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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
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...
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.
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."
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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.
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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."
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.
You actually made me laugh out loud in work.
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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.
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I thought it was the opposite: "Around the Globe, Women Outlive Men":
From the rest of the post it seems like that's just a typo.
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Sorry, that’s what I meant but I miswrote it.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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.
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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).
Yeesh.
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Well, at least they didn't pick Lizzo, but Patrick Dempsey is still more attractive than Timothee Chalamet.
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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.
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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?
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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!"
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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...because the threat of social ruin gives them power over the older men they are hooking up with?
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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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