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I decided to share my theory (if we can call it that) about the origin of the ‘incel’ slur. I’m not claiming it’s terribly original or anything but I welcome your feedback about it because it’s a pure culture war phenomenon in my view and I wonder if my theory is sound.
To start with the obvious, pretty much every human community that ever existed have had concepts of the feminine and masculine as collections of desirable traits. This entails that men and women who refuse to live up to these ideals are disadvantaged in various ways. One way is social shaming. Again, let’s leave it that here; I’m aware that I could go off on dozens of tangents here and add dozens of qualifiers and interpretations to make my argument nuanced and elaborate, but I want to keep this concise.
One way to shame unmasculine men is to use the slur ‘nerd’ on them. This was the norm for a long time in Anglo-Saxon societies, and it sort of made sense. After all, nerds are interested in things and machines, not humans, who are anything but machines. The traits that make you a nerd, especially a hard-working and employable one, are exactly the traits that are useless, detrimental even, if you want to be a socially savvy, sexually successful cool guy. If you’re too boneheaded to correctly read the carefully calculated, covert signals women send out to you to indicate sexual interest without coming off to their social circle as dirty sluts, you’re not a real man. Especially if you’re also not interested in playing team sports etc.
At some point though, the Third(?) Industrial Revolution happens, and the computerization of science and the economy is in full swing. The men most disposed to become computer scientists and programmers happen to be nerds. Before that, programming used to be seen a lowly, dull desk job, basically not different from being a secretary, and a significant chunk of programmers were single women as a result. But now, society starts believing that learning to code is a secure path to having a high-paying career and the American Dream. It seems that only the sky is the limit in the digital revolution and the booming online sector. Young women come to realize that calling undesirable men ‘nerds’ just comes across as dumb and baseless to most people.
However, none of this means, of course, that unattractive male traits just disappeared, or that society is open to abandoning social shaming as a tool of controlling men. In fact, due to an unfortunate combination of the unintended(?) long-term consequences of feminist messaging and socially harmful, pathological trends like online porn addiction, endocrine disruptors, sedentary lifestyles, social atomization, the disappearance of male rites of passage and male bonding rituals etc., it seems that a growing segment of men are socially illiterate, repulsive and dull skinnyfat manchildren. Women no longer want to dismiss them as nerds, but they definitely want to dismiss them as…something.
At this point, due to online trends, society discovers the ‘incel’ term, and just starts using it as a replacement of ‘nerd’, basically. Later, online journos discover that the term was actually invented by some Canadian female college student 20 years earlier who was a romantic failure and started a long-defunct online message board for other college women in the same situation, who applied the term to themselves, not as a slur, and definitely not as something that conveys anti-feminist views etc., but all this is long forgotten and nobody cares anymore, so it doesn’t matter. Fast forward a few years, and it becomes normal for leftist women and their male ‘allies’ to dismiss anyone and everyone as ‘incel’, even married men with children as long as they come across as sufficiently deplorable to the average feminist.
I encountered the same types who were using incel to had been previously been using MRA as an insult in reddit political subreddits.
The reality is that in culture wars, the groups that are bullied more are those who have shown weakness and susceptibility to it by accepting it, and those who have a lower status position. And men who do pander to women qualify. Obviously this in it self is a massive problem for movements that claim to be for equality, and you will sometimes see people use the arguement that X demographic cares less about identity politics for themselves, so it is fine and proper to maintain a caste system.
A bit like the over focus on white extremism, or "right wing conspiracy theorists". All these are smear terms and propaganda from a political space that favors framing things in a manner that is excessively disfavorable towards its outgorups, men being one of them.
It is also important to note, that it is blatantly a bad argument that the existence of niche subcommunities justifies such behavior. There is obviously a backlash against feminism, but modern loser men have never been more pro feminist, and previous generations of more sexually successful men, had more antifeminist views. Although, being attractive and more social is probably something women appreciate more than having more feminist views and not being too social. But that frustration a) it would be unfair on current societal circumstances including issues like hypoagency, female overepresentation in colleges, and a lot other things, to entirely pin on men as a class while not criticising women which is what the prevailing bias is towards b) it is something different than the narrative that ties the increasing more isolated behavior as deserving because they hate women. This guy has a decent if somewhat more pro male take on decline of marriage. https://www.highly-respected.com/p/stop-blaming-men-for-the-marriage
An aspect of this strategy is to keep in line under a mental slavery and acceptance of their inferior role, various demographics who accept that it is just and roper for them to have a subservient role as allies. My view is that these ideologies really need to be thrown in the dustbin, but it isn't as if I think unfairness towards women is impossible. Although we should also be conserned with important goals of the common good and not take a self serving lazy stance that greater comfort for particular demographics is greater good. For example neither women nor society benefits if birth rates crash and we have a culture that abhors necessary pain and self sacrifice.
What we see here is another example of a supremacist ideology in favor of specific demographic, also unconcerned about the negative effects n society in general, that hides under the pretense of being morally pure, and its dissenters evil. It would be a beating a dead horse to say that a male incel supremacist/focused ideology where the selfish interest of an incel is maximized at expense of women, and society, is undesirable. I would expect most people here already agree with the undesirability of such approach. Well, people should realize such movements are exaggerated enormously and dangled as scapegoats to justify the opposite extreme, and reject such manipulations.
Although, controversially, I don't see why the interests but not from a self destructive manner for society, of even incels of people who would have come incels, needs to not be considered. As should that of women, even incel women. Hint, hint, we need to move towards a situation that there is more romance, marriages, and births. And part of having a sane understanding on such controversial issues is putting your foot down and saying that the legitimate interests of groups like whites, men, whoever, matter. But, like all interests those have a limit and it relates also to how they affect the legitimate interests of other groups. There is a massive gray area and room for debate, but this idea that only the interests of progressive favored groups matter, and the interests of other groups is inherently an extremist proposition, is precisely why things have gone in a direction that is hateful and mistreating of groups whose interests are treated as illegitimate.
While I am in favor of the suppression/end of various sacred cows movements and their limited hangouts that are extreme in this manipulative manner I don't think the ideal is to be the opposite extreme, but to try to wisely favor good tradeoffs. There isn't a good reason to buy into this idea that without such movements and factions only the most extreme chaos and opposite approach would happen. Part of these fears relate also to exaggerating the bad things from the past and not considering the good things that have been eroded by such movements. Nor the fact that we can in fact choose to accept whatever if any reasonable points have been made, while still we ought to reject the unreasonable, which cannot be done under the factions that are uncompromising which is what we are dealing with now.
And I'm going to say here that it takes two to tango, the Sexual Revolution was for the benefit of men as much (or even more) than women. Attitudes in the 60s-70s were "why should I be trapped and bound down by marriage, why can't I get sex outside of marriage?" Men were seduced by the promised lifestyle of free love and liberation, where they could have as much sex as they wanted with loads of willing women who would not demand committment and marriage from them. They didn't want their fathers' life of marriage and family and domesticity and 9-5 job where you work thirty years for the gold watch and pension. They wanted the new freedoms the new era promised, and that did not include "get married and have a kid by 25-30".
I'm certainly not excluding women and feminism here, but it was men as much as women who didn't want family and kids to get in the way of the fun the new world of good jobs with good pay, increased access to air travel, the opening up of global tourism and holiday destinations, and 'now you can spend your money on things that you enjoy' offered to them.
Whatever the responsibility of men in the 60s or 70s, it isn't the 60s or 70s anymore and there is also not an equivalence in the current arrangement. Frankly, I don't think we should care that much, about whether men or women are more at fault for the sexual revolution. Do you disagree, and think we ought to prioritize the original blame?
Average men are getting a raw deal which is worse than women. In addition to dating prospects, frustrated men get hostility, while women get pandering.
It is only a minority of men who come as winners in the current arrangement, and that is also at expense of society.
I mostly agree with Scott's Greer take I linked towards which also includes a part about dating apps. https://www.highly-respected.com/p/stop-blaming-men-for-the-marriage
This is important, because people used to date more often through dates being arranged by friends and relatives, or meeting people through their community and in statistics showing how people meet, these have sharply declined, while dating apps have been replacing them.
There is also the issue of women dating up and their overepresentation in colleges and benefiting from affirmative action policies. Now, I recall when looking at statistics a rise in loneliness among women too, although there is certainly less pressure on them, but the current way things are arranged isn't necessarily great for women, even if it is worse for men. And even if there is pro female identitarian aspect to opposition towards changing things.
In any case, I don't think we should be paralyzed by narratives of original blame, on really any issues of consequence, but need to examine if the current arrangement is good, not necessary perfect, but working well, and if it isn't working well then it is time to change things. Of course, this is compatible with conservative changes, and reversing specific previous changes that resulted in things going in a worse direction.
I think if you're going to say it's all on women alone to be having more babies, and getting married young, and the rest of it, and discussing sanctions to force women to do this, it's no bad idea to remember that men are part of it too (unless you mean the women should all be in same-sex marriages and having babies by sperm donation?) and it was men who were eager to break the bargain of "marriage and domesticity for access to sex" in return for "access to sex, no need to marry or commit long-term".
You can't fix the problem by looking at one side; there are plenty of low-value men quite happy to have a string of kids by different women but not marry any of the mothers, and that's not the kind of "we must increase the birth rate" that people want when they discuss "why aren't people marrying and having kids?" Women may well be much too fussy and choosy now, but the shoe used to be on the other foot with men not wanting to be tied down before they got a chance to sow their wild oats and have their fun.
Pretty clear that you want to prioritize blaming men. These narratives that focuses on coming up with a story that is one sided blame game in the past to excuse a bad arrangement today have been getting very tiresome.
Men are getting a more raw deal in the current arrangement, and it is taboo to not pander to women. This doesn't mean that realizing such facts is being one sided against women. If we are ever going to move from feminist excesses, we should be willing to make such admittance, without overacting.
You are responding uncharitably to a very different post than what I promoted. One would think instead of promoting more arranged dating by friends and communities like it used to exist even in the 90s, problems with dating apps which might require possible regulation, and stopping pro female affirmative action my priority was going full Ceausescu! Such issues are not actually just focusing on blaming women and are ideas that go further than that. Now, I hinted some of these than being explicit, by mentioning them as problems. I definitely don't think our approach should be maximally coercive at expense of women...
Opposing the situation where women date up, overepresented in colleges in part due to Affirmative Action, in dating apps, there is a scenario where there is a prioritisation of minority of men and women trying to arrange dates with them, is far from what you paint. Another aspect I didn't focus as much is deferring family formation, with education being prioritised in the family formation years, in combo with an aspect of this being fear of commitment and even of raising children and birth. Where due to the influence of feminism the concept of it being taboo to say that we need more births, and also a promotion of careerism over motherhood, has also happened. Perhaps under the same feminist influence, is why you think I am talking about forcing women to have children, when I am more interested in societal perceptions, encouragement. Humanity wouldn't have survived so far if there hasn't also been an instict to have children and a desire, which we also see statistically where women want more children than they have. They used to fear birth less. And society should encourage what is good and discourage what is detrimental to it, and there is a huge gray line and debate in how to go about to do that and how far, and I am more interested in the right framework that coming with all exact solutions. I definitely wouldn't like Ceausescu like policies, which haven't been necessary in history to get above replacement rate birth rates and a society where a larger percentage of men and women were in healthy relationships.
Raising average male status and having a higher % of men and women dating, that is more widespread monogamy over a situation where women target for the top percent is not a nightmare scenario, but an improvement of the status quo. And even in that situation, as always was the case, there will exist people, including men who will lose for various reasons, including their own deficiencies.
It isn't actually that widespread of a problem outside of the black community. It is more lack of romance and low number of children among actual couples that is the bigger issue.
Look, I'm old enough that I remember the tail end of the Sexual Revolution becoming aware of it as going into my teen years. The attitudes then about men versus women were nuts by modern standards, and I don't mean "crazy ultra-feminists hate all men" standards, I mean "treating the other person as a human" standards. The attitudes parodied here where guys were tough and macho and women loved it, and the notion was to be sexually available because this was the new era of doing away with hang-ups. Men did benefit from it, so it does make me smile wryly to read all the crying now that the shoe is on the other foot.
Is it great that women can now be emotionally abusive to men? No. But in general guys are now getting a taste of the medicine that women had to put up with, and they don't like it. Newsflash: neither did women, hence feminism. "Women have the power in the dating market! Women are too picky! Women spurn nice guys and go for the alphas!" Yeah, the sexual market place used to be a male buyer's market, now it's a female one. And men can't shove off all the blame onto women, because men wanted to eat their cake and have it: women willing and available for casual sex, no demands for committed relationships or marriage, and access to novelty. Women were then conditioned into 'if guys can do it, so can you'. And now we have the results, where nobody is happy save for a few who can command premium attention, be they men or women.
If you're going to complain that women are not having babies, you need to look at the other side of "where do you get babies" because it's not out of thin air. Why don't women want marriage and kids? What are the social forces driving this? A lot of it is economic - unless you have one partner with a lot of money, it's not really feasible to be a stay at home wife and mother. If both of you have to work, then there's little chance to have kids because it all needs to be planned around education and careers, and then when you do, you're paying for childcare which is pretty much eating up one of your wages. You won't get a mortgage without two incomes, and renting is another problem (can you even find a place to rent, and if you do how high is the rent, and will the lease allow children?)
I'm not trying to blame men, I'm saying that there are no easy answers and putting all the blame on women alone is as unfair as putting all the blame on men alone.
Most of your post still focuses on the narrative of blaming men continually though as getting a taste of their own medicine, with one sided narratives which is the classic far left/feminist narrative with the twist that you don't see agency for the women with sexual revolution.
Your message includes excessive browbeating against men, which is the last thing we want.
You genuinely are repeatedly trying to have this discussion with me, of how blaming men is legitimate because of past sins, when my point that I have been discussing was that such an approach is not legitimate way to approach issues to begin with.
While I am not interested in forcing women to have babies and favor sensible changes that create a situation where more people are in monogamous relationships and have more children, I am in favor of society marginalizing factions promoting these narratives of one sided oppression and permanent revenge and getting even, which are not society's best interests but also sadistic glee against men is bad on its own right. Being against one's fathers, brothers, sons, and husbands, who are permanently blamed as being permanently responsible as men based on slanted one sided narratives, is not what we need.
The issues with that are numerous. An additional one is this: I don't accept the one sided story, and one where women don't have agency, but even if someone was to grant it, which I don't, then how are current men to blame for what other men did previously? So, it is another example of how such movement and narrative is destructive and just irrationally spiteful.
Ironically, what you argue fits perfectly the point of the blog post I previously linked: https://www.highly-respected.com/p/stop-blaming-men-for-the-marriage
Bellow you argue the following:
Economic expenses of parenthood aren't fully explanatory because even in societies with decent wages and high welfare to parents have some these issues. Plus the issue isn't' just births but relationships and decline there too. The economic issue is probably a factor in relation with expectations and other issues I promoted related to education first as a model and so on. Various of these issues also relate with social norms that both men and women follow, not everything is more related to female behavior and incentives specifically.
Ultimately from the article I linked I want to highlight this which goes further than just blaming women:
You have been consistently mischaracterizing the idea that men are getting a raw deal in the current arrangement as blaming women exclusively, and are reacting to opposition to things like the bellow
This narrative does blame some men too, you know.
Although the issue isn't to prioritize blaming women, but to change things. If things are bad, and part of this relates to this idea of women not settling early enough and chasing the top, which is worse for men than for women for various reasons explained, including women dating up and benefiting from affirmative action, this is an entirety fair issue to observe. However, even this explanation does show that women also lose in some ways from this arrangement. They have less children than polled to desire, and the men they chase also often refuse to settle down. Then there are those issues that relate to both male and female behavior.
Maybe there is a room for trying to change current male behavior specifically, in addition to changes of both men and women but I agree with the article I linked that it can't come in the same one sided demand where the arrangement remains hostile to men, but only demands are made for men to step up. It can't be motivated by the same anti male feminist perspective where as you see it, men are tasting their own medicine.
At the end of the day people who care about improving things and have specific goals like a society with more healthy monogamous relationships and at least replacement fertility rate, should change things. Those who want instead to focus on retaining a sex negative feminist consensus are probably going to be an obstacle to that. Also, a level of sympathy for groups "getting a taste of their own medicine" is going to be helpful to promote the correct policies.
Yeah, and if men want that, they are going to have to face up to it that they can't eat their cake and have it: be 'sowing their wild oats' in their 20s with a bunch of hot, willing chicks, then settle down in their 30s with a modest wifey to pop out kids. If you want hot chicks willing to have casual sex with you, you are going to have a culture where women will expect the same sexual market value as men. If you don't want a culture of promiscuity and infertility, you are going to have to change back to the old values of "respectable men don't fuck around and will try and wait for marriage".
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I think you're really mischaracterizing past societies. Before the post-war sexual revolution, it really wasn't that common for people to hook up for casual sex, or to select their mates based on who you found sexy. Especially not for women- their careers were so limited, so they were really dependent on marrying a good husband who could provide for them, it kind of swamped any other criteria like looks or social savvy. At least for commoners; the nobility and nuveau-riche could afford to be more sexually playful.
If anything, it was the men choosing women on the basis of looks and social skills, so it became really important for women to learn how to wear pretty clothes, dance, sing, etc. The men could get away with wearing the same basic clothes and being kind of socially inept, as long as they were "a good man" (follows the basic religious laws) and had decent earnings. In that light, it makes sense that "incel" was originally coined by a woman- it was a serious problem to be an older woman with no career, no husband, and fading looks! But nowadays things have shifted, and it's the men trying desperately to appeal to women with flamboyant peacocking and mating calls or whatever, and the whole thing just seems so unnatural. It's basically forcing heterosexual men to act like women and gay men, and it's no surprise that a lot of women just aren't into it and a lot of men just can't learn the act.
The social conditions where 'nerd' is no longer normalized as a slur are indeed very, very recent in historic terms, whereas the Sexual Revolution was more than 50 years ago.
Well... when did "nerd" first become a slur? I genuinely don't know, but I don't think it's all that old either. I feel like it came on pretty quickly in the 80s, along with the sudden rise in microcomputers, Sci-fi movies, and DnD.
1951, apparently, so it strictly speaking predates the sexual revolution.
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Yes, basically. I'd say it coincides with the appearance of teenagers as a separate consumer group, which happened in the early 1960s.
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I think it's wrong to attribute the popularization of "incel" primarily to women. Women definitely prefer to be with men who are successful with women, but the vast majority are not consciously aware of their hypergamy. Women don't look for men who brag about their bodycount. They have other insults for low-status men, like the ever-useful "creepy" term that will never go out of style. While some women might have used the term "incel" on Tumblr or in random blogposts, it was more used as a replacement for the "entitlement" phenomenon, i.e. that men are not "entitled" to have sex with women because they're friends or neighbors or "boys will be boys" or whatever.
In contrast, some men absolutely consider bodycount to be crucial to any man's overall value. Thus, terms like "incel" really started gaining popularity on male-dominated forums like 4chan long before they broke into the mainstream.
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This period is largely a feminist myth. If it existed, it was prior to 1960, when there were vanishingly few programmers at all.
(and before you mention ENIAC, programming that was definitely not a desk job)
It may be the whisper network distorting the idea that computer operators were female.
Operators became majority female in 1975, then almost 70% by 1986, though some of that may have been by separation of job titles rather than an actual change. I'm pretty sure the myth goes back to attempts by feminists to promote the idea, often relying on an article in Cosmopolitan by Grace Hopper which suggested programming was especially suited to women. Hopper, however, was recruiting, not describing an existing situation.
"operators" being more like telephone switchboard operators ?
Some were like that, some were more like typists. According to the 1974-1975 Occupational Outlook Handbook, there were keypunch operators and data typists, both of whom basically did data entry (but not directly to the computer -- to cards or to tape). There were also "console operators", who would switch the tapes and cards in and out. The handbook includes a picture of a console operator -- a woman -- loading a reel-to-reel tape.
The 1974-75 handbook breaks down the gender in a more detailed way than the summary statistics do -- 3/5 "console and auxiliary equipment operators" were men, 9/10 "keypunch operators" were women.
I'm only informed enough to use basic sociology as reference. When the social status of a specific profession appears to be dropping, men start leaving it, and it starts attracting women instead, especially single women. If society starts attaching higher status to it, such as what happened to the IT sector as a whole after, say, 1980 or 1990, it then attracts more men than women.
Still, the 70% figure from 1986 is kind of crazy, but I guess another part of it is that it became more common to hire single women to such positions after reliable contraception became accessible.
This is mere pravda.
The IT sector as a whole in the United States has, as long as such records have been kept, attracted more men than women.
That was 1950. It is more likely the increase in proportion of women was
A general increase in women's employment and
An increase in data-entry "operator" positions (typing, basically, for which women had been predominantly hired for decades) compared to the "console operator" type positions (which we know in 1974 leaned slightly male)
I'm not disputing that.
As far as I know, it's actually Sociology 101. Men are more likely than women to apply to jobs for the purpose of supporting a family or to position themselves as eligible for marriage. This means they're less likely then women to accept positions with bad pay/prospects, no matter what advantages may be on the table. So if people get the impression that the IT sector offers better prospects than they thought, which is basically what happened after the 1980s, it will attract more men than before.
Yes, that makes sense. The devil is in the details.
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From what I can tell, early computer operators were not infrequently people (many women) who had previously worked as human computers. The story of Dorothy Vaughan of Hidden Figures fame comes to mind.
But I also suspect that the tasks these operators were doing differed quite a bit from the very abstract notion of what a computer is today. It makes sense to hire the folks that were previously manually crunching, say, your numeric integrals for artillery shell trajectories to operate a machine that does the same, because they already specialize in breaking that problem down into discrete operations that can be done by hand. That seems qualitatively different from writing an operating system or building a web app, partly because the digital computer was still seen by most as a machine that replaced the human computers.
Vaughan herself didn't get involved in digital computers until 1961. The Department of Labor had only one computer-related job title then, "Computer Specialists", and it was slightly over 30% women.
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I honestly don't think this has much to do with it. I think it's like prison rape: feminists insisted that rape wasn't funny, and then everyone had to be consistent on this despite men unthinkingly making such jokes forever (I don't really think there's much of a material explanation for this shift). A general tendency to look down on bullying and slut shaming took hold (as well as a claim that men being judged by their attractiveness to women turned women into objects in male status games*), so feminists had to try to be consistent.
Of course, low-status is low status and, whatever people say, they need a way to recognize it or tar things as such.
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The kernel of truth at the center of this is that even men who are objectively, even wildly, sexually successful can still harbor the sexual resentment that sits at the core of the incel label.
Incel, properly understood, is more like "unemployed" than it is like "disabled" or "nerd." Most men are involuntarily celibate (they would like to have sex but can't find a partner) for periods of their life. I've expanded the metaphor elsewhere:
What we see is a lot of guys retain the incel talking points and resentments, that they formed when they couldn't get laid, even after they are getting laid. A lot of guys continue to hate women for withholding pussy even after some women stop withholding it! A lot of guys who came into themselves are still mad about rejections in high school. Which I understand, there was a period between 16-18 when it seemed like I had somehow already missed the boat: every girl I hit on who didn't reject me immediately eventually told me she had lost her virginity some time ago to her [asshole] ex bf, and that now she wasn't really interested in that kind of thing anymore. And it's easy for those kinds of rejections to fester, even after one goes to college and none of it matters anymore. Or, a lot of guys who came into their own after college, once they got a good job, feel like they missed the boat in that ok fine I can date women now, but half of them got fat after college, and i can never get that back, they're always going to resent not getting it back then.
That's the dynamic I think you're seeing!
None of that explains why Elon Musk, Tucker Carlson, Jordan Peterson etc. regularly get called incels though.
Do we need an explanation beyond "people throw all the buzzwords at whatever they see"? Incel is a popular progressive insult, and people love using insults even if they don't really fit.
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And I can understand that attitude on the part of the girls; they had sex for the first time with their boyfriend because that's what you're supposed to do when you're In Love (as well as the other social attitudes dinned into us about sex and freedom and the rest of it); it probably wasn't that great for her because inexperience and a guy who is more interested in getting off himself; she thinks "well I don't know what is supposed to be so great about this" and then they break up. And the boys who replace him are, as you say, 16-18 and clearly aching for the chance to get sex, which is why they want a girlfriend. And it's clear to the girl that they primarily see her as a route to sexual access. And if she isn't that keen on having sex, and the boy isn't that impressive, then "sorry but no, Horace, I can only think of you as a brother".
Nobody is being deliberately bad, the boys are boys at that age and Nature is having its way with them, the girls are being girls. The boys will want sex a lot more than the girls and be less interested in the girls as persons, conversely the girls will be socialised into putting huge emphasis onto the personal element and be turned off by "he only has one thing on his mind". There isn't really a cure for it, it does no good to be brutally honest and tell 16-18 year old boys "you will want sex much, much more strongly, and want it more frequently, than the girls will, and unless they really like you there is little chance you'll get it" and tell 16-18 year old girls "basically all you are is a warm body to him so if you don't put out he'll dump you". The boys are not being mean or horrible on purpose, but neither are the girls. It's evolutionary drives all the way down, with the layers of civilisation on top!
The common attitude among single women and girls is that you shouldn't ever do or reveal anything that might give the impression to any man who's a long-term prospect / boyfriend material that you're promiscuous and easy. Engaging in desire sex (for lack of a better word) and kinky sex acts in general is only advisable with other types of guys. Again, this is rather understandable from an evo psych point of view, but let's not pretend it doesn't exist, and that it doesn't play a big role in this.
For a long time, it's been a tricky balancing act. Don't put out? You're a frigid bitch. Do put out? You're a slut. Men seem to want (and I'm emphasising "seem" here because this is all gross generalisation) women to be agreeable to have sex with them, but never to have had sex with previous partners, or only a couple of previous partners. If you think about it, it's not really doable; if you dump/break up with the girlfriend and both of you move on to new relationships, after a while you're both going to have a past history. If Joe has had more relationships than Annie, that's great. If Joe and Annie have the same number, that may be a problem: too high for Annie, too low for Joe even on the same numbers. If Annie has had more relationships than Joe, that's bad because that means she's promiscuous.
The double standard hurts men and women both because men are supposed to rack up more experience, but women are not, which means how do you do that? If the guy is always dating a new girlfriend who had only one or two boyfriends before him, then a small number of men are getting all the 'good' girls and leaving 'sullied' girls after them for the rest of the guys.
So women have an incentive to report lower numbers, and men to report higher numbers, of previous partners than they really have had.
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I think there's a lot of work you're just leaving on the table on the part of both boys and girls and assuming they won't do it and just be "boys be boys and girls be girls". 16 is old enough for boys to try and put in more effort into connecting with the girl on a personal level (and getting good at sex), and for girls to be a bit more forgiving about initial unimpressiveness (while also learning that the more physically impressive the boy is, the less incentive there is for him to stick with her and learn her preferences).
You've provided examples of destructive rather than constructive "brutal honesty", but it doesn't have to be.
The problem is that that is the age most sensitive, and most under the cosh of brutal honesty. It may well be that you will have to wait four years to grow out of the awkward, shy, spotty stage (for both boys and girls) but that is cold comfort to be told that "jam tomorrow but not jam today" when you see (as you think you see) 'everyone else is dating and having sex but not me'.
Resentments do seed themselves at that time, and come to bloom in later years. There is no way around the realities of nature, but we try and wrap it up in cotton wool for good reasons. But some people will never find anyone, and it's not anybody's fault in particular. And state-mandated girlfriends are no solution there, neither are the AI waifus (though for some very bruised psyches, the perfect girlfriend or boyfriend you can tailor to your exact tastes who will never leave you and always love you will be an aid, the way spectacles or a wheelchair is a necessary aid for physical lack of abilities).
I don't and never cared, which saved me from the worst of it. But my God, had I wanted romance and love and sex in my teens and twenties, I'd probably genuinely have tried killing myself because of the need that could never be assuaged, because I'm too weird, too ugly, too wrong to get someone who loves me. Whatever flaw of nature means I don't feel the want of that really was a lucky one.
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I'll cop to that. When I finally (finally! after much struggle!) got my first girlfriend at the tender age of 16, she admitted that she had previously had a boyfriend in middle school, and had lost her virginity to him, and didn't want to be like that anymore. A fact which she mentioned multiple times, and at great length. In retrospect I think she was actually a bit traumatized by the experience, and was trying to find closure by talking about it with someone. But at the time, it sure felt like I had missed the boat in middle school and was doomed forever to just be the guy picking up the pieces for these damaged women.
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I don’t mind you linking back to this post since it is one of your best and I very much agree with it, but to some extent this is just cope.
The very same people who are upset they missed out on high school are - as you point out - also the people who:
True enough, but those people often missed out on having fun in high school for exactly the same reason they aren’t capable of ‘catching up’ today.
It gets rare with age, but certainly in every major metropolitan area there is a substantial minority of adults well into middle age hooking up, partying and living a low responsibility lifestyle. Sure, it may be worse of more cringe than 18 year olds doing it, but that isn’t the primary issue these people have.
The core emotion is inward, it’s self hatred not because they never did, but because they never could have. If they went back to being 16 now with their current personality, they’d end in the same place in the social stack. “I regret not partying in high school” should actually be “I regret not being the kind of person who would have partied in high school”.
This isn’t coming from a popular person sneering at nerds perspective either, since (possibly like yourself) I led a largely dull and chaste high school life. But that’s because of who I am, not because of what happened to me.
Absolutely. Only boring people are bored. Endorse all of what you said.
I'd add that I don't regret in any way leading a dull and chaste high school life, in that I am happy where I am. Amor Fati. It's fun, occasionally, to daydream of how I could have acted with more agency at the time, but if I had the power to change anything I'm not sure I would. I might have ended up married to someone else, which I wouldn't trade for anything.
I was talking with [a child] the other week, who was complaining about boredom (in the absence of screen time) and observed that I remember being bored when I was a kid, but as part of growing up, I'm never bored as an adult. There is always something (many things, actually) I should be doing, and never enough hours in my day. And I even have to take care to use my hours wisely: not all interesting things have equal long-term value: I've largely retreated from video games except in a social capacity with IRL friends far away, instead working on improving myself (exercise, learning languages, art, hobby skills, reading), and valuing getting things done that provide long-term benefits.
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I acknowledge that the phenomenon you're describing is real, but I wish we had separate terms for "men who resent women because they can't get laid" and "men who can get laid, but resent women because of lingering grievances brought about from earlier rejections".
Accepting these as the choices is still accepting the incel-yellers frame. There is a possibility that the complaints the men have do in fact have validity and are not merely some sort of injured pride.
Well, yes. "Couldn't get laid when I was 16, now I'm 30 and I still can't get laid" could be down to "all women are bitches" or it could be "there are reasons why this is down to me" (and that needn't be "I don't make any effort", it's "unfortunately due to nature I'm odd/weird/ugly/otherwise unattractive").
But "couldn't get laid when I was 16, now I'm 30 and I can" has little reason to still resent the 16 year old girls back then. You're older now, improved, grew up (we hope), are better value, know now what to do and how to act when you want to attract someone. Still being resentful over "Lisa wouldn't date me when I was a spotty, gangly, awkward 16 year old, that bitch, I hope she's fat and single and poor today" is just being mean.
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All three can be true. This is what you absolute conflict theorists ignore: the people you hate may be making bad faith accusations, but their accusations may also have more than a little truth to them. Of course you won't acknowledge the latter because admitting your enemies have a point would be conceding ground to them, which conflict theorists (who do not care about the truth, only about winning) can never acknowledge. But your enemies still might have a point.
There are actual incels, and incel-adjacent misogynists, and some of them have been legitimately injured by feminists and have reason to be resentful, and some of them are just shitty people who can't get laid for good reason, and some are just plain old misogynists resentful that they can't get laid as much and as easily as they would like.
Your enemies are never going to concede that calling Elon Musk (with 10 kids by 3 attractive women) an incel is at all wrong. By conceding that any of their accusations have truth to them, you validate such bogus accusations as well. It is not a matter of conflict theorists not caring about the truth; it is a matter of conceding true things assists in establishing lies.
No, they aren't, because they are also bad-faith conflict theorists.
Calling Elon Musk an incel is obviously ridiculous, but it has nothing to do with whether incels and incel culture does in fact exist. And if you take your position, which is that you can never admit your opponents might even accidentally be right about something because that would be giving them a "win," then you are no longer able to actually distinguish between what's true and what's not, only between what helps your cause and what doesn't.
I know what's true and what's not; I know men with unjustified anger at women exist. But I see no reason to accept the "incel" framing of that phenomenon when it brings in all the stuff that isn't true also, and by accepting that framing I implicitly validate that too. That brings no one closer to truth.
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The term "incel" is generally hurled at three categories of men:
I know because I fit into the third category (certainly not the first, and I would like to think not the second), and have had the "incel" epithet hurled at me dozens of times.
Now, obviously it's ridiculous to assume that any man who departs from woke/progressive orthodoxy is either sexually frustrated or harbours a lingering resentment towards women as a group. I don't think I hold the opinions that I do because of resentment towards women. But I'm also not going to deny the existence of men who fit in category 2: they exist, I've interacted with them, I've spoken to them in person.
And what's more, even if these men only arrived at their opinions because of their lingering resentment towards women as a group, that doesn't in and of itself mean that their opinions are wrong, or their grievances lacking in merit - that would be a textbook example of Bulverism. Bob's underlying psychological motivation for believing in X has no bearing on whether or not X is true. I'm not required to deny the existence of resentful misogynistic men in order to make the case for why e.g. female underrepresentation in STEM is not the moral outrage many feminists seem to think it is.
Spin it back the other way around: it could be literally 100% true that Alice is only a socialist because she feels resentful of how unsuccessful she is, and that in and of itself wouldn't tell us anything about whether or not socialism is a preferable economic system to capitalism.
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It may well have made its way out into wider society and lost all sharp edges of definition, like other terms of disapprobation such as "racist" and "Nazi", but it originated as "involuntarily celibate" meaning someone who wanted romantic relationships and was unsuccessful for no reason they could discern easily.
But it became popularised, and unfortunately set as the image of the 'incel', by that young man who killed young women because he felt aggrieved over not getting the love life he felt he deserved. And if you read any of his writing, it's clearly evident why he couldn't get and keep a girlfriend and it was down to his own flaws and lacks. The kind of person who goes and murders random people, after all, is not the kind of person who can manage to get on with others in the ordinary way of things.
Are you referring to Elliot Rodger? He killed four men and two women.
He was at least as much misandric as misogynistic.
Oh, he hated and resented everybody, but he was operating off an inflamed sense of grievance - how dare his (few) male friends dump him when they got girlfriends, and how dare girls not be his girlfriend when he was such a catch? But his writing is full of evidence as to why he had such problems making friends and attracting girls, and every time I feel a little sorry for him, he spouts some horrible nonsense.
He definitely had problems, but making him into some kind of hero or "see? that's what drives people like me to acts of desperation" by self-identified incels is not the way to go. "Yeah, I admire the guy who wanted to murder as many women as he could" is not going to persuade women that you're the boyfriend they want.
I think you're correct, I was mixing him up with the Canadian shooter Marc Lépine. Another guy who blamed feminism for his problems, which was not in fact the reason he was troubled.
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Are you referring to Elliot Rodger?
Despite all the crying and complaining about incel killers, there's basically only three, and two were before the term came into being (Rodger and LePine).
Exactly. I was about to point that out, but I wasn't sure if the OP is referring to E.R.
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The function of the slur is to lower the status of men whose actions or existence are insufficiently aligned with female interests. Hence why Andrew Tate and Jordan Peterson are "incels".
Known incel Elon Musk getting dunked on constantly by redditors. He has threesomes with celebrities and has enough kids to field a baseball team with extras. But no matter, he's a rightoid of some sort, so he's an incel.
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Yeah. It's just an evolved version of "virgin" "neckbeard" or any of the thousand other insults that women use to insinuate that someone isn't having sex. No reason to look so deeply into it.
The only mildly interesting aspect is the one whereby it's usually the case that people who vociferously argue that women shouldn't be judged or shamed for their sexual exploits are the same ones who are usually a hair trigger away from shaming men for not having sex (but they will also shame men for caring too much about having sex, or for going about getting sex in the wrong ways, or whatever else have you).
I think the core female complaint is that there aren't enough good men to go around.
Being approached by a bunch of inferior men is annoying, kinda like if you were in the market for a new Tesla but everyone kept trying to sell you a used Hyundai.
Do you think I would drive a Hyundai? How insulting.
Just like snobbery is insecurity about social status, denigrating low-status men reflects a woman's insecurities about her own status in the marketplace. Which is why this behavior is more likely to be evidenced by a purple-haired fatty than by a beautiful blonde.
I also get the sense, like ThisIsSin, that overall standards have gone up a lot too, while people's actual value has gone down, with greater obesity, sedentary lifestyles, and mental health challenges among both men and women.
But I also can't help feeling that people have just lost interest in romantic relationships in general. They don't believe in eros any more. They don't have faith in love being valuable. This especially seems pronounced among women, who, after all, are the biggest traditional market for such high valuation of love.
There just seems to be a cohort of women that's not interested in dating any man who comes their way. And I'm not saying they won't date any man who comes their way (that seems eminently reasonable), but that they won't date any of the many men who come their way (some of those men, I know, were generally very popular among women). I know, and have had, lots of female friends and acquantances who have never been in major relationships and show no interest in starting one. We talk about "men going their own way" -- but "women going their own way" seems to be an even bigger group, at least from my zoomer perspective. Love seems transactional, not interpersonal, to them; if I recall correctly, some back in school would joke about marrying a rich man for the money, but actually loving a man never seemed to occur to them.
I haven't noticed as much of a similar cohort of men, though there are some. And there are definitely men who 'desire' a relationship but aren't very active in looking for one.
Contrary to popular belief, this cohort actually seems just as pronounced among women of a conservative background, to my eyes because of the intense values against casual dating in that cohort. They are, just as much as any highly-selective women, waiting for Mr. Right to fall out of the sky. And it has to be Mr. Divinely-Ordained-Right, because the marriage is in three months and they will immediately have children.
My crackpot theory is also that this has something to do with women's relationships with their fathers (and men's relationships to their mothers); most of the women I've gotten on well with romantically have had at least decent relationships with their fathers. I have a weird suspicion that the rise in divorce and single parenthood has led to a lot of women who don't have major male influences in their lives, so they don't form the understanding and appreciation of men's personality traits that women who grow up around them do -- leading them either to idolize or reject something they don't really understand. Growing up with a caring father gives you a good example of the positive influence of men in your life, and a key example of the value men can provide to you and your children. Plus, it means you love at least one man, and that predisposes you to feel positively about them in general. My girlfriend groans at my dad jokes, but her own father's are even more groan-worthy, so she's had a lot of practice tolerating them (and I think secretly enjoys them, don't we all?).
I guess it just makes me sad, I'm a big believer in the value that an intimate relationship, above and beyond the sexual or transactional benefits, brings to people's lives, more than most men -- and I know this, because when I bring up my beliefs on the issue other men mostly don't seem to understand me and talk about it in confused ways, the same way my asexual friends IRL have talked about sexuality in ways that are incredulous and confused. I have this strong value, I've seen its profound impact on my life, and I see it profaned and cast off everywhere -- "I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, Moloch the loveless."
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The men say this too.
As the alternatives to (and opportunity costs of) selecting a bad partner pile up every time some new media comes out, the bar for who is marriageable in the first place rises, which means a man or woman who had marginal personality/attractiveness in 1960 is probably not getting out of that pool in 2024 without substantial mitigating factors (the "666" dating app meme is a symptom of this).
I think gender dynamics predict women will be more resentful of this than men specifically because it is the sociobiological role of women to be wanted. I think the "it's your duty to serve me and my interests" attitude from women comes from the same place it does from similar-quality men; incels say "state-mandated GF", femcels say "all regretted sex is rape", and they both seem to want to problematize anything that could possibly be sexually arousing to anyone (hence the DignifAI thing for incels, and 72 genders/drag queen story hour for femcels).
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The society 'discovered' the incel term due to the existence of a self-declared incel community that alternated between posting highly and violently misogynistic stuff and the sort of self-loathing, it's-over-rope-awaits material that seemed highly toxic for any new guys falling into the community, typically teenagers for whom it was certainly not all over, to assume as a mindset. Sure, the term is misused to all hell now, but any analysis of what started the processes leading to that misuse would have to take that into account.
I think this is a key point- ‘incel’ wasn’t a word that feminists invented because they needed a new sneer. It was invented by the crowd that now populates /r9k/ as a self descriptor, and this crowd being one that a given approximation of nobody likes, it started getting used as an insult.
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I would substitute "fail" rather than "refuse". No man chooses to be 5'6".
Shame their parents weren't willing to indulge in a little HGH before their bones ossified.
It worked wonders for Messi.
I always have a mild hangup about dating girls who are significantly shorter than me (and of course, most are, unless you're Nordic, 6' might not be quite as remarkable in the West as it is in India, but it still falls into tall). If I'm serious enough to want kids with them, as I was with my ex, I am scared shitless at the possibility of my son(s) coming out short. I know being tall has been incredible for me, I have my charms regardless, but even average men are often hard countered by women setting 6' in their bio, or even implicitly in person or social settings (though women are certainly not the best at gauging it, hence so many guys who are 5'10" getting away with, they just recognize "tall"). And I've read research to the effect that taller men are trusted and respected more, and even paid better (!), just look at the heights of successful politicians versus the average male in their locale, or the average height of CEOs.
Now, if I had a daughter, that would hardly be a concern, but if it's a boy and he's not looking like he'll turn out at least as tall as I am, well, if I can't prescribe the HGH myself, I know someone who knows someone and so on. I guess the genes for height were there all along in our family, looking at me and my brother, though my dad probably spent at least half his adolescence malnourished. But knowing firsthand how much that matters, no way am I going to let my sons turn out short. I'd rather lop my legs off at the heels and give it to them as platforms.
I just looked this up, since I had never really noticed or thought about height all that much before. Turns out I've been spending time with all the tall ethnicities by accident. I didn't know the Balkans and Southern Slavic people were noticeably tall before, TIL.
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I have bad news for you. If you are the tallest in your family, your kids are most likely going to regress to the mean.
Unless your parents and their siblings and cousins, etc, were all that terribly malnourished, it's most likely you're an outlier.
My brother is a mere half inch shorter than me, a source of merciless mockery from my end. Well, it's good natured, it's not like he's suffering, being actually hot, to the extent that he has most of the girls in his med school after him, and all the gay guys, including a professor.
Very luckily for him, he's borderline asexual so doesn't give a shit about women. I wish I was so lucky, so I cherish every advantage I get. If there was a pill that shut off my libido without other side effects, I'd take it regularly and PRN.
Once can be a coincidence, twice is
enemyfriendly action. If you count my very large extended family, I'm not the tallest, but that's more evidence the genes are percolating in their somewhere. Nutrition certainly made everyone taller over the ages, but it is not remotely enough to account for 6 extra inches alone, not when the genes aren't helping. After all, I did once have a CT brain and they didn't find a pituitary adenoma, though that would have made me both tall and milkable.Besides, even if it's a fluke, the solution remains the same. Yay, more HGH, what can it not do?
This is actually what is at the root of the dispute between men and women. That men only like women because "all I am to you is a hole for you to stick your dick in". Without that desire, men don't care about women and don't want to interact with them. Of course women are going to resent being treated as a sex doll. We want men to like us for ourselves, to be interested in us as a unique person, not an interchangeable set of tits'n'ass.
I don't think there's an easy answer to this. If men only like women because SEX and nature prodding us all to reproduce the species, while women want LOVE besides/outside of sex again because of nature and forming groups to support and raise the new offspring, then we're all screwed because the traditional guard rails around sex/love = marriage and kids are being torn down and melted for scrap and we're getting nothing in return except unhappiness.
If we were all ape troupes back on the savannah, with one dominant male monopolising the females and the less dominant males sneaking around for sex, it might work out: males get sex or fight each other for access to females, females get offspring and support from other females in the troupe and genes from the winners of the male struggles. But we grew big brains on top of our instincts and we want seventeen contradictory things at once.
I do believe women can be interesting as people to men. It's just that, without sexual attraction in play, they have to compete with the other men on that front.
Maybe women find it naturally harder because they aren't interested in the same things as men to connect with them platonically as well as their male friends. Maybe most women never learn to be interesting due to having sexual attraction on their side. When I match with a woman on a dating app and see an empty bio or something that barely provides any hooks for a conversation, I am certainly overcome with an intense wave of apathy, no matter how hot she is.
I don't think that women and men should necessarily have the same interests; I don't see why men shouldn't have their own little clubs and women theirs, but I also see why that was lobbied against because there were advantages to being 'all boys together' networking. I think "your spouse should be your best friend as well" and the whole laundry list of requirements makes marriage tougher, because no one person can be all-in-all to another.
But if men and women can't be friends and have mutual interests outside of sexual attraction, I think that's bad for society as well; if both sexes are only looking at the other sex in terms of "do I find them fuckable?", then they don't see that person as a person, merely as a list of requirements to be ticked off and if failed, then not even considered. Yeah, I'm influenced here by Catholic teachingson human dignity and the idea of a person as a whole person, not a convenience and lifestyle add-on.
A lot of it is that now we are so used to choice, and a range of options, and maximally making our lives more convenient and to our own requirements, all over the entire range of experience, that we're shoving relationships into the same "I want to order off the menu and add in the secret sauce and can I get the special offer deluxe?" mindset of choice, choice, choice or else it's all wrong and someone is to blame.
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I wish I could be asexual as well, certainly would free up a lot of space in my head.
Risks of HGH for kids? I don't trust Dr Google on this one.
It's great, I'm aromantic as well which means I don't give a flying fig about men or their views of me as fuckable or not, and I have no stress around all that 😁 Means I relate to men on the level of "do I find you a likeable specimen of humanity?" and not "me want snoo-snoo", so if I don't like you, I don't have to tolerate your bullshit (unless you're my boss) on the faint hopes of "well maybe I can get a situationship* out of this".
*Stupidest fucking concept I've heard to date, what the hell is this need to invent new degrees of idiocy? You're fucking around, sleeping around, casual sex, fornicating. It's not a 'thing' or any kind of romantic association. It's mere convenience. 'Oh no, see, it's this special new modern thing that past generations never even thought of'. Past generations fucked around casually just fine, friend.
One downside to being asexual other than not having the drive to pass on your genes or ending up old without a family is...
If your're a man, you actually need to be competent and attractive in general for a lot of other things than getting women. No small part of me working out religiously, working hard on my career and not playing video games all day is thanks to those things making women more likely to like me. But I benefit from being fit, having money and not wasting my time nevertheless, even outside of fucking women.
If you're doing those things because you like them and get benefits from them, then "women will be more attracted" is secondary benefit. If you're doing it primarily because "women will be more attracted" and then it turns out they're not, that gets to be a problem of resentment on both sides: "I wasted all this time and effort for nothing, women are bitches" versus "joined an evening class in pottery, guy there was friendly and seemed nice while we were chatting about the class, the second he learned I had a boyfriend he ignored me and then dropped out of the class, guys only want one thing".
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You ideally give them during puberty, and as long as you don't go overboard and end up in gigantism territory, it's not much of a concern.
I don't recall anything else particularly pressing, but you don't need all that much of it to have noticeable effects. You can look into the therapy Messi received if you want a simple example investigated with Thorough Journalistic Depth.
While I'm not an endocrinologist or paediatrician, I know that it's often offered as a treatment for dwarfism due to HGH deficiency. Haven't heard of any serious issues when dosed correctly, and it's an ongoing therapy so plenty of time to reduce doses or stop if something isn't right.
Just don't take it when your bones have fully ossified and fused, I'd say 18 is concerning, 21 dangerous. Unless you really crave the neanderthal look, I heard it's in vogue these days.
Hey, sorry for the oddball question (I promise not to take this as medical advice, I have an endo and will ask them these questions but would much appreciate some info on this topic if possible): What if you have a 22-year old with growth plates that are still slightly open in proximal tibia, distal femur, proximal femur and proximal humerus, but that person is 3-4 inches shorter than the rest of their generation in their family, with noticeably narrower bones as well?
For background, I was born a bit premature with borderline low birth weight, grew normally up to age 9, and then developed anorexia nervosa at age 9 which lasted right up until age 20, at times mildly underweight and at times significantly underweight, maybe briefly normal weight for a 1-year period around age 12. I have osteoporosis as a result, which I suppose is a sign of how bad the malnutrition was, but I've recovered since, and have not been underweight for 1 year and reached an optimal BMI of 20 now at age 22 (completing recovery from the eating disorder). I take this recovery as a win, but at the same time I am insecure about my frame size, mainly height but also things like hand/foot size, shoulder width, arm length, overall ribcage diameter, and seeming lack of appositional growth of my bones too, although I'm not sure when most of the appositional growth is supposed to happen so I'm not sure if it was the anorexia or lower birth weight that did that.
I have heard of catch-up growth; I've read about cases of hypothyroid men in their mid 20s growing inches after HGH treatment, but I'm not sure if the level of delay in growth maturation is less significant for anorexia than for hypothyroidism, making me wonder whether I have as much potential to "catch-up" as the hypothyroid men due to our having different etiologies of growth retardation. Apparently hypothyroidism is one of the hormonal effects of anorexia so perhaps they're not as different as I currently believe but I'm not informed enough to know whether this is the case.
Would HGH make any sense at all in this situation? If there is any growth potential left, would it just happen naturally now that I'm at a normal weight, without the need for HGH? I'm thinking the minimalist approach would be to let nature take its course now, and if my body can indeed grow more, it will do so, without the risk of hormone treatment. But another side of me wonders whether, due to my age, some sort of kick-start is needed for the growth process to commence?
Also, regardless of etiology of growth retardation, if plates are still technically open but nearly closed in someone's 20s, is HGH worth it or just too risky?
Thank you.
Oh dear. I am really not an endocrinologist or paediatrician.
This is incredibly far outside what I can reasonably consider my expertise, and you have asked a complex question to boot.
Growth plate fusion is very important, and given your age, you'd need an xray to very carefully examine your growth plates to figure out how safe it is.
To put the difficulty of your question in perspective, I'd be barely more at ease if asked by someone if they needed open heart surgery.
I could ask you to elaborate and provide reports and so on, but I'm still not remotely comfortable with the topic, especially at that age, it would entail me cracking open textbooks and research papers and feverishly reading, and it's not laziness that makes me wish to avoid it, it's the fact that I still wouldn't be sure if my advice was sound in your case, especially with the risk of acromegaly.
You absolutely need a different kind of doctor, not a psych trainee, this is genuinely above my paygrade and I would have to be crazy to comment without significantly more experience in the subject, which seems rather unlikely to come about.
My apologies, while I'm not one to gatekeep medical advice, this isn't something I feel qualified to speak about, especially with so many confounding factors. My innate reaction is "probably not a good idea, if the plates are almost fused" but even that isn't a statement from confidence.
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The trouble is, you will get the arms race. If everyone is now 6 foot minimum, the new filtering level will be 6 foot 3. Then future versions of you will be "I hope my sons won't be 6 foot manlets, I'm going to put them all on HGH so they're at least 6 foot 6".
Do that enough and we will end up with the 7 foot NBA version of "we must ensure our kids have all advantages" you're scorning.
On the plus side, Elendil the Tall is the role model to aim for 😁 "2 rangar minimum, 6 foot shorties DNI"!
Giving your kids anything that, that explicitly gives them an edge in the dating market is gauche and very outside the Overton window. Hell taking steroids yourself for it is..
He doesn't need to worry about an arm's race anytime soon.
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I expect my grandkids, if they exist, will be simulated entities in a Matrioshka brain. When it's the size of the sun and change, I think it becomes a bit moot 🧐
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At least if bodymodding is available to all, then everyone will be able to reach whatever equilibrium there is (square-cube law should eventually put a cap on height).
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Anecdotes being anecdotes and all, but I my personal experience makes me believe this whole thing is just wildly overrated. I'm just a bit over 5'8" and this has literally never been a problem with women. I have never met a woman I was romantically interested in that seemed even remotely put off by my relative shortness, including a couple hookups that were a shade taller me than me. Height is certainly an advantage, but it seems more like an advantage in the same way that social status, income, good looks, and physicality are rather than just a categorical one. I'm sure my predilection for dating petite women has helped on this one, but I really do think that treating height as an insurmountable obstacle has more to do with coping and excusing other personal failings than anything else.
As a 5'3" guy... yes, it is a major impediment. It doesn't preclude relationships or even casual hookups, but it substantially increases search time and costs.
Back in my online dating days, I did some experiments, and every two inch increase roughly doubled my match rate, with diminishing returns starting around 5'10" (typical results for my profile: one match per week at real height, 3-5 matches per day at 5'10, with me swiping right on about half of profiles). That said, results in the real world are much less bleak, though it still acts as an impediment.
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You're in the acceptable range for girls when it comes to height, especially the petite ones.
Much shorter, and it becomes a turnoff, much taller, and well.. Whereas for you, it's roughly just neutral.
And while I can't comment on the particulars of who you've dated or fell for, I can assure you that there are plenty of women for whom being short is a deal breaker. Obviously not all of them, note I never claimed that at all. It's a tautology that half of men are shorter than average, and believe me 50% of men aren't unable to find a partner and settle down. It isn't that bad. But unless they're exceptionally rude, most girls won't say to your face that your height isn't good enough, so you might well be missing out on those, especially since you say you've only dated the ones shorter or just very slightly taller. Believe me when I say that I have plenty of female friends, and I've heard them dismiss tons of guys for not being tall enough.
And even if someone is short, they might be handsome. Rich. Be a comedian, or famous. But it's a handicap nonetheless. Simply not insurmountable.
However it is incontrovertibly true that height helps, the more the merrier until you end up in the NBA or die young from back issues.
Now, I don't think I'd be utterly fucked if I magically lost 3 inches, but I know for a fact it would sting, and I want what's best for my kids. If they're a boy and not making the cut, then HGH it is, unless we have something better. I'm confident my height has enabled me to do more than I otherwise could, such as be taken more seriously as a doctor, or land women who demand that in men.
I am certainly doing my best to ensure my kids have the other advantages you mention, such as being at least (hopefully) UMC when they're born, seeing someone cute so that there's a chance they're born with decent looks (not that I'm ugly, just average, 7/10 on a good day), and I demand my partner is smart, which is also genetic.
You won't see me knocking up a 10/10 bimbo, let alone wifing one. But height is something that's done a lot for me, and I'll go to great lengths to ensure it advantages my kids.
Oh, sure, I accept pretty much without question that genuinely tall girls are right out. They don't want me and I don't want them. Nothing personal. That just doesn't eliminate enough of the pool to really be much of a problem.
To be clear, I'm not claiming that height isn't a distinct life advantage, just that it's a sliding scale rather than categorical. Being doomed to date women that are mostly median height and below isn't really much of a problem. Like a number of other things in life, the good news is that if you get it right even once, you're all set anyway.
But I've never claimed it was categorical either!
It is certainly a distinct advantage, one I prize dearly from personal experience, but people can make do without it.
You're average height for a guy, or roughly so, which means the majority of women are shorter than you. Consider the pain of men who are even worse off. They have a smaller pool of women, and said women a larger pool of men who have a height advantage.
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Is your mother extraordinarily tall, or where did you get your height? It seems odd to write off possible wife and mother on the grounds that "she's not five foot nine, my possible sons possibly might be under six feet tall!"
Also, if you have short daughters, then you're just setting up the next generation of "this woman is too short to be the mother of my future sons", so better put them on HGH as well.
My mom and dad are the same height, name 5'6. It's always been a mild peeve that she can't wear heels, but they get along fine regardless. I'm by far the tallest on dad's side, and there are plenty of my male relations who were born after the immediate decade or so of privation from being penniless refugees fleeing a genocide ended. My mom was considered quite tall for a girl, by Indian standards of her time, though that's only just slightly above average now for the newer crop. Her side of the family did tend taller, but even then, uh, maybe like two of my maternal cousins once removed are taller than me? And it's a very big family.
My paternal grandpa was supposedly quite tall, but then again, he died of cancer shortly after being lined up against a wall, though the cancer got him only because the Pakistani lieutenant responsible for rounding up all "military aged males" in the village took pity on a 65 year old man quite obviously on the verge of death. Maybe they were being frugal with the bullets, but I like to be charitable.
So it's possible that my dad drew the short straw, semi-literally, and my mom's side was always taller than average.
Note that I never said a girl being short was a deal-breaker. I was planning to marry my ex after all, and she'd need 12 inch heels and a stiff breeze upwards to look me in the eye.
I wouldn't call my concern with the height of my future son irrational at the least, height matters for men, I'm suitably thankful for being lucky in that regard. Given that my brother is almost as tall (albeit much more handsome), I am modestly confident it wasn't a fluke. The genes for height are complicated, but there's an equation for a rough and ready estimate of the likely height of your kids, based off the average of the parents and adjusting upwards by 3 inches if blue, down if pink.
If I married someone 5' tall and had a boy, they will likely be around 5'9" tall, on average. This is only an estimate, maybe they'd be lucky like I was. I'd prefer not to take the risk, though it's hardly the end of world when it comes to my choice in partner. Just something that eats away at me from the inside.
I expect gene therapy for any purpose, including height to be easily available by then. It's a shame it's not here in time for me, but if I ever went to the trouble of going the IVF route and paid for genetic screening, I suspect I could buy it. I don't want my son to be 7' tall, but even a humble 6' and change is acceptable. I'd settle for 5'10 assuming everyone else wasn't making their Uber-kids taller. I don't need IVF, I know (regrettably) that the swimmers swim.
And what's wrong with HGH anyway? Your body makes it by the bucketload during puberty and in small amounts elsewhere. It only causes issues if given too late, or produced by a tumour when the bones are fused, making you look like a gorilla. (Gigantism during puberty, acromegaly is the gorilla bit)
It's modestly expensive, but it'll pay for itself, and I'm not quite planning the future of my grandchildren yet. Though I do hope to be around to see them.
Believe me that most men couldn't give less of a shit about the height of a girl if she's cute. Women? Oh boy.
Sure, height matters, but I think you're hanging a lot more on it than is warranted, and if your dad had the same concerns as you, then he wouldn't have married your mother. You can't control these things unless you are going to go for polygenic embryonic selection, so why stress about "she's suitable in every way except height"?
Yeah, women like tall men, but that often means just "taller than me". If she's five foot six and you're five foot ten, she's not going to be crossing you off the list of "not quite six feet, pity". Height alone isn't going to be a deal-breaker, and if it is, then I think (to be honest) you're better off without that sort of neurotic type.
My parents had an arranged marriage lol. My mom was too much of a nerd to even date before that, and that too she had to rush it because of her younger sister.
Given that my dad was an up and coming surgeon who had already made a name for himself, and she was considered tall for women while he was average for men, I doubt it was a big deal. But I have heard her grumble about it, sotto voce, or else how would I know about the heels thing? Oh, and he did have a really nice head of hair at the time. Shame it didn't last.
I don't think I'm likely to go for polygenic embro selection (yay, someone remembered what I was yapping about), given that IVF itself is expensive. And I have other ways to handle the height issue, should it even prove to be an issue.
You know that 5'10" is considered tall too right? Six has magic connotations, but even that's a perfectly respectable height for an adult male.
So you see, I don't particularly worry about height, especially given what I told you about my ex who I was serious about. But I would certainly prefer a girl who likes me for more than my height, and I do have other qualities if I say so myself. Worst case, HGH. It's safe enough. If I'm even alive to have kids and know that they're coming out short.
Yes, that's what I meant that five foot ten is tall, so this mythical list of "six foot or GTFO" is something I find difficult to believe. I could see it as a filtering mechanism, similar to how jobs ask for "five years of experience in a two year old technology" just to weed out the excess number of applicants, but I don't think it's more than that on a dating app where the story seems to be that there are always more men than women on these and the women get flooded with requests.
You'll find that I never claimed that being literally six feet or above is necessary, in the "GTFO" way.
Women are actually pretty bad at judging height. It's trivial for men close-ish to 6 to lie on the apps, and even then they're unlikely to get rumbled on a date. However, I'm just grateful I don't have to lie, and whatever combination of nature and nurture put me here, it staggered to the finish line before collapsing. But a lot of women (percentage unknown to me, but it's non-negligible) set height filters, and the de-facto standard if 6' or 180 cm for the metric folk (see, they're cutting you a whole 2 or 3 centimeters of slack!).
What I am saying is:
I'd be equally as concerned with my kids turning out dumb or ugly, which why I wouldn't marry someone hot but dumb. And while I'm no Adonis, I still pray that I end up with someone tugging in the rightward direction.
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Figures in the UK and US are skewed by immigration. In upper-middle class circles the average height of a man of European descent is 6’ or taller.
A cursory Google search tells me it's 5'9 for white men in the UK and 5'10 in the US.
I know height correlates with income/wealth, but I couldn't find anything about UMC white men specifically. Well, not with the amount of effort I'll give at the middle of a tiring shift.
All I can tell you is that while I'm not as a relatively tall as in India, my time in my UK suggests that it's hardly middle of the pack either.
Even taking at face value your claim that UMC white men are 6' on average, then I'll just be average, which is presumably neutral. And my height isn't doing all the heavy lifting.
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My ex was a bespectacled 5' Chinese girl. We used to joke that if we had boys, best-case scenario they'd be just as tall as me and just as attractive as her; worst-case scenario, they'd be myopic, ginger Asian midgets. Can you imagine the bullying you'd get as a boy who's short, ginger and Asian?
FWIW, there is a lot less persecution of gingers in the UK now than there was when I was a kid. My red-headed son is the most popular kid in his class. Was gingerism ever a big deal in the US?
I live in Ireland and still get my fair share of slagging. A few years ago I could hardly leave the house without someone pointing at me and saying "hey look lads, Ed Sheeran's on tour!" but that dropped off after I lost weight.
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The ginger gene is recessive, so you'd only need to worry about quarter asian ginger grandkids.
Quarter Asian, or quarter ginger? Which is more worrying? 👩🦰👨🦰
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Load off my mind.
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I'd rather not, but since you've put the idea in my head, it's a good thing I've got the DSM and ICD diagnostic criteria for depression open on my tablet.
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Fair point. I'd add the qualifier that the verbal shaming of certain men as a way of intentionally disadvantaging them was normally directed at those men who refused to live up to society's ideals or just ignored those for whatever reason instead of failing through no fault of their own. Maybe I'm too much of an idealist in this regard, but I'd say this is how it normally went.
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