On point 2. Though I haven’t read the book, based on your summary... and experience raising 8 daughters:
The argument that feminism reduces promiscuity if flawed IMHO for several reasons.
The first one being that, I attribute the reduction in sex, frequency more to video games and the Internet and social media then I do to feminism. It just so happens that feminism was amplified by the Internet and social media.
I think a better evaluation would be looking at what sort of sex the fewer people that are having. I just watched the final episode of the excellent Netflix series Beef, and in the final episode, there was a conversation about how choking during sex has become main stream because of the Internet, yet it wasn’t something that kids raised in the 80s or 90s even thought about. The same could be said about the prevalence of anal sex, and a wide variety of other sexual behaviors.
Ultimately, I think we have a two pronged problem here. On one hand, a certain flavor of feminism has encourage young women to be more promiscuous than they would’ve otherwise been. The other issue is with young men basically taking them cells off the market because they’re spending all the time watching porn or playing video games.
The combination of the two means there is fewer young men than women out there who are on the market, so the young men who are having sex, are willing to push the limits and expect less monogamous type relationships. And the young women out there who are trying to find a mate, and with the influence of the certain brand of feminism, I’m more willing to acquiesce to these male desires.
My antidotal perception based on working with a lot of young, single 20 and 30 something years old guys and having raised eight girls is basically that the men with charm/looks/balls get laid often and easily. Way more than their peers from earlier generations. Meanwhile, women in their teens and 20s have a lot less selection of men who are worth dating.
If there are any grammatical errors, I apologize… I dictated this while sitting in my car in a parking lot.
Great! We should be CELEBRATING the fact that teen sex and pregnancies have dramatically reduced. For decades Conservatives cried, howled, yelped and hollered over "teen sex" "teen pregnancy" and "out of wedlock birthrate". Now that all of that has decreased I expect to hear them celebrating.
Yeah, I think this is closer to what is happening. There are noticeably more young men than women who have zero friends, who still live with their parents, etc., and I see this in both anecdotes and surveys.
Though I'd say the same shut-in effect applies to both men and women -- it has just hit men harder, leading to the gap that you describe. The women who are basically shut-ins tend to just watch Netflix (or worse, TikTok). Which might be less addictive than the lethal combination of video games + porn, but it's surely more addictive than watching TV in prior decades.
To further compound the issue, there is the obesity issue and the social media unrealistic expectations aspect of everything. Whether it’s fair or not, a woman’s dating value is more looks dependent than men’s. Though, ironically, I’ve seen some antidotal data that says women actually have more unrealistic expectations than men do about dating partners.
More speculatively, I also wonder if young people find each other's personalities less attractive, but that's harder to measure. I suspect that people in the past were more inclined to consciously adopt behaviors that seemed attractive to the opposite sex, or to avoid behaviors that were repellant.
As to unrealistic expectations, what I have gathered is that women have more self-awareness about their relative attractiveness ranking (they have a very obvious tendency to study their competition in a way that we men really don't), but they're also more rigid about refusing to modify their expectations in a partner. Men are more inclined towards a "I'll take what I can get" mentality.
Of course, at least partly what's going on is that women are thinking more about long-term compatibility. Men will first take what we can get, THEN assess whether "what we can get" is something we really want to lock down.
I've been saying this for a while. No one seems to want to comment on the fact that obesity is a big turnoff in a partner, male or female, and we've got a lot more obese people these days than we used to. I say this as someone who's got a bit of a weight problem myself.
Men will take what they can get, to get SEX. They will not take it (*assuming you mean a homely or fat woman) for a real dating relationship... introduce such a woman to their friends or family... treat her with respect and consideration... be faithful to her... let alone marry her. They will, if desperate enough, have sex with such a woman but only on the side, in secret and they will often do degrading or mean things to such women to allay the mans fears that he is STUCK with a FUGLY DOG.
Who you sleep with casually... in our modern American society that is... is not necessarily who you want a relationship with... this goes for both sexes.
At the point you introduce the relationship to your friends or family... that is when you will get major blowback for dating a loser, a fat person, someone outside of your social class (*such as a college degreed woman who brings home a blue collar boyfriend) and of course the usual race/ethnicity stuff.
Decreased male success plus an increased number of somewhat improved alternatives leads to fewer attempts.
Meanwhile, the women pursue an increasingly selected number of men, trying to catch them in their magic boxes (always a mistake). This reduces the success rate for individual men.
Add to that ridicule of any attempt to extract useful information from admittedly sleazy men who claim to have figured things out.
Only incels and MRAs think this, with the help of RedPill sites and the Manosphere.
It just isn't true. Women pursue men who are attractive, have good personalities and are easy to talk to... and men pursue women who are those things.
BTW: calling a vagina a magic box is gross. Stop it.
The men who fail at dating are generally incels, MRAs, MGTOW and influenced by the movements I mention... they are nasty to women, call most of them ugly names (blue haired land whales, etc.)... they think they are entitled to a gorgeous supermodel and despise ordinary women. Women pick up on this message very quickly and avoid this type of man.
Yes, women pursue men that are attractive (although most of them just wait for men to pursue), but women only consider a small group of men attractive, and that attraction is based on height, looks, fitness and income - NOT personality.
You can keep on spreading your lies, but it will never change reality.
She's clearly upset by the fact that men are able to compare notes now in a digital age. The data is really freaking clear on this - men are not getting sexual access at near the rates they used to, and not nearly at the same rates as women are.
For her to claim that "the men who fail at dating" which is LITERALLY ALL THE EXPERIENCE IS FOR MEN are failing because of niche communities (seriously, so niche that at their peak before the nuts at Reddit killed off MGTOW and TRP there were only thousands of users) is absolutely asinine. This woman, by her own admission, is on her second marriage. Was her first husband's failed marriage to her because of MGTOW? Was her current husband's failed first marriage due to TRP?
Nope, and only a man (RedPill, incel, MRA, etc.) would think that way.
Personality matter THE MOST OF ALL.
Height is minimal. And you left off HAIR! LOL! you really do not know any women, do you?
What is the most important thing for many women? you'd be surprised.... it is LIBERAL POLITICS. They will not marry or date or sleep with conservative men, not even wealthy ones.
TRUTH!
Women clearly marry men of all heights, looks, weight and yes, poor men and working class men. There are very ample demographics to prove this, including US Census data.
Most sex happens in committed relationships. If feminism reduces committed relationships it's going to reduce sex.
However, even if the amount of sex is down, you could still have promiscuous sex happening. They aren't mutually exclusive. Someone in a long term relationship may be having sex every week for a long time, while someone whose perpetually "dating" maybe have one night stands or short bouts of sex with a pattern interspersed by dry periods.
That's what I observed in my 20s. People weren't in relationships, but sometimes they would hook up (usually with alcohol). Some of those hook ups would last a few months or whatever. Nobody was trying to get married. There was a lot of distrust and nihilism, and sometimes that distrust and nihilism manifested itself in sexual acts.
Yeah, I am old too. It is a pretty sad way of looking at relationships.
That said, I do know it happens. People meet up for noncommittal sex, so no it is not a relationship. Often one or both parties would be ashamed to have their friends/family know about the hookup. It relieves sexual longing, and nobody today wants to be a prude so this is how they cope.
BTW: most women despise this, but do it out of desperation to meet guys... no matter what they say about liking hooking up.
Feminism and culture (especially the show Sex and The City) has brainwashed women into thinking that casual sex is empowering and liberating. And that still does not change the fact that these women are willingly participating in casual sex - nobody is forcing them to do so. Not to mention the fact that most women will sleep with a man BEFORE she gets into a serious relationship with him in order to judge his penis size and sexual performance.
I would say that the increasing availability and convenience of internet porn has reduced sexual activity more than all the First Things articles ever penned, all the sex ed classes ever taught.
Do you seriously think that women with charm, looks and... whatever the female equivalent of balls is (flirtatiousness? sexy moves?)... do not get sexual opportunities (along with dating and other perks) more than women without those things? I mean seriously... duh. Good looking PEOPLE get more sexual opportunities than homely people... smooth talkers get more dates than socially awkward losers.
Interesting. I "learned" about chocking in 1993: Sean Connery "Rising Sun". Though I missed out on the you-porn-wave. Anal: ol' lore. Not unknown during my/our youth, but the AIDS-scare might have lowered numbers then - and I would not trust numbers from studies older than me. Wikipedia - rare trigger warning! - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anal_sex#Cultural_views
I guess all this is the reason why... "Even if women’s situation is objectively good, they are more prone than men to sadness, anxiety, resentment, and other negative emotions."
Frequency of sex can be a deceiving measure for promiscuity, because - by definition - being promiscuous means having sex with a lot of different partners. For example, someone who has had 1000 encounters with the same person would be seen as less promiscuous than a person who has had 100 encounters with 100 different people.
I haven't looked at the data in depth, but I would guess that young people today have less sex but with more different partners. It would be interesting to know if there is any truth to that.
One second comment. Is there any sort of survey that shows what percentage of young people are in a relationship? My guess is that the percentage of young people that are in a relationship has decreased even further than the percentage of young people who have had sex.
Teens need to focus on their studies and forget these stupid "relationships" and sex. It's utterly ridiculous for a society to want it's teenagers to have sex.
I did a quick Google search. That is the first thing I found. Most of the article is useless fluff, but it quotes some GSS data that could be useful: the percentage of young people (18 - 34) not having a steady partner increased from 35% in 1986 to 51% in 2018.
I think another measure that would tell us a lot would be if that sex was happening in a relationship or not. A young woman could only be having sex once, or twice a year, but they could both be hook ups. And even if the person is having sex, with the same person, several times, it could be a friends with benefits situation.
This article performs a valuable service. Your critique of Perry's book is so thorough, I can now move on, confident I don't have to read it myself. Thanks!
Agreed. I largely agree with Bryan's essay, and I largely agree with Perry's book, though of course I have my differences with both. And Perry's book can really help when talking to people who don't share a lot of your priors.
I haven't read the book, though I think I once read about it on a blog summary. Given it probably uses a lot of data I've found elsewhere I'll shoot from the hip.
1) Most sex happens in committed relationships. If feminism reduces committed relationships it's going to reduce sex. However, even if the amount of sex is down, you could still have promiscuous sex happening. They aren't mutually exclusive. Someone in a long term relationship may be having sex every week for a long time, while someone whose perpetually "dating" maybe have one night stands or short bouts of sex with a pattern interspersed by dry periods.
That's what I observed in my 20s. People weren't in relationships, but sometimes they would hook up (usually with alcohol). Some of those hook ups would last a few months or whatever. Nobody was trying to get married. There was a lot of distrust and nihilism, and sometimes that distrust and nihilism manifested itself in sexual acts.
2) I don't think you really understand consent here. We aren't talking about "what do I need to not be considered a rapist." We are talking about "even if someone agrees to something, is it still the wrong choice." I don't mean this in a legal sense, but a moral sense. If a woman gives me consent, but she's wrong to do so, it's still bad.
I understand this is "paternalistic". Oh well. I thought we all understood people make bad choices and that this is especially common involving young people and sex (I will throw in alcohol too, as that is a big part of the sexual market).
3) "Because free markets are a social mechanism for giving people who have something to offer whatever they want."
This was Houellebecq's critique in "the expansion of the domain of struggle." That is the mechanisms that allow disinterested bakers and candlestick markers to delver good outcomes even with selfish desires doesn't apply when applied to romance.
Our preferred mechanism for social organization, monogamy, marriage, and family, are at least to some degree "not what people want." They all involve sacrifices and commitments people would like to figure a way out of making or cheat on. It takes vigilance of both people and society to make it work, and having it not work leads to bad outcomes.
I think part of this is that the sexual market is very different from the market market. For one, it's INHERENTLY a rival goods market. There is only ever one man and one woman. We can't use assembly lines to make more mates. And to the extent you think the context is even worse than one to one the greater the rivalry.
It turns out that you can give mates "what they want" in a way that isn't really good for their life outcomes. Promiscuity is like becoming a smoker, the cigarette company gives you want you want but you get cancer.
4)" If she understands and appreciates how markets work, she has two options."
Have you considered "self deception" as an option. This is actually pretty easy to do if the men she can't get to commit will fake it to sleep with her. If women aren't even looking to marry until around 30, it only takes a couple of string along relationships to squander what's left of ones youth.
5) "Men in relationships should avoid spending time alone with attractive women - and women should prefer to be with men who avoid such temptations. Women in relationships should avoid spending time alone with successful men - and men should prefer to be with with women who avoid such temptations."
Mike Pence was right!
BTW, you eviscerated this view when talking about workplaces. Maybe work just shouldn't be a place where people are trying to get in each others pants.
I see a lot of comments discussing how social media, videogames, porn etc. has affected relations between the sexes. I think there might be a kind of selection bias there. For some individuals (let's say ages 12-22) these are serious issues comparable to substance addiction but I don't think that accounts for most of what the stats reveal.
From a young age children are constantly surrounded by screens showing them people, places and lifestyles that appear much better than anything they experience in real life. This oversaturation of seemingly real life discourages them from seeking out fulfilling people, places and lifestyles because they intuitively know it will never measure up to what they're constantly exposed to. It's easy to point to videogames and porn as a starting point but it's more nuanced than that.
DEFINITELY true. One interesting series of studies involved showing men (*likely mostly college age volunteers) pictures of average women and then the men rated them as attractive on a 10 point scale. They found most of the women reasonably attractive.
Then they were shown photos of gorgeous supermodels and extremely beautiful women. Again, shown a variety of female images....now the men were much pickier and found the average women distasteful and unappealing. They now wanted a supermodel.l
This all started long ago with movies, TV and advertising but in the last 25 years with the internet... it has been on greased rails, with young people fed images from birth that are so intoxicating... as you correctly say, they will NEVER experience this in real life and they long for fantasy worlds, where they can put on avatars like costumes, and design the perfect (digital) partners.
In comparison, real life seems bland and unappealing. This is very troubling.
Lies. Women are the ones who have unrealistic demands and deem most men to be physically unattractive. Men have realistic standards and views regarding women's physical attractiveness, but most women do NOT have realistic standards and views regarding men's physical attractiveness.
No, it is the truth and it is sad if I am the first person to challenge your RedPill (MRA, incel) belief system.
Ask your mother. Ask your sisters. Ask any female friends, if you have them. TALK TO WOMEN.
What you state is literally the opposite of reality, like UPSIDE DOWN WORLD.
Women find most men physically attractive. The problem is, some perfectly OK looking men have these ugly, hate filled INCEL MRA RED PILL belief systems, and are loud & insulting about them, and start off on dates or meetings with complaints like yours.
They come across so toxic, that women either will not date them, or drop them like a hot rock after one or two dates. You are probably, unwitting, self sabotaging YOURSELF here.
Men are so unrealistic, it is THEY who not only consume but CREATE almost all pornography!!! women have almost NO porn directed to or by other women! EXPLAIN THIS!!!
Men create almost all advertising, make almost all movies and TV shows, and yet you state WOMEN have the unrealistic standards????
Men have a 62.6% obesity rate, but reject women with a 62.4% obesity rate... you yourself just stated this in an earlier post. So men are rejecting roughly 2 out of 3 women BEFORE EVEN MEETING THEM.
Lets talk about the real problem: YOU cannot find a girlfriend. You refuse to do deep personal introspection on WHY this is happening and inside prefer paranoia about things like your height (*just date short women!) or your penis size (*nope, just isn't a factor).
Unless you are literally a dwarf or have a micro penis.... sir, this is all in your head and has nothing to do with the dating market or the OLD OLD TV show Sex And The City.
Assuming you are American... there are 165 million women in this country. It is statistically IMPOSSIBLE to not find someone you like, who also likes you.
No, most women do not find most men to be physically attractive. Most women believe that most men are ugly. Several studies have shown this.
And why are you mentioning porn? Just because most porn is created and watched by men, it does not mean that men have unrealistic standards. I would argue that porn has made women have even more unrealistic standards as they now expect men to be well-endowed and last for a very long time in bed.
It has already been proven that women are the ones with the unrealistic standards. Women are the ones that are out of touch with reality and think that they deserve a man who is at the top. But most men have realistic standards
There are other parallels too, there could probably be a long book about media's effect on cognition at different stages of development. Black and white thinking is one example, the majority of the popular stories that we consume (movies, books, tv shows) feature clear distinctions between protagonist and antagonist. Children then apply that framing of good guy vs bad guy to real life. This fairy tale mindset which we'd normally outgrow in past generations persists in the age of 24/7 engagement and encourages a distorted mental model of the world.
Thats an excellent insight, though I have to note that B&W thinking is far from new and goes back to the earliest days of things like the movies... cowboys & Indians, crime dramas, etc. Clear good guys and clear bad guys, and the good guys ALWAYS prevail. That goes back to the earliest 20th century, 120 years ago.
Yet what we see today seems different, doesn't it? So there is something more, and I think that is the predominance of video gaming (vs. traditional fiction in books or films) in the last 30 years. Gaming does not end at 12 or 13 like other childhood activities used to do, and you see adults still deeply enmeshed in this culture. The storylines of games involve deep fantasies, playing YOURSELF as a character (vs. watching other characters)... the concept of avatars and creating your own reality.
Its a pretty deep dive! and worth of a whole article itself.
I think it's due to the pervasiveness of screen based consumption (whether it's phone, tv or videogames), 100 years ago you had to actually go to the movie theater. Now from the age of 1 to 30 we spend more than half our day staring at screens.
"Well, I’m not just a father of four; I exceed the 99th personality of paternal involvement. I handled every nightshift for every baby. Solo. That includes a pair of twins. I’ve been homeschooling - again, solo - for almost ten years. During Covid, I homeschooled all four of our kids. And through all of this, I never thought my kids “limited my freedom” in the slightest."
Dude, what!? I have never read a Caplan sentence that left me more gobsmacked. As a fellow father of four, and also as someone who would dare to put himself past the (slightly more modest) 98th percentile of paternal involvement, I cannot make this make sense to me. I mean, OF COURSE, kids limit your freedom in a thousand different ways. Every day. All the time.
I've long been puzzled over your general attitude of "ehh, kids are easy!" I read Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids, taking it to heart (you're welcome kids #3 and 4!) I even switched to plastic cutlery like you recommended! But it is unfathomably time-consuming. And I won't touch homeschooling with a ten foot pole. So how are you doing this?? Are your kids also in a few 99th percentiles? For agreeableness? Studiousness? Docility? Mental focus? Independence? Politeness? Compulsion to please parents? What is it?
I know you've mentioned nannies a few times. Is it the nannies?! Should you be mentioning the nannies every time your write on this topic??
Interestingly, as a creationist, I find this critique both very true, but also perhaps missing the point of Perry's book. I do think that her neuroticism and dark view of reality are problems, but I've been listening to her podcast, and I think she is trying to seek out other perspectives to offer alternatives and expansions.
I also think that you point out that she's writing for young feminist audiences, particularly women, not for cranky conservatives and libertarians who already believe that men and women should get married and have kids.
Now, the question is - can she defeat the sterilizing memes that have taken over (and maybe are inherent in?) feminist culture? I don't know. But I think her book should be widely read and hopefully combat those sterilizing memes quickly.
Also, I think treating feminism as a monolith both in intent/argument and in effect is a bit of a mistake, as I think feminism is perhaps most noteable for being very fractious and incoherent.
In many cases, I think the general thrust of the book is correct - casual sex is bad, the more casual the more true this is. On the most actionable paths to limiting sexual harm, I think this book makes an excellent case for the complete destruction of Pornhub and similar sites. The horrifying section about Pornhub is probably the most vile thing in the book. It seems like a great cause for a politician on either side of the aisle - simply point out the rampant abuse. Perry, seeming to be a feminist without ideological friends, points out that much of the sexual liberation movement is tied to abusive left-leaning scholars.
On a baseline level, I agree with Bryan re: grading on a curve. Throughout the whole book, I keep thinking that much of this stuff would have been absolutely trivial to point out to anyone in a religious tradition, or anyone who has been to a bar. "Women are in danger while drinking alone at bars" is indeed common sense, and if we are praising common sense, we should praise the under-praised religious and traditional folks here and point out that "red pill" stuff might be worth reading as a guideline of what to avoid.
And that's why I think Tyler has the better sense of this book- because I think he sees Perry as someone who is successfully presenting common sense in a method framed as radical.
Throughout the book the harms of porn and sloth are hammered home for men. The burden of this book is not to make the case that casual sex is bad, something that anyone could do. The point of the book is to make the case that we have previously underestimated these harms for women, and thus we need to re-evaluate. THIS is why Perry is influential - because she is using maximally successful memes for distribution as part of the message. It's a Straussian masterpiece, using the "woke" tone and frame to come around to a damn-near religious view of sexuality. She does all of this without making the case for marriage/children/etc. although these are the most obvious reasons to not have casual sex, porn addictions, and to generally try to improve.
The book is written to point out the massive divide between sex in committed relationships and casual sex/hookups, in a language that undergrad feminism courses will use and want to discuss. It succeeds. The text as written is "Women are the primary losers of hookup culture." The question the book tries to pose is, "Given that casual sex is in fact bad, dangerous, and humiliating, why have it?" There are answers to this question, but they are not answers that fit neatly into a political platform or any sort of cause. On the other hand, you have building a relationship of which sex is a part and working together on goals, possibly (likely) family.
The readers of MR/BetOnIt/etc. have a choice here. We can either read this book and think "This is factually incorrect" or "Ah, in the age of feminization we must frame all arguments in women's tears!" Or we can say "Oh this book is controversially feminist" and let college feminism profs do the work for us. Choosing option 1 might mean we score internet points. Option 2 might mean fewer people getting into UFC fights by mistake after a nice dinner, and potentially a widespread movement to destroy the internet pornography industry. I vote Option 2.
> The readers of MR/BetOnIt/etc. have a choice here.... Option 2 might mean fewer people getting into UFC fights by mistake after a nice dinner, and potentially a widespread movement to destroy the internet pornography industry. I vote Option 2.
Most rationalists are libertarians or adjacent, and don't WANT to destroy internet porn. It serves a purpose, and the market is large and robust, and desired by billions everywhere in the world. Taking that away would be a bad thing, not a good thing. And women watch it too! About 25-33% of Pornhub viewers are women. It's not like porn is a male-only thing.
In fact, given the key and specific economic hand porn had in developing internet technologies and driving widespread adoption, porn has almost certainly done hugely *more* good in the world than most other entertainment sectors. The internet was basically invented and spread widely because of it.
Trying to force your own aesthetics and choices on the entire world via legislative fiat isn't a good thing, it's basically the definition of being a d*ck.
I totally concede this isn't a libertarian thing to do, but exercising power to make porn 25x less accessible strikes me as a good use of government power. Similar to gambling on sports, where the deadweight loss is just increasing so rapidly that libertarianism becomes infeasible.
I'd concede that porn -> internet growth, but I'd reckon the internet would stick around if porn websites ceased to exist. I might not accept the tradeoff in 1995. I accept the tradeoffs in 2025!
The book has criticisms of porn websites that you would consider on libertarian grounds - do read if you haven't! I suspect that the author has beliefs closer to mine, and we'd all be better off if we'd address those true concerns.
In my perfect universe, porn is illegal and not even desired, but in a universe we could maybe all agree to, porn is legal, but with 60 minutes of truly unskippable YouTube ads set up as required viewing beforehand. Note that YouTube doesn't want porn on their site, likely because they and advertisers don't want to be affiliated. Even the market thinks this stuff could be banned for just causes!
No ad hominems, please! I am rooting for you in so many other contexts! I want every individual sovereign! Pornhub wants everyone to spend all their time and money on their evil porn website! You and I have the common cause!
Absolutely fantastic review. I'm glad Bryan has taken up the mantle and started arguing against the excesses of modern feminism despite the significant potential for negative career or at least reputational impacts. It would have been all to easy for Bryan to keep his thoughts to himself and only argue less inflammatory topics like open borders (I'm serious). He's doing a valuable service making the arguments he is, and in reviewing books like these.
Bryan literally argues that men should suppress their sexual needs for variety and women should suppress their sexual needs for the top men. He's basically an open misogynist and misandrist. Just like Perry.
Apart from the fact that evolutionary psychology is extremely wrong, it doesn't describe male and female strategies well (men are not any less "hypergamous" and women are not any less polygamous).
Men are totally hypergamous, just expressing it in different ways than women. Men want women they can show off on their arm... women that make their friends jealous... women who are high status (which can be fame, beauty, family wealth)... I wish I had a nickel for every guy I have heard talking about girls with RICH DADDYS or wanting to marry THE BOSSES DAUGHTER.
Oh honey. Sorry, but you are in DEEP DENIAL if you do not think men get HUGE status and props from other men... if they appear at an event or couples date, and THEIR girlfriend(wife) is gorgeous, thin, much younger than they are, etc.
Why do you think very rich men, movie stars, etc. always have a trophy girlfriend/wife on their arms and trade her in every few years for a new younger model? Hello Leonardo DiCaprio!
It is NOT because they want family and children, as many never marry OR have children (or if they do, they neglect those kids once they remarry).
I also think that women do SOME of the same things... not all. But women of a certain age ... lets call them cougars... do absolutely show off their boy toys. Younger women get big bragging rights from having a handsome or rich boyfriend/husband!
But it is not the extremes that men do it, and not so clearly self serving... women do not discard and replace their male partners with the same degree of alacrity.
Perhaps you don’t understand what Hypergamy means.
I do think that women may be polygamous, in that they might be willing to share a high status man, if they can make the finances work. Those men who are not among those happy few may object to being taxed to pay for it.
Are you mixing up hypergamy and polygamy? Hypergamy simply means DESIRING to marry up... it could be in terms of wealth, status, looks, opportunities, etc. It is not a gendered term, anymore than monogamy.
I do not see any evidence for polygamy in women (i.e., multiple women with one man) in society outside of Fundie Mormonism. Even there, most women loathe polygamy and hate sharing a man, but think they have no other options.
Typically these start out as conventional one woman/one man marriages and then when the mans eye wanders... the first wife accepts the new, younger wife so as not to lose her status, income, benefits, father for her children. But she is miserable and bitter about it.
I suggest the old TV show BIG LOVE as it shows this very clearly.
No. Women are naturally polygamous in the sense that they would ideally like to sleep with many men, meaning having their own "rotation" of men. Women and men are not in any way different in that regard.
The only difference is that safety reasons and societal shaming (more in the past) make women less likely to act on it. But it's ridiculous to believe that makes women less naturally polygamous, female promiscuity is the most natural thing in the world.
Well all humans are inherently selfish. WE want to be free to have as many sexual relations as we can with the most attractive potential partners... but we want OUR partners to be absolutely monogamous and faithful!
WE want sexual satisfaction but do not care so much for our partners satisfaction.
A lot of men, especially in the incel/MRA/RedPIll world of the internet still cling to hopelessly outdated notions (SPINSTERS????) and one of them is the idea of women as blushing flowers, who have little or no sexual agency or desire... that only men are HORNY and wants lots of sex with lots of different partners. But in fact, this is universal and the only thing that stops it is opportunity.... most of us are not beautiful and we certainly do not stay YOUNG, so whatever chances we had in our teens or 20s are mostly all gone by our 50s.
Not just safety, unless you include concerns about providing for any resulting children.
I can imagine too many women’s ideal world being one where they are free to mate with and have children by whoever struck their fancy. Tax money would pay to support and raise the children. This would have the genetic advantages of polygamy, without the harem politics.
I guarantee you that the married couples, women who prefer marriage, plus all the men who aren’t getting any would resent the hell out of such a scheme. The latter group would probably work just enough to live and entertain themselves. We might also see an increase in “young man syndrome”, where unattached young men act out violently.
Does anything about the second paragraph seem familiar? I would love to test the paternity of _all_ children in some neighborhoods.
Utterly wrong. Women are not going to form harems with the "top 20% men." In fact, women are actually more likely to have children with low-status men:
"Men aged 22-49 with no high school diploma or GED had fathered a higher mean number of children (1.7) than men who had a high school diploma or GED (1.3) or those with some college (1.0) or a bachelor's degree or higher (1.0)."
I have never seen a poor men struggling to get girls. It seems like they have more time and are less overhinking things, so no reason to believe poor men will have no women if women have their ideal world.
“I exceed the 99th personality of paternal involvement
Did you mean to write "percentile"?
No I think Bryan means “99th personality of paternal involvement.” He’s pretty full of himself as the ULTIMATE FATHER, and homeschooler. I suspect his kids are well academic-schooled, but I’d like to interview them to see if their CAPLAN-schooling has rendered them autistic offshoots of their father.
I do not know the man, so I have to take his review of his own parenting at face value. Maybe he is father of the year, and a SAHD (Stay at Home Dad).
But more likely he is STUCK home because he is unemployed for some reason and his wife is the primary breadwinner. I wonder what SHE WOULD SAY about the situation.
You're a little confused. Bryan Caplan is not a stay-at-home Dad. He is one of the top economists at James Madison University and one of the most influential economists in the country. The cute part is he thinks he's a renown social sciences philosopher as well, and he just might be . . . But he's delightfully quirky and has a face you want to slug.
Then the confusion is deliberate on HIS part... he stated at great length how he is the primary caretaker for his children, does all this stuff for them and pretty much the primary parent (not his wife). That doesn't dovetail with him having a demanding FULL TIME job (though I know many university tenured professors work like 2 hours a week, get all summers and holidays off with pay and long sabbaticals whenever they want).....
Good point about how does he get everything done--all that homeschooling time PLUS a demanding career? I believe he is very productive! But Bryan, if you're listening, maybe you could list your weekly schedule.
I haven't met him, but have seen some videos, and read a lot of his posts and his "Education" book. I actually like and admire him. He's definitely interesting and a great talent, but I stand by my post above. He likes to be a provocateur, so I can be one too. I wouldn't let my children be home-schooled by him, except for Economics and Math . . . From afar I have a love/hate relationship with those "James Madison boys," (Cowen, Hanson, Caplan)
I always find books like Perry's, and pretty much all writing on the "dating market," to be incredibly strange. It feels like the Vasharans from D&D have somehow made it to our world and cornered the market on relationship writing.
When I was young, like most people, I was bombarded with all the schmaltzy, social-desirability bias-laden relationship advice you hear in the media. Be yourself. Fall in love with your best friend. Find things in common to connect with people over. Focus on personality rather than looks. Be emotionally vulnerable. Do not be ashamed of your feelings. Communicate your feelings. So I did all that stuff.
It worked. It worked fantastically well. I found a wonderful partner I loved, and I also encountered a good many other people who I think things would have worked out with if I hadn't met her.
This makes me suspect that most of this cynical relationship market stuff is just fragile, neurotic people projecting. They think the dating milieu is a terrible place because schmaltzy relationship advice has been tried and found wanting. But actually, it has been found difficult, and hence been left untried. For some reason a lot of people have trouble doing these basic things that are really effective.
Good for you. But "the system worked for me, therefore everything is fine" has never been valid reasoning.
Even for you, it wasn't easy. It's not easy for anybody and hence many people fail. Now, should we sit back and accept that or should we as a society try to make it easier, so more people end up in your fortunate position?
But most people marry. Even those who never marry, are usually in long term, live together sorts of relationships (which used to be CALLED common law marriage!)
Most people are not single forever or by choice... if you filter out the widows/widowers or people over 75 (by 75 or 80, there are 3x as many women as men because THE MEN ARE DEAD).
The people you're talking about are largely old enough that they'd already settled down before the curse of Tinder & friends made everything so much harder.
Alex, that would make sense if I ONLY KNEW people who are my exact age (older GenX) but obviously I know a variety of people of all ages. Also, personal ads are NOT remotely new and were around when I was dating... they were SLOW compared to internet dating (like Tinder, Match.com, EHarmony, etc.) but the principle of letting people arrange THEIR OWN blind dates remains the same.
I am not sure why you think Tinder completely makes things different...it only started in earnest in 2013. Do you think dating has deteriorated THAT remarkably in just the past 10 years? are you old enough to remember dating (as an adult, not a teen) prior to 2013?
Almost everything people complain about Tinder (etc.), I found was around in the 90s when I was dating (second time around, as a 30ish divorcee)... people setting unreasonably picky standards, for example.
I definitely agree with you that dating and finding relationships is too hard for many people, and that there are ways to advocate for change to make it easier. What I am skeptical about isn't changing the system, it's the repulsively cynical, neurotic, and manipulative worldview that people like Perry seem to have. I don't think that worldview is an accurate description of society and human nature, and I also think that it is not effective at finding solutions.
I think Bryan makes similar arguments in his 14th point in his post. If I encountered a woman or a man who thought the same way Perry does my first bit of relationship advice for them would be "Stop. The reason things are hard for you is that your toxic worldview causes you to see malice where there is none, and to feel contempt for people who do not deserve it. Just stop."
Louise Perry is also happily married and doesn't need your relationship advice. Evidently her neurosis paid off!
I think this is probably a gender thing. Women have every reason to be neurotic because men are a lot more sexually predatory than women. Quite conceivable that being neurotic is a learned adaption to steer clear of those predators and find a good man (which is still most of them, obligatory #notallmen).
I strongly suspect that Perry and similar women are happily married in spite of their neuroticism, not because of it. I'm not just trying to give dating advice, I'm also trying to give advice on how to not be a miserable misanthrope who interprets every little thing people do in the worst possible light.
In regards to your theory on the cause of female neuroticism, it sounds like a plausible theory, although I can think of plenty of other explanations that are equally plausible. I wonder if it could be tested by seeing if lesbians are, on average, less neurotic than heterosexual women, since they don't need to filter dating partners to the same degree (on the other hand, that would probably introduce a lot of confounding factors, like women who dated men for a bit because they didn't realize they were lesbians right away, or women with neuroses that were caused dealing with homophobia).
Thanks. That system actually DOES work MOST of the time. No system is totally fool proof but what you describe has worked and is working now, for MOST PEOPLE.
No matter how wonderful your partner (and good for you to appreciate them!)... the reality is this is a big planet and big country, and there are probably hundreds of thousands of people you COULD potentially make a solid marriage with... some better than others.
The proof of this is how often people remarry after being widowed or divorced. They grieve and then they heal, and they love again.
BTW: the cynical stuff overwhelmingly comes from deeply embittered people whose dating strategies have failed or backfired.
You are 100% correct, and I think that is part of why the book is written the way it is. However, it is important that neurotic people who like politicizing topics deserve to have a neurotic, politicized defense of common sense, and I think Perry has a successful career ahead of her doing much the same.
"True, most young, well-educated women won’t be able to marry handsome, charming investment bankers. But if they set their sights a little lower, they can find a good husband fairly easily."
I guess many women are simply not ok with setting their sight "a little lower"
I don't know about men, but I have a vague feeling (being a woman myself) that most women probably prefer to rather be alone than to be with a man they don't like much. (This may be wrong and I don't know if I can say 'most women' confidently - maybe it's only 40% percent of women or so. People are different.) It wasn't like this in the past when women were economically dependent on spouses. But now that they aren't it may not make sense for women to actively 'lower' their preferences if that would mean lowering them to a level where the resulting union would be worse than living alone. Living alone has several benefits, after all - freedom, privacy, no-one nagging at you.
Yes, I'm a man, but I do think this dynamic is real. A lot of men drop from "positive marriage/relationship value" to "negative value" once their economic contributions become less relevant. Women haven't seen the same sort of decrease in value.
Even if we think not in terms of "happiness" but purely Darwinian survival of one's progeny, a lot of men are of negative value to the continued survival and wellbeing of a prospective partner's children, and this value, too, must be adjusted downward if his economic contribution is no longer a matter of life and death for them.
To some degree, men can adapt by, for example, becoming more attentive husbands and fathers, but that's beyond the reach of many.
In the long run, I believe society will converge on a set of family-forming behaviors that are sustainable (or otherwise perish), but right now we're living through a number of shocks to family formation, most of which are technology-generated. As a result, our family-formation customs are in chaos, and most women do not have a replacement number of children.
Also they may be sleeping with men who the do like quite a bit but who are not interested in marrying them. But many wouldn't call this "not being alone", i.e. it's not quite as "together" as actually sharing the roof and finances with someone.
I thought Bob’s comment was about promiscuity. Which I do think still means being mostly alone. The promiscuous women I’ve known have all have all just had occasional hookups. One random encounter per month is a high rate and would probably only be sustained for a brief life phase.
There are women who are ultra-promiscuous, racking up a triple-digit body count, but it’s rare, outside of actual professionals.
Then there are friends with benefits, but I think most of the time the woman there would like a relationship and the man is non-committal.
Exactly. There is an old saying that if you marry ONLY for wealth... the PRICE in terms of your dignity, effort, self esteem and happiness will cost much more than any monies you get from marrying.
Investment bankers are often creeps. I hear more often the idea that women want to marry DOCTORS... but doctors have staggering rates of divorce, work long hours, their flexible job structure plus wealth means they have very ample opportunities to cheat. So yes, you may marry wealth but is it worth it???
Christoph: sure there are women who want to marry rich men ONLY. They have a name: GOLD DIGGERS. And it is nothing new and does not require education or even to be all that young.
What percentage of men are investment bankers? like 0.001%? how many men are RICH? only about 3% of men earn over $100,000 a year! and that isn't truly rich in todays world.
if what you and incel/MRA culture believed was remotely true.... almost nobody would ever marry. Yet most people DO marry. Even those who do NOT marry, typically have close committed relationships.
I could easily say the same to men: sorry, you cannot get a supermodel... but if you SET YOUR SIGHTS A BIT LOWER... you could get a nice ordinary woman to marry.
But tell incel/MRAs this and they get hysterical, screaming they do not want a FUGLY DOG or BLUE HAIRED LAND WHALE....
Lola, Per Google: "17% of all men earn over $100k per year] Jan 18, 2023" so if this is correct than it almost 5X more than your estimate of 3%. Inflation is real, and approaching 20% of American men make "six figures."
Ok you got me there... the last 3 years post COVID has seen remarkable spikes in pay. So my figures were probably pre 2020... I am willing to go $125,000 for a fairly high US income and frankly, if you live in NYC or LA or Boston.... $100K is not really wealth anymore. A tax rate of over 50% and you are talking about about $4200 a month take-home pay, when rents average $3500....and starter homes are $900K.
My overarching point is correct though: if a woman is set on a RICH husband, the pickings are very slim.
The crux of Birger's "Dateonomics" is that this actually isn't true in recent times. The supply of young, well-educated women in the geographic areas where they work and search for mates (the central parts of cities) considerably exceeds the supply of young, well-educated men. The details are in the book, but women now get educated more than men, and as you go up the education ladder, the disproportion gets larger. And there's a strong bias by women to not marry men with less education.
The few reports I've seen suggest that the young men in the "just out of college in central cities" category are using their increased market power to be more sexually demanding of the young women. The women are unhappy with that, but there's no way for them to change that without either combining to do some sort of "price fixing" or significantly changing who they would accept as husbands. That's a form of "a little lower", but it really means giving up a husband with a bachelor's degree.
There is truth there. Many educated women want to live & work in a handful of Big Blue cities and thus, there is a huge oversupply of such women to men.
The same women would be wildly more successful if they just moved to a less competitive or less blue city... but tell them that, you will get your eyes scratched out. They would almost rather DIE (or live alone forever) than move to somewhere that is not cool, trendy or hip.
It is less about education than about geography, though education IS a factor.
Ive talked to actual woman (as a woman myself) if they would rather marry an adjunct college professor who earned $30K a year OR a very successful plumber who earned $180K a year. To a woman, they all picked the professor! (so much for the hypergamy theory).
The interesting thing is WHY... they would be ashamed of the plumber in front of their friends & family.... he might not have the right political views, or tastes in things like food or movies. God forbid, he might be MAGA! many women have expressed to me that they value liberal politics in a man WAYYY over money, height, hair, good looks, etc.
BTW: many folks seem unaware of ASSORTIVE MATING. Men today also want a woman with an equal education. Men with advanced degrees do not marry women who dropped out of 8th grade.
All true... Though on slightly longer timescales, there are relevant complications. Birger mentions that not so long ago, it was relatively common for college-educated women to marry blue-collar men. I myself have some vague memory of a trope of a blue-collar guy marrying a wife he freely admitted was smarter and having her run his life. (Consider the very popular "Honeymooners".)
I have some suspicion that the cause is the delayed effect of the relative pay of various occupations. Back in the 1950s, a lot of money rode on physical strength, and a lot of blue-collar work paid as well as white-collar work. There was a class difference, but putting too much emphasis on it was considered snobbery. That is, *male* blue collar work paid as well as white-collar work; women largely had to marry an employed male to live decently, but she wasn't necessarily losing out by marrying that plumber.
Scroll forward to circa 1995 and automation of heavy work and globalization of factory work caused a sharp difference in pay between those with bachelor's degrees and those without.
Scroll forward to now, and as Birger says a lot of men skip college because there is well-paying blue-collar work to be had for men; he says particularly in construction. But I can guess that there's a lingering prejudice from the days when you needed a bachelor's degree to get decently paid at all. Also, it's plausible that women now being paid largely at parity with men (until they have children), their choices aren't so closely focused on money (which would push them back toward the 1950s pattern) and more on intangible status factors (ugh, especially the ones that can be obliquely boasted about on Facebook).
Bully that you've actually surveyed women about these things. (Conveniently, you're a woman and have a decent chance of other women telling you the truth about this "when y'all let your hair down".) But of course, it's still hypergamy, just of status.
> many women have expressed to me that they value liberal politics in a man WAYYY over ... height
Really!
> an adjunct college professor who earned $30K a year
I've read various bloggers complaining about how adjuncts are exploited. It's always a question why adjuncts put up with it rather than bailing for whatever other career possibilities they have (which would be far less abusive and likely pay better). But perhaps it's one of those odd jobs whose status is *much* higher than its pay. Certainly to the twenty-something male, living in poverty in a city where it's easy to get girlfriends would have its attractions.
I would have to dispute the claim that NOT THAT LONG AGO (when is this? the 50s? 60s? 70s?) college degreed women routinely married blue collar men. I mean... anything can happen, but I doubt it was the norm. In the 50s & 60s, it was common to state that women went to universities to get an MRS degree... i.e., to find a degreed, successful husband.
You could marry a blue collar guy (well paid, say a Ford auto plant worker) just by taking a job in an auto plant... why waste 4 years and $$$ on a degree? Remember in the 50s and 60s, a majority of women quite work by their mid 20s to raise a family! So the degree did not have much use beyond the value of meeting suitable men during the peak ages of 18 to 22!!!
Now: did men sometimes marry women who were SMARTER THAN THEMSELVES? sure, it probably happened all the time and happens today. People dont exactly meet up by comparing their IQs or even grades (well, maybe in Mensa dating groups but not normally). During courtship and LIMERANCE (look it up)... people are not thinking about IQ but about sex and hormones.
Blue collar work paid pretty well up into the 70s (and still does in some respects) but the status is low..... a high paid Ford auto worker might be an incredible catch for a waitress who dropped out of 8th grade. He is NOT A CATCH if you have a BA in English literature or Gender Studies.... he is an embarrassment in front of your family & friends, when he uses bad grammar or has bad table manners.
So you are missing missing the subtle complexities of mating here. It is not all money, which is why just saying HYPERGAMY is missing the boat (also missing out that men seek hypergamy themselves in trying to get high status wives or girlfriends). Money certainly matters, but it is not everything.
I cant remember if I quoted it here, but I read an interesting study that asked a couple hundred women (roughly 22 to 35) if they would rather earn $100K a year doing a blue collar job, like sewer cleaning (with great benefits) OR earn $25K a year as an adjunct professor or publishing intern. Almost 100% went for the $25K a year job! why? the blue collar job is LOW STATUS. And you wont meet high status men that way. It is MORE HIGH STATUS in some circles to be that $25K adjunct married to another $25K adjunct husband... even if you have to take money from parents, or live in a dump... because the last thing you want is to be a LOW STATUS BLUE COLLAR WORKER, who might be a MAGA Trump voter or something!
The changes you refer to did not happen in 1995; they were building in the 60s and came to fruition in the 70s and early 80s and they came ON TOP OF massive inflation that made ordinary acquisitions (like a first starter house) more and more difficult... starting a sort of nuclear arms race of Boomers trying to keep up. (How well they did is a matter of opinion! but they are REVILED today!) Thats when the Boomer middle/upper middle class became so conservative, after a youth spent as hippie liberals. The jobs arms race affected middle management jobs, but I think the big elephant in that room was the computer revolution, which started (very roughly) around 1979.
Unfortunately for your theory... a lot of young men (by now, millennials) skip college but NOT to work high paying blue collar jobs. In fact, construction jobs pay less than ever (in inflation adjusted dollars) because the field is overwhelmingly filled with illegal aliens who have driven down wages AND benefits. The young men who DO NOT go to college work McCrap McJobs, often part time, while living in moms basement playing video games and watching porn. I wish this was not true, but alas....
Now, it is not ALL young men by far, but enough that it tilts the field. Meanwhile women have taken up the mantle and are now the MAJORITY of students, graduates and in fields like medicine and law. If they work full time and dont take off time for children (or use day care)... they actually earn as much or MORE than same age men, at least until their early 30s.
Status ALWAYS has mattered, even 50 to 75 years ago (and probably always). There are some terrific books on this, some related to mating strategies and some just about the social condition in the US over the last 40 years.
I find such things fascinating and I talk to a lot of people (men too!) both online and in real life, and of course, I have adult kids who are millennials so they tell me a lot. And some of it is in novels, which can tell you a lot about culture and romance and how they intersect... are you a fan of Jane Austen, perchance?
I would prefer to talk about MALE hypergamy, which is well on display around the internet.
As for that quote... yes, I have had DOZENS of women of varying ages, over the last 25 years, tell me that they ABSOLUTELY value liberal politics in a man over his income OR education.... that it is an absolute DEAL BREAKER, that they would not marry even a millionaire if he was a conservative or Republican. And I think they are sincere. Many will not date a conservative men, period. They would choose lifelong single hood over that. The best analogy I can think of is women 100 to 200 years ago, who might have insisted on a man who was a Good Christian in proper standing with the Church. Ideology uber alles.
Height? this one of those things MEN care about, as they compete with other men rather than what women want... I think a woman might not want a man who was half a foot shorter than her, but the idea that average size women reject men who are 5ft 11.5 inches tall... nope, that is ridiculous. And again: even being 6ft 4inches would not help a man who is conservative or Republican (in the eyes of an educated liberal woman).
As for adjuncts: absolutely academic STATUS is involved. Also the theory of SUNK COSTS... they are indebted to the tune of maybe $200K or more, to be a Professor of (say) Art History and suited for NOTHING ELSE... what do they do? go work at Walmart? and the social status of being in education far outweighs (to them) the shortcomings of pay. They whinge a lot, and would like to demand higher pay.... but wont change THEIR LIFESTYLE OR CAREER to get it. No way.
I would not go so far as to being a low paid Adjunct is a babe magnet (and remember that half or more are FEMALE adjuncts!)... but it would offer excellent access NOT to working city girlfriends who earn MORE... but to female students. The predation of academic professors on female students is a legend (that happens to be 100% true).
Sure, but being an old spinster is not as bad as it used to be. A spinster can have romantic flings and/or bring up a baby without too much trouble. Evolutionarily speaking, it may be better than living with a spouse if the only spouses available to you are net negative for raising the kids.
And men can end up alone too and childless... why isn't there a nasty, derogatory name for THAT? (BTW: SPINSTER? really? 1880 is calling and wants it memes back.)
Not marrying isn't the end of the world for MGTOWs... so why are these never married ladies not simply WGTOWs? women going their own way?
A woman with a spectacular career, good money, etc. might have a wonderful life surrounded by family & friends. And she has the option to have a baby if she wants... adoption, IVF, sperm donor. I know several women who have done this and they are happy as could be.
As Unirt says, maybe it is not IDEAL but it is vastly better than being stuck with an angry, demanding incel/MRA man who puts you down all the time or makes remarks like SPINSTER to you.
It is neither here nor there, because it is pretty hard to trigger a long married wife and mother over her supposed SPINSTER (!) status... that said, why isn't there an equally mocking and reductive term for a never married man? the RedPill community seems to have embraced MGTOW...Men Going Their Own Way and yet nobody calls an older single woman a WGTOW.
still laughing. No, I do not believe for one second that you gave up a career as a college professor to be a FULL TIME homeschooling (!) stay at home dad. No way, no how.
Also: speaking as a graphic designer... what bargain basement did you dredge this book design out of? it is the most amateurish thing I ever saw, and if I found it in a Little FREE Library, I would assume it is self published junk.
Man, you have so missed the point here. I think in general women are FAR more flexible about what they demand in men (very very few women demand a handsome investment banker) while men have long laundry lists of what they insist on.... women who must be thin, even wear a certain dress size... be very pretty.... younger and shorter than the man (!)... successful yes, but NOT MORE THAN HE IS... some men have extremely specific hair and eye colors. I have NEVER known women like this, but know MANY men like this and see zillions on the internet.
Your graph here implies men will date ANY woman, when we KNOW that is not remotely true. Do you ever even TALK to women? most online dating for most ordinary women is a festival of rejection by men. I could tell you stories that would burn your ears off.
In reality, men reject women for not being good enough (good enough as defined by beauty, weight, height, etc.) than women reject men.
This doesn't match my personal experience at all. Most men I've met don't even know their partner's dress size. A lot of them couldn't care less about eye color. In my experience, women also care more about height than men.
"most online dating for most ordinary women is a festival of rejection by men"
I am a little confused, Guiseppe: are you are WOMAN with a male username?
I can only speak to my experiences, those of my friends and social circle, plus about 10,000 books, articles, online discussions between women posters... and probably 99.999% say that in online dating... the men are more concerned about body size than any other factor.
Men do not understand fashion or dress sizes (*unless gay, which would put them outside this discussion) AT ALL... so they might say they dont care about dress size, because they couldn't tell a size 000 from a size 4 (though all women CAN tell). But they sure know what they like/demand, which is slender women.
The sheer number of names & insults online for women who are even a little above ideal weight proves this: heifers... WHALES... blue haired land whales... fatso... lard ass...hippo and so on... probably 100s more I cannot even think of this minute.
Nothing similar for fat men, who are just BIG GUYS or teddy bears or linebackers.
I do know some men who have obsessed on eye color, but it is not as universal as the prejudice against fat women. BTW: men call a woman FAT if she is 160 lbs... 260 lbs... 360 lbs or 460 lbs.... there is no nuance here.
You are confusing SWIPING (on Tinder or similar) with actual dating or relationships. Women get swiped on more, because they are only 25% of Tinder or OK Cupid or other sites. (This was true even 30 years ago, when personal ads were in newspapers and in print!) It is always skewed like this, because women face dangers in blind dating that men simply do NOT face.... it is low risk for men, who do not have to worry about a date beating them up or raping them.
It is no honor or compliment to be overwhelmed by 100x of online messages (on a dating site) when most of them are crude sexual come ons, or requires for nude photos of your genitalia. I know women who were initially asked for oral sex before the man had so much as called them.
Men who are insecure about a lack of messages often fail to analyze WHY they are not succeeding and make appropriate changes in their responses to women. One thing I encountered (again, back in the ancient newspaper personal ad era) was how many men USING these forms of dating... considered themselves to be normal doing it... but the women were slutty, desperate losers who would do anything to get asked out. It is a weird imbalance... I am surprised it has lingered on in our society which has so much sexual freedom otherwise, but then the whole RedPIll Manosphere has surprised me. (I am old enough to remember when it was the awful mail order paperback book THE PICKUP ARTIST, pushing the same misogynistic views.)
I have challenged the idea that height is a universal requirement from women. I believe it is MEN who drive the height issue, out of massive insecurity about being shorter than a woman (or even the same height). I have dated shorter men, and it was NEVER a problem for me... but the men had all kinds of issues, demanding I never wear heels or making fun of me in general for being TOO BIG (I am not and never was overweight). One guy I dated was furious when I noted we wore the same shoe size, and decided to call me Big Foot (like the Yeti) to his friends!
So if a woman notes height in her bio, it is probably because she encountered this at some point and wants to avoid it as an issue... preserving male self esteem. There is zero evidence that there is any correlation between shortness and unmarried status among men... i.e., no vast demographic of never married short guys.
The only one who has missed the point here is you. Your post is filled with ignorance, projection and lies.
There are countless studies that reveal that women are far LESS flexible than men and a lot shallower than men. This is also confirmed by millions of women on dating sites and apps.
Women are the ones that are obsessed with a man's height, looks and income, whereas most men could not care less about her height and income, and men care less about a woman's looks than women care about men's looks.
Women are the ones who have mile-long laundry lists of requirements for men, but men do not have the same for women. Most men's requirements are simply: be pleasant and feminine, and don't be fat and promiscuous.
Most women are delusional and believe that they deserve a man who is in the top 10% or even top 5%. Women constantly reject good men because they are not tall enough, not handsome enough, not muscular enough, not well-endowed enough, not rich enough etc. This means that most men can never live up to women's ridiculous requirements as men cannot change their height, face and penis size. Women are the ones who believe that most men are ugly and unattractive, whereas men have a realistic view on women's attractiveness as they judge most women as average. Women will reject men for the most ridiculous and silly reasons. Men get rejected far more than women do.
I sincerely hope that you are trolling because you are so far out of touch with reality.
JJ: for starters, I am very willing to discuss specifics here, but if you start out insisting the other party is LYING... you make that difficult. I have no reason to lie here about anything, and I am not projecting (I am a happily married woman with kids), and I surely have has much experience and insight as you (so not ignorant).
No, there are no such studies. Sorry. I have looked for them, but all there is (and what you are parroting here, unfortunately) are TALKING POINTS from the RedPill (MRA, incel, MGTOW) communities online. They are pushing a very specific misogynistic agenda, and it is a huge subject and very complex, but it has no relationship to reality.
You cannot seriously believe that MILLIONS OF WOMEN on dating sites or elsewhere, ALL AGREE that they are shallow! come on! or less flexible than men? that is hilarious.
Only short men see this obsession they claim women have about height. I know far more women than you, and far more women in the dating world (of all ages) and it is very rare to hear about HEIGHT as a factor. Income, I will agree IN PART (though less important than in the past, when most women did not work outside the home). Income is about status and opportunity, and of course for women... it is a factor because it will affect their future children.
NOBODY is more obsessed about LOOKS than men. Come on. The entirety of the porn industry and much of Madison Avenue advertising, Hollywood, movies, TV... all run by men, created by men, FOR MALE CUSTOMERS and all intensive focused on the minutae of female LOOKS.
I would say on average, men care about a womans looks to the ABSOLUTE EXCLUSION of all other characteristics. They will marry a POOR woman if she is pretty enough. They will marry a prostitute or woman of really low moral character... if she is pretty enough. How many incels/MRAs insist they will move to a poor third world nation... just to find a woman who is pretty (and slender, and passive)?
Actually you fell right into this trap, JJ. You insist women have a long laundry list of requirements, but MEN DO NOT? and then you immediately say a woman has to BE THIN!!! when 66% of all Americans (both MEN and women) are overweight or obese.
And promiscuous? Men have far more sexual partners than women; men patronize prostitutes and OnlyFans, which pretty much DO NOT EVEN EXIST for women as options. Are their Asian mail order grooms for lonely American women? NOPE!
BTW: words like PLEASANT or FEMININE are just codes for pretty... passive... no real career (must have JOB to bring in money, but not a real CAREER)... and slender.
Here is a hard truth, that you can only ignore at your own peril: You cannot demand anything of a partner (this goes for both sexes) that you do not bring to the table yourself. You cannot demand virginity or a LOW BODY COUNT, unless you yourself are a virgin or have had very few sexual partners. You cannot demand wealth, if you are poor. You cannot demand a trim, fit slender body if you yourself a lazy fat slob and couch potato!
Yes, some young women are unrealistic about their chances at a very handsome wealthy man... but dont worry, life is hard and will teach them lots of lessons over the years. However, why cant you address the delusion of men? YOU JUST STATED A WHOLE LIST OF THEM... that a man can demand a woman of a certain size & weight, certain sexual history, age, looks, height (shorter than him!) and so on. WHY CAN MEN DO THIS? but if women do this, they are DELUSIONAL?
(Just an aside here: I am 5 ft 5 inches, and I have dated men both taller and shorter than myself. Also know about 100x more women than you do. What I know is that the height issue is FROM MEN, not women. Women will date shorter men, but SHORT MEN WILL NOT DATE TALLER WOMEN. Their egos cannot take it.)
I would like to suggest this is a YOU problem, JJ. You are alleging issues with ALL WOMEN, when what you mean is YOU PERSONALLY have been rejected and you ASSUME it is because you are not rich enough, tall enough, muscular enough, handsome enough and my personal favorite... too small a penis. This is not true.
BTW: women cannot change their height either, so if you are short and reject tall women... isn't that the same thing? if you reject a woman who is flat chested, isn't that the same as a woman rejecting you for an immutable characteristic? women cannot change their faces, or their genetic predisposition to a certain body size!
Id say that most women DO find most men about average (going by just a photo or casual meeting) but a lot of men LIKE YOU (or the whole RedPIll movement) tend to ruin dates or meetings with your anger and sense of entitlement... demanding sex on a first date, then screaming about how all women are sluts with high body counts (@whatever)!
Women get rejected FAR far more often than men... you clearly have never spoken to women about how they get used for sex, then ghosted or two timed by men playing the field. I am not saying it is ALL MEN... but you are saying it is ALL WOMEN. Anything that doctrinaire has to be incorrect.
If you continually have bad experiences with online dating... try different tactics. Try meeting women in real life. Try being a nice guy and not an angry RedPill. Try not assuming THE WORST about people. Try not judging a woman for having THE SAME SEXUAL LIFE as you feel entitled to, only you are just doing what comes naturally but SHE is a slut.
Cut your ties with the RedPill manosphere. It is poisonous and full of masonry and hatred.
There are countless studies that confirm everything that I wrote before, but keep on denying reality. After all, that is the typical behavior displayed by feminists who hate men. And FYI: women don't have to outright say "I'm shallow" for them to be considered shallow. Their behavior and standards for men reveal their extreme shallowness.
The fact that you believe that height is not a factor for women just reveals how ignorant you are. You clearly do not know many women. Or maybe you are lying again. Either way, you have already proved in several posts that you are both ignorant and a liar. The vast majority of women are obsessed with height. It's an undeniable fact that has been demonstrated countless times.
Most men do not care about height - regardless of their own height. Short men will gladly date taller women. Average-height men will gladly date taller women. Tall men will gladly date taller women. Women are the ones who reject men based on height - not the other way around.
Women are shallower and more obsessed with looks than men. This is also a fact that has been backed up by countless studies. Women do NOT believe that most men are average-looking. They believe that most men are ugly. This is a fact.
Saying that I "feel into a trap" because I wrote that men do not have a long laundry list of requirements, and because I wrote that men do not want fat women, is absolutely nonsensical. But all your posts have been nonsense, so what else could I expect from you? You are not even bright to understand that having one requirement is not the same as having a long laundry list of requirements.
Regarding promiscuity: a tiny group of men have more sexual partners than the average woman, but the average woman has far more sexual partners than the average man. This has been true for at least a decade if not more.
And no, women do NOT get rejected more than men. Men receive far more rejection than women. It's not even close. How many women can even say that they have been rejected 10 times? Or 20 times? Most men have been rejected way more than that before they turn 18. It's laughable to see the BS that you will write just to garner sympathy.
And it's quite pathetic that you try to assume that I am basing my data on nothing but personal experiences. I am not. This has nothing to do with me. I am basing it solely on studies/data and women's behavior. But you are, of course, doing this because you have no valid arguments or data.
But keep on lying about women. Keep on portraying women as innocent beings who could never be shallow, and who only care about a man's personality. Men already know that you are lying, so you are not fooling anyone.
If there are studies... and by that, I mean objective studies not from the RedPill community... link to them. Because I have looked and no such studies exist.
Calling all women feminists is ridiculous and feminists do not hate men. I love men; I am married for a long time to a man! I have sons! I had a wonderful father, great in-laws, two wonderful brothers, nephews and uncles and so on. I do not hate men.
I know lots and lots of women, and I know lots of men. I am not saying that height has NO influence, but it is not a prime factor. Also, if what you say is true... only tall men would ever marry and we would easily see a HUGE demographic of men under (say) 5ft 10inches who never can marry do to their height... and that is obviously false.
I am not lying; I am telling you the truth. Your total over reaction... to call me NAMES... is proof you have never been challenged in your incorrect and biased belief system here... and you have clearly found the RedPill Manosphere, which is teaching you a self destructive set of beliefs ground in misogyny and hatred/fear of women.... which is sabotaging ANY chances you have of finding happiness in a relationship, marriage and family.
Obviously there are lots of women in this world, so do some women focus on height? sure. But I have known far more women who focus on HAIR... they want a guy with good hair!!! and yet many men over 30 are balding! but this is NOTHING compared to the pervasive hatred men (LIKE YOU) have for women who are even slightly over ideal weight.
You have failed to explain why there is a HUGE HUGE porn industry (run entirely by men) that caters to mens ideals of sexuality and female looks.... but nothing similar for women. Shouldn't there be a HUGE female porn industry, featuring extremely tall men? LOL!
Women are KEENLY aware, JJ, that men like yourself, are very threatened by a women who is even 1 or 2 inches taller than themselves, so women want a (slightly) taller guy so as not to be threatening. Tall women (really tall, like 6ft) have more trouble dating than even FAT women. And then you add in the issue of women in high heels...
However, almost all short men DO find wives, so it cannot matter THAT MUCH. I know lots of marriages between taller women and shorter men! and most short men simply ... marry slightly shorter women. The average woman is only 5 ft 3 inches tall (in the US).
And again, no studies have EVER shown women are more obsessed with looks than men. Women DO judge men by how good a provider they appear to be, because it will directly affect a womans children (or her ability to even HAVE children). But looks? if that were true, how did HARVEY WEINSTEIN ever marry? the man is HIDEOUS!
And it is simply false that most women consider men to be ugly. WTF??? seriously WTF? if this were true, the human species would have died out millennia ago!
What you are saying, very clearly, is about your own dating problems, your shortcomings and your insecurities. YOU feel rejected for your looks, height and um... penis size? Or perhaps you just feel so insecure, you dont even TRY to date out of fear of rejection. What ever it is... YOU are the one sabotaging YOURSELF. Not women, not feminists.
Men do have insanely long lists of demands from women, and you stated many of them here. In a society with a 62% to 66% obesity rate... men demand a slim fit woman. Even when the man is a lard ass with a jelly belly! So from the get go, JJ... you have eliminated 2 out of 3 women in your demographic! no wonder you are not having any luck!
I think my posts are very reasonable, and moderate... I am not the one calling people liars or other names. You are claiming a bunch of studies, without links or citations, because YOU read about (or saw a video) from the RedPill Manosphere, and you have swallowed their ugly ideology hook line and sinker as an excuse for why you cannot find a girlfriend. But you are being sold poison and self destruction.
I do not think that either MOST MEN or MOST WOMEN are promiscuous, but certainly more men are than women. That is very well established. Nothing happened in the last 20 years to make men suddenly prudish and virginal, while women are wildly sleeping around. And the whole Chad idea is just laughable, that all women are sleeping with some tiny percentage of very good looking men.... just laughable. Rich, tall, handsome men do not date homely, fat or undesirable women AT ALL, not even for hook up sex. They do not HAVE to do so. Super desirable men have all the gorgeous women at their disposal... this has always been true all through history.
BUT... most people are just average. Average men, average women. And they have always found ONE ANOTHER. When you focus so obsessively on this idea that MOST MEN ARE PURE, but ALL WOMEN ARE PROMISCUOUS SLUTS... well, first off, it is incorrect. Second it is self sabotaging. Nothing has happened, btw, since 2013 to turn ALL WOMEN into sluts. This is again, laughable.
I personally know women who were rejected (and here I mean, personal ads, blind dates and that sort of thing) over 100 times within a 3 to 5 year period of time. Some even more than that. I know women who are fat, who have faced rejection almost continually since their teens. And rejected in cruel ways you cannot imagine in your worst nightmares.
What YOU consider rejection, is probably a woman who turns down a drink at a nightclub. What THEY have faced is name calling, outright physical abuse, humiliation, ghosting, etc.
All teenagers are a bit awkward, so to say men have been rejected before turning 18 is just... naive. I mean, is this a 14 year old who asks a 13 year old to the Friday night dance or what?
One problem I often see in men like you (*from the RedPill community) is you think simply asking a woman out, buying her a cocktail... entitles you to sex. If the woman says no... ironically, you do not consider her PURE OR MORAL... you call her a slut, or claim she is promiscuous (just not with YOU).
I need no sympathy, JJ. I have been married for decades. I have adult children. I am not some lonely cat lady you can make fun of... imagine that! (Single woman: lonely pathetic cat lady. Single MAN: brave, clever MGTOW who avoids all human entanglements!)
You are not basing this on studies. Please. Dont even try to say this. You are basing it on your own sad experiences, never having married or had kids. When you watch YouTube videos from the RedPillers... you THINK they are referring to real studies but as I showed you with Pearly Things... they just make that shit up. YOU believe it, because it validates your loneliness and unhappiness, and tells you IT IS ALL SOMEONE ELSES FAULT! it is all TEH EVIL WOMEN! FEMINAZIS!
I never said all women are innocent, nor that no woman is ever shallow. I am saying that women are human beings JUST LIKE MEN, and there are many good women (and men) and some bad ones. You cannot simply blanket say ALL WOMEN THIS OR THAT (or all men this or that)... there are tens of millions of women in your age cohort, and they are not ALL one thing.
Most people do marry, or live together in committed relationships. People who NEVER marry or commit are pretty rare. So it is you who are the outlier... certainly not me, and not most women (or men). And if all men reject women in your fashion... the human race would die out. (And with 8 billion people on earth, that aint happening.)
Get out of the RedPIll community, JJ, or you will pay an awful price for these lies.... in terms of your own happiness and future chance at a wife & children.
"whereas most men could not care less about her height and income,"
When I was in my twenties I told my friends, "I am attracted to tall women and short women, thin women, and heavier women, caucasian red-heads, and dark Africans, highly paid and unemployed women."
When the mantra is that all sex between consenting adults is good, when sexual situations feel bad people automatically think “there must not have been consent.” The problem is with the mantra, it’s not true, consent is not enough for sex to be morally right. When an employer hits on an employee and the employee feels pressured to submit to her boss or risk professional consequences, that doesn’t feel good. It’s not the same thing is forcible rape, a crime that warrants a prison sentence. But if it’s not rape and it doesn’t seem right than what is it and what should the punishment be? I don’t think many people want to operate in an economy where an employer can add sexual duties to an employers list of required tasks and would not want to do business with such people.
It doesn’t feel good when a woman thinks a man is interested in a serious relationship with her only to find out that he was only interested in casual sex. If he socially pressures her it isn’t rape, but what is it and what should the punishment be? It should be a social taboo and she should tell the other women that he’s a cad so they won’t date him.
This is why it’s so important to distinguish between the 3 spheres and not collapse them. Forcible rape is a violent crime that should be punished in the criminal sphere. Economic coercion and sex work in general should be handled by the economic sphere and be incentivized against with boycotts. Socially pressuring someone into sex should be handled in the social sphere and punished with social sanctions, being criticized, shamed or even shunned by your social community.
On point 2. Though I haven’t read the book, based on your summary... and experience raising 8 daughters:
The argument that feminism reduces promiscuity if flawed IMHO for several reasons.
The first one being that, I attribute the reduction in sex, frequency more to video games and the Internet and social media then I do to feminism. It just so happens that feminism was amplified by the Internet and social media.
I think a better evaluation would be looking at what sort of sex the fewer people that are having. I just watched the final episode of the excellent Netflix series Beef, and in the final episode, there was a conversation about how choking during sex has become main stream because of the Internet, yet it wasn’t something that kids raised in the 80s or 90s even thought about. The same could be said about the prevalence of anal sex, and a wide variety of other sexual behaviors.
Ultimately, I think we have a two pronged problem here. On one hand, a certain flavor of feminism has encourage young women to be more promiscuous than they would’ve otherwise been. The other issue is with young men basically taking them cells off the market because they’re spending all the time watching porn or playing video games.
The combination of the two means there is fewer young men than women out there who are on the market, so the young men who are having sex, are willing to push the limits and expect less monogamous type relationships. And the young women out there who are trying to find a mate, and with the influence of the certain brand of feminism, I’m more willing to acquiesce to these male desires.
My antidotal perception based on working with a lot of young, single 20 and 30 something years old guys and having raised eight girls is basically that the men with charm/looks/balls get laid often and easily. Way more than their peers from earlier generations. Meanwhile, women in their teens and 20s have a lot less selection of men who are worth dating.
If there are any grammatical errors, I apologize… I dictated this while sitting in my car in a parking lot.
Sex has been reduced because marriage has been reduced and married people have a lot more sex than single people.
Surveys which focus entirely on teenagers 15-18 show dramatic reduction in sex. And I’m pretty sure that wasn’t effected by marriage.
Great! We should be CELEBRATING the fact that teen sex and pregnancies have dramatically reduced. For decades Conservatives cried, howled, yelped and hollered over "teen sex" "teen pregnancy" and "out of wedlock birthrate". Now that all of that has decreased I expect to hear them celebrating.
Teenagers married in the past.
Not in that past I am from (or Rory).
Yeah, I think this is closer to what is happening. There are noticeably more young men than women who have zero friends, who still live with their parents, etc., and I see this in both anecdotes and surveys.
Though I'd say the same shut-in effect applies to both men and women -- it has just hit men harder, leading to the gap that you describe. The women who are basically shut-ins tend to just watch Netflix (or worse, TikTok). Which might be less addictive than the lethal combination of video games + porn, but it's surely more addictive than watching TV in prior decades.
To further compound the issue, there is the obesity issue and the social media unrealistic expectations aspect of everything. Whether it’s fair or not, a woman’s dating value is more looks dependent than men’s. Though, ironically, I’ve seen some antidotal data that says women actually have more unrealistic expectations than men do about dating partners.
It is probably fair to say that the median man and woman find each other less physically attractive than they previously did. Young adults are both fatter and physically weaker than in the past (e.g. here: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/06/13/481590997/millennials-may-be-losing-their-grip)
More speculatively, I also wonder if young people find each other's personalities less attractive, but that's harder to measure. I suspect that people in the past were more inclined to consciously adopt behaviors that seemed attractive to the opposite sex, or to avoid behaviors that were repellant.
As to unrealistic expectations, what I have gathered is that women have more self-awareness about their relative attractiveness ranking (they have a very obvious tendency to study their competition in a way that we men really don't), but they're also more rigid about refusing to modify their expectations in a partner. Men are more inclined towards a "I'll take what I can get" mentality.
Of course, at least partly what's going on is that women are thinking more about long-term compatibility. Men will first take what we can get, THEN assess whether "what we can get" is something we really want to lock down.
I've been saying this for a while. No one seems to want to comment on the fact that obesity is a big turnoff in a partner, male or female, and we've got a lot more obese people these days than we used to. I say this as someone who's got a bit of a weight problem myself.
Men will take what they can get, to get SEX. They will not take it (*assuming you mean a homely or fat woman) for a real dating relationship... introduce such a woman to their friends or family... treat her with respect and consideration... be faithful to her... let alone marry her. They will, if desperate enough, have sex with such a woman but only on the side, in secret and they will often do degrading or mean things to such women to allay the mans fears that he is STUCK with a FUGLY DOG.
Who you sleep with casually... in our modern American society that is... is not necessarily who you want a relationship with... this goes for both sexes.
At the point you introduce the relationship to your friends or family... that is when you will get major blowback for dating a loser, a fat person, someone outside of your social class (*such as a college degreed woman who brings home a blue collar boyfriend) and of course the usual race/ethnicity stuff.
Men have slightly higher obesity rates (just a bit higher) than women... so why does womens obesity decline their dating value but mens do not?
I think it’s probably a vicious cycle.
Decreased male success plus an increased number of somewhat improved alternatives leads to fewer attempts.
Meanwhile, the women pursue an increasingly selected number of men, trying to catch them in their magic boxes (always a mistake). This reduces the success rate for individual men.
Add to that ridicule of any attempt to extract useful information from admittedly sleazy men who claim to have figured things out.
Only incels and MRAs think this, with the help of RedPill sites and the Manosphere.
It just isn't true. Women pursue men who are attractive, have good personalities and are easy to talk to... and men pursue women who are those things.
BTW: calling a vagina a magic box is gross. Stop it.
The men who fail at dating are generally incels, MRAs, MGTOW and influenced by the movements I mention... they are nasty to women, call most of them ugly names (blue haired land whales, etc.)... they think they are entitled to a gorgeous supermodel and despise ordinary women. Women pick up on this message very quickly and avoid this type of man.
It has nothing to do with height or even money.
Wrong. Bob is right.
Yes, women pursue men that are attractive (although most of them just wait for men to pursue), but women only consider a small group of men attractive, and that attraction is based on height, looks, fitness and income - NOT personality.
You can keep on spreading your lies, but it will never change reality.
She's clearly upset by the fact that men are able to compare notes now in a digital age. The data is really freaking clear on this - men are not getting sexual access at near the rates they used to, and not nearly at the same rates as women are.
For her to claim that "the men who fail at dating" which is LITERALLY ALL THE EXPERIENCE IS FOR MEN are failing because of niche communities (seriously, so niche that at their peak before the nuts at Reddit killed off MGTOW and TRP there were only thousands of users) is absolutely asinine. This woman, by her own admission, is on her second marriage. Was her first husband's failed marriage to her because of MGTOW? Was her current husband's failed first marriage due to TRP?
Nope, and only a man (RedPill, incel, MRA, etc.) would think that way.
Personality matter THE MOST OF ALL.
Height is minimal. And you left off HAIR! LOL! you really do not know any women, do you?
What is the most important thing for many women? you'd be surprised.... it is LIBERAL POLITICS. They will not marry or date or sleep with conservative men, not even wealthy ones.
TRUTH!
Women clearly marry men of all heights, looks, weight and yes, poor men and working class men. There are very ample demographics to prove this, including US Census data.
Most sex happens in committed relationships. If feminism reduces committed relationships it's going to reduce sex.
However, even if the amount of sex is down, you could still have promiscuous sex happening. They aren't mutually exclusive. Someone in a long term relationship may be having sex every week for a long time, while someone whose perpetually "dating" maybe have one night stands or short bouts of sex with a pattern interspersed by dry periods.
That's what I observed in my 20s. People weren't in relationships, but sometimes they would hook up (usually with alcohol). Some of those hook ups would last a few months or whatever. Nobody was trying to get married. There was a lot of distrust and nihilism, and sometimes that distrust and nihilism manifested itself in sexual acts.
I must be old because I think a hookup lasting a few months *is* a relationship.
Yeah, I am old too. It is a pretty sad way of looking at relationships.
That said, I do know it happens. People meet up for noncommittal sex, so no it is not a relationship. Often one or both parties would be ashamed to have their friends/family know about the hookup. It relieves sexual longing, and nobody today wants to be a prude so this is how they cope.
BTW: most women despise this, but do it out of desperation to meet guys... no matter what they say about liking hooking up.
Nope. Most women do not despise that.
Feminism and culture (especially the show Sex and The City) has brainwashed women into thinking that casual sex is empowering and liberating. And that still does not change the fact that these women are willingly participating in casual sex - nobody is forcing them to do so. Not to mention the fact that most women will sleep with a man BEFORE she gets into a serious relationship with him in order to judge his penis size and sexual performance.
I would say that the increasing availability and convenience of internet porn has reduced sexual activity more than all the First Things articles ever penned, all the sex ed classes ever taught.
Do you seriously think that women with charm, looks and... whatever the female equivalent of balls is (flirtatiousness? sexy moves?)... do not get sexual opportunities (along with dating and other perks) more than women without those things? I mean seriously... duh. Good looking PEOPLE get more sexual opportunities than homely people... smooth talkers get more dates than socially awkward losers.
Interesting. I "learned" about chocking in 1993: Sean Connery "Rising Sun". Though I missed out on the you-porn-wave. Anal: ol' lore. Not unknown during my/our youth, but the AIDS-scare might have lowered numbers then - and I would not trust numbers from studies older than me. Wikipedia - rare trigger warning! - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anal_sex#Cultural_views
I guess all this is the reason why... "Even if women’s situation is objectively good, they are more prone than men to sadness, anxiety, resentment, and other negative emotions."
You make some very interesting points.
Frequency of sex can be a deceiving measure for promiscuity, because - by definition - being promiscuous means having sex with a lot of different partners. For example, someone who has had 1000 encounters with the same person would be seen as less promiscuous than a person who has had 100 encounters with 100 different people.
I haven't looked at the data in depth, but I would guess that young people today have less sex but with more different partners. It would be interesting to know if there is any truth to that.
One second comment. Is there any sort of survey that shows what percentage of young people are in a relationship? My guess is that the percentage of young people that are in a relationship has decreased even further than the percentage of young people who have had sex.
Teens need to focus on their studies and forget these stupid "relationships" and sex. It's utterly ridiculous for a society to want it's teenagers to have sex.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2019/03/21/its-not-just-you-new-data-shows-more-than-half-young-people-america-dont-have-romantic-partner/
I did a quick Google search. That is the first thing I found. Most of the article is useless fluff, but it quotes some GSS data that could be useful: the percentage of young people (18 - 34) not having a steady partner increased from 35% in 1986 to 51% in 2018.
I think another measure that would tell us a lot would be if that sex was happening in a relationship or not. A young woman could only be having sex once, or twice a year, but they could both be hook ups. And even if the person is having sex, with the same person, several times, it could be a friends with benefits situation.
This article performs a valuable service. Your critique of Perry's book is so thorough, I can now move on, confident I don't have to read it myself. Thanks!
it's still worth reading, pick it up, just read Bryan's book in conjunction with it.
Agreed. I largely agree with Bryan's essay, and I largely agree with Perry's book, though of course I have my differences with both. And Perry's book can really help when talking to people who don't share a lot of your priors.
I haven't read the book, though I think I once read about it on a blog summary. Given it probably uses a lot of data I've found elsewhere I'll shoot from the hip.
1) Most sex happens in committed relationships. If feminism reduces committed relationships it's going to reduce sex. However, even if the amount of sex is down, you could still have promiscuous sex happening. They aren't mutually exclusive. Someone in a long term relationship may be having sex every week for a long time, while someone whose perpetually "dating" maybe have one night stands or short bouts of sex with a pattern interspersed by dry periods.
That's what I observed in my 20s. People weren't in relationships, but sometimes they would hook up (usually with alcohol). Some of those hook ups would last a few months or whatever. Nobody was trying to get married. There was a lot of distrust and nihilism, and sometimes that distrust and nihilism manifested itself in sexual acts.
2) I don't think you really understand consent here. We aren't talking about "what do I need to not be considered a rapist." We are talking about "even if someone agrees to something, is it still the wrong choice." I don't mean this in a legal sense, but a moral sense. If a woman gives me consent, but she's wrong to do so, it's still bad.
I understand this is "paternalistic". Oh well. I thought we all understood people make bad choices and that this is especially common involving young people and sex (I will throw in alcohol too, as that is a big part of the sexual market).
3) "Because free markets are a social mechanism for giving people who have something to offer whatever they want."
This was Houellebecq's critique in "the expansion of the domain of struggle." That is the mechanisms that allow disinterested bakers and candlestick markers to delver good outcomes even with selfish desires doesn't apply when applied to romance.
Our preferred mechanism for social organization, monogamy, marriage, and family, are at least to some degree "not what people want." They all involve sacrifices and commitments people would like to figure a way out of making or cheat on. It takes vigilance of both people and society to make it work, and having it not work leads to bad outcomes.
I think part of this is that the sexual market is very different from the market market. For one, it's INHERENTLY a rival goods market. There is only ever one man and one woman. We can't use assembly lines to make more mates. And to the extent you think the context is even worse than one to one the greater the rivalry.
It turns out that you can give mates "what they want" in a way that isn't really good for their life outcomes. Promiscuity is like becoming a smoker, the cigarette company gives you want you want but you get cancer.
4)" If she understands and appreciates how markets work, she has two options."
Have you considered "self deception" as an option. This is actually pretty easy to do if the men she can't get to commit will fake it to sleep with her. If women aren't even looking to marry until around 30, it only takes a couple of string along relationships to squander what's left of ones youth.
5) "Men in relationships should avoid spending time alone with attractive women - and women should prefer to be with men who avoid such temptations. Women in relationships should avoid spending time alone with successful men - and men should prefer to be with with women who avoid such temptations."
Mike Pence was right!
BTW, you eviscerated this view when talking about workplaces. Maybe work just shouldn't be a place where people are trying to get in each others pants.
Oh God, I can't believe I like a post that ended with "Mike Pence was right", but this was a very well-argued post.
I see a lot of comments discussing how social media, videogames, porn etc. has affected relations between the sexes. I think there might be a kind of selection bias there. For some individuals (let's say ages 12-22) these are serious issues comparable to substance addiction but I don't think that accounts for most of what the stats reveal.
From a young age children are constantly surrounded by screens showing them people, places and lifestyles that appear much better than anything they experience in real life. This oversaturation of seemingly real life discourages them from seeking out fulfilling people, places and lifestyles because they intuitively know it will never measure up to what they're constantly exposed to. It's easy to point to videogames and porn as a starting point but it's more nuanced than that.
DEFINITELY true. One interesting series of studies involved showing men (*likely mostly college age volunteers) pictures of average women and then the men rated them as attractive on a 10 point scale. They found most of the women reasonably attractive.
Then they were shown photos of gorgeous supermodels and extremely beautiful women. Again, shown a variety of female images....now the men were much pickier and found the average women distasteful and unappealing. They now wanted a supermodel.l
This all started long ago with movies, TV and advertising but in the last 25 years with the internet... it has been on greased rails, with young people fed images from birth that are so intoxicating... as you correctly say, they will NEVER experience this in real life and they long for fantasy worlds, where they can put on avatars like costumes, and design the perfect (digital) partners.
In comparison, real life seems bland and unappealing. This is very troubling.
Lies. Women are the ones who have unrealistic demands and deem most men to be physically unattractive. Men have realistic standards and views regarding women's physical attractiveness, but most women do NOT have realistic standards and views regarding men's physical attractiveness.
No, it is the truth and it is sad if I am the first person to challenge your RedPill (MRA, incel) belief system.
Ask your mother. Ask your sisters. Ask any female friends, if you have them. TALK TO WOMEN.
What you state is literally the opposite of reality, like UPSIDE DOWN WORLD.
Women find most men physically attractive. The problem is, some perfectly OK looking men have these ugly, hate filled INCEL MRA RED PILL belief systems, and are loud & insulting about them, and start off on dates or meetings with complaints like yours.
They come across so toxic, that women either will not date them, or drop them like a hot rock after one or two dates. You are probably, unwitting, self sabotaging YOURSELF here.
Men are so unrealistic, it is THEY who not only consume but CREATE almost all pornography!!! women have almost NO porn directed to or by other women! EXPLAIN THIS!!!
Men create almost all advertising, make almost all movies and TV shows, and yet you state WOMEN have the unrealistic standards????
Men have a 62.6% obesity rate, but reject women with a 62.4% obesity rate... you yourself just stated this in an earlier post. So men are rejecting roughly 2 out of 3 women BEFORE EVEN MEETING THEM.
Lets talk about the real problem: YOU cannot find a girlfriend. You refuse to do deep personal introspection on WHY this is happening and inside prefer paranoia about things like your height (*just date short women!) or your penis size (*nope, just isn't a factor).
Unless you are literally a dwarf or have a micro penis.... sir, this is all in your head and has nothing to do with the dating market or the OLD OLD TV show Sex And The City.
Assuming you are American... there are 165 million women in this country. It is statistically IMPOSSIBLE to not find someone you like, who also likes you.
LOL. You are so out of touch with reality.
No, most women do not find most men to be physically attractive. Most women believe that most men are ugly. Several studies have shown this.
And why are you mentioning porn? Just because most porn is created and watched by men, it does not mean that men have unrealistic standards. I would argue that porn has made women have even more unrealistic standards as they now expect men to be well-endowed and last for a very long time in bed.
It has already been proven that women are the ones with the unrealistic standards. Women are the ones that are out of touch with reality and think that they deserve a man who is at the top. But most men have realistic standards
There are other parallels too, there could probably be a long book about media's effect on cognition at different stages of development. Black and white thinking is one example, the majority of the popular stories that we consume (movies, books, tv shows) feature clear distinctions between protagonist and antagonist. Children then apply that framing of good guy vs bad guy to real life. This fairy tale mindset which we'd normally outgrow in past generations persists in the age of 24/7 engagement and encourages a distorted mental model of the world.
Thats an excellent insight, though I have to note that B&W thinking is far from new and goes back to the earliest days of things like the movies... cowboys & Indians, crime dramas, etc. Clear good guys and clear bad guys, and the good guys ALWAYS prevail. That goes back to the earliest 20th century, 120 years ago.
Yet what we see today seems different, doesn't it? So there is something more, and I think that is the predominance of video gaming (vs. traditional fiction in books or films) in the last 30 years. Gaming does not end at 12 or 13 like other childhood activities used to do, and you see adults still deeply enmeshed in this culture. The storylines of games involve deep fantasies, playing YOURSELF as a character (vs. watching other characters)... the concept of avatars and creating your own reality.
Its a pretty deep dive! and worth of a whole article itself.
I think it's due to the pervasiveness of screen based consumption (whether it's phone, tv or videogames), 100 years ago you had to actually go to the movie theater. Now from the age of 1 to 30 we spend more than half our day staring at screens.
"Well, I’m not just a father of four; I exceed the 99th personality of paternal involvement. I handled every nightshift for every baby. Solo. That includes a pair of twins. I’ve been homeschooling - again, solo - for almost ten years. During Covid, I homeschooled all four of our kids. And through all of this, I never thought my kids “limited my freedom” in the slightest."
Dude, what!? I have never read a Caplan sentence that left me more gobsmacked. As a fellow father of four, and also as someone who would dare to put himself past the (slightly more modest) 98th percentile of paternal involvement, I cannot make this make sense to me. I mean, OF COURSE, kids limit your freedom in a thousand different ways. Every day. All the time.
I've long been puzzled over your general attitude of "ehh, kids are easy!" I read Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids, taking it to heart (you're welcome kids #3 and 4!) I even switched to plastic cutlery like you recommended! But it is unfathomably time-consuming. And I won't touch homeschooling with a ten foot pole. So how are you doing this?? Are your kids also in a few 99th percentiles? For agreeableness? Studiousness? Docility? Mental focus? Independence? Politeness? Compulsion to please parents? What is it?
I know you've mentioned nannies a few times. Is it the nannies?! Should you be mentioning the nannies every time your write on this topic??
Interestingly, as a creationist, I find this critique both very true, but also perhaps missing the point of Perry's book. I do think that her neuroticism and dark view of reality are problems, but I've been listening to her podcast, and I think she is trying to seek out other perspectives to offer alternatives and expansions.
I also think that you point out that she's writing for young feminist audiences, particularly women, not for cranky conservatives and libertarians who already believe that men and women should get married and have kids.
Now, the question is - can she defeat the sterilizing memes that have taken over (and maybe are inherent in?) feminist culture? I don't know. But I think her book should be widely read and hopefully combat those sterilizing memes quickly.
Also, I think treating feminism as a monolith both in intent/argument and in effect is a bit of a mistake, as I think feminism is perhaps most noteable for being very fractious and incoherent.
“Cranky conservative could be a good description for Bryan Caplan . . . Okay “Cranky Libertarian.”
Bryan doesn't seem that cranky to me.
In many cases, I think the general thrust of the book is correct - casual sex is bad, the more casual the more true this is. On the most actionable paths to limiting sexual harm, I think this book makes an excellent case for the complete destruction of Pornhub and similar sites. The horrifying section about Pornhub is probably the most vile thing in the book. It seems like a great cause for a politician on either side of the aisle - simply point out the rampant abuse. Perry, seeming to be a feminist without ideological friends, points out that much of the sexual liberation movement is tied to abusive left-leaning scholars.
On a baseline level, I agree with Bryan re: grading on a curve. Throughout the whole book, I keep thinking that much of this stuff would have been absolutely trivial to point out to anyone in a religious tradition, or anyone who has been to a bar. "Women are in danger while drinking alone at bars" is indeed common sense, and if we are praising common sense, we should praise the under-praised religious and traditional folks here and point out that "red pill" stuff might be worth reading as a guideline of what to avoid.
And that's why I think Tyler has the better sense of this book- because I think he sees Perry as someone who is successfully presenting common sense in a method framed as radical.
Throughout the book the harms of porn and sloth are hammered home for men. The burden of this book is not to make the case that casual sex is bad, something that anyone could do. The point of the book is to make the case that we have previously underestimated these harms for women, and thus we need to re-evaluate. THIS is why Perry is influential - because she is using maximally successful memes for distribution as part of the message. It's a Straussian masterpiece, using the "woke" tone and frame to come around to a damn-near religious view of sexuality. She does all of this without making the case for marriage/children/etc. although these are the most obvious reasons to not have casual sex, porn addictions, and to generally try to improve.
The book is written to point out the massive divide between sex in committed relationships and casual sex/hookups, in a language that undergrad feminism courses will use and want to discuss. It succeeds. The text as written is "Women are the primary losers of hookup culture." The question the book tries to pose is, "Given that casual sex is in fact bad, dangerous, and humiliating, why have it?" There are answers to this question, but they are not answers that fit neatly into a political platform or any sort of cause. On the other hand, you have building a relationship of which sex is a part and working together on goals, possibly (likely) family.
The readers of MR/BetOnIt/etc. have a choice here. We can either read this book and think "This is factually incorrect" or "Ah, in the age of feminization we must frame all arguments in women's tears!" Or we can say "Oh this book is controversially feminist" and let college feminism profs do the work for us. Choosing option 1 might mean we score internet points. Option 2 might mean fewer people getting into UFC fights by mistake after a nice dinner, and potentially a widespread movement to destroy the internet pornography industry. I vote Option 2.
> The readers of MR/BetOnIt/etc. have a choice here.... Option 2 might mean fewer people getting into UFC fights by mistake after a nice dinner, and potentially a widespread movement to destroy the internet pornography industry. I vote Option 2.
Most rationalists are libertarians or adjacent, and don't WANT to destroy internet porn. It serves a purpose, and the market is large and robust, and desired by billions everywhere in the world. Taking that away would be a bad thing, not a good thing. And women watch it too! About 25-33% of Pornhub viewers are women. It's not like porn is a male-only thing.
In fact, given the key and specific economic hand porn had in developing internet technologies and driving widespread adoption, porn has almost certainly done hugely *more* good in the world than most other entertainment sectors. The internet was basically invented and spread widely because of it.
Trying to force your own aesthetics and choices on the entire world via legislative fiat isn't a good thing, it's basically the definition of being a d*ck.
I totally concede this isn't a libertarian thing to do, but exercising power to make porn 25x less accessible strikes me as a good use of government power. Similar to gambling on sports, where the deadweight loss is just increasing so rapidly that libertarianism becomes infeasible.
I'd concede that porn -> internet growth, but I'd reckon the internet would stick around if porn websites ceased to exist. I might not accept the tradeoff in 1995. I accept the tradeoffs in 2025!
The book has criticisms of porn websites that you would consider on libertarian grounds - do read if you haven't! I suspect that the author has beliefs closer to mine, and we'd all be better off if we'd address those true concerns.
In my perfect universe, porn is illegal and not even desired, but in a universe we could maybe all agree to, porn is legal, but with 60 minutes of truly unskippable YouTube ads set up as required viewing beforehand. Note that YouTube doesn't want porn on their site, likely because they and advertisers don't want to be affiliated. Even the market thinks this stuff could be banned for just causes!
No ad hominems, please! I am rooting for you in so many other contexts! I want every individual sovereign! Pornhub wants everyone to spend all their time and money on their evil porn website! You and I have the common cause!
Absolutely fantastic review. I'm glad Bryan has taken up the mantle and started arguing against the excesses of modern feminism despite the significant potential for negative career or at least reputational impacts. It would have been all to easy for Bryan to keep his thoughts to himself and only argue less inflammatory topics like open borders (I'm serious). He's doing a valuable service making the arguments he is, and in reviewing books like these.
Bryan literally argues that men should suppress their sexual needs for variety and women should suppress their sexual needs for the top men. He's basically an open misogynist and misandrist. Just like Perry.
Apart from the fact that evolutionary psychology is extremely wrong, it doesn't describe male and female strategies well (men are not any less "hypergamous" and women are not any less polygamous).
Men are totally hypergamous, just expressing it in different ways than women. Men want women they can show off on their arm... women that make their friends jealous... women who are high status (which can be fame, beauty, family wealth)... I wish I had a nickel for every guy I have heard talking about girls with RICH DADDYS or wanting to marry THE BOSSES DAUGHTER.
Men do not care about making their friends jealous, this is entirely female pathology attempting to view male behavior through female lenses.
Oh honey. Sorry, but you are in DEEP DENIAL if you do not think men get HUGE status and props from other men... if they appear at an event or couples date, and THEIR girlfriend(wife) is gorgeous, thin, much younger than they are, etc.
Why do you think very rich men, movie stars, etc. always have a trophy girlfriend/wife on their arms and trade her in every few years for a new younger model? Hello Leonardo DiCaprio!
It is NOT because they want family and children, as many never marry OR have children (or if they do, they neglect those kids once they remarry).
I also think that women do SOME of the same things... not all. But women of a certain age ... lets call them cougars... do absolutely show off their boy toys. Younger women get big bragging rights from having a handsome or rich boyfriend/husband!
But it is not the extremes that men do it, and not so clearly self serving... women do not discard and replace their male partners with the same degree of alacrity.
Perhaps you don’t understand what Hypergamy means.
I do think that women may be polygamous, in that they might be willing to share a high status man, if they can make the finances work. Those men who are not among those happy few may object to being taxed to pay for it.
Are you mixing up hypergamy and polygamy? Hypergamy simply means DESIRING to marry up... it could be in terms of wealth, status, looks, opportunities, etc. It is not a gendered term, anymore than monogamy.
I do not see any evidence for polygamy in women (i.e., multiple women with one man) in society outside of Fundie Mormonism. Even there, most women loathe polygamy and hate sharing a man, but think they have no other options.
Typically these start out as conventional one woman/one man marriages and then when the mans eye wanders... the first wife accepts the new, younger wife so as not to lose her status, income, benefits, father for her children. But she is miserable and bitter about it.
I suggest the old TV show BIG LOVE as it shows this very clearly.
No. Women are naturally polygamous in the sense that they would ideally like to sleep with many men, meaning having their own "rotation" of men. Women and men are not in any way different in that regard.
The only difference is that safety reasons and societal shaming (more in the past) make women less likely to act on it. But it's ridiculous to believe that makes women less naturally polygamous, female promiscuity is the most natural thing in the world.
Well all humans are inherently selfish. WE want to be free to have as many sexual relations as we can with the most attractive potential partners... but we want OUR partners to be absolutely monogamous and faithful!
WE want sexual satisfaction but do not care so much for our partners satisfaction.
A lot of men, especially in the incel/MRA/RedPIll world of the internet still cling to hopelessly outdated notions (SPINSTERS????) and one of them is the idea of women as blushing flowers, who have little or no sexual agency or desire... that only men are HORNY and wants lots of sex with lots of different partners. But in fact, this is universal and the only thing that stops it is opportunity.... most of us are not beautiful and we certainly do not stay YOUNG, so whatever chances we had in our teens or 20s are mostly all gone by our 50s.
Not just safety, unless you include concerns about providing for any resulting children.
I can imagine too many women’s ideal world being one where they are free to mate with and have children by whoever struck their fancy. Tax money would pay to support and raise the children. This would have the genetic advantages of polygamy, without the harem politics.
I guarantee you that the married couples, women who prefer marriage, plus all the men who aren’t getting any would resent the hell out of such a scheme. The latter group would probably work just enough to live and entertain themselves. We might also see an increase in “young man syndrome”, where unattached young men act out violently.
Does anything about the second paragraph seem familiar? I would love to test the paternity of _all_ children in some neighborhoods.
Utterly wrong. Women are not going to form harems with the "top 20% men." In fact, women are actually more likely to have children with low-status men:
"Men aged 22-49 with no high school diploma or GED had fathered a higher mean number of children (1.7) than men who had a high school diploma or GED (1.3) or those with some college (1.0) or a bachelor's degree or higher (1.0)."
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhsr/nhsr179.pdf
I have never seen a poor men struggling to get girls. It seems like they have more time and are less overhinking things, so no reason to believe poor men will have no women if women have their ideal world.
“I exceed the 99th personality of paternal involvement
Did you mean to write "percentile"?
No I think Bryan means “99th personality of paternal involvement.” He’s pretty full of himself as the ULTIMATE FATHER, and homeschooler. I suspect his kids are well academic-schooled, but I’d like to interview them to see if their CAPLAN-schooling has rendered them autistic offshoots of their father.
I do not know the man, so I have to take his review of his own parenting at face value. Maybe he is father of the year, and a SAHD (Stay at Home Dad).
But more likely he is STUCK home because he is unemployed for some reason and his wife is the primary breadwinner. I wonder what SHE WOULD SAY about the situation.
You're a little confused. Bryan Caplan is not a stay-at-home Dad. He is one of the top economists at James Madison University and one of the most influential economists in the country. The cute part is he thinks he's a renown social sciences philosopher as well, and he just might be . . . But he's delightfully quirky and has a face you want to slug.
Then the confusion is deliberate on HIS part... he stated at great length how he is the primary caretaker for his children, does all this stuff for them and pretty much the primary parent (not his wife). That doesn't dovetail with him having a demanding FULL TIME job (though I know many university tenured professors work like 2 hours a week, get all summers and holidays off with pay and long sabbaticals whenever they want).....
Good point about how does he get everything done--all that homeschooling time PLUS a demanding career? I believe he is very productive! But Bryan, if you're listening, maybe you could list your weekly schedule.
Robert, are you judging based only on his writing, or have you met the man?
I haven't met him, but have seen some videos, and read a lot of his posts and his "Education" book. I actually like and admire him. He's definitely interesting and a great talent, but I stand by my post above. He likes to be a provocateur, so I can be one too. I wouldn't let my children be home-schooled by him, except for Economics and Math . . . From afar I have a love/hate relationship with those "James Madison boys," (Cowen, Hanson, Caplan)
I always find books like Perry's, and pretty much all writing on the "dating market," to be incredibly strange. It feels like the Vasharans from D&D have somehow made it to our world and cornered the market on relationship writing.
When I was young, like most people, I was bombarded with all the schmaltzy, social-desirability bias-laden relationship advice you hear in the media. Be yourself. Fall in love with your best friend. Find things in common to connect with people over. Focus on personality rather than looks. Be emotionally vulnerable. Do not be ashamed of your feelings. Communicate your feelings. So I did all that stuff.
It worked. It worked fantastically well. I found a wonderful partner I loved, and I also encountered a good many other people who I think things would have worked out with if I hadn't met her.
This makes me suspect that most of this cynical relationship market stuff is just fragile, neurotic people projecting. They think the dating milieu is a terrible place because schmaltzy relationship advice has been tried and found wanting. But actually, it has been found difficult, and hence been left untried. For some reason a lot of people have trouble doing these basic things that are really effective.
Good for you. But "the system worked for me, therefore everything is fine" has never been valid reasoning.
Even for you, it wasn't easy. It's not easy for anybody and hence many people fail. Now, should we sit back and accept that or should we as a society try to make it easier, so more people end up in your fortunate position?
But most people marry. Even those who never marry, are usually in long term, live together sorts of relationships (which used to be CALLED common law marriage!)
Most people are not single forever or by choice... if you filter out the widows/widowers or people over 75 (by 75 or 80, there are 3x as many women as men because THE MEN ARE DEAD).
Even most divorced people end up remarrying!
The people you're talking about are largely old enough that they'd already settled down before the curse of Tinder & friends made everything so much harder.
Alex, that would make sense if I ONLY KNEW people who are my exact age (older GenX) but obviously I know a variety of people of all ages. Also, personal ads are NOT remotely new and were around when I was dating... they were SLOW compared to internet dating (like Tinder, Match.com, EHarmony, etc.) but the principle of letting people arrange THEIR OWN blind dates remains the same.
I am not sure why you think Tinder completely makes things different...it only started in earnest in 2013. Do you think dating has deteriorated THAT remarkably in just the past 10 years? are you old enough to remember dating (as an adult, not a teen) prior to 2013?
Almost everything people complain about Tinder (etc.), I found was around in the 90s when I was dating (second time around, as a 30ish divorcee)... people setting unreasonably picky standards, for example.
I definitely agree with you that dating and finding relationships is too hard for many people, and that there are ways to advocate for change to make it easier. What I am skeptical about isn't changing the system, it's the repulsively cynical, neurotic, and manipulative worldview that people like Perry seem to have. I don't think that worldview is an accurate description of society and human nature, and I also think that it is not effective at finding solutions.
I think Bryan makes similar arguments in his 14th point in his post. If I encountered a woman or a man who thought the same way Perry does my first bit of relationship advice for them would be "Stop. The reason things are hard for you is that your toxic worldview causes you to see malice where there is none, and to feel contempt for people who do not deserve it. Just stop."
Louise Perry is also happily married and doesn't need your relationship advice. Evidently her neurosis paid off!
I think this is probably a gender thing. Women have every reason to be neurotic because men are a lot more sexually predatory than women. Quite conceivable that being neurotic is a learned adaption to steer clear of those predators and find a good man (which is still most of them, obligatory #notallmen).
I strongly suspect that Perry and similar women are happily married in spite of their neuroticism, not because of it. I'm not just trying to give dating advice, I'm also trying to give advice on how to not be a miserable misanthrope who interprets every little thing people do in the worst possible light.
In regards to your theory on the cause of female neuroticism, it sounds like a plausible theory, although I can think of plenty of other explanations that are equally plausible. I wonder if it could be tested by seeing if lesbians are, on average, less neurotic than heterosexual women, since they don't need to filter dating partners to the same degree (on the other hand, that would probably introduce a lot of confounding factors, like women who dated men for a bit because they didn't realize they were lesbians right away, or women with neuroses that were caused dealing with homophobia).
Thanks. That system actually DOES work MOST of the time. No system is totally fool proof but what you describe has worked and is working now, for MOST PEOPLE.
No matter how wonderful your partner (and good for you to appreciate them!)... the reality is this is a big planet and big country, and there are probably hundreds of thousands of people you COULD potentially make a solid marriage with... some better than others.
The proof of this is how often people remarry after being widowed or divorced. They grieve and then they heal, and they love again.
BTW: the cynical stuff overwhelmingly comes from deeply embittered people whose dating strategies have failed or backfired.
You are 100% correct, and I think that is part of why the book is written the way it is. However, it is important that neurotic people who like politicizing topics deserve to have a neurotic, politicized defense of common sense, and I think Perry has a successful career ahead of her doing much the same.
"True, most young, well-educated women won’t be able to marry handsome, charming investment bankers. But if they set their sights a little lower, they can find a good husband fairly easily."
I guess many women are simply not ok with setting their sight "a little lower"
I don't know about men, but I have a vague feeling (being a woman myself) that most women probably prefer to rather be alone than to be with a man they don't like much. (This may be wrong and I don't know if I can say 'most women' confidently - maybe it's only 40% percent of women or so. People are different.) It wasn't like this in the past when women were economically dependent on spouses. But now that they aren't it may not make sense for women to actively 'lower' their preferences if that would mean lowering them to a level where the resulting union would be worse than living alone. Living alone has several benefits, after all - freedom, privacy, no-one nagging at you.
Yes, I'm a man, but I do think this dynamic is real. A lot of men drop from "positive marriage/relationship value" to "negative value" once their economic contributions become less relevant. Women haven't seen the same sort of decrease in value.
Even if we think not in terms of "happiness" but purely Darwinian survival of one's progeny, a lot of men are of negative value to the continued survival and wellbeing of a prospective partner's children, and this value, too, must be adjusted downward if his economic contribution is no longer a matter of life and death for them.
To some degree, men can adapt by, for example, becoming more attentive husbands and fathers, but that's beyond the reach of many.
In the long run, I believe society will converge on a set of family-forming behaviors that are sustainable (or otherwise perish), but right now we're living through a number of shocks to family formation, most of which are technology-generated. As a result, our family-formation customs are in chaos, and most women do not have a replacement number of children.
Yes, but apparently they are _not_ alone, they’re sleeping with men who they don’t like very much, but who do check the other boxes.
Also they may be sleeping with men who the do like quite a bit but who are not interested in marrying them. But many wouldn't call this "not being alone", i.e. it's not quite as "together" as actually sharing the roof and finances with someone.
I thought Bob’s comment was about promiscuity. Which I do think still means being mostly alone. The promiscuous women I’ve known have all have all just had occasional hookups. One random encounter per month is a high rate and would probably only be sustained for a brief life phase.
There are women who are ultra-promiscuous, racking up a triple-digit body count, but it’s rare, outside of actual professionals.
Then there are friends with benefits, but I think most of the time the woman there would like a relationship and the man is non-committal.
Who wants to marry a investment banker? Usually they’re just leeches advancing unproductive financialization. A good plumber adds more to society.
Exactly. There is an old saying that if you marry ONLY for wealth... the PRICE in terms of your dignity, effort, self esteem and happiness will cost much more than any monies you get from marrying.
Investment bankers are often creeps. I hear more often the idea that women want to marry DOCTORS... but doctors have staggering rates of divorce, work long hours, their flexible job structure plus wealth means they have very ample opportunities to cheat. So yes, you may marry wealth but is it worth it???
I would guess the sort of person who'd marry a leech would be a meta-leech, or a "gold digger" as they're more commonly known.
Christoph: sure there are women who want to marry rich men ONLY. They have a name: GOLD DIGGERS. And it is nothing new and does not require education or even to be all that young.
What percentage of men are investment bankers? like 0.001%? how many men are RICH? only about 3% of men earn over $100,000 a year! and that isn't truly rich in todays world.
if what you and incel/MRA culture believed was remotely true.... almost nobody would ever marry. Yet most people DO marry. Even those who do NOT marry, typically have close committed relationships.
I could easily say the same to men: sorry, you cannot get a supermodel... but if you SET YOUR SIGHTS A BIT LOWER... you could get a nice ordinary woman to marry.
But tell incel/MRAs this and they get hysterical, screaming they do not want a FUGLY DOG or BLUE HAIRED LAND WHALE....
Lola, Per Google: "17% of all men earn over $100k per year] Jan 18, 2023" so if this is correct than it almost 5X more than your estimate of 3%. Inflation is real, and approaching 20% of American men make "six figures."
Ok you got me there... the last 3 years post COVID has seen remarkable spikes in pay. So my figures were probably pre 2020... I am willing to go $125,000 for a fairly high US income and frankly, if you live in NYC or LA or Boston.... $100K is not really wealth anymore. A tax rate of over 50% and you are talking about about $4200 a month take-home pay, when rents average $3500....and starter homes are $900K.
My overarching point is correct though: if a woman is set on a RICH husband, the pickings are very slim.
The crux of Birger's "Dateonomics" is that this actually isn't true in recent times. The supply of young, well-educated women in the geographic areas where they work and search for mates (the central parts of cities) considerably exceeds the supply of young, well-educated men. The details are in the book, but women now get educated more than men, and as you go up the education ladder, the disproportion gets larger. And there's a strong bias by women to not marry men with less education.
The few reports I've seen suggest that the young men in the "just out of college in central cities" category are using their increased market power to be more sexually demanding of the young women. The women are unhappy with that, but there's no way for them to change that without either combining to do some sort of "price fixing" or significantly changing who they would accept as husbands. That's a form of "a little lower", but it really means giving up a husband with a bachelor's degree.
There is truth there. Many educated women want to live & work in a handful of Big Blue cities and thus, there is a huge oversupply of such women to men.
The same women would be wildly more successful if they just moved to a less competitive or less blue city... but tell them that, you will get your eyes scratched out. They would almost rather DIE (or live alone forever) than move to somewhere that is not cool, trendy or hip.
It is less about education than about geography, though education IS a factor.
Ive talked to actual woman (as a woman myself) if they would rather marry an adjunct college professor who earned $30K a year OR a very successful plumber who earned $180K a year. To a woman, they all picked the professor! (so much for the hypergamy theory).
The interesting thing is WHY... they would be ashamed of the plumber in front of their friends & family.... he might not have the right political views, or tastes in things like food or movies. God forbid, he might be MAGA! many women have expressed to me that they value liberal politics in a man WAYYY over money, height, hair, good looks, etc.
BTW: many folks seem unaware of ASSORTIVE MATING. Men today also want a woman with an equal education. Men with advanced degrees do not marry women who dropped out of 8th grade.
All true... Though on slightly longer timescales, there are relevant complications. Birger mentions that not so long ago, it was relatively common for college-educated women to marry blue-collar men. I myself have some vague memory of a trope of a blue-collar guy marrying a wife he freely admitted was smarter and having her run his life. (Consider the very popular "Honeymooners".)
I have some suspicion that the cause is the delayed effect of the relative pay of various occupations. Back in the 1950s, a lot of money rode on physical strength, and a lot of blue-collar work paid as well as white-collar work. There was a class difference, but putting too much emphasis on it was considered snobbery. That is, *male* blue collar work paid as well as white-collar work; women largely had to marry an employed male to live decently, but she wasn't necessarily losing out by marrying that plumber.
Scroll forward to circa 1995 and automation of heavy work and globalization of factory work caused a sharp difference in pay between those with bachelor's degrees and those without.
Scroll forward to now, and as Birger says a lot of men skip college because there is well-paying blue-collar work to be had for men; he says particularly in construction. But I can guess that there's a lingering prejudice from the days when you needed a bachelor's degree to get decently paid at all. Also, it's plausible that women now being paid largely at parity with men (until they have children), their choices aren't so closely focused on money (which would push them back toward the 1950s pattern) and more on intangible status factors (ugh, especially the ones that can be obliquely boasted about on Facebook).
Bully that you've actually surveyed women about these things. (Conveniently, you're a woman and have a decent chance of other women telling you the truth about this "when y'all let your hair down".) But of course, it's still hypergamy, just of status.
> many women have expressed to me that they value liberal politics in a man WAYYY over ... height
Really!
> an adjunct college professor who earned $30K a year
I've read various bloggers complaining about how adjuncts are exploited. It's always a question why adjuncts put up with it rather than bailing for whatever other career possibilities they have (which would be far less abusive and likely pay better). But perhaps it's one of those odd jobs whose status is *much* higher than its pay. Certainly to the twenty-something male, living in poverty in a city where it's easy to get girlfriends would have its attractions.
I would have to dispute the claim that NOT THAT LONG AGO (when is this? the 50s? 60s? 70s?) college degreed women routinely married blue collar men. I mean... anything can happen, but I doubt it was the norm. In the 50s & 60s, it was common to state that women went to universities to get an MRS degree... i.e., to find a degreed, successful husband.
You could marry a blue collar guy (well paid, say a Ford auto plant worker) just by taking a job in an auto plant... why waste 4 years and $$$ on a degree? Remember in the 50s and 60s, a majority of women quite work by their mid 20s to raise a family! So the degree did not have much use beyond the value of meeting suitable men during the peak ages of 18 to 22!!!
Now: did men sometimes marry women who were SMARTER THAN THEMSELVES? sure, it probably happened all the time and happens today. People dont exactly meet up by comparing their IQs or even grades (well, maybe in Mensa dating groups but not normally). During courtship and LIMERANCE (look it up)... people are not thinking about IQ but about sex and hormones.
Blue collar work paid pretty well up into the 70s (and still does in some respects) but the status is low..... a high paid Ford auto worker might be an incredible catch for a waitress who dropped out of 8th grade. He is NOT A CATCH if you have a BA in English literature or Gender Studies.... he is an embarrassment in front of your family & friends, when he uses bad grammar or has bad table manners.
So you are missing missing the subtle complexities of mating here. It is not all money, which is why just saying HYPERGAMY is missing the boat (also missing out that men seek hypergamy themselves in trying to get high status wives or girlfriends). Money certainly matters, but it is not everything.
I cant remember if I quoted it here, but I read an interesting study that asked a couple hundred women (roughly 22 to 35) if they would rather earn $100K a year doing a blue collar job, like sewer cleaning (with great benefits) OR earn $25K a year as an adjunct professor or publishing intern. Almost 100% went for the $25K a year job! why? the blue collar job is LOW STATUS. And you wont meet high status men that way. It is MORE HIGH STATUS in some circles to be that $25K adjunct married to another $25K adjunct husband... even if you have to take money from parents, or live in a dump... because the last thing you want is to be a LOW STATUS BLUE COLLAR WORKER, who might be a MAGA Trump voter or something!
The changes you refer to did not happen in 1995; they were building in the 60s and came to fruition in the 70s and early 80s and they came ON TOP OF massive inflation that made ordinary acquisitions (like a first starter house) more and more difficult... starting a sort of nuclear arms race of Boomers trying to keep up. (How well they did is a matter of opinion! but they are REVILED today!) Thats when the Boomer middle/upper middle class became so conservative, after a youth spent as hippie liberals. The jobs arms race affected middle management jobs, but I think the big elephant in that room was the computer revolution, which started (very roughly) around 1979.
Unfortunately for your theory... a lot of young men (by now, millennials) skip college but NOT to work high paying blue collar jobs. In fact, construction jobs pay less than ever (in inflation adjusted dollars) because the field is overwhelmingly filled with illegal aliens who have driven down wages AND benefits. The young men who DO NOT go to college work McCrap McJobs, often part time, while living in moms basement playing video games and watching porn. I wish this was not true, but alas....
Now, it is not ALL young men by far, but enough that it tilts the field. Meanwhile women have taken up the mantle and are now the MAJORITY of students, graduates and in fields like medicine and law. If they work full time and dont take off time for children (or use day care)... they actually earn as much or MORE than same age men, at least until their early 30s.
Status ALWAYS has mattered, even 50 to 75 years ago (and probably always). There are some terrific books on this, some related to mating strategies and some just about the social condition in the US over the last 40 years.
I find such things fascinating and I talk to a lot of people (men too!) both online and in real life, and of course, I have adult kids who are millennials so they tell me a lot. And some of it is in novels, which can tell you a lot about culture and romance and how they intersect... are you a fan of Jane Austen, perchance?
I would prefer to talk about MALE hypergamy, which is well on display around the internet.
As for that quote... yes, I have had DOZENS of women of varying ages, over the last 25 years, tell me that they ABSOLUTELY value liberal politics in a man over his income OR education.... that it is an absolute DEAL BREAKER, that they would not marry even a millionaire if he was a conservative or Republican. And I think they are sincere. Many will not date a conservative men, period. They would choose lifelong single hood over that. The best analogy I can think of is women 100 to 200 years ago, who might have insisted on a man who was a Good Christian in proper standing with the Church. Ideology uber alles.
Height? this one of those things MEN care about, as they compete with other men rather than what women want... I think a woman might not want a man who was half a foot shorter than her, but the idea that average size women reject men who are 5ft 11.5 inches tall... nope, that is ridiculous. And again: even being 6ft 4inches would not help a man who is conservative or Republican (in the eyes of an educated liberal woman).
As for adjuncts: absolutely academic STATUS is involved. Also the theory of SUNK COSTS... they are indebted to the tune of maybe $200K or more, to be a Professor of (say) Art History and suited for NOTHING ELSE... what do they do? go work at Walmart? and the social status of being in education far outweighs (to them) the shortcomings of pay. They whinge a lot, and would like to demand higher pay.... but wont change THEIR LIFESTYLE OR CAREER to get it. No way.
I would not go so far as to being a low paid Adjunct is a babe magnet (and remember that half or more are FEMALE adjuncts!)... but it would offer excellent access NOT to working city girlfriends who earn MORE... but to female students. The predation of academic professors on female students is a legend (that happens to be 100% true).
Then they can remain alone and become “old spinsters,” like they used to say.
Sure, but being an old spinster is not as bad as it used to be. A spinster can have romantic flings and/or bring up a baby without too much trouble. Evolutionarily speaking, it may be better than living with a spouse if the only spouses available to you are net negative for raising the kids.
And men can end up alone too and childless... why isn't there a nasty, derogatory name for THAT? (BTW: SPINSTER? really? 1880 is calling and wants it memes back.)
Not marrying isn't the end of the world for MGTOWs... so why are these never married ladies not simply WGTOWs? women going their own way?
A woman with a spectacular career, good money, etc. might have a wonderful life surrounded by family & friends. And she has the option to have a baby if she wants... adoption, IVF, sperm donor. I know several women who have done this and they are happy as could be.
As Unirt says, maybe it is not IDEAL but it is vastly better than being stuck with an angry, demanding incel/MRA man who puts you down all the time or makes remarks like SPINSTER to you.
Sorry about the Spinster" adjective. I wasn't trying to trigger you . . . Okay I must be honest--maybe I was a little bit.
It is neither here nor there, because it is pretty hard to trigger a long married wife and mother over her supposed SPINSTER (!) status... that said, why isn't there an equally mocking and reductive term for a never married man? the RedPill community seems to have embraced MGTOW...Men Going Their Own Way and yet nobody calls an older single woman a WGTOW.
I’m happy for them. I suspect that they are the exception, not the rule. Most people, men or women, have jobs, not careers.
still laughing. No, I do not believe for one second that you gave up a career as a college professor to be a FULL TIME homeschooling (!) stay at home dad. No way, no how.
Also: speaking as a graphic designer... what bargain basement did you dredge this book design out of? it is the most amateurish thing I ever saw, and if I found it in a Little FREE Library, I would assume it is self published junk.
Man, you have so missed the point here. I think in general women are FAR more flexible about what they demand in men (very very few women demand a handsome investment banker) while men have long laundry lists of what they insist on.... women who must be thin, even wear a certain dress size... be very pretty.... younger and shorter than the man (!)... successful yes, but NOT MORE THAN HE IS... some men have extremely specific hair and eye colors. I have NEVER known women like this, but know MANY men like this and see zillions on the internet.
Your graph here implies men will date ANY woman, when we KNOW that is not remotely true. Do you ever even TALK to women? most online dating for most ordinary women is a festival of rejection by men. I could tell you stories that would burn your ears off.
In reality, men reject women for not being good enough (good enough as defined by beauty, weight, height, etc.) than women reject men.
This doesn't match my personal experience at all. Most men I've met don't even know their partner's dress size. A lot of them couldn't care less about eye color. In my experience, women also care more about height than men.
"most online dating for most ordinary women is a festival of rejection by men"
The data would disagree: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/02/02/key-findings-about-online-dating-in-the-u-s/
Women are more likely to feel overwhelmed by the amount of messages they get, whereas men are more likely to feel insecure about a lack of messages.
I am a little confused, Guiseppe: are you are WOMAN with a male username?
I can only speak to my experiences, those of my friends and social circle, plus about 10,000 books, articles, online discussions between women posters... and probably 99.999% say that in online dating... the men are more concerned about body size than any other factor.
Men do not understand fashion or dress sizes (*unless gay, which would put them outside this discussion) AT ALL... so they might say they dont care about dress size, because they couldn't tell a size 000 from a size 4 (though all women CAN tell). But they sure know what they like/demand, which is slender women.
The sheer number of names & insults online for women who are even a little above ideal weight proves this: heifers... WHALES... blue haired land whales... fatso... lard ass...hippo and so on... probably 100s more I cannot even think of this minute.
Nothing similar for fat men, who are just BIG GUYS or teddy bears or linebackers.
I do know some men who have obsessed on eye color, but it is not as universal as the prejudice against fat women. BTW: men call a woman FAT if she is 160 lbs... 260 lbs... 360 lbs or 460 lbs.... there is no nuance here.
You are confusing SWIPING (on Tinder or similar) with actual dating or relationships. Women get swiped on more, because they are only 25% of Tinder or OK Cupid or other sites. (This was true even 30 years ago, when personal ads were in newspapers and in print!) It is always skewed like this, because women face dangers in blind dating that men simply do NOT face.... it is low risk for men, who do not have to worry about a date beating them up or raping them.
It is no honor or compliment to be overwhelmed by 100x of online messages (on a dating site) when most of them are crude sexual come ons, or requires for nude photos of your genitalia. I know women who were initially asked for oral sex before the man had so much as called them.
Men who are insecure about a lack of messages often fail to analyze WHY they are not succeeding and make appropriate changes in their responses to women. One thing I encountered (again, back in the ancient newspaper personal ad era) was how many men USING these forms of dating... considered themselves to be normal doing it... but the women were slutty, desperate losers who would do anything to get asked out. It is a weird imbalance... I am surprised it has lingered on in our society which has so much sexual freedom otherwise, but then the whole RedPIll Manosphere has surprised me. (I am old enough to remember when it was the awful mail order paperback book THE PICKUP ARTIST, pushing the same misogynistic views.)
I have challenged the idea that height is a universal requirement from women. I believe it is MEN who drive the height issue, out of massive insecurity about being shorter than a woman (or even the same height). I have dated shorter men, and it was NEVER a problem for me... but the men had all kinds of issues, demanding I never wear heels or making fun of me in general for being TOO BIG (I am not and never was overweight). One guy I dated was furious when I noted we wore the same shoe size, and decided to call me Big Foot (like the Yeti) to his friends!
So if a woman notes height in her bio, it is probably because she encountered this at some point and wants to avoid it as an issue... preserving male self esteem. There is zero evidence that there is any correlation between shortness and unmarried status among men... i.e., no vast demographic of never married short guys.
The only one who has missed the point here is you. Your post is filled with ignorance, projection and lies.
There are countless studies that reveal that women are far LESS flexible than men and a lot shallower than men. This is also confirmed by millions of women on dating sites and apps.
Women are the ones that are obsessed with a man's height, looks and income, whereas most men could not care less about her height and income, and men care less about a woman's looks than women care about men's looks.
Women are the ones who have mile-long laundry lists of requirements for men, but men do not have the same for women. Most men's requirements are simply: be pleasant and feminine, and don't be fat and promiscuous.
Most women are delusional and believe that they deserve a man who is in the top 10% or even top 5%. Women constantly reject good men because they are not tall enough, not handsome enough, not muscular enough, not well-endowed enough, not rich enough etc. This means that most men can never live up to women's ridiculous requirements as men cannot change their height, face and penis size. Women are the ones who believe that most men are ugly and unattractive, whereas men have a realistic view on women's attractiveness as they judge most women as average. Women will reject men for the most ridiculous and silly reasons. Men get rejected far more than women do.
I sincerely hope that you are trolling because you are so far out of touch with reality.
JJ: for starters, I am very willing to discuss specifics here, but if you start out insisting the other party is LYING... you make that difficult. I have no reason to lie here about anything, and I am not projecting (I am a happily married woman with kids), and I surely have has much experience and insight as you (so not ignorant).
No, there are no such studies. Sorry. I have looked for them, but all there is (and what you are parroting here, unfortunately) are TALKING POINTS from the RedPill (MRA, incel, MGTOW) communities online. They are pushing a very specific misogynistic agenda, and it is a huge subject and very complex, but it has no relationship to reality.
You cannot seriously believe that MILLIONS OF WOMEN on dating sites or elsewhere, ALL AGREE that they are shallow! come on! or less flexible than men? that is hilarious.
Only short men see this obsession they claim women have about height. I know far more women than you, and far more women in the dating world (of all ages) and it is very rare to hear about HEIGHT as a factor. Income, I will agree IN PART (though less important than in the past, when most women did not work outside the home). Income is about status and opportunity, and of course for women... it is a factor because it will affect their future children.
NOBODY is more obsessed about LOOKS than men. Come on. The entirety of the porn industry and much of Madison Avenue advertising, Hollywood, movies, TV... all run by men, created by men, FOR MALE CUSTOMERS and all intensive focused on the minutae of female LOOKS.
I would say on average, men care about a womans looks to the ABSOLUTE EXCLUSION of all other characteristics. They will marry a POOR woman if she is pretty enough. They will marry a prostitute or woman of really low moral character... if she is pretty enough. How many incels/MRAs insist they will move to a poor third world nation... just to find a woman who is pretty (and slender, and passive)?
Actually you fell right into this trap, JJ. You insist women have a long laundry list of requirements, but MEN DO NOT? and then you immediately say a woman has to BE THIN!!! when 66% of all Americans (both MEN and women) are overweight or obese.
And promiscuous? Men have far more sexual partners than women; men patronize prostitutes and OnlyFans, which pretty much DO NOT EVEN EXIST for women as options. Are their Asian mail order grooms for lonely American women? NOPE!
BTW: words like PLEASANT or FEMININE are just codes for pretty... passive... no real career (must have JOB to bring in money, but not a real CAREER)... and slender.
Here is a hard truth, that you can only ignore at your own peril: You cannot demand anything of a partner (this goes for both sexes) that you do not bring to the table yourself. You cannot demand virginity or a LOW BODY COUNT, unless you yourself are a virgin or have had very few sexual partners. You cannot demand wealth, if you are poor. You cannot demand a trim, fit slender body if you yourself a lazy fat slob and couch potato!
Yes, some young women are unrealistic about their chances at a very handsome wealthy man... but dont worry, life is hard and will teach them lots of lessons over the years. However, why cant you address the delusion of men? YOU JUST STATED A WHOLE LIST OF THEM... that a man can demand a woman of a certain size & weight, certain sexual history, age, looks, height (shorter than him!) and so on. WHY CAN MEN DO THIS? but if women do this, they are DELUSIONAL?
(Just an aside here: I am 5 ft 5 inches, and I have dated men both taller and shorter than myself. Also know about 100x more women than you do. What I know is that the height issue is FROM MEN, not women. Women will date shorter men, but SHORT MEN WILL NOT DATE TALLER WOMEN. Their egos cannot take it.)
I would like to suggest this is a YOU problem, JJ. You are alleging issues with ALL WOMEN, when what you mean is YOU PERSONALLY have been rejected and you ASSUME it is because you are not rich enough, tall enough, muscular enough, handsome enough and my personal favorite... too small a penis. This is not true.
BTW: women cannot change their height either, so if you are short and reject tall women... isn't that the same thing? if you reject a woman who is flat chested, isn't that the same as a woman rejecting you for an immutable characteristic? women cannot change their faces, or their genetic predisposition to a certain body size!
Id say that most women DO find most men about average (going by just a photo or casual meeting) but a lot of men LIKE YOU (or the whole RedPIll movement) tend to ruin dates or meetings with your anger and sense of entitlement... demanding sex on a first date, then screaming about how all women are sluts with high body counts (@whatever)!
Women get rejected FAR far more often than men... you clearly have never spoken to women about how they get used for sex, then ghosted or two timed by men playing the field. I am not saying it is ALL MEN... but you are saying it is ALL WOMEN. Anything that doctrinaire has to be incorrect.
If you continually have bad experiences with online dating... try different tactics. Try meeting women in real life. Try being a nice guy and not an angry RedPill. Try not assuming THE WORST about people. Try not judging a woman for having THE SAME SEXUAL LIFE as you feel entitled to, only you are just doing what comes naturally but SHE is a slut.
Cut your ties with the RedPill manosphere. It is poisonous and full of masonry and hatred.
There are countless studies that confirm everything that I wrote before, but keep on denying reality. After all, that is the typical behavior displayed by feminists who hate men. And FYI: women don't have to outright say "I'm shallow" for them to be considered shallow. Their behavior and standards for men reveal their extreme shallowness.
The fact that you believe that height is not a factor for women just reveals how ignorant you are. You clearly do not know many women. Or maybe you are lying again. Either way, you have already proved in several posts that you are both ignorant and a liar. The vast majority of women are obsessed with height. It's an undeniable fact that has been demonstrated countless times.
Most men do not care about height - regardless of their own height. Short men will gladly date taller women. Average-height men will gladly date taller women. Tall men will gladly date taller women. Women are the ones who reject men based on height - not the other way around.
Women are shallower and more obsessed with looks than men. This is also a fact that has been backed up by countless studies. Women do NOT believe that most men are average-looking. They believe that most men are ugly. This is a fact.
Saying that I "feel into a trap" because I wrote that men do not have a long laundry list of requirements, and because I wrote that men do not want fat women, is absolutely nonsensical. But all your posts have been nonsense, so what else could I expect from you? You are not even bright to understand that having one requirement is not the same as having a long laundry list of requirements.
Regarding promiscuity: a tiny group of men have more sexual partners than the average woman, but the average woman has far more sexual partners than the average man. This has been true for at least a decade if not more.
And no, women do NOT get rejected more than men. Men receive far more rejection than women. It's not even close. How many women can even say that they have been rejected 10 times? Or 20 times? Most men have been rejected way more than that before they turn 18. It's laughable to see the BS that you will write just to garner sympathy.
And it's quite pathetic that you try to assume that I am basing my data on nothing but personal experiences. I am not. This has nothing to do with me. I am basing it solely on studies/data and women's behavior. But you are, of course, doing this because you have no valid arguments or data.
But keep on lying about women. Keep on portraying women as innocent beings who could never be shallow, and who only care about a man's personality. Men already know that you are lying, so you are not fooling anyone.
If there are studies... and by that, I mean objective studies not from the RedPill community... link to them. Because I have looked and no such studies exist.
Calling all women feminists is ridiculous and feminists do not hate men. I love men; I am married for a long time to a man! I have sons! I had a wonderful father, great in-laws, two wonderful brothers, nephews and uncles and so on. I do not hate men.
I know lots and lots of women, and I know lots of men. I am not saying that height has NO influence, but it is not a prime factor. Also, if what you say is true... only tall men would ever marry and we would easily see a HUGE demographic of men under (say) 5ft 10inches who never can marry do to their height... and that is obviously false.
I am not lying; I am telling you the truth. Your total over reaction... to call me NAMES... is proof you have never been challenged in your incorrect and biased belief system here... and you have clearly found the RedPill Manosphere, which is teaching you a self destructive set of beliefs ground in misogyny and hatred/fear of women.... which is sabotaging ANY chances you have of finding happiness in a relationship, marriage and family.
Obviously there are lots of women in this world, so do some women focus on height? sure. But I have known far more women who focus on HAIR... they want a guy with good hair!!! and yet many men over 30 are balding! but this is NOTHING compared to the pervasive hatred men (LIKE YOU) have for women who are even slightly over ideal weight.
You have failed to explain why there is a HUGE HUGE porn industry (run entirely by men) that caters to mens ideals of sexuality and female looks.... but nothing similar for women. Shouldn't there be a HUGE female porn industry, featuring extremely tall men? LOL!
Women are KEENLY aware, JJ, that men like yourself, are very threatened by a women who is even 1 or 2 inches taller than themselves, so women want a (slightly) taller guy so as not to be threatening. Tall women (really tall, like 6ft) have more trouble dating than even FAT women. And then you add in the issue of women in high heels...
However, almost all short men DO find wives, so it cannot matter THAT MUCH. I know lots of marriages between taller women and shorter men! and most short men simply ... marry slightly shorter women. The average woman is only 5 ft 3 inches tall (in the US).
And again, no studies have EVER shown women are more obsessed with looks than men. Women DO judge men by how good a provider they appear to be, because it will directly affect a womans children (or her ability to even HAVE children). But looks? if that were true, how did HARVEY WEINSTEIN ever marry? the man is HIDEOUS!
And it is simply false that most women consider men to be ugly. WTF??? seriously WTF? if this were true, the human species would have died out millennia ago!
What you are saying, very clearly, is about your own dating problems, your shortcomings and your insecurities. YOU feel rejected for your looks, height and um... penis size? Or perhaps you just feel so insecure, you dont even TRY to date out of fear of rejection. What ever it is... YOU are the one sabotaging YOURSELF. Not women, not feminists.
Men do have insanely long lists of demands from women, and you stated many of them here. In a society with a 62% to 66% obesity rate... men demand a slim fit woman. Even when the man is a lard ass with a jelly belly! So from the get go, JJ... you have eliminated 2 out of 3 women in your demographic! no wonder you are not having any luck!
I think my posts are very reasonable, and moderate... I am not the one calling people liars or other names. You are claiming a bunch of studies, without links or citations, because YOU read about (or saw a video) from the RedPill Manosphere, and you have swallowed their ugly ideology hook line and sinker as an excuse for why you cannot find a girlfriend. But you are being sold poison and self destruction.
I do not think that either MOST MEN or MOST WOMEN are promiscuous, but certainly more men are than women. That is very well established. Nothing happened in the last 20 years to make men suddenly prudish and virginal, while women are wildly sleeping around. And the whole Chad idea is just laughable, that all women are sleeping with some tiny percentage of very good looking men.... just laughable. Rich, tall, handsome men do not date homely, fat or undesirable women AT ALL, not even for hook up sex. They do not HAVE to do so. Super desirable men have all the gorgeous women at their disposal... this has always been true all through history.
BUT... most people are just average. Average men, average women. And they have always found ONE ANOTHER. When you focus so obsessively on this idea that MOST MEN ARE PURE, but ALL WOMEN ARE PROMISCUOUS SLUTS... well, first off, it is incorrect. Second it is self sabotaging. Nothing has happened, btw, since 2013 to turn ALL WOMEN into sluts. This is again, laughable.
I personally know women who were rejected (and here I mean, personal ads, blind dates and that sort of thing) over 100 times within a 3 to 5 year period of time. Some even more than that. I know women who are fat, who have faced rejection almost continually since their teens. And rejected in cruel ways you cannot imagine in your worst nightmares.
What YOU consider rejection, is probably a woman who turns down a drink at a nightclub. What THEY have faced is name calling, outright physical abuse, humiliation, ghosting, etc.
All teenagers are a bit awkward, so to say men have been rejected before turning 18 is just... naive. I mean, is this a 14 year old who asks a 13 year old to the Friday night dance or what?
One problem I often see in men like you (*from the RedPill community) is you think simply asking a woman out, buying her a cocktail... entitles you to sex. If the woman says no... ironically, you do not consider her PURE OR MORAL... you call her a slut, or claim she is promiscuous (just not with YOU).
I need no sympathy, JJ. I have been married for decades. I have adult children. I am not some lonely cat lady you can make fun of... imagine that! (Single woman: lonely pathetic cat lady. Single MAN: brave, clever MGTOW who avoids all human entanglements!)
You are not basing this on studies. Please. Dont even try to say this. You are basing it on your own sad experiences, never having married or had kids. When you watch YouTube videos from the RedPillers... you THINK they are referring to real studies but as I showed you with Pearly Things... they just make that shit up. YOU believe it, because it validates your loneliness and unhappiness, and tells you IT IS ALL SOMEONE ELSES FAULT! it is all TEH EVIL WOMEN! FEMINAZIS!
I never said all women are innocent, nor that no woman is ever shallow. I am saying that women are human beings JUST LIKE MEN, and there are many good women (and men) and some bad ones. You cannot simply blanket say ALL WOMEN THIS OR THAT (or all men this or that)... there are tens of millions of women in your age cohort, and they are not ALL one thing.
Most people do marry, or live together in committed relationships. People who NEVER marry or commit are pretty rare. So it is you who are the outlier... certainly not me, and not most women (or men). And if all men reject women in your fashion... the human race would die out. (And with 8 billion people on earth, that aint happening.)
Get out of the RedPIll community, JJ, or you will pay an awful price for these lies.... in terms of your own happiness and future chance at a wife & children.
"whereas most men could not care less about her height and income,"
When I was in my twenties I told my friends, "I am attracted to tall women and short women, thin women, and heavier women, caucasian red-heads, and dark Africans, highly paid and unemployed women."
When the mantra is that all sex between consenting adults is good, when sexual situations feel bad people automatically think “there must not have been consent.” The problem is with the mantra, it’s not true, consent is not enough for sex to be morally right. When an employer hits on an employee and the employee feels pressured to submit to her boss or risk professional consequences, that doesn’t feel good. It’s not the same thing is forcible rape, a crime that warrants a prison sentence. But if it’s not rape and it doesn’t seem right than what is it and what should the punishment be? I don’t think many people want to operate in an economy where an employer can add sexual duties to an employers list of required tasks and would not want to do business with such people.
It doesn’t feel good when a woman thinks a man is interested in a serious relationship with her only to find out that he was only interested in casual sex. If he socially pressures her it isn’t rape, but what is it and what should the punishment be? It should be a social taboo and she should tell the other women that he’s a cad so they won’t date him.
This is why it’s so important to distinguish between the 3 spheres and not collapse them. Forcible rape is a violent crime that should be punished in the criminal sphere. Economic coercion and sex work in general should be handled by the economic sphere and be incentivized against with boycotts. Socially pressuring someone into sex should be handled in the social sphere and punished with social sanctions, being criticized, shamed or even shunned by your social community.
Very good. But link to your book at end does not work.