
  3. Return to devout religiosity as with Mormons of old and certain Jewish sects

Real pathways to raise fertility:

  1. Return or move closer to actual patriarchy
  2. Mass cloning/AI/eternal youth technical fix
  3. Return to devout religiosity as with Mormons of old and certain Jewish sects

I quite enjoyed this recent piece from the vice president for economic and social-policy studies at The Cato Institute, Alex Nowrasteh. Specifically this bit:

He asked what I’d do to increase fertility if that were the only outcome I cared about. After clarifying that I don’t support this policy, I said that I’d massively increase marginal tax rates on the second worker in any household to force them out of the labor market, which would lower their opportunity cost of having children.

Even the Mormons are falling below replacement rate, though for all I know that is due to secularization. A "return to patriarchy" could work if it specifically limits women's opportunities, but part of Nowrasteh's point seems to be that with the luxury of ubiquitous electronic entertainment, even excluding women from the workforce would likely be insufficient to push the opportunity cost balance back toward fecundity.

Nowrasteh's proposal is deregulation to reduce the cost of raising children, but in my experience children are already pretty affordable--at least until they get to college! Rather, the benefits of having children are often poorly communicated or even perhaps outside the Overton window, and when they are understood those benefits still take decades to really come to fruition. Having a close-knit family is an extremely effective risk-mitigation strategy on numerous fronts, but it takes a lot of work to build such a thing, and it takes a lot of cultural input to get people believing it's even possible.

massively increase marginal tax rates on the second worker in any household

This just leads to a massive drop in household formation where a man and a woman who both have a job they like decide to keep everything casual and live separately to avoid these massive taxes instead of moving in together. Of course, this lack of household formation will probably lead to lower birthrates too.

Yeah, what should be taxed is obviously childlessness.

"We'll tax and tax people until we get the results we want!"

A popular view. Not one I'm fond of and I really doubt it is good for anything other than making "vices" too expensive for most people. I don't think we can tax our way into broad positive social changes such as boosting fertility rates.

Which leads to a drop in fertility as couples are now unable to save enough to become comfortable financially with having a child. Yes, I know, you work around this one by putting age limits on the tax. But at some point in the epicycles you should probably figure you've got a wrong approach.

None of this will work because the amount of taxation which would make it worthwhile to have a kid isn't viable; you'll drive a massive black market instead. The problem is on the other end -- children are too expensive for too long, both in financial and non-fungible terms.

None of this will work because the amount of taxation which would make it worthwhile to have a kid isn't viable; you'll drive a massive black market instead. The problem is on the other end -- children are too expensive for too long, both in financial and non-fungible terms.

We could change the social norms so that kids are allowed to mostly roam free, from a much younger age, instead of being in paid and adult-chaperoned activities all the time. That would also probably have the effect that some of the males get killed off from taking dumb risks, and more teenage pregnancy. Not sure if that's a good thing but... it does solve the fertility drop.

for all I know that is due to secularization

Mormonism is not what it was. See 'jump humping' and 'soaking' for example.

even excluding women from the workforce would likely be insufficient to push the opportunity cost balance back toward fecundity

Good point. Now I think about it, even if you did have an actual patriarchy, modern contraception might result in your male household heads deciding to have fewer children and spend more on luxuries. You'd probably need to suppress contraception too, which is not that hard considering you've already launched a cultural revolution to get there in the first place.

He asked what I’d do to increase fertility if that were the only outcome I cared about. After clarifying that I don’t support this policy, I said that I’d massively increase marginal tax rates on the second worker in any household to force them out of the labor market, which would lower their opportunity cost of having children.

I remember proposing something similar in one of the previous discussion threads, capping total hours worked at 20 hours per week per adult person in a household and uncapping them after the second (60) and the third (80) minor dependent.

Yeah, this is the ‘best’ (most efficient) option since it makes living on your own dependant on marriage for most young people.

You're a little off track, my comment wasn't about fertility per se it was about gender balance. Related, and I can see where you jumped off, but not the same. The Asian countries outlined combine a pervasive social bias against females with modern freedoms, which suppress fertility, lead to sex selective abortion, and gendered immigration patterns. My example of Singapore was meant to show that tension: Singapore under LKY and his successors wants to have talented students, male and female, travel abroad for university education they see this as a net beneficial policy; but they disproportionately lose female university students to emigration abroad. Similarly, if you have a pervasive bias against female children, the scientific/medical base to test for gender early, and abortion on demand to abort female children, you get pervasive sex selective abortion, which drives the gender imbalance to unworkable levels. If you provide women with modern escape hatches from patriarchal expectations, you can't expect them to choose child rearing, they'll utilize the escape hatches to get away. If you need the escape hatches in order to operate as a modern economy for various reasons, then it's the patriarchal expectations that are going to have to shift.

China used to have high fertility, but when exposure after birth was the only method to cull female children it was much less common and the gender balance stayed pretty average. With early testing and abortion available, there are 120 male births for every 100 female births. That represents a society in a severe state of dysfunction, regardless of fertility levels.

Further, on the subject of Fertility:

I also note that fertility is not very high in the richest, most feminist states like Sweden. They're around 1.8 which is better than South Korea but probably propped up by births amongst non-assimilating migrants. Canada is at 1.5, Finland 1.4, Germany 1.6... Feminism clearly doesn't raise fertility.

Feminism suppresses fertility from pre-feminist norms, but it seems clear that the worst places to be are the halfway houses of East Asia: feminist enough to remove patriarchal restrictions, insufficiently feminist to remove patriarchal expectations. It's a uniquely toxic mix. Highly feminist countries have sub replacement TFRs, but South Korea is at half of Germany. That's not a minor gap, that is huge. That's the difference between a society slowly shrinking, in a way that is likely sustainable with moderate assimilable immigration, and a society in free fall. China is still higher but significantly lower than the West, and those numbers are widely believed to be massaged.

China used to have high fertility, but when exposure after birth was the only method to cull female children it was much less common and the gender balance stayed pretty average. With early testing and abortion available, there are 120 male births for every 100 female births. That represents a society in a severe state of dysfunction, regardless of fertility levels.

I don’t think you can separate China’s possibly uniquely bad gender ratio at birth from its possibly uniquely bad One Child Policy. If that policy had never been implemented, I’m guessing you’d see a much smaller gender disparity. The problem is that they kept a patrilineal society but forbade parents from having multiple children, when if they wanted to adopt the latter policy, they needed to first take an axe to the former tradition. Of course Chinese parents want a boy; it’s how their family line is passed down! Sure, they’ll happily have a girl as a second or third child, but if that option is closed off to them, they’ll settle for just one boy. If anything, I’m surprised the ratio isn’t even more skewed.

Here's the thing: India is nearly as bad on a national level, and on in certain localities as bad or worse, without the one child policy. The throughline isn't the one child policy, it is female children being devalued (such as through strict patrilineal descent or dowry traditions). The one child policy might have made the issue more acute, but it did not create the issue single handed.

https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2022/03/02/son-preference-and-abortion/#:~:text=Over%20time%2C%20the%20Indian%20government,the%20sex%20of%20the%20fetus.

What about Qatar, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Kuwait, etc?

It's seems more like tfr correlates with being a poor, unstable, agrarian shithole than it does with patriarchy.

Iran is a victim of its own highly successful population control policy.

Iran has a flourishing feminist movement, see the huge protests last year and in 2017 over hijab-wearing. True, the state does suppress feminism in Iran but their suppression efforts clearly aren't sufficient. Plus there's a very substantial presence of women in higher education:

Enrollment of women in universities jumped from 3% in 1977 to 67% in 2015, according to the World Bank statistics.

UAE and Kuwait have all kinds of weirdness with regard to demographics because of the large non-citizen population. Plus UAE, Saudi Arabia and so on apparently rank rather highly in these gender equality statistics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_Inequality_Index

I would not classify Iran or even Saudi Arabia as an actual patriarchy like Afghanistan. True, the real patriarchies tend to be poor, unstable agrarian shitholes today.

It's also surprisingly irreligious. Especially for a nominal theocracy, which I suppose explains in part the insecurity of its ruling elite.

I know quite a few Iranian immigrants. One is a practicing Muslim, goes to mosque, etc.

All the others, as best I can tell, are non-religious. They also all drink alcohol and the women don't cover their hair. So Muslim cultural norms didn't stick.

The far more important thing to look at is societies like China and India and South Korea and Singapore and Japan, which mistreat their own women to such an extent that their societies fail to reproduce themselves.

This was and still is a very curious thing to me. I have three friends with east Asian wives, one from Korea, one from China and one from Japan. Their wives are all middle or upper middle class and they have all married either laterally or downwards (especially lookswise), but all seem exceptionally happy with their husbands, who are not really exceptional people.

As I've come to understand it this does not have to do with fetishization as much as with just how badly these women have been treated by their previous Asian boyfriends and the general expectations on them from their prospective in-law families and society in general. From the perspective of a decent Swedish guy, the standards for being a good partner seem astonishingly low – to the point where failure almost seems to require an active effort.

It just seems so unsustainable for them. It's not like we're perfect or giga-cucked over here but it's still a walk-over, at least in the mind of these particular women. They just want to be treated with respect by their partners, be able to work after having children and not be treated as pseudo servants/slaves by their in-laws. I've had a bit of hard time really believing this, could it really be that bad?

Perhaps.

Or perhaps my friends' wives have a overly negative view of their home societies and that's why they ended up with western husbands. Or maybe it's a combination.

I've had a bit of hard time really believing this, could it really be that bad?

Like I've said on here before, there's a sort of misery porn/revenge porn set of texts up on Youtube (see this for sample), and while it's ostensibly set in America, it's pretty clearly Japanese in inspiration (with some copy-cat other East Asian versions).

Granted, this is all exaggerated in the style of romance novels, but still: the expectations to make the set-up even remotely credible are:

(1) Your mother-in-law will probably be a thundering bitch who expects you to be a housemaid for her because 'that's how it's always been'; when you marry into a family, you now have to serve that family like your own parents
(2) This even extends to 'hand over your money'
(3) Husbands will likely be momma's boys who don't stand up to defend you, or check out because they don't want to deal with drama, they're too busy working
(4) Husbands will often not come home because they're attending drinking parties with clients/co-workers; this is normal
(5) Husbands will often not come home because they're working so much overtime so they stay in a hotel; this is normal
(6) Grandchildren are mandatory, you'll get a lot of abuse from in-laws if you don't do your Womanly Wifely Duty and pop out a sprog. Also it better be a son, because girls aren't good enough
(7) You get it in the neck whether you're a stay-at-home wife (lounging around living off husband's hard-earned money, plus lots of free time so you must obey mother-in-law's commands) or a working woman (not pulling your weight doing chores at home because that's the wife's job)
(8) Divorce seems to be way easier, it's just a matter of filling out forms and dropping them off, and divorce is a threat often wielded by the husband/mother-in-law

There does seem to be a cultural assumption that the in-laws have way more interference in the lives of married couples and that you don't get the cops/outsiders involved even in cases where we in the West would say "that's abusive". The role seems to be: be successful (there's a ton of snobbery around education and being a middle-school/high-school dropout or not going to the right kind of university), get a rich husband, run the house on a budget while keeping up standards, provide grandkids, and be at the beck and call of your in-laws for pretty much everything.

As I said, a lot of this is clearly (I hope!) exaggerated, but the background cultural setting that makes this plausible even as wish-fulfilment fantasy seems to indicate that married life for Asian women is more limiting in many ways than their Western counterparts.

Their wives are all middle or upper middle class and they have all married either laterally or downwards (especially lookswise), but all seem exceptionally happy with their husbands, who are not really exceptional people.

Pity Skookum got banned, this would've been a data point contrary to his narrative of "women married to ugly (but caring and attentive) men are literally more miserable than women married to men who beat them".

To play Skookum's advocate, men's looks work quite different than women's, and asian men got the shortest of sticks on that account. A rugged, average height westerner will easily beat out the average asian moonface manlet in terms of looks. Sorry if someone feels insulted, I'm exaggerating for emphasis, but asian women are often quite open about western men being far more attractive than asian men.

They certainly are, but I'm pretty sure Skookum is a white guy, and rugged enough that his powerlifting PRs are better than mine.

Yeah I guess this point might actually go against him personally, but it still means his general argument might still be correct.

In America there seems to be a bit of a stereotype among hispanic women that their menfolk are alcoholics who sometimes beat their wives and cheat on them at any opportunity, and thusly you see a lot of good looking latinas with white guys who are schlubby and not particularly well off. I don't think this is a great description of the typical hispanic man, although alcoholism, adultery, and spousal violence are probably more common in that community I don't think it's an 'everyone' problem as opposed to a 'higher per capita rate' problem. What matters is that senoritas seem to believe it.

It's very possible that the same thing is going on with oriental women; there's a stereotype of husbands/boyfriends letting their mothers treat girlfriends/wives like shit, and it doesn't matter that it isn't the typical case, what matters is they believe it.

Just world fallacy. I suppose men like dating younger women because they realize they’ll treat them better and are better lovers?

The somewhat feminized characteristics of asians (shorter, socially reserved, small round features) creates an imbalance in the desirability of their men and women (works opposite in blacks), reflected in the singaporean student imbalance.

White men are just more attractive. So when your asian gf tells you how happy she is to be with you and how great you treat her, remember that to her you’re like a girl with big tits.

I suppose men like dating younger women because they realize they’ll treat them better and are better lovers?

Yes? I mean, it obviously isn't the only reason, but there are far, far more 20-somethings who are eligible and without serious emotional baggage than there are 40-somethings. It's the superior dating pool if you want those types of things.

remember that to her you’re like a girl with big tits.

And I'm totally fine with that.

I know, it's great. But let's not pretend it's because we're such great and magnanimous lovers.

I'll have you know I'm a decent lover, and spent 3% of this month's salary on her latest birthday present.

Joking aside, I see your point.

There is a difference between hooking up with someone and maintaining a happy long term relationship.

The perceived 'leagueness' influences satisfaction with the relationship.

I wouldn't say they have an overly bad view of their home countries, but perhaps are high percentile of sensitivity to those kinds of slights. In the same way that white people in the USA vary in their sensitivity to wokeness, and Black people vary in their sensitivity to racism. Some barely notice it, some are driven to distraction or change careers or migrate. Women with strong senses of independence will migrate out.

I briefly dated a girl who was born in Egypt but grew up in Bahrain. She left the country because she couldn't stand the repressive Islamic theocracy (IIRC, it's still the case that a rapist can escape punishment if he agrees to marry his female victim, something Morocco outlawed in 2014). But the departure of one woman chafing against the restrictions imposed by the society just means that the society is very slightly more conservative and tolerant of repression than it was prior. It had never occurred to me before that evaporative cooling of group beliefs applies just as much on a national level as with religions, cults, political organisations etc.

That's probably true but to me they still seem fairly submissive though, especially the Japanese woman. They really aren't asking for much independence. I guess they just took the chance when they saw it, I doubt they would have migrated on their own.

Curved against their home culture?

For reference, I have a very close friend who is precisely that: a highly educated female expat from an East Asian tiger economy. She left largely, consciously, because of things like civil rights and feminism. At the same time, when I observe how she acts, she is significantly more family oriented, more submissive to her husband and her family, than I would expect from an American woman of her class and education and cultural affectations.

That's the arbitrage that is so often talked up among the mail-order-bride market boosters: she feels like she is getting significant extra freedom from her husband, her American husband feels like he is getting an amazing wife and highly supportive partner. Where so often in a dual-income marriage between equals, both feel that they're getting a terrible bargain and insufficient support/freedom from their partner.

I think the social expectation of siding with your wife over your mother makes a pretty big difference; women treat each other much worse than men do and husbands generally love their wives, and even western mothers in law aren't exactly known for being easy to deal with.

very interesting post. Thanks for making this much effort in response to what was admittedly an insane late-night screed.

Appreciate it! Though mine was just Tumblers clicking into place of reading for a year, on a hangover rainy Sunday.

Open immigration policies equally lead to gender imbalances, immigrants are more likely to be men.

Not according to this, at least in the US:

There were 23.2 million female immigrants in the United States in 2021, accounting for more than half (51.3 percent) of the total foreign-born population.

Of course, "open" is always a relative concept...

I don't think that data covers illegal immigration, though I was also wrong about that statistic: Women are 46% of the illegal immigrant population (estimated). I would have guessed 60% or more were male based on my experiences in agriculture and construction. So you're right, I was wrong about the USA. Looking at the numbers, I do wonder to what extent American feminism is a structural advantage relative to other first world countries when attracting high education immigrants.

I was thinking more of EU countries in the Syrian crisis, where two thirds or more were male. Bringing hordes of young men into a country will throw things off in a hurry.

On the other hand, the Ukrainian crisis, which led to a refugee influx to (the rest of Europe) positively dwarfing the 2015-2016 influx, was mostly women and children.

I just checked the stats for Finland at the end of 2021 (ie. before the war kicked off bigly in Ukraine), and out of the 442 290 born outside of Finland, 230 138 were men and 212 152 were women. So 52 % men, a slight advantage but not a major one.

Well, in case of Ukraine man covered by draft were mostly banned from leaving country.

Humans are like 1.05 males: females at birth, so there's a natural imbalance. I can only assume this was balanced in the past because males died more: from war, or hunting animals, or just generally taking more risks.

Another aspect could be better pre- and post-natal care and healthcare in modern times than in the ancestral environment.

Being mammalian, human embryos start off developmentally as females. There's a bunch of checkpoints and milestones to hit in developing maleness in the first few weeks. Each failed checkpoint/milestone may result in termination of the fetus or result in a sickly or otherwise relatively weak male baby.

The male burden of performance starts early; nature is the OG shit-tester.

There's clearly something wrong with the standard for toplevel posts. Either posts like this should be promptly deleted, or higher-quality regulars should be making a lot more lower-effort toplevels. Or both!

And look: a few perfectly interesting discussions were spawned in the comments, despite this being an "insane" "screed".

I don’t understand this. You seem to be saying that A) we have too few top-level posts; B) this one led to several “perfectly interesting discussions;” and C) this post should nevertheless have been deleted before those interesting discussions were allowed to happen.

If the OP led to an interesting discussion, who cares how insane it was? You’re letting the perfect be the enemy of the good.

I wasn't intending that comment to push a specific view, just highlight a tension.

If the OP led to an interesting discussion, who cares how insane it was

(iirc) The mod team disagreed with that line of thought the last time it was brought up.

I sort of agree. On the other hand, I think we could have more posts that aren't huge effortposts but aren't 'insane', and since we don't we reply to the insane ones. IMO (maybe) there should be a general space (like the BLR) where it's within norms for people to post thoughts, links, etc about generic topics (as opposed to the weekly threads, which are scoped to questions / fun / etc) that can start discussions. I'm guessing there's a lot more supply of posts that are shorter and lighter, but still decent quality, than 20 paragraph effortposts, posts similar to the good replies to this post. But currently only people who for whatever reason ("I'm feeling rather insane right now so I'll post a screed") are willing to break the norms a bit end up making the toplevel posts.

Do you ever feel like there are just... too many men on this planet? Not humans. Just men, in particular.

No.

None of that happens now, in our ultra-safe modern feminized society. So we just have a bunch of surplus males sitting around.. doing nothing... simping for women. Taking up body building, or feminism, or prostitution, or onlyfans, or whatever else will give them a drop of female attention.

Society is "feminized" because a lot fewer men die? Also these people aren't doing nothing. They presumably work, generating value for society. They probably have friends and family and other non-romantic relationships. They themselves very likely have hobbies they enjoy, that bring them happiness. The idea that because, in some theoretical 1:1 man:woman pairing, these guys mathematically wouldn't be able to be paired with a woman therefore they should just die is insane. So I guess you characterized your post correctly!

I encourage anyone interested in this topic to read this article about how gender ratios on college campuses impact the dating market. Spoiler: dating norms are controlled by whichever gender is in more demand. When there are more women than men dating norms tend towards men's preferences (lots of hookups, one night stands, few LTRs) while the opposite is true when there are more men than women.

Don't you think your second paragraph kind of contradicts your first? The gender ratio clearly has strong effects on society. It's not just an individual problem.

I don't see how. What is the logic chain from "different gender skews effect dating norms" to "society would be better off if a bunch of single men were dead." Especially if your preferred kind of relationship formation is long term monogamous! That happens when there are more men than women (so women have more power). A bunch of men dying should shift norms more towards casual hookups and short term relationships.

Right now, the marriage rate everywhere is plummeting. It seems that the preferred relationship model for women is "get lots of male attention online, but never actually settle down." My preference would be having a choice of either casual dating, parties/hookups, long term relationships, marriage, or even polygamy. But all of that seems to work better when there's more women than men. Just see the difference between a party with an equal split (or slightly more women), and one that's all dudes with just a few women.

I think it's mostly women being spoiled for choice and having no friggin' clue what a match on their same level would be. @raggedy_anthem downthread mentions younger women not knowing how attractive they are; this is in my experience true, but it seems like older single women tend to dramatically overestimate their own attractiveness at the same time younger single women underrate it. I think there's the other factor, as well, where women generally get that men like "curvy blonde teenager at a healthy weight" but have no idea what men are looking for in non-looks related departments and evaluate themselves the way women evaluate men- no, most men do not care about a potential romantic partner's educational or career accomplishments very much at all, and care a lot about her cooking ability.

That's a pretty big problem when there's functionally unlimited choices on offer through e-dating, which is the basically dominant method by which couples meet these days. You will never match the marriage rate of a village with five single people between 16 and 40, and the odd one out has to join a convent/the military, in an environment of massive paradox of choice, and you especially can't match it when, to be crude, a lot of 4's-6's think they're 9's(I know it's more complicated than that and there's lots of blame to go around, but I can't think of a clearer way to express the sentiment). And I don't think it's unreasonable for single women to have standards in a man, either, but there is a discussion to be had over whether those standards are unreasonably high, perhaps driven by specific features of online dating and the illusion of greater choice(eg the increase in minimum height and income sought by women seems well documented to be driven by men lying about it on dating apps). I think it's important to note here that very few women want to hook up; most also don't want to be nuns, but it's entirely unavoidable that there are simply a lot more men than women who get laid on the first date and don't set up a second one. That is not part of the solution.

But back to the paradox of choice, the communities with very high marriage rates in the modern west mostly have a restricted pool of potential partners for both men and women, sometimes intentionally(eg orthodox Jewish matchmaking) and sometimes just cause that's how it works out from endogamy or whatever. Lots of people see a pretty big decision with what seems like unlimited options and freeze up, and women are already passive when it comes to finding love.

There's some truth to this, but I also think online dating just sucks. It limits you to nothing but a picture and text, like an internet meme. Real life personal connection works a lot better when you can hear their voice, see how they carry themselves, get some social connection from friends, do an activity together, maybe dance, eat, drink, etc. Men maybe are OK with seeing a woman's photo and saying "yep she's hot!" but it's hard to really build a connection from that. I don't know if "a lot of 4's-6's think they're 9's," or if they're just being honest that they're not attracted to the photo of another average person they've never met.

It seems that the preferred relationship model for women is "get lots of male attention online, but never actually settle down."

This is directly contradicted by the available evidence of what dating norms are like when they are favorable to women. Consider that many of the historical periods people in the United States refer to for monogamous relationship formation were subsequent to some pretty awful wars in which a lot of men died (Vietnam, WW2, WW1, the Civil War, etc). This almost certainly means the population distribution was skewed more towards women.

My preference would be having a choice of either casual dating, parties/hookups, long term relationships, marriage, or even polygamy.

Choice... by who? Relationship formation is the classic double coincidence of wants. If men and women (on average) want different things they are not going to be able to equally satisfy their preferences. That's the point of the article I linked. Being in-demand (having the gender distribution skewed against you) gives you relatively more power to satisfy your wants because their is relatively less alternative.

But all of that seems to work better when there's more women than men.

Maybe for men to get what they want!

This is directly contradicted by the available evidence of what dating norms are like when they are favorable to women. Consider that many of the historical periods people in the United States refer to for monogamous relationship formation were subsequent to some pretty awful wars in which a lot of men died (Vietnam, WW2, WW1, the Civil War, etc). This almost certainly means the population distribution was skewed more towards women.

True but bear in mind the numbers. All the 20th century wars were relatively light deaths for the US, they just didn't move the demographics that much. And this was while we were also getting disproportionately male immigration. It would be more interesting to compare with countries like Russia, which really did (and still are!) losing a huge chunk of their male population to war.

I don't think men dying has anything to do with it. It's due to boys having a higher infant mortality rate. Natural selection should result in the cost of raising a boy relative to the cost of raising a girl to be equal to the expected number of offspring that a boy will have relative to the expected number of offspring a girl would have. The expected relative number of offspring is equal to the girl:boy ratio, so for nature to select a ratio below one, it has to be cheaper to have boys. The higher risk of boys dying than girls lowers their cost of being raised, particularly when they're very young and the cost of parenting is high, but once they're adults, the higher risk of death has no effect.

Do you ever feel like there are just... too many men on this planet?

No. But sometimes I feel like there are too many men who don't know or want to know how to build or maintain anything, who sit around complaining on the internet about ugly houses and poorly maintained infrastructure.

Knowing how to "build a house" is a ludicrous expectation for most men around the world. Even in the US, it's a bit of a stretch, and you have a strong DIY culture.

"Ugly houses" are best addressed by people developing more taste, architects either being less (or more!) restricted.

Poorly maintained infrastructure, that's problem for the government, I fail to see how the average male complaining about them can be expected to pull out a shovel or start laying down asphalt.

That was local to a very specific thing that's going on in my own neighborhood, and not related to the OP, so I shouldn't have mentioned it.

Just go to Harvard Law, spend 4 years in DC, make connections on the lobbying and donor circuit, run for state senate, run for the house, run for the senate, wait for your time to run for president, and then fail because congress is against you and legislating architectural standards is fascist. This can’t be a serious request.

When ‘the people’ who can afford to do so build their houses, they do choose pastiches of classical styles (ie the default McMansion).

Or just go into software. The "builders" of our time are probably all there consciously or not.

No, I meant a literal house. With their hands.

Not in San Francisco or London or somewhere else where it's impossible, obviously.

There's someone within a mile of me who has been working on house building, and it's quite charming, and also quite cheap. I could add a little house on my property if I had skills (my lein holder has kind of encouraged this a bit when they made the loan). Permission asking is minimal.

Do you ever feel like there are just... too many men on this planet? Not humans. Just men, in particular.

No.

We're a violent species, but women can be and are every bit as violent as men. Take this shy little blossom here, who bashed her husband's brains in so she could get his kids and his money. Seems she got her very own episode in this lurid tabloid series about Deadly Women.

I don't know if we need war - other animal species fight each other over territory, resources, and mates - but I do think you're going overboard about the intra-sexual competition. Men who can't get women are not going around fighting other men to take away their mates, they're complaining on the Internet that women are all whores who won't even glance at them.

That's just one woman though, and apparently female murderers are noteworthy enough for them to make a whole show about them. Male murderers are a dime a dozen, and then there's the millions who kill and die in war, mostly men.

Seems like they had fourteen seasons, of three murderesses per episode. That's a lot more killer women than just one. Poison used to be the weapon of choice, but modern ladies are equal opportunity shooting their victims now, or persuading others to kill them for them. The likes of this lady are no argument for "without men, it would be a peaceful world":

In all, it was revealed that she had killed four husbands, two children, two of her sisters, her mother, two grandsons, and a mother-in-law.

It's not about literally one women, or how many women commit violence im absolute terms. Per capita, men commit more violent crimes.

If you want to argue that there are a lot of female masterminds that have male minions commititng crimes on their behalf, that still implicates at least an equal number of men and women, besides being pure conjecture.

Men compete over attractive women regardless of how many men there are, though. If you’re in a school and 5% of the women are hyper-attractive, you could easily see 40% of the men compete over them. You see this with the phenomenon of DMs / Snapchat / social media likes, and decades before there would be a line of boys asking them to dance. So regardless of how many men there are, there will always be ruthless competition over the most attractive women and most attractive men.

The distinct problems of the decline in slut-shaming and the move away from reputational status as a gauge of sexual worth don’t have anything to do with how many men there are. You could cut the male population in half and online dating will still favor the 5-10% of men who know how to rig it and are attractive enough to do so.

Zelenskyy and Putin are working on it.

Oh, absolutely. There was even a big post either here or on /r/SSC where a poster argued quite convincingly that a big part of the reason why there is a modern dating imbalance and women have so much power in the marketplace is precisely because there are too many 18-25 men today compared to even 1980. In 1980 the male:female ratio had equalised by age 20-24: https://www.populationpyramid.net/united-states-of-america/1980/ ; while today the imbalance is still almost as bad as at birth: https://www.populationpyramid.net/united-states-of-america/2023/ . Of course this 5% imbalance gives women a very disproportionate amount of power (it's not 5% more power, due to how strong the human male sex drive is, men will jump through a ton of hoops before enough of them drop out so that the market clears).

I can't seem to find the post though, even after a cursory google...

there are too many 18-25 men today compared to even 1980

Another big factor is that, more and more, 18-25 year old men are competing against older men.

Let's say you're a 22 year old woman. Who would you rather date? A 22 year old man living his parent's basement? Or a 30 year old man with his own place?

Older men are better than young men. More attractive, more successful, more emotionally mature. Men's overall value in the dating market peaks at age 38. Women peak in their early 20s or before.

While this has always been the case, in the past it was mitigated by young people falling in love and marrying without ever really entering a post-college dating market.

Now, a 23 year old women can get on the apps and instantly match with a bunch of successful, good-looking guys who seem available. It's pretty tough to turn down this proposition in favor of some young dork who actually is available. Worse, once they are discarded by these better men, they are unlikely to want to settle for worse options. It is hard to form a secure attachment with a woman if you're not the best person she has ever dated.

The gender ratio of 18-25 year olds is 1.05:1. That hugely understates the problem. For young men, it is far far worse than that.

Another big factor is that, more and more, 18-25 year old men are competing against older men.

I saw a tweet earlier this year that said something like "Being a boy sucks. When you're 13 years old, you're competing to date 13-year-old girls against 19-year-old men. When you're 19 years old, you're competing to date 19-year-old girls against Saudi princes."

While there are dramatically more younger women dating/marrying older men than the reverse, and I can well believe that early-twenties women prefer mid-to-late twenties men, I do not think it plausible that many women actively desire 10+ year age gaps(although probably a few do, it's probably not enough to throw off the dating market).

In any case, the current dating market problems don't seem down to "21 yo women prefer 25 yo men"(believable), because if they were the problem would be slowly fixing itself, when all evidence is that sex relations are getting worse.

Worse, once they are discarded by these better men, they are unlikely to want to settle for worse options.

At least one paper found confirmation for the notion that—not only do discarded women not settle—they take out their frustrations on lesser men: "Rejection by an Attractive Suitor Provokes Derogation of an Unattractive Suitor."

It is hard to form a secure attachment with a woman if you're not the best person she has ever dated.

Indeed, hence the notion of an alpha-widow and the risks of trying to turn a hoe into a housewife.

An alpha might not even be necessary: A woman with a long sexual history may subconsciously or consciously find you to be dissatisfactory as a partner if you're not in the top X_i percentile of each attribute i (e.g., height, looks, income, etc.) among her exes, fuck buddies, and one night stands, even if none of those men are particularly remarkable individually across all attributes. Not even Chad can compete against Stochastic FrankenBrad.

Not even Chad can compete against Stochastic FrankenBrad.

You actually made me laugh out loud in work.

Marrying a 40 year old guy at 25 almost guarantees that by 60 or 65 you’re going to be a carer/nurse/housekeeper for an old man, while 60 year old women who married same-age men can usually enjoy their retirement with someone who is still relatively fit and active.

Men are outlived by women by default, so marrying a substantially older man gives you a significant chance of spending 10-20 years alone as a widow, and because the dating market is awful for 60+ year old women (due to men dying younger) it’s unlikely you’ll remarry.

None of my friends are married to a man more than 7 or 8 years older than them. I’m not saying it doesn’t happen, but big age gaps are rare in PMC circles unless he’s a centimillionaire or has Clooney looks.

Although 8 year gaps aren't particularly common, it does seem typical for there to be a 2 to 3 year age gap in favor of the guy. And that propagates down, leaving men in their early 20s in a bad place. They could hypothetically date teenagers (and some do), but there are additional barriers facing college students dating high schoolers and recent grads dating college students. Which isn't to say it doesn't happen, but those types of relationships happen less than you'd expect based purely on the ages.

Men outlive women by default

I thought it was the opposite: "Around the Globe, Women Outlive Men":

Women outlive men in almost every society. In more developed countries, the average life expectancy at birth is 79 years for women, 72 years for men. In less developed countries, where high maternal mortality reduces the difference in longevity, women can expect to live an average of 66 years, compared with 63 years for men.

From the rest of the post it seems like that's just a typo.

Sorry, that’s what I meant but I miswrote it.

Women care less about attractiveness than men do, but it's not this extreme. Very few 23 year old women want to date 38 year old men. Looks aren't the only thing that decline with age. So do energy, health, and sperm quality.

Men's overall value in the dating market peaks at age 38.

Is this claim based entirely on that one survey from OK Cupid or something? I'm in my late 30s, generally quite fit and successful, and I would be very surprised if it turned out that I'm more appealing to college-age women now than I was when I was 23. Age-matching with a preference for slightly older men will looks like the modal choice to me.

It's based off a misunderstanding of data. 38 is the age at which men have the most advantage on the dating market, they are attractive to the broadest swathe of women at that age. Just going by half-plus-seven a 26 year old woman is in bounds for a 38 year old man, and a woman who is impractical years older isn't going to turn him down as a baby faced child either.

So on dating app statistics, 38 comes out as the age that men peak, because that's where he has the advantage.

That doesn't mean that all women find 38 year old men most attractive. It probably isn't the best age to casually fish for college chicks, if that's your target group then your peak is going to be going to grad school in an MBA or MFA or JD.

Average age of "World's Sexiest Man" in People is 38.

You attractiveness is almost certainly far higher now than at 23 (unless you went bald or fat).

Nevertheless, women are still tethered to age expectations, so a typical 23 year old isn't going to date you at age 38 even if she finds you attractive. But it does happen, a lot more than people like.

World’s Sexiest Man (Like Woman) is a competition between famous people, it’s never some random person with the best facial structure - it’s almost always a famous model or actress for women or just a famous actor for men. The average male lead is usually pretty established and older.

In addition, the magazines who give out these awards (like People) know their largely middle aged readership and therefore cater to them. Hence why 2023’s sexiest man is 57 year old Patrick Dempsey rather than 27 year old Timothee Chalamet even though I categorically guarantee that any prime-of-her-life 19 year old very attractive woman would pick the latter over the former.

any prime-of-her-life 19 year old very attractive woman would pick the latter over the former.

Well yeah. If you're 19. Hopefully then you grow up and develop better taste than Twiglets.

Dempsey is definitely on the mature side, so too old for 19 year olds (and let's hope to God that applies in both directions because while men of all ages might like nubile 17-20 year olds, it's too much of a scandal waiting to happen if he does pick up a hot chick of that age) but he's not in possession of a face that would turn milk sour, either.

Fair enough. I know that if People had a World's Sexiest Woman feature they'd probably choose a bunch of mature women like Hilary Swank that no man is going to ever jerk off too. They'd probably throw a trans person in there too.

Nevertheless, I think most women do find these men sexy. It's just another data point in the OK Cupid data and, you know, actual real life.

What's your opinion on Maxim's Sexiest Woman? Yes there's a bunch of mature women in there, but this one seems to be picked because she's zaftig (as a plus-size model).

What's your opinion on Maxim's Sexiest Woman?

Yeesh.

Well, at least they didn't pick Lizzo, but Patrick Dempsey is still more attractive than Timothee Chalamet.

More comments

Yeah, basically what I was talking about.

It's hard to say for sure given how much filtering / makeup is involved, but I assume this person is average in real life. You could find hundreds of hotter women on a typical college campus.

You are missing the filter. The average female lead is much younger than a male lead. The filter isn’t at the point where the magazine is picking which 38 year old actor is hottest - the filter is in becoming a star actor. All the personality traits etc men develop over time also make them a better actor. All the I’m young and hot things are selected for in actress and hence they are young and hot.

And it's just a coincidence that the sexiest men in the world are all of an age appealing to the last generation to still buy magazines?

The curious thing is the new emerging taboo against age differences in relationships. Large age differences have always been somewhat inappropriate and suspicious, but differences of only a few years between obvious adults are now being castigated. I would expect this to be simply female mate competition by older women reacting to the situation you describe, discouraging successful men in their 30s and 40s trading them in on the dating apps for a younger model. However, this taboo appears to be coming from younger age groups who seem convinced that age gaps imply grooming which implies non-consent. Why are some young women apparently trying taboo a 22 year old women dating a 28 year old man when they are also disproportionaly hooking up with older men on the dating apps?

It's one way to square the circle around the pedophilia taboo:

"Wow, this girl is so hot and sexy!"

"She's seventeen, you creepy pedo!"

"She looks older to me. Anyway, here's a photo of her from her 18th birthday party where she looks exactly the same. Am I allowed to call her hot and sexy?"

"Uh..... no! You are still a creepy pedo!"

I noticed it in a previous relationship I was in. Women my age (late-20s) were unhappy to see me dating a girl six years younger. I think they were unhappy to see a guy from their cohort with a younger women, since that norm (if tolerated) would allow the men they were interested in to date younger. That would fit your assumption about mate competition.

This study suggests that people disapprove of both older man and older woman relationships, but that the power imbalance assumption only holds for the older man relationships. That suggests to me that there's an 'ew gross' effect for both types of relationship, but the women are wonderful/female hypoagency effect makes the participants assume that a younger woman is being exploited, whereas there is no such concern for a young man in the same situation.

We'd really need to see which people (or realistically, women) are trying to enforce this taboo. My gut would say that it is most strongly enforced by women from 25-35, who have noticed that the beauty they took for granted in their early 20s is starting to decline and who are looking for husbands. Younger women are probably too confident in their looks to care, and older women are having to look at increasingly older men themselves to have a realistic shot in the marriage/dating market.

That's surprising. Honestly, I think you'd get a lot more social approval than disapproval.

For men, the number one reason to have a hot girlfriend is the social status. It gets old eventually. As they say "Show me 10 and I'll show you a guy who's bored of fucking her".

The clucks of old prudes aren't moving the needle here. They might not like Leonardo DiCaprio dating women 20 years his junior, but his status isn't affected in the slightest.

I'm pretty sure that the number one reason to have a hot girlfriend is to have a hot girlfriend. It's an end in and of itself. Rich men have attractive mistresses in spite of the fact that they absolutely can't show them off to their peers.

The social disapproval I got wasn't from men, it was from women. Honestly, I didn't really get any reaction from men, positive or negative.

When I see a guy with a smokin' hot girlfriend I definitely wonder what his story is. Same when I see a decent looking guy with an ugly girlfriend.

I don't think I'm especially shallow.

I’ve never heard someone in real life complain about a 22 year old and a 28 year old hooking up or dating, and I doubt most people would even notice.

The way I've seen it explained is that this is no different from a 16 year old dating a 22 year old (or maybe even a 14 year old dating a 20 year old). Super ick.

I work at a university, and not a particularly liberal one. I’ve heard multiple students not just describe that exact age gap as “creepy,” but also casually comment that the man is probably a pedophile.

Why are some young women apparently trying taboo a 22 year old women dating a 28 year old man when they are also disproportionaly hooking up with older men on the dating apps?

People in general are quite capable of saying the thing they think is currently popular, then doing something else. Women on the Internet in particular, but everyone does this, male or female, on the internet or off. Everyone I've seen complaining about "Capitalism, amirite" still has the latest iPhone.

Why are some young women apparently trying taboo a 22 year old women dating a 28 year old man when they are also disproportionaly hooking up with older men on the dating apps?

...because the threat of social ruin gives them power over the older men they are hooking up with?

In the popular imagination "grooming" is a conspiratorial right-wing thing, but it's true it's actually quite normative among younger people in general, that theme and accusation.

Colleen Ballinger aka Miranda Sings was accused of that and I'm pretty sure it wasn't coming from the right, who were never paying much attention to her.

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