Erratum: "Some" takes me to "Effects of Experimental Bot Fly Parasitism on Gonad Weights of Peromyscus maniculatus" https://www.jstor.org/stable/1380025 , which I am guessing is not the intended reference (and I can't guess what is because you didn't provide anything but a link).
I also don't see how the second link, to "Like father, like self: emotional closeness to father predicts women's preferences for self-resemblance in opposite-sex faces" https://gwern.net/doc/psychology/man-hands/2011-watkins.pdf , supports your claim "how much other men respect a man counts a lot more to women than how much other women respect a woman counts to men". None of the questions seem to bear on the father being respected by other men?
An interesting take. I wonder if you miss the forest for one particular tree though, as currently women seem far far more vocal in their critique of men than men in their critique of women.
A take I often see is that complaining is unattractive in men, but appealing/neutral in women. Hence, women find it easier to coordinate to belittle the other gender.
Women seem to think they can be casually sexist and misandrist, without any downsides. While men seem to fear being sexist and misogynist quite strongly. At least that is my experience of young people at university.
I think, in reality, both genders are harmed by being sexist (as either way it vastly limits your options for a kind and loving partner), but it definitely seems mainstream to be anti-men, and almost completely taboo to be anti-women in polite society.
And yet some women still do it. But presumably they do it because they believe it is advantageous. Certainly some men pursue that route of uncritically internalising female critique (and other men shame these men, as you describe).
How does your logic apply to coordination? It seems there is a strong incentive to defect from ones gender for personally better odds (e.g., being 'pick me').
I mean, the polite society doesn't recognize that "misandrist" is a coherent notion, similarly to how it's impossible to be racist against whites, so men in good standing are also supposed to be misan-, ahem, feminist. And yeah, ideas like this being widespread is how you end up with half the country hating the other half and Trump in charge, but no sane memetically competitive alternative has emerged yet.
"So men can more easily, compared to women, coordinate to demand higher prices for what they sell, and lower prices for what they buy. Maybe this can help explain historical gender norms." reads as very cryptic to me, speaking only to people who know what you are inferring.
Not Robin, but here's my best shot at a quick explainer:
In the 50's, in more traditional gender norm times, ~85% of men got married and had kids.
Today, only the top 20% of men have 80-90% marriage rates. The bottom 50% of men get 20-50% marriage rates.
This is because women are able to get jobs and support themselves, so don't need to put up with median men anymore, because they can just get pets if they're lonely and watch Netflix or Tik Tok, which is vastly more entertaining and fun than spending time with men.
On that front - did you know the median "inter-ejaculatory latency time" for hetero sex is a mere 9 minutes? And that even young couples in their twenties average sex about once every 4-10 days? How on *earth* is ANY woman supposed to get off in that regime??
I'm just putting this little tidbit here to point out that the benefits women get from a relationship with a median guy are *extremely* limited. Basically you get 9 minutes of awful, completely selfish sex that has zero chance of getting you off every week or so. In return, you get a giant man baby who expects you to cook for him and do his laundry and dishes. The woman benefits in this transaction...how?
So long story short, marriage and fertility is plummeting because women have always graded male attractiveness pass / fail, with 80% failing, and now they have much better alternatives like Tik Tok and pets to fill their time with:
But the historical gender norms (say up to the 1970's) were when even median men, even men down to the *15th percentile* were able to dupe some poor woman into marrying and having kids with them!
I think that's what Robin means when he points to historical gender norms being vastly favorable to men, a sign that they had more coordination and bargaining power.
On the sex facts, I wrote a post about that if anyone is interested:
Why blame it on men? There doesn't seem to be any evidence that men cause the infrequent sex. It could equally well be that women are disinterested in sex, and hence couples are not having much sex. Or that our antisex culture is generally leading many to have unsatisfying sex lives.
There's a massive bias in the social sciences to interpret data in favour of women. It's truly crazy and deeply unscientific and deeply unequitable. If you care about gender relations, if you care about women, you should care about the truth, and not just find ways to interpret data in favour of women looking good.
For example, I once read a paper describing how on average men estimate women's interest in sex as being far higher than women's reported desire for sex. The initial paper interpreted this data in the standard "men are terrible" framing, interpreting that men must be idiotic creeps who overestimate women's desire. In a rare instance of good science, separate authors showed that if you incentize women to be truthful (offering a monetary incentive) and ask them to estimate other women's desires then the male and female estimates match. That is, women underreport and men estimate accurately.
> Why blame it on men? There doesn't seem to be any evidence that men cause the infrequent sex.
True - it's likely multiply confounded. There's at least correlational evidence that women's desire might be less because of the male median performance baseline, I touch on that in the post, but it's likely a result of multiple things.
I think also that there's decent evidence that just like neuroticism, men and women come from different sexual desire baselines, and the male baseline is just intrinsically higher.
I realize that isn't aligned with the study you're mentioning - if you find it, I'd be interested in reading it.
> There's a massive bias in the social sciences to interpret data in favour of women. It's truly crazy and deeply unscientific and deeply unequitable.
Yes, I agree that this is undoubtedly true as well. Academia has well-known biases on this front and in this direction, and studies that set out to find anything that slants against them are largely never undertaken, and if such results are found, are less published and / or reinterpreted.
But a lot of the stuff I was talking about was purely observational and narrative, not based on studies. To my knowledge, there aren't any studies done on whether or to what extent Tik Tok or Netflix is rivalrous with male company, it's just a "Mark 1 eyeball" observational take when you look at how people spend their time.
Ultimately, the raw facts of declining dating, pairing, marriage, and fertility across the world are what they are, and are likely driven by a whole host of factors, which would be impossible to narrate in a coherent and tidy form.
You say we should be dedicated to the truth, and I agree - I just think the truth isn't going to do much for us in this particular case. There's not a single example of a culture top-down deciding to move a certain way and successfully changing prevailing mores in the intended direction. We could have a 100% veridical Shapley estimate of all the factors in order of importance and effect size, and probably still couldn't act on it.
I personally think it's going to require a technological leap forward to move the needle - either gengineering raising male standards overall, or uterine replicators or transgenic pigs allowing us to take the physical burden of pregnancy away and allow anyone who wants to reproduce to reproduce regardless of gender, or something else along those lines.
For now, I blame it on men because they're the ones complaining, for the most part, and it just seems extremely obvious on its face why the average woman might want to opt out of relationships entirely with the average man, and that this isn't a symmetric feeling due to the respective costs and benefits on both sides.
Broadly, in Robin's narrative, the costs are high and the benefits low from the male side, and you don't blame a savvy consumer for not buying under those conditions. So the ones offering shoddy goods for a high price are the ones to blame when those transactions aren't happening.
You seem to have this odd notion sex is a team partnership of equals. It's generally not. This modern neo puritan idea of romantic empowered sex is a plague on modern happiness and fertility. Normative sex is pro forma, functional, or transactional, not sure why that truism has gotten distorted.
I'm not convinced most women wouldn't benefit from partnering up with a similarly tiered man. Given the social sciences bias, I doubt any finding that women don't benefit, without actually reading the paper and the methodology myself (feel free to link), especially as it is currently in vogue to hate on men (e.g., see the many online articles about the burden and embarrassment of being a straight woman).
I think one of the issues is that a lot of women's experiences of men are coloured by casual sex with men who aren't actually interested in them. These women are having sex with men who are 'above them' in status.
This dynamic has two issues: i) it gives women a falsely high standard of men in terms of their attractiveness (e.g., looks wealth, etc...) and ii) it gives women a falsely low standard of men in terms of their commitment and compassion, as they are interacting with men who are only interested in them for sex.
They're not, though, is the thing. There's a large supply / demand mismatch on either end.
To a first approximation, essentially every man wants sex with women, and grade on a bell curve in terms of desirability, and a lot of women simply do not reciprocate.
Women famously grade pass / fail, with 80% of men failing:
This ends in things like "the top 78% of women are fighting over the top 20% of men" on dating apps, women swiping on only 5% of profiles, and more.
If the demand isn't there on one end, but is on the other, you are always going to have a mismatch like this, and this argues that the actual truth of the matter is that the average woman IS more desirable than the average man.
I'm just not at all convinced that men demanding women more innately is true.
I think women are more conformist, and so if society tells them that men are good and being in a relationship is good they will gladly do so (and female demand for men will be high) while if society demonizes men and says that almost all relationships are bad (as you are doing) then they will avoid relationships.
Men are also socially influenced (e.g., men going their own way) but to a far lesser degree.
For a counter example to men desiring women more, look at ancient greek culture where the pervading view was that women were far more into sex than men, and that men found this desire a bother.
" the actual truth of the matter is that the average woman IS more desirable than the average man."
I suppose that you are saying that if men are willing to have sex with a women she's desirable, but as Lenny Bruce pointed out, guys will have sex with mud. Maybe it isn't that women are more desirable per se, just that men are less selective.
But that's because men and women traditionally wanted different things from each other. Sure, he might have an ugly mug and an awful smell, but he'd still be an essential part of keeping a household afloat. Nowadays a woman can easily do that part by herself and face no social opprobrium (the opposite is more likely, if anything), so the dating market has mostly degenerated into a casual sex market, and there women of course hold all the advantages (until their "best before" date, an important but often-omitted qualifier).
Yeah, but who said it had to be a hot take? All this stuff is pretty well supported in the data, and you find the same trends worldwide, basically directly correlated with female education and ability to get jobs.
Women don't just need intercourse. Ovulation only happens once in a month. But cuddling and a friendly shoulder is nice to have. You can't get that from a pet, because the pet won't earn 100k$/year for you. Nor will it be able to provide you with kids.
> You can't get that from a pet, because the pet won't earn 100k$/year for you.
Yeah, but neither will anyone but the top 20% of men, either - and lo and behold, those have 80-90% marriage rates!
And kids are obviously on the decline in every developed country - both total maternity rate and total fertility rate. So obv less of a priority for a lot of women?
Women care much less about sex than men and even if they do they can masturbate just like men or find sex extremely easily and cheaply unless they look extremely bad.
Sex was never a reason for most women to mate.
Then you talk about women in general when actually you are describing the portion of women that are feminists in well paying cushy bullshit job.
Of course they don’t care about mating they are getting paid for the easiest work one could think of, it’s basically an amusement park for them (they get to group, gossip and stuff while getting free status, how convenient).
In practice they create very little value and in fact most of the time cost efficiency and create trouble.
Otherwise the women at the bottom are still trying to mate and are hanging to the few men who accept them dearly. They are already poor as is and have to do real boring, tiring work. If you talk to them about feminist rethoric they will tell you to fuck off.
Similarly the women at the top are smart enough to understand the benefits of long term partnering (aka mariage, kinda necessary if you wanna have kids) and they would rather not have their education wasted to some bullshit that is guaranteed to give poor long term outcomes to their children (yes they still want those, they are not brain dead).
What’s more if women are so good alone, why is it that they keep asking me for shit when I specifically try to avoid them.
In the real world women actually do very little and are very much dependent on men. Even when they try to pretend they are « girl bossing » stuff like home improvement, they systematically find a way to trick a poor soul to « help » them and he ends doing all the work.
And you seem to be arguing that it is men that have issues with how it’s going. This is not the case, men are venting about women’s behavior but it’s women complaining about not being able to find « a good man ».
Men care about sex and it has never been easier regardless of their « rating ».
The reality is that it’s mostly the average delusional entitled woman that is problematic. Because of how genetics works in females it is a very large group because they end up being very clustered around the average in most characteristics.
They can only afford their delusions because we have been rich enough to allocate them a lot of them for not much value. However economic reality may impose itself sooner than later, probably in Europe first. Feminism will become extremely unpopular out of necessity and marriage will become more desirable. There is nothing like sharing ressources when you are poor.
In fact you can see this is already happening in the younger generations who are de facto poorer for various reasons.
9 minutes? Astonishing, if true. Based on my experience, I'd think it would be at least 30 minutes. And increasing with age, because men lose that "hair trigger" effect as they get older.
On your sex thing, it's because sex isn't freely given generally hence why give the affective prostitute an orgasm? I'd bet there is a direct correlation between male effort and cost.
Ergo if I'm paying, why do I care beyond 45 seconds.
Except that for some of us, the woman's expression of pleasure is itself a huge intensifier of our pleasure. Not to mention, the journey being more fun than the arrival,
Of course. Men often pay prostitutes as well in an selfish attempt to "give them an orgasm" as a way to establish a sense of self worth but ultimately it's the same thing, it's you attempting to second party masturbate even if that takes an intermediate route of the allusion of their pleasure as well.
Nor is the journey more fun unless the journey is the intent hence the huge market for ED aids and aphrodisiacs; "blue balls" isn't something most men aim for nor is it celebrated nor is bilateral fun the only objective for sex, or even I daresay, the normative case for it. Not everyone wants nor has the time for performative sex as a routine matter, not ever race is a marathon. Sometimes you just want a quick release and why bother yourself when you can find a self cleaning "partner" to do it for you; effective glory holes have long existed in all cultures. I'm assuming you have been in a relationship, IDK about you but most men I know quit masturbating at that point because they have someone next to them; and most women I know, and all I have been in relationship, get upset if you do it yourself rather than use them as it's an affront to their own sense of worth.
If I wake up at 3 am horny, my girlfriend doesn't want me to bother waking her up and going on a twenty minute journey with her on a work night when all I want is a thirty seconds and all she wants is sleep. Lube, pop, sleep; takes less time that getting up to pee and everyone happy.
If men have more bargaining power (by virtue of having more coordination power), this would help explain why historically gender relations were unbalanced against women
The data you cite: "Women were more likely to rate male targets as more desirable when presented alongside a female while no obvious effects were detected with male choice." How does the following follow from that: "men have a big advantage re this status strategy, as how much other men respect a man counts a lot more to women than how much other women respect a woman counts to men." Presumably if women are more likely to display MCC, then they have more of an ability to coordinate.
Actually, if women think of woman A* as promiscuous, it would definitely lower the chances of man B marrying her. Particularly if man B were high status.
It seems to me that both men and women have recently shifted their priorities to win respect from their own sex and try less overtly hard to impress the opposite sex. Men's advantage might come from sincerely not caring which woman wins status fights with other women, but woman do somewhat prefer the men that have high status with men.
Don't men have a larger interest in reducing promiscuity of their mates, at least over evolutionary time? For a man, determining parentage of children is not easy, and absent norms to limit female promiscuity, men are less likely to want to invest in their mate and potential offspring.
To be clear, this is not my idea. It's a prevalent idea in evolutionary psychology.
Yeahbbut...is this the proper comparison? A henpecked man is pathetic to both genders, because he is submissive and does not stand up for himself. A promiscuous woman is very appealing to men, even the ones who foreswear promiscuity. Even an upstanding Baptist preacher wants nookie, at some level. This seems apples-to-oranges.
I think the proper comparison is between a henpecked man and, for example, a morbidly obese woman. Or a woman who doesn't shave her legs. Or, compare the promiscuous woman with a male "player", meaning a guy who eschews intimacy for "body count".
Women's standing with respect to other women strongly affects their access to help caring for children. Many men pretend not to care about a woman's standing, but in practice seem to treat the women I know who aren't playing the intrasexual status game as sexually invisible, so they are in fact responsive to this incentive, even if IMO they're using a poor proxy that misses some high-value options.
Until artificial wombs, uploads, or other similar innovations become practical, the TOTAL reproductive success of men HAS to equal the TOTAL reproductive success of women. Therefore, women as a class have identical evolutionary interests to men as a class. Any transfer from men to women, or from women to men, that harms aggregate reproductive success, is bad for men AND women, and vice versa.
Elite women may have divergent interests from elite men. Elites tend to speak as though they were the only people. The less privileged imitate them. I think the framing of this article suffers from the resulting confusion.
The real adversarial negotiation can't possibly be between men in general and women in general, but some men and some women can enact the drama of an adversarial negotiation as a disinformation tactic to confuse, invalidate, and marginalize individuals trying to negotiate in good faith: https://benjaminrosshoffman.com/the-drama-of-the-hegelian-dialectic/
There's an equally good argument that *women* have the gender-war advantage. Women can effectively shame men by calling them "incel losers" and diminish their prospects, but men can't effectively shame women by calling them "feminist harpies" nearly as effectively. A few men are likely to break ranks to date the "feminist harpies" if they are otherwise desirable; the reverse is not as true.
I suspect the effect I describe is stronger. "when men look down on hen-pecked men, those men look bad in both male and female eyes" -- Given the choice between dating a man who is insulted by men as a "white-knight simp", and dating a man who is insulted by women as a "incel loser", I suspect women would prefer the former. He sounds more caring and more attractive.
Only in the West where sex work laws have become strengthen, expansive, and militantly enforced to include on simple dating. Women are only able to do this because they maintain a cartel that successful men rightly in self interest maintain to keep their harems intact. There are no incels when you can rent a girl or buy a wife.
Not just women, but all people, care more about men’s opinions; not just men, but all people, care less about women’s opinions. This is because men are the dominant gender. So I do not think you have provided an explanation of gender relations. But you have pointed out one particular respect in which women’s position is inferior.
Yep, child support is paid on a diminishing scale per kid with the same father. The way you maximize it is one kid per man hence yeah, they do extremely well with men.
We have standards, we want someone to want us. Men don't denigrate women with lots of children, that's a feminist trope. Men denigrate women with lots of kids on welfare because if we have to raise another man's kids, we should at least get one out of it too.
Men denigrate all women for literally everything including just being women lol you think we don’t hear that shit? You know everyone can listen on the internet right, you assholes are having these conversations in the open now.
Simplifying a lot, men are mostly looking for qualities that are specific to a woman: Kindness, appearance, intelligence, fertility, and so on.
Women seek protection and resources, which depend on a man's qualities but importantly also diffuse factors like his place in society and his relationships with others.
If there's a gender war "advantage" here I wouldn't see it as for men overall, but rather for higher-status men who use these social factors to disadvantage other men in the eyes of women. Often such men have multiple female partners – as multiple wives if laws allow it, or via serial monogamy or extramarital affairs.
Women do not seek resources in a world where we work and often make more money than male partners. Single (never-married) women are buying more houses than men now. And we don’t really need protection if we are trained in self-defense and how to use a gun properly. Isn’t it somehow ironic that we “need” a man to protect us from other men? What does that say about men as a sex?
People who study these things find a few essentially universal trends across cultures: That women tend to prefer men who are at least their equals in income and education, and that men care about these things far less.
As you point out this preference isn't fully rational in certain parts of the modern world, where women have access to resources and protection without need of men. Yet the preference structure remains. We humans carry a lot of historical baggage that is poorly adapted to our present condition. You point out another – the male tendency to solve problems with violence.
BS. Women still want men's resources so they can make an even bigger safety net. Why spend your own money when you can spend someone elses like a proper sex worker.
I don’t know. I lived a fairly promiscuous life in my teens and 20s (hello, bipolar)! And yet I still ended up married to a wonderful liberal man who loves, respects, and treats me as the equal partner that I am. And young women (at least the ones I know, are done with the slut-shaming). They’d rather be celibate and sell their bodies online than to be with any man who thinks he deserves a submissive virgin who will stay at home, clean his house (because of course it’s his, not hers), and raise his children while he goes to work during the day and sits on his ass at night!
Women want simple things. We want equal partnership. We want to be able to work outside of the home and function as a team with our partners when we get home. And if we DO stay home to raise children, we expect a man who works outside of the home to help when he comes home because a SAHM’s work is 24/7. She doesn’t get paid, she doesn’t get vacations, she doesn’t sick time, and she NEVER gets a raise.
If men can’t provide that, I have a strong feeling that women (in the Western World at least) will just check out of marrying and birthing altogether and white men will have to cry about “race extinction.” I mean, do you have any idea of how many women were sterilized after Roe v. Wade in the U.S. was overturned? NONE of the young women I see on any social media post where men are complaining about women are buying what these hateful jerks are saying. They just affirm to themselves and each other that those attitudes are why they’re not interested in marriage and babies any longer.
My post did not speak to any of the issues you are talking about here. How exactly do you think your complaints here are going to get you better offers in the mating marketplace?
I don’t need any better offers in the mating marketplace. I am happily married to a man who knows I’m his equal and who values my intellect, ambition, and drive just as much as he values my more typically “feminine” qualities. I’m talking about what YOUNG women are saying. And I don’t blame them one bit. I’d be fed up with today’s young men as well. Women have evolved and (far too many) men have failed to follow. Young women aren’t interested in going back to the 1950s or earlier. They are planning to just stay single, or, if they are bisexual, to enter into relationships only with other women. Lest we forget, women are FAR more sexually fluid than men. The only way young women are going back in time is if men literally use violence to force them.
Assuming what you've said here is true, it feels more likely that you found a guy DESPITE promiscuity rather than BECAUSE. (Btw, no complaints on the promiscuity - good for you! )
Also, no one is forcing anyone to do anything here, lol. Prof Hanson is legit asking questions.
Yeah, it does seem that the sexes are largely incompatible given liberal post-industrial conditions. The question remains, whether the eventual outcome is a technologically-enabled divergence, or extinction and replacement by Taliban.
Lol the first time I meet a woman that wants a equal partnership has never been born. Even above you clearly stated your superiority to men. Maybe HE wants to stay home and get drunk at the pool while Filipinos raise your kids why YOU work, see hoe you didn't give him that option.
Also no idea what race has to do with anything in this. In the West TFR is plummeting across all races and whites aren't suffering the most from it even. Far East Asian male birth rates are abysmal in the West for example.
Also most women aren't virtue signalling social media stars. I have Zoomer daughters in college and all they talk about is boys as do all their friends. They all pretend to be feminists but then go home and cry themselves to sleep nobody likes them while their roommates is running trains.
I don't get the impression there is anything wrong with today's young men (other than problems wrong with youth in general). I think they suffer, but I don't think they have massive moral failings. What do you think is so wrong with them?
I find so much of feminist discourse so ungrounded. For example, most people do not enjoy working. Most people work to live. They don't live to work. And yet, feminist discourse often presents the idea of being a stay-at-home mum as this horrible horrible imposition rather than one of the nicest things to do.
What is nicer than creating a lovely home and caring for the ones you love? That is soo so much nicer than the vast majority of most 9 to 5s. If you see that as oppression, them I am sorry, you seem like a misanthrope to me.
As Robin Hanson oft eludes to, Western culture (and I'd argue most modern culture) is becoming degenerate and non-adaptive, and I think this general casting of healthy loving relationships as opression is just one small instance of that.
Fyi, just as an aside, I think you'd prefer white men's norms regarding women over most men's norms (e.g., muslims actively banning women from education). It is this insane luxury belief to be anti white.
Also, lest you forget, women have ALWAYS worked. The 1950s in America was the ONLY time in history where WHITE middle-class women didn’t work. Because poor women and women of color ALWAYS worked. Especially in the South, those special white ladies still needed their toilets cleaned and their food cooked for them.
Heck, both of my WHITE grandmothers (both born in the early 1920s) worked! One was widowed very young and needed to work to feed her 7 children and the other worked in a cannery and then became a nurse—by HER choice. My grandfather who survived supported her in that choice. Why? Because he loved his wife and wanted to see her dreams come true for her.
I am glad your grandfather supported his wife. I think the vast majority of westerners would agree.
I don't understand who you are arguing so vehemently with. Who thinks that women should not be free to work? It's not a position I ever see anyone advocate for.
My point is that I don't think *needing* to work is a privilege. Historically men were expected to provide, and they are either hardwired or socially conditioned to do so.
For example, statistically men make trade-offs in their lives to enable high earnings (e.g., moving city, long commutes, applying for many jobs), and when you control for these variables the gender pay gap reverses.
In general, I am quite confused by your position. Are you a female chauvinist? You seem to believe that women are superior to men (e.g., more clever more hard working).
I was raised by conservative Christians and groomed to be a stay-at-home wife and mother. Even at 6-7 years old I knew it was a bad deal that I did not want. I was smarter than the boys around me so why should I let my brain rot at home just to change diapers, cook, and do laundry? I KNEW with every ounce of my being that I could NEVER be happy in such an arrangement. And so I rejected it. I did become a young mom (oops!) but my daughter’s father and I BOTH furthered our education. He became a surgical technologist and I ultimately became a lawyer. And our daughter has worked since she was 18. In fact, she works at the same hospital as her father doing patient registration. She’s had that job for almost 20 years. Her husband also works. My grandson is the kindest, most polite, and most well-behaved middle schooler I’ve ever known.
When you respect and support women, not only will they respect and support you, but so will your children. And you’ll help to create better men.
Feminism won. Women aren’t going back. You’ll have to use violence if you think you can make us. And many of us would rather die than waste our talents, our intellect, our ambition, and our dreams so we can stay at home all day doing drudgery.
What do you mean by feminism? There have been several waves of feminism and often feminists strongly disagree (e.g., anti-sex Vs pro-sex feminism).
I don't think anyone is anti the suffragettes, and I like to think that in the west we are overwhelming in favour of female liberty and female opportunity (e.g., access to education).
The only feminism I would object to is the inegalitarian type. Unfortunately this type is much of the modern feminism that you find in western media (the type that likes demonizing men). It is pretty moronic and often factually straight-up false. The kind of feminism that treats men outperforming women as a call to action but then celebrates women outperforming men is obviously deeply unequitable and unmeritocratic.
Example of inegalitarian feminism: main street news papers rabidly defending Amber Heard despite her obviously being the abuser. Example: r/female dating strategy, etc...
By feminism I mean feminism. First, I mean intersectional concern for female equality in any and all aspects of life. By extension, and with the knowledge that we ALL “perform” our gender differently, I mean protection for women as a gender in all aspects of life. The ONLY reason ANYONE (and no, SOME is not ALL feminists) cheer when women outperform men is because at every step of the way in women’s quest for equality, the majority of men have opposed our ability to compete in the first place.
Not all feminists defended Amber Heard. And there was MUTUAL abuse in that relationship—she just paid the price because, well, because he’s Johnny Depp. I mean, I had a crush on him as a teenager when he was just a young 20-something!
I don't think you can just say "feminism." Feminism is a massive group, with diverse ideologies, and they do strongly strongly disagree.
I also don't believe I said all feminists do anything. As said, they are a diverse group, and anyone can opt to label themselves a feminist.
If by feminism you mean a lobby group for women's interests then ofc that depends on the case (e.g., I am not in favour of men being slaves to women, even if the policy serves women's interests).
If by feminism you mean egalitarianism with respect to gender, then ofc I am on board with that. But realistically, it should be acknowledged that self-described feminists have a poor track record of this (generally being uninterested in if not explicitly anti men's issues). For example see the Ezra Klein podcast episode "the boys are not alright"
Men the second she said intersectionality you need to just check out. She's either a true believer at the point or a elaborate reddit like troll. Just move on.
And just fyi, you can't be in favour of equalitarinism if and only if it advantages your chosen group. That's just lobbying for your group without any other principles.
I’m not angry at YOU. I’m angry FOR young women. I’m angry that women have had to fight every step of the way to have equal educational opportunities, expanded (and supposedly equal) employment opportunities, the (always-under-threat) ability to live life on our own terms (as men have been able to do since the advent of agriculture and the patriarchal religions), the ability to choose whether and when to reproduce (men have been controlling that ever since they realized they could make money from our reproductive capacity), and the ability to live our lives in the public AND private sphere JUST to have men try to shove them back down into their “proper place” (according to men).
I will fight with my aging body and my loud and angry voice to save young women from the lives that my mother’s generation fought so desperately to escape.
I know you're not angry at me, but thank you for clarifying in case I was confused :)
I just don't think men have actively wanted to supress women. All men have mothers, and all men basically love their mothers, and all daughters have fathers, and are mostly loved by them. I believe most men love their wives.
I just don't think there is this incentive to supress the other gender. I believe the historical gender roles where as they were, not because of some evil conspiracy, but just because of the realities of child birth and household labour, and I am not convinced that the female role was worse than the male one.
As I understand it, the vast majority of both roles really sucked. E.g., men being worked to death in bake houses and dying in war. Etc...
Statistically, women are currently significantly advantaged in the west (e.g., twice as likely to be hired as a professor given the same CV, better educational attainment etc...). I don't think there is injustice to fight there. If anything, men are currently being unfairly selected against (with hiring committees actively prioritising women over more qualified men).
Lol women haven't had to fight jack or squat. Everything they have men have given them and generally against the will of the majority of women. Hell even suffrage was opposed by the majority of women at the time. Get back to me when women conquer a nation, found a government, and grant themselves rights contrary to the wishes of what men have given them out of magnimnity.
The fact you use the word grooming to describe a career men would kill for says a lot here. If your parents wanted you to become a string independent man hating feminist doctor, would you still use grooming? Yes historically grooming had positive conatations but it's pure negative since the 90s.
We do need to creat better men but not in the way you seem to think. MGTOW should be the future now to combat FGTOW, we aren't your pets.
The problem is that YOUNG men are listening to what is being said online (not on TV) about women by violently dangerous toxic men like Andrew Tate, and by intellectually toxic men who provide the pseudo-scientific reasoning for the dangerous and toxic ideas that people like Tate and his sycophants (“podcast bros”) like to spew out into the ether.
And young women read what these guys are saying. They BELIEVE that women are inferior, that they should be submissive virgins, that they should either stay home all day or work outside of the home and still come home and cook, clean, and take care of the children while he “rests.” After all, if he’s worked all day and he’s paying for the house, then she should be grateful!
Are you wholly unaware that these men exist?
Because I can promise you that they are all over social media and their comments are the sole cause for how young women feel about men these days.
I agree Andrew Tate has an audience, but my perspective is he is pretty damn fringe.
The problem is that the mainstream is incredibly sexist towards men (e.g., all the newspaper articles supporting Amber Heard) and so there is a huge demand from men for any voices that are pro the masculine.
The mainstream also demonizes reasonable and earnest voices (e.g., Jordan Peterson, Joe Rogan) and so you get even more push towards misogynistic grifters like Tate.
I still have yet to meet a man who actually holds a belief that women are inferior. I am sure you can find it online (you can find anything online) but it seems exceedingly rare in real life. On the other hand, I have met many women in real life who actively and proudly announce their misandry (and who would likely be social pariahs were the genders flipped).
Andrew Tate is pretty successful, women love him. Generally the more abusive you are as a man, the more successful you'll have in the marketplace. Don't blame Tate here, he's simply reacting to what women want.
Erratum: "Some" takes me to "Effects of Experimental Bot Fly Parasitism on Gonad Weights of Peromyscus maniculatus" https://www.jstor.org/stable/1380025 , which I am guessing is not the intended reference (and I can't guess what is because you didn't provide anything but a link).
Sorry, links are fixed.
I also don't see how the second link, to "Like father, like self: emotional closeness to father predicts women's preferences for self-resemblance in opposite-sex faces" https://gwern.net/doc/psychology/man-hands/2011-watkins.pdf , supports your claim "how much other men respect a man counts a lot more to women than how much other women respect a woman counts to men". None of the questions seem to bear on the father being respected by other men?
Ok, I deleted that second link from the post.
An interesting take. I wonder if you miss the forest for one particular tree though, as currently women seem far far more vocal in their critique of men than men in their critique of women.
A take I often see is that complaining is unattractive in men, but appealing/neutral in women. Hence, women find it easier to coordinate to belittle the other gender.
Women seem to think they can be casually sexist and misandrist, without any downsides. While men seem to fear being sexist and misogynist quite strongly. At least that is my experience of young people at university.
I think, in reality, both genders are harmed by being sexist (as either way it vastly limits your options for a kind and loving partner), but it definitely seems mainstream to be anti-men, and almost completely taboo to be anti-women in polite society.
Yes women complain more about men than vice versa, but what exactly is this getting them in mating negotiations?
Unhappiness, I think.
And yet some women still do it. But presumably they do it because they believe it is advantageous. Certainly some men pursue that route of uncritically internalising female critique (and other men shame these men, as you describe).
How does your logic apply to coordination? It seems there is a strong incentive to defect from ones gender for personally better odds (e.g., being 'pick me').
I mean, the polite society doesn't recognize that "misandrist" is a coherent notion, similarly to how it's impossible to be racist against whites, so men in good standing are also supposed to be misan-, ahem, feminist. And yeah, ideas like this being widespread is how you end up with half the country hating the other half and Trump in charge, but no sane memetically competitive alternative has emerged yet.
Speaking in code?
huh?
"So men can more easily, compared to women, coordinate to demand higher prices for what they sell, and lower prices for what they buy. Maybe this can help explain historical gender norms." reads as very cryptic to me, speaking only to people who know what you are inferring.
Not Robin, but here's my best shot at a quick explainer:
In the 50's, in more traditional gender norm times, ~85% of men got married and had kids.
Today, only the top 20% of men have 80-90% marriage rates. The bottom 50% of men get 20-50% marriage rates.
This is because women are able to get jobs and support themselves, so don't need to put up with median men anymore, because they can just get pets if they're lonely and watch Netflix or Tik Tok, which is vastly more entertaining and fun than spending time with men.
On that front - did you know the median "inter-ejaculatory latency time" for hetero sex is a mere 9 minutes? And that even young couples in their twenties average sex about once every 4-10 days? How on *earth* is ANY woman supposed to get off in that regime??
I'm just putting this little tidbit here to point out that the benefits women get from a relationship with a median guy are *extremely* limited. Basically you get 9 minutes of awful, completely selfish sex that has zero chance of getting you off every week or so. In return, you get a giant man baby who expects you to cook for him and do his laundry and dishes. The woman benefits in this transaction...how?
So long story short, marriage and fertility is plummeting because women have always graded male attractiveness pass / fail, with 80% failing, and now they have much better alternatives like Tik Tok and pets to fill their time with:
https://imgur.com/mTsnQMZ
But the historical gender norms (say up to the 1970's) were when even median men, even men down to the *15th percentile* were able to dupe some poor woman into marrying and having kids with them!
I think that's what Robin means when he points to historical gender norms being vastly favorable to men, a sign that they had more coordination and bargaining power.
On the sex facts, I wrote a post about that if anyone is interested:
https://performativebafflement.substack.com/p/sex-much-more-than-you-wanted-to?r=17hw9h
Why blame it on men? There doesn't seem to be any evidence that men cause the infrequent sex. It could equally well be that women are disinterested in sex, and hence couples are not having much sex. Or that our antisex culture is generally leading many to have unsatisfying sex lives.
There's a massive bias in the social sciences to interpret data in favour of women. It's truly crazy and deeply unscientific and deeply unequitable. If you care about gender relations, if you care about women, you should care about the truth, and not just find ways to interpret data in favour of women looking good.
For example, I once read a paper describing how on average men estimate women's interest in sex as being far higher than women's reported desire for sex. The initial paper interpreted this data in the standard "men are terrible" framing, interpreting that men must be idiotic creeps who overestimate women's desire. In a rare instance of good science, separate authors showed that if you incentize women to be truthful (offering a monetary incentive) and ask them to estimate other women's desires then the male and female estimates match. That is, women underreport and men estimate accurately.
> Why blame it on men? There doesn't seem to be any evidence that men cause the infrequent sex.
True - it's likely multiply confounded. There's at least correlational evidence that women's desire might be less because of the male median performance baseline, I touch on that in the post, but it's likely a result of multiple things.
I think also that there's decent evidence that just like neuroticism, men and women come from different sexual desire baselines, and the male baseline is just intrinsically higher.
I realize that isn't aligned with the study you're mentioning - if you find it, I'd be interested in reading it.
> There's a massive bias in the social sciences to interpret data in favour of women. It's truly crazy and deeply unscientific and deeply unequitable.
Yes, I agree that this is undoubtedly true as well. Academia has well-known biases on this front and in this direction, and studies that set out to find anything that slants against them are largely never undertaken, and if such results are found, are less published and / or reinterpreted.
But a lot of the stuff I was talking about was purely observational and narrative, not based on studies. To my knowledge, there aren't any studies done on whether or to what extent Tik Tok or Netflix is rivalrous with male company, it's just a "Mark 1 eyeball" observational take when you look at how people spend their time.
Ultimately, the raw facts of declining dating, pairing, marriage, and fertility across the world are what they are, and are likely driven by a whole host of factors, which would be impossible to narrate in a coherent and tidy form.
You say we should be dedicated to the truth, and I agree - I just think the truth isn't going to do much for us in this particular case. There's not a single example of a culture top-down deciding to move a certain way and successfully changing prevailing mores in the intended direction. We could have a 100% veridical Shapley estimate of all the factors in order of importance and effect size, and probably still couldn't act on it.
I personally think it's going to require a technological leap forward to move the needle - either gengineering raising male standards overall, or uterine replicators or transgenic pigs allowing us to take the physical burden of pregnancy away and allow anyone who wants to reproduce to reproduce regardless of gender, or something else along those lines.
For now, I blame it on men because they're the ones complaining, for the most part, and it just seems extremely obvious on its face why the average woman might want to opt out of relationships entirely with the average man, and that this isn't a symmetric feeling due to the respective costs and benefits on both sides.
Broadly, in Robin's narrative, the costs are high and the benefits low from the male side, and you don't blame a savvy consumer for not buying under those conditions. So the ones offering shoddy goods for a high price are the ones to blame when those transactions aren't happening.
You seem to have this odd notion sex is a team partnership of equals. It's generally not. This modern neo puritan idea of romantic empowered sex is a plague on modern happiness and fertility. Normative sex is pro forma, functional, or transactional, not sure why that truism has gotten distorted.
I'm not convinced most women wouldn't benefit from partnering up with a similarly tiered man. Given the social sciences bias, I doubt any finding that women don't benefit, without actually reading the paper and the methodology myself (feel free to link), especially as it is currently in vogue to hate on men (e.g., see the many online articles about the burden and embarrassment of being a straight woman).
I think one of the issues is that a lot of women's experiences of men are coloured by casual sex with men who aren't actually interested in them. These women are having sex with men who are 'above them' in status.
This dynamic has two issues: i) it gives women a falsely high standard of men in terms of their attractiveness (e.g., looks wealth, etc...) and ii) it gives women a falsely low standard of men in terms of their commitment and compassion, as they are interacting with men who are only interested in them for sex.
Why do you have such a negative view of the median man? I would imagine the median woman and the median man are similar in what they offer.
They're not, though, is the thing. There's a large supply / demand mismatch on either end.
To a first approximation, essentially every man wants sex with women, and grade on a bell curve in terms of desirability, and a lot of women simply do not reciprocate.
Women famously grade pass / fail, with 80% of men failing:
https://imgur.com/mTsnQMZ
This ends in things like "the top 78% of women are fighting over the top 20% of men" on dating apps, women swiping on only 5% of profiles, and more.
If the demand isn't there on one end, but is on the other, you are always going to have a mismatch like this, and this argues that the actual truth of the matter is that the average woman IS more desirable than the average man.
I'm just not at all convinced that men demanding women more innately is true.
I think women are more conformist, and so if society tells them that men are good and being in a relationship is good they will gladly do so (and female demand for men will be high) while if society demonizes men and says that almost all relationships are bad (as you are doing) then they will avoid relationships.
Men are also socially influenced (e.g., men going their own way) but to a far lesser degree.
For a counter example to men desiring women more, look at ancient greek culture where the pervading view was that women were far more into sex than men, and that men found this desire a bother.
" the actual truth of the matter is that the average woman IS more desirable than the average man."
I suppose that you are saying that if men are willing to have sex with a women she's desirable, but as Lenny Bruce pointed out, guys will have sex with mud. Maybe it isn't that women are more desirable per se, just that men are less selective.
But that's because men and women traditionally wanted different things from each other. Sure, he might have an ugly mug and an awful smell, but he'd still be an essential part of keeping a household afloat. Nowadays a woman can easily do that part by herself and face no social opprobrium (the opposite is more likely, if anything), so the dating market has mostly degenerated into a casual sex market, and there women of course hold all the advantages (until their "best before" date, an important but often-omitted qualifier).
"The patriarchy could more easily assert its authority when it had a greater economic monopoly" wouldn't exactly be a hot take
Yeah, but who said it had to be a hot take? All this stuff is pretty well supported in the data, and you find the same trends worldwide, basically directly correlated with female education and ability to get jobs.
I said it was coded. The post doesn't clearly convey what it is advocating for
So by gender norms is he primarily referring to women not being allowed to work?
Women don't just need intercourse. Ovulation only happens once in a month. But cuddling and a friendly shoulder is nice to have. You can't get that from a pet, because the pet won't earn 100k$/year for you. Nor will it be able to provide you with kids.
> You can't get that from a pet, because the pet won't earn 100k$/year for you.
Yeah, but neither will anyone but the top 20% of men, either - and lo and behold, those have 80-90% marriage rates!
And kids are obviously on the decline in every developed country - both total maternity rate and total fertility rate. So obv less of a priority for a lot of women?
First you are being facetious on the sex part.
Women care much less about sex than men and even if they do they can masturbate just like men or find sex extremely easily and cheaply unless they look extremely bad.
Sex was never a reason for most women to mate.
Then you talk about women in general when actually you are describing the portion of women that are feminists in well paying cushy bullshit job.
Of course they don’t care about mating they are getting paid for the easiest work one could think of, it’s basically an amusement park for them (they get to group, gossip and stuff while getting free status, how convenient).
In practice they create very little value and in fact most of the time cost efficiency and create trouble.
Otherwise the women at the bottom are still trying to mate and are hanging to the few men who accept them dearly. They are already poor as is and have to do real boring, tiring work. If you talk to them about feminist rethoric they will tell you to fuck off.
Similarly the women at the top are smart enough to understand the benefits of long term partnering (aka mariage, kinda necessary if you wanna have kids) and they would rather not have their education wasted to some bullshit that is guaranteed to give poor long term outcomes to their children (yes they still want those, they are not brain dead).
What’s more if women are so good alone, why is it that they keep asking me for shit when I specifically try to avoid them.
In the real world women actually do very little and are very much dependent on men. Even when they try to pretend they are « girl bossing » stuff like home improvement, they systematically find a way to trick a poor soul to « help » them and he ends doing all the work.
And you seem to be arguing that it is men that have issues with how it’s going. This is not the case, men are venting about women’s behavior but it’s women complaining about not being able to find « a good man ».
Men care about sex and it has never been easier regardless of their « rating ».
The reality is that it’s mostly the average delusional entitled woman that is problematic. Because of how genetics works in females it is a very large group because they end up being very clustered around the average in most characteristics.
They can only afford their delusions because we have been rich enough to allocate them a lot of them for not much value. However economic reality may impose itself sooner than later, probably in Europe first. Feminism will become extremely unpopular out of necessity and marriage will become more desirable. There is nothing like sharing ressources when you are poor.
In fact you can see this is already happening in the younger generations who are de facto poorer for various reasons.
9 minutes? Astonishing, if true. Based on my experience, I'd think it would be at least 30 minutes. And increasing with age, because men lose that "hair trigger" effect as they get older.
Oh, I know, when I first read Spiegelhalter's book my jaw was dropped. 40 minutes is literally a 1-in-1k performance!
Everything suddenly became clear to me - no wonder women are opting out of dating and marriage at record rates! 😂
On your sex thing, it's because sex isn't freely given generally hence why give the affective prostitute an orgasm? I'd bet there is a direct correlation between male effort and cost.
Ergo if I'm paying, why do I care beyond 45 seconds.
Except that for some of us, the woman's expression of pleasure is itself a huge intensifier of our pleasure. Not to mention, the journey being more fun than the arrival,
Of course. Men often pay prostitutes as well in an selfish attempt to "give them an orgasm" as a way to establish a sense of self worth but ultimately it's the same thing, it's you attempting to second party masturbate even if that takes an intermediate route of the allusion of their pleasure as well.
Nor is the journey more fun unless the journey is the intent hence the huge market for ED aids and aphrodisiacs; "blue balls" isn't something most men aim for nor is it celebrated nor is bilateral fun the only objective for sex, or even I daresay, the normative case for it. Not everyone wants nor has the time for performative sex as a routine matter, not ever race is a marathon. Sometimes you just want a quick release and why bother yourself when you can find a self cleaning "partner" to do it for you; effective glory holes have long existed in all cultures. I'm assuming you have been in a relationship, IDK about you but most men I know quit masturbating at that point because they have someone next to them; and most women I know, and all I have been in relationship, get upset if you do it yourself rather than use them as it's an affront to their own sense of worth.
If I wake up at 3 am horny, my girlfriend doesn't want me to bother waking her up and going on a twenty minute journey with her on a work night when all I want is a thirty seconds and all she wants is sleep. Lube, pop, sleep; takes less time that getting up to pee and everyone happy.
https://carlsonschool.umn.edu/sites/carlsonschool.umn.edu/files/2019-04/baumeister_et_al_2017_j_econ_psych_competing_for_love-_applying_sexual_economics_theory_to_mating_contests_1.pdf
Thanks but still don't know how it helps explain historical gender norms.
If men have more bargaining power (by virtue of having more coordination power), this would help explain why historically gender relations were unbalanced against women
The coordination power seems massively dwarfed by economic power, right?
The data you cite: "Women were more likely to rate male targets as more desirable when presented alongside a female while no obvious effects were detected with male choice." How does the following follow from that: "men have a big advantage re this status strategy, as how much other men respect a man counts a lot more to women than how much other women respect a woman counts to men." Presumably if women are more likely to display MCC, then they have more of an ability to coordinate.
Actually, if women think of woman A* as promiscuous, it would definitely lower the chances of man B marrying her. Particularly if man B were high status.
It seems to me that both men and women have recently shifted their priorities to win respect from their own sex and try less overtly hard to impress the opposite sex. Men's advantage might come from sincerely not caring which woman wins status fights with other women, but woman do somewhat prefer the men that have high status with men.
Don't men have a larger interest in reducing promiscuity of their mates, at least over evolutionary time? For a man, determining parentage of children is not easy, and absent norms to limit female promiscuity, men are less likely to want to invest in their mate and potential offspring.
To be clear, this is not my idea. It's a prevalent idea in evolutionary psychology.
Yeahbbut...is this the proper comparison? A henpecked man is pathetic to both genders, because he is submissive and does not stand up for himself. A promiscuous woman is very appealing to men, even the ones who foreswear promiscuity. Even an upstanding Baptist preacher wants nookie, at some level. This seems apples-to-oranges.
I think the proper comparison is between a henpecked man and, for example, a morbidly obese woman. Or a woman who doesn't shave her legs. Or, compare the promiscuous woman with a male "player", meaning a guy who eschews intimacy for "body count".
Women's standing with respect to other women strongly affects their access to help caring for children. Many men pretend not to care about a woman's standing, but in practice seem to treat the women I know who aren't playing the intrasexual status game as sexually invisible, so they are in fact responsive to this incentive, even if IMO they're using a poor proxy that misses some high-value options.
Until artificial wombs, uploads, or other similar innovations become practical, the TOTAL reproductive success of men HAS to equal the TOTAL reproductive success of women. Therefore, women as a class have identical evolutionary interests to men as a class. Any transfer from men to women, or from women to men, that harms aggregate reproductive success, is bad for men AND women, and vice versa.
Elite women may have divergent interests from elite men. Elites tend to speak as though they were the only people. The less privileged imitate them. I think the framing of this article suffers from the resulting confusion.
The real adversarial negotiation can't possibly be between men in general and women in general, but some men and some women can enact the drama of an adversarial negotiation as a disinformation tactic to confuse, invalidate, and marginalize individuals trying to negotiate in good faith: https://benjaminrosshoffman.com/the-drama-of-the-hegelian-dialectic/
There's an equally good argument that *women* have the gender-war advantage. Women can effectively shame men by calling them "incel losers" and diminish their prospects, but men can't effectively shame women by calling them "feminist harpies" nearly as effectively. A few men are likely to break ranks to date the "feminist harpies" if they are otherwise desirable; the reverse is not as true.
I suspect the effect I describe is stronger. "when men look down on hen-pecked men, those men look bad in both male and female eyes" -- Given the choice between dating a man who is insulted by men as a "white-knight simp", and dating a man who is insulted by women as a "incel loser", I suspect women would prefer the former. He sounds more caring and more attractive.
Only in the West where sex work laws have become strengthen, expansive, and militantly enforced to include on simple dating. Women are only able to do this because they maintain a cartel that successful men rightly in self interest maintain to keep their harems intact. There are no incels when you can rent a girl or buy a wife.
Not just women, but all people, care more about men’s opinions; not just men, but all people, care less about women’s opinions. This is because men are the dominant gender. So I do not think you have provided an explanation of gender relations. But you have pointed out one particular respect in which women’s position is inferior.
Women with kids by lots of men do well with men?
Yep, child support is paid on a diminishing scale per kid with the same father. The way you maximize it is one kid per man hence yeah, they do extremely well with men.
But me denigrate women with lots of kids. I’d say the real issue is that women have standards and when you get right down to it, men don’t.
We have standards, we want someone to want us. Men don't denigrate women with lots of children, that's a feminist trope. Men denigrate women with lots of kids on welfare because if we have to raise another man's kids, we should at least get one out of it too.
Men denigrate all women for literally everything including just being women lol you think we don’t hear that shit? You know everyone can listen on the internet right, you assholes are having these conversations in the open now.
Don't confuse virtue signaling with reality.
Vice signalling
Simplifying a lot, men are mostly looking for qualities that are specific to a woman: Kindness, appearance, intelligence, fertility, and so on.
Women seek protection and resources, which depend on a man's qualities but importantly also diffuse factors like his place in society and his relationships with others.
If there's a gender war "advantage" here I wouldn't see it as for men overall, but rather for higher-status men who use these social factors to disadvantage other men in the eyes of women. Often such men have multiple female partners – as multiple wives if laws allow it, or via serial monogamy or extramarital affairs.
Women do not seek resources in a world where we work and often make more money than male partners. Single (never-married) women are buying more houses than men now. And we don’t really need protection if we are trained in self-defense and how to use a gun properly. Isn’t it somehow ironic that we “need” a man to protect us from other men? What does that say about men as a sex?
People who study these things find a few essentially universal trends across cultures: That women tend to prefer men who are at least their equals in income and education, and that men care about these things far less.
As you point out this preference isn't fully rational in certain parts of the modern world, where women have access to resources and protection without need of men. Yet the preference structure remains. We humans carry a lot of historical baggage that is poorly adapted to our present condition. You point out another – the male tendency to solve problems with violence.
BS. Women still want men's resources so they can make an even bigger safety net. Why spend your own money when you can spend someone elses like a proper sex worker.
WHY do women care more about what men think? That factor could explain the gender disparity better.
We don’t.
You do when you are being ignored. Hell hath no fury right lol.
Not the response I was angling towards, but lol.
I don’t know. I lived a fairly promiscuous life in my teens and 20s (hello, bipolar)! And yet I still ended up married to a wonderful liberal man who loves, respects, and treats me as the equal partner that I am. And young women (at least the ones I know, are done with the slut-shaming). They’d rather be celibate and sell their bodies online than to be with any man who thinks he deserves a submissive virgin who will stay at home, clean his house (because of course it’s his, not hers), and raise his children while he goes to work during the day and sits on his ass at night!
Women want simple things. We want equal partnership. We want to be able to work outside of the home and function as a team with our partners when we get home. And if we DO stay home to raise children, we expect a man who works outside of the home to help when he comes home because a SAHM’s work is 24/7. She doesn’t get paid, she doesn’t get vacations, she doesn’t sick time, and she NEVER gets a raise.
If men can’t provide that, I have a strong feeling that women (in the Western World at least) will just check out of marrying and birthing altogether and white men will have to cry about “race extinction.” I mean, do you have any idea of how many women were sterilized after Roe v. Wade in the U.S. was overturned? NONE of the young women I see on any social media post where men are complaining about women are buying what these hateful jerks are saying. They just affirm to themselves and each other that those attitudes are why they’re not interested in marriage and babies any longer.
My post did not speak to any of the issues you are talking about here. How exactly do you think your complaints here are going to get you better offers in the mating marketplace?
I don’t need any better offers in the mating marketplace. I am happily married to a man who knows I’m his equal and who values my intellect, ambition, and drive just as much as he values my more typically “feminine” qualities. I’m talking about what YOUNG women are saying. And I don’t blame them one bit. I’d be fed up with today’s young men as well. Women have evolved and (far too many) men have failed to follow. Young women aren’t interested in going back to the 1950s or earlier. They are planning to just stay single, or, if they are bisexual, to enter into relationships only with other women. Lest we forget, women are FAR more sexually fluid than men. The only way young women are going back in time is if men literally use violence to force them.
Assuming what you've said here is true, it feels more likely that you found a guy DESPITE promiscuity rather than BECAUSE. (Btw, no complaints on the promiscuity - good for you! )
Also, no one is forcing anyone to do anything here, lol. Prof Hanson is legit asking questions.
Yeah, it does seem that the sexes are largely incompatible given liberal post-industrial conditions. The question remains, whether the eventual outcome is a technologically-enabled divergence, or extinction and replacement by Taliban.
Lol the first time I meet a woman that wants a equal partnership has never been born. Even above you clearly stated your superiority to men. Maybe HE wants to stay home and get drunk at the pool while Filipinos raise your kids why YOU work, see hoe you didn't give him that option.
Also no idea what race has to do with anything in this. In the West TFR is plummeting across all races and whites aren't suffering the most from it even. Far East Asian male birth rates are abysmal in the West for example.
Also most women aren't virtue signalling social media stars. I have Zoomer daughters in college and all they talk about is boys as do all their friends. They all pretend to be feminists but then go home and cry themselves to sleep nobody likes them while their roommates is running trains.
I don't get the impression there is anything wrong with today's young men (other than problems wrong with youth in general). I think they suffer, but I don't think they have massive moral failings. What do you think is so wrong with them?
I find so much of feminist discourse so ungrounded. For example, most people do not enjoy working. Most people work to live. They don't live to work. And yet, feminist discourse often presents the idea of being a stay-at-home mum as this horrible horrible imposition rather than one of the nicest things to do.
What is nicer than creating a lovely home and caring for the ones you love? That is soo so much nicer than the vast majority of most 9 to 5s. If you see that as oppression, them I am sorry, you seem like a misanthrope to me.
As Robin Hanson oft eludes to, Western culture (and I'd argue most modern culture) is becoming degenerate and non-adaptive, and I think this general casting of healthy loving relationships as opression is just one small instance of that.
Fyi, just as an aside, I think you'd prefer white men's norms regarding women over most men's norms (e.g., muslims actively banning women from education). It is this insane luxury belief to be anti white.
Also, lest you forget, women have ALWAYS worked. The 1950s in America was the ONLY time in history where WHITE middle-class women didn’t work. Because poor women and women of color ALWAYS worked. Especially in the South, those special white ladies still needed their toilets cleaned and their food cooked for them.
Heck, both of my WHITE grandmothers (both born in the early 1920s) worked! One was widowed very young and needed to work to feed her 7 children and the other worked in a cannery and then became a nurse—by HER choice. My grandfather who survived supported her in that choice. Why? Because he loved his wife and wanted to see her dreams come true for her.
I am glad your grandfather supported his wife. I think the vast majority of westerners would agree.
I don't understand who you are arguing so vehemently with. Who thinks that women should not be free to work? It's not a position I ever see anyone advocate for.
My point is that I don't think *needing* to work is a privilege. Historically men were expected to provide, and they are either hardwired or socially conditioned to do so.
For example, statistically men make trade-offs in their lives to enable high earnings (e.g., moving city, long commutes, applying for many jobs), and when you control for these variables the gender pay gap reverses.
In general, I am quite confused by your position. Are you a female chauvinist? You seem to believe that women are superior to men (e.g., more clever more hard working).
I was raised by conservative Christians and groomed to be a stay-at-home wife and mother. Even at 6-7 years old I knew it was a bad deal that I did not want. I was smarter than the boys around me so why should I let my brain rot at home just to change diapers, cook, and do laundry? I KNEW with every ounce of my being that I could NEVER be happy in such an arrangement. And so I rejected it. I did become a young mom (oops!) but my daughter’s father and I BOTH furthered our education. He became a surgical technologist and I ultimately became a lawyer. And our daughter has worked since she was 18. In fact, she works at the same hospital as her father doing patient registration. She’s had that job for almost 20 years. Her husband also works. My grandson is the kindest, most polite, and most well-behaved middle schooler I’ve ever known.
When you respect and support women, not only will they respect and support you, but so will your children. And you’ll help to create better men.
Feminism won. Women aren’t going back. You’ll have to use violence if you think you can make us. And many of us would rather die than waste our talents, our intellect, our ambition, and our dreams so we can stay at home all day doing drudgery.
It’s equal partners or bust. You guys choose.
What do you mean by feminism? There have been several waves of feminism and often feminists strongly disagree (e.g., anti-sex Vs pro-sex feminism).
I don't think anyone is anti the suffragettes, and I like to think that in the west we are overwhelming in favour of female liberty and female opportunity (e.g., access to education).
The only feminism I would object to is the inegalitarian type. Unfortunately this type is much of the modern feminism that you find in western media (the type that likes demonizing men). It is pretty moronic and often factually straight-up false. The kind of feminism that treats men outperforming women as a call to action but then celebrates women outperforming men is obviously deeply unequitable and unmeritocratic.
Example of inegalitarian feminism: main street news papers rabidly defending Amber Heard despite her obviously being the abuser. Example: r/female dating strategy, etc...
By feminism I mean feminism. First, I mean intersectional concern for female equality in any and all aspects of life. By extension, and with the knowledge that we ALL “perform” our gender differently, I mean protection for women as a gender in all aspects of life. The ONLY reason ANYONE (and no, SOME is not ALL feminists) cheer when women outperform men is because at every step of the way in women’s quest for equality, the majority of men have opposed our ability to compete in the first place.
Not all feminists defended Amber Heard. And there was MUTUAL abuse in that relationship—she just paid the price because, well, because he’s Johnny Depp. I mean, I had a crush on him as a teenager when he was just a young 20-something!
I don't think you can just say "feminism." Feminism is a massive group, with diverse ideologies, and they do strongly strongly disagree.
I also don't believe I said all feminists do anything. As said, they are a diverse group, and anyone can opt to label themselves a feminist.
If by feminism you mean a lobby group for women's interests then ofc that depends on the case (e.g., I am not in favour of men being slaves to women, even if the policy serves women's interests).
If by feminism you mean egalitarianism with respect to gender, then ofc I am on board with that. But realistically, it should be acknowledged that self-described feminists have a poor track record of this (generally being uninterested in if not explicitly anti men's issues). For example see the Ezra Klein podcast episode "the boys are not alright"
Men the second she said intersectionality you need to just check out. She's either a true believer at the point or a elaborate reddit like troll. Just move on.
And just fyi, you can't be in favour of equalitarinism if and only if it advantages your chosen group. That's just lobbying for your group without any other principles.
I don't know why you are so angry.
I have never met a man who actively wants to supress women.
I think you have a very distorted impression of men, perhaps due to the misfortune of being mistreated by them in your past.
The vast majority of men, like the vast majority of women, are decent humans who could do well in a relationship and add a lot to anothers life.
The problem is that there is a minority of assholes, and especially with men, the assholes get around.
I’m not angry at YOU. I’m angry FOR young women. I’m angry that women have had to fight every step of the way to have equal educational opportunities, expanded (and supposedly equal) employment opportunities, the (always-under-threat) ability to live life on our own terms (as men have been able to do since the advent of agriculture and the patriarchal religions), the ability to choose whether and when to reproduce (men have been controlling that ever since they realized they could make money from our reproductive capacity), and the ability to live our lives in the public AND private sphere JUST to have men try to shove them back down into their “proper place” (according to men).
I will fight with my aging body and my loud and angry voice to save young women from the lives that my mother’s generation fought so desperately to escape.
I know you're not angry at me, but thank you for clarifying in case I was confused :)
I just don't think men have actively wanted to supress women. All men have mothers, and all men basically love their mothers, and all daughters have fathers, and are mostly loved by them. I believe most men love their wives.
I just don't think there is this incentive to supress the other gender. I believe the historical gender roles where as they were, not because of some evil conspiracy, but just because of the realities of child birth and household labour, and I am not convinced that the female role was worse than the male one.
As I understand it, the vast majority of both roles really sucked. E.g., men being worked to death in bake houses and dying in war. Etc...
Statistically, women are currently significantly advantaged in the west (e.g., twice as likely to be hired as a professor given the same CV, better educational attainment etc...). I don't think there is injustice to fight there. If anything, men are currently being unfairly selected against (with hiring committees actively prioritising women over more qualified men).
Lol women haven't had to fight jack or squat. Everything they have men have given them and generally against the will of the majority of women. Hell even suffrage was opposed by the majority of women at the time. Get back to me when women conquer a nation, found a government, and grant themselves rights contrary to the wishes of what men have given them out of magnimnity.
The fact you use the word grooming to describe a career men would kill for says a lot here. If your parents wanted you to become a string independent man hating feminist doctor, would you still use grooming? Yes historically grooming had positive conatations but it's pure negative since the 90s.
We do need to creat better men but not in the way you seem to think. MGTOW should be the future now to combat FGTOW, we aren't your pets.
The problem is that YOUNG men are listening to what is being said online (not on TV) about women by violently dangerous toxic men like Andrew Tate, and by intellectually toxic men who provide the pseudo-scientific reasoning for the dangerous and toxic ideas that people like Tate and his sycophants (“podcast bros”) like to spew out into the ether.
And young women read what these guys are saying. They BELIEVE that women are inferior, that they should be submissive virgins, that they should either stay home all day or work outside of the home and still come home and cook, clean, and take care of the children while he “rests.” After all, if he’s worked all day and he’s paying for the house, then she should be grateful!
Are you wholly unaware that these men exist?
Because I can promise you that they are all over social media and their comments are the sole cause for how young women feel about men these days.
I agree Andrew Tate has an audience, but my perspective is he is pretty damn fringe.
The problem is that the mainstream is incredibly sexist towards men (e.g., all the newspaper articles supporting Amber Heard) and so there is a huge demand from men for any voices that are pro the masculine.
The mainstream also demonizes reasonable and earnest voices (e.g., Jordan Peterson, Joe Rogan) and so you get even more push towards misogynistic grifters like Tate.
I still have yet to meet a man who actually holds a belief that women are inferior. I am sure you can find it online (you can find anything online) but it seems exceedingly rare in real life. On the other hand, I have met many women in real life who actively and proudly announce their misandry (and who would likely be social pariahs were the genders flipped).
Andrew Tate is pretty successful, women love him. Generally the more abusive you are as a man, the more successful you'll have in the marketplace. Don't blame Tate here, he's simply reacting to what women want.