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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

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.

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.