I'm not at all shocked that today's men are becoming demotivated. The problem honestly goes beyond higher education, which is an increasingly female-dominated area except in STEM subjects. Here in...
I'm not at all shocked that today's men are becoming demotivated. The problem honestly goes beyond higher education, which is an increasingly female-dominated area except in STEM subjects. Here in the UK 56.3% of participants in higher education are female. Heck, I actually studied at a UK university where women outnumbered men by 4 to 1 at the time.
This (and other problems with today's society that I won't delve into because I'd honestly be writing a whole essay on this) have created a social underclass of mainly men who can't find decent jobs or be homeowners because they don't have a joint income, and can't find sexual partners because they don't have the financial assets or social status to actually find a suitor. Adulthood has turned into a catch-22 for them.
I am one of these people, a 31 y/o virgin earning less than people around my age group, despite having a Bachelors degree and accounting technician qualifications. Though in my case disability (Asperger's) has also put me at a disadvantage.
There is a reason why the manosphere (namely the incel, red pill and MGTOW communities) have seen explosive growth in recent years, and why increasing numbers of people are turning to controversial self-proclaimed playboys like Andrew Tate for guidance.
Cancelling people for misconduct or for supporting hateful ideas isn't going to fix the problem because you're just playing a game of whack-a-mole and not resolving the issues that are making people turn towards more radical ideologies. Reining in our heavily capitalistic and materialistic society will. The more that wealth inequality grows, the more these problems will be exacerbated, and lawmakers need to realise that they're playing a dangerous game here.
Replying to the bits of the thread in one post instead of separately. Apologies in advance for the length, poor structuring, incoherenece from rushing, and related inability to reply to anything...
Exemplary
Replying to the bits of the thread in one post instead of separately. Apologies in advance for the length, poor structuring, incoherenece from rushing, and related inability to reply to anything for a while.
The causality in the original post is reversed, at least within the context of the article. Men aren't demotivated because they aren't graduating, they aren't graduating because they aren't motivated or otherwise struggling with school in ways that show up at age 5 and widen from ~9-13.
Understanding the root of that dysfunction is needed to try to address it. The article mostly puts out "we don't really know" as for why. Maybe trade schools, more male teachers, or other mentioned reforms could close the gap. Maybe there's some sexual dimorphism at play.
Another possible explanation is boys are performing worse because there's something about the way they're raised that prepares them poorly for the future. Starting early, and often reinforced.
I'm all in favor of improving income equality, a less materialistic society, better treatment of teachers, education reform, and any other sensible policy... but I think there's observable differences in boys and girls before they're worrying about their career, and they track with differences that show later in life.
You don't hear about 8 year old girls throwing out slurs and making rape threats in voice chats. They're not the audience of TheFappening or revenge porn.
There's things that suck for each gender and I don't really think it's helpful to try to make hard comparisons. I think the language of "X to Y" pipeline is a useful reminder that most people get to where they are incrementally, and it's important for improving society by making it desirable at every step of the way for someone to change for the better.
Women online will say never talk to a woman at the gym, at the grocery store, at a bar, at work, etc.
I believe you, but this is not advice I've seen. The informal advice I've seen is roughly:
Don't ask out someone doing their job. A waitress is forced to be polite and can't leave the situation.
Be considerate of the person you're talking to. Give a second to think about their wants, needs, and context. Someone at the gym may be on a tight schedule or just want to do their thing. Someone on a dating app is looking to date, and they're probably (exceptions apply) open to being approached a bar or a club.
Accept rejection gracefully. If you get turned down don't pester for why or insult them. If they don't reciprocate don't escalate as if they're playing hard-to-get.
Don't immediately sexualize someone. Build rapport, see if the other person is responding if you want to escalate things.
Women are valuable as friends. Not having a romantic relationship isn't a failure. The survey linked below has 20% of people meeting a partner through friends, but beyond that it helps you understand a female perspective and, uh, more friends are great.
Women aren't a monolith. These points are guidelines and not rules, and there is a vast diversity of people out there. Everything depends on context and you have to build up those interpersonal skills.
Mistakes/misunderstandings will happen. Acknowledge them without getting defensive, try to make them right if you can, and care enough to reflect and learn from them.
Build a support network. For a lot of guys, self included, their only emotional outlet is a romantic partner. That makes being in a romantic relationship much highest stakes than it needs to be.
Virginity status, appearance, dick size, or many other things someone may be anxious about aren't as important as you think. Some people care and you might have uphill odds, but some usually don't, some have preferences that are opposite of the mainstream.
<things to make yourself more attractive>, etc.
Talking to someone isn't the same thing as trying to hitting on them, and flirting with someone at work isn't the same thing as being a sex pest. I've never met someone saying don't give a "keep it up!" in passing at a gym that becomes a conversation on yoga the next week and an invitation to an event. That's different from walking up to someone running with earbuds in that you know nothing about except you find them attractive and expecting them to interrupt their routine to talk to you.
But that is actually how most people meet and form relationships.
It probably varies regionally, but a 2017 Stanford survey says most people find each other online. Bars/restaurants/presumably other spaces where flirting or hook-ups are sanctioned (e.g., clubs, festivals, mini golf) became more common, and the rest shrunk proportionally to the increase of online dating since 1995.
I can't think of anyone that met their partner from while they were shopping at a grocery store, approaching them on the street, or at any other one-off non-sanctioned venue.
I trust that your perspective comes from your own experience with female friends or people online. Personally, I relate to it. My earliest memories are a divorce with domestic violence and other accusations. I always hated "locker talk", and it took a while to grow out of being overly protective to just treat women as people.
It's hard to see a lack of good advice being out there as the issue, since I feel like I've seen it without searching. There's never been more access to hear the intimate, candid, anonymous details of strangers. You can read hundreds of stories about a woman's best date, what they find attractive, where they met their partner, what's a red flags, thoughts on virgins, etc. You can get the same from men, subpopulations, whatever. From that you can probably get a better idea of the spectrum of different people out there than you could from a guru trying to simplify and package the complexity of human preference.
I've also had housemates that considered themselves feminist enough to want that to be an interview question for future housemates. They were all pretty sex-positive and open. One (with a theater background) snagged her long-term boyfriend at a concert and to his mild-chagrin would show off a picture book with holes cut to turn a male member into an astronaut, santa... maybe a Mongolian death worm? I forget. None of them resemble the type of person that would label someone a "creepy evil misogynist". If anything they tried encouraging me to be more social.
Your problem of being a great catch concerned about women's comfort to the point you don't know what you find attractive doesn't seem to be one most of the manosphere seem to have.
Do you think the rhetorical incel/PUA/whatever is having problems sexualizing or "checking out" women? My limited experience is they can't avoid it. Platonic relationships with women become impossible because they feel some claim of the woman, getting upset if someone they had designs for starts dating.
Bullmaestro asked someone out several times. It's awful that they got bullied in the fallout. I'm also likely on the spectrum (go team?) and had a pretty messy childhood, so my heart goes out to the people who have to struggle every step of the way to internalize what comes easily for others.
My first roommate in college bought courses on how to hypnotize women in a sketchy way. Someone else I knew advocated the "shotgun approach" to dating. Shoot your shot at everyone. You may end up creeping out dozens of women, but you'll find that one that responds to negging, wants to be a trad wife, or was looking for something casual when you asked for sex in the first conversation. Others were blasé about leveraging alcohol.
A later roommate bought flowers and others gifts for multiple of women who had partners, after they'd explicitly asked him not to. A couple times he made scenes at their place of work.
There were many informal and a couple formal "interventions" where people patiently tried to explain why what he was doing wasn't appropriate, why it wouldn't work, what he could try, etc. Different tones and approaches were used. A few offered to start a fitness routine with him. It always ended up being in one ear and out the other because he didn't want it.
He wanted to be a James Bond figure, a high status male. He didn't want to pursue anyone except attractive women. He didn't want to learn when to move on and take polite-then-direct refusals as legitimate. If women weren't taken by his ballroom dancing or wine tasting the mistake never lay with the desire or expectation.
There's a reason that lots of young men flock to right-wing people like Andrew Tate, Jordan Peterson, etc., because there's no one on the left trying to help young men in a way that actually works. I really wish there was an equivalent figure on the left, but there's basically no one with the same level of prominence, and the end result is that tons of young men are driven to the political right.
This was the bit that got me to write a reply. Helping out that roommate didn't fail to shift the needle because of a lack of effort or good advice from guys/gals that were romantically successful. It failed because of some deep world view/desires/motivations that clashed with reality.
I don't follow progressive talking heads (Breadtube? no idea), but if there isn't an anti-Tate out there it may be because there is no appetite for it. The manosphere is an industry and it promotes, justifies, and reifies what it sells. It doesn't need to give good advice. It will exist and find a spokesperson as long as it says what people want to hear.
Once you get the inertia of /r/theredpill's 200k+ active member sub it is capable of growing itself divorced from any external force that "drives" young men to it. The number of users becomes an endorsement that maybe there's something to it. They make secret language and special knowledge and other culty things.
They look for examples that justify their worldview and ban dissent. A shrill blue-haired harridan of the month gets packaged and spread, or old ones are used, and that works because monkey brains use the availability heuristic. Distort or outright fabricate.
They act presentable when recruiting, as @cfabbropointed out elsewhere, while the head mod advocates straight up rape. People that benefit from it steer and advertise it. Those in it defend it aggressively, maybe because it's a toxic community that rewarded toxic behavior, or maybe from the sunk cost.
It's beyond disgusting, and the plug at the bottom says it isn't even the spicey stuff.
In the highly unlikely event that you, the esteemed reader of the Red Pill sexual strategy forum, have had the opportunity to leave your video game and pornography pleasure bunker, you may have noticed that there has been a sudden change in the media narrative. Our beloved, all-knowing science–man Anthony Fauci has mysteriously disappeared from television and has been surreptitiously replaced with very evil bad man Vladimir Putin. Now, as a reader of the Red Pill you might not know much about taking regular showers or preventing your underwear from turning moist and brown on the inside. However, as a refined video game connoisseur you do know that emotionally vulnerable grief-stricken women are a source of quests, and quests are how you obtain rewards and experience points. There are many such women on the television right now, so obviously there are a lot of quests. Therefore, the logical question for any contemporary rational male is: How to Use the Desperation of Ukrainian War Refugees to your Sexual Advantage?
Speaking of taking advantage of Ukrainian women. What are the sexual advantages of Ukrainian women? I’m glad you asked. Unlike American women, who on average weigh 170 pounds at 5 feet 4 inches, Ukrainian women still possess a modicum of self-respect and have not gorged themselves into grotesque proportions like barnyard hogs. Unlike sexual intercourse with American women, the use of a headlamp is not a prerequisite during sex with Ukrainians as the vaginal opening is not hidden beneath a maze of creases, wrinkles, fat flaps and folds. Consequently, sex is easier, more straightforward and reasonably hygienic.
Another stark contrast is that Ukrainian women possess souls. American women power wash away all semblance of personality via hormonal birth control, antidepressants, recreational drugs and social media. Ukrainian women, on the other hand, live simpler lives and spend their days digging for potatoes and playing the accordion. Their bloodstreams have not been colonized by big pharma and they are capable of face-to-face social interaction without turtling up in their smart phone at the slightest inconvenience. This means that Ukrainian women are not grotesque science experiments with soulless hollow eyes and can still be biologically classified as human beings. Finally, the most important difference between Ukrainian and American women is that the former are capable of providing you with healthy, viable offspring, while the latter will misappropriate your DNA and birth a transformer whose only life skill is genital self-mutilation and attaching itself to ceiling fans in creative ways.
Now that you understand the comparative value of Ukrainian females, it’s important to understand the driving factors behind the current sexual marketplace deep discount. Here at The Red Pill, we pride ourselves on being brilliant amoral sexual strategists. Hypergamy doesn’t care about your feelings, yada yada yada. Well, uncle Vladimir has given us a belated Christmas present: hot, young, fertile Ukrainian refugees. The last refugee wave was in 2015 when Europe got flooded with brownies. That only benefited obese 50-year-old white spinsters and an unmentionable Middle-Eastern country that doesn’t get along with its neighbors.
As far as sexual strategy is concerned, all you need to know is that Ukraine trusted a comedian with the fate of a nation and now holds a bizarre state ideology consisting of a contradictory mix of fascism and kindergarten homosexuality class]. The big takeaway here is that if the Ukrainian state is willing to delude itself with an incoherent ideology while getting defiled with foreign biological weapon labs and IMF loans, then Ukrainian women are willing to get deluded by your incoherent PUA bullshit while you defile them with your penis. A nation behaves on a macro scale the same way its people behave on a micro scale. As above so below.
The devastation of Ukraine was purposefully engineered to flood the West with cheap, high-quality labor. So why not benefit from the situation by taking advantage of cheap, high-quality Ukrainian sexual labor? Financial advisors always talk about buying the dip; now’s the time to invest your penis by dipping into Ukrainian vagina. The sexual market is no different than the stock market. You have to eke out every advantage you can get. We are well past the easy sexual marketplace of 2005 when a fedora and copy of the Mystery Method were sufficient to get you lady-hole. You don't have to be a genius to understand that the world is rapidly deteriorating and that opportunities are becoming harder to come by.
Luckily for the Red Pill, Ukrainian women are already acclimated to living in basements on dirty mattresses and as such represent a perfect fit for the lifestyle of our readership. They’ve already been negged by uncle Putin. All you need to do is be nice to them and find them living space between your elite gaming rig and boxes of Mountain Dew. Best of all, they won't know how socially uncalibrated you are because of their limited English.
From a practical standpoint, all you need to know about Ukrainian women is that they will be arriving primarily in Central Europe and major western cities as refugees. They are easily identifiable by their stoic facial expressions, out-of-date choice of fashion and slim figures. At the level of game, Ukrainian women are no different than any other second world woman which is to say they want to ride a dick into a first-world lifestyle. They are shallow, materialistic and willing to do anyone and anything that will give them the assets necessary to make their girlfriends at home jealous. If you do not manage the relationship properly you will find yourself in the same financial situation as the men who fell for the mail order bride scam in the 90s when the Soviet Union collapsed. If you do manage the relationship properly, she’ll be on the receiving end of your meat missile while her devoted husband is on the receiving end of a Kalibr cruise missile.
When you’re defeated in war, someone else takes your women and passes on their superior genetics to them. When a simple Ukrainian man gets conned into joining Right Sektor and fighting on behalf of gay Aryan Rimjobs by a country that shall not be named, his wives and daughters flee abroad and get drilled by foreigners. That's just basic War Bride Theory. We the Red Pill didn't create the situation nor do we have any power over it. What we can do however is take advantage of it with our penises. After all these Ukrainian vaginas have to get fucked by someone. Why not us?
I’ve created a public Telegram channel, an uncensorable fortress, for Red Pills so spicy they can't be posted on Reddit.
I'll be the one to say it: fuck that. Fuck everything about people who could ever find their way into that thread. No one got driven into that. It was selling a world where women are subhuman trophies and toys, and anyone there was buying. By extension, and from the many dozens of (less ranty, sorry) conversations I've had, most people who use the canard of being driven into some anti-social or anti-Democratic position struggle to justify it.
I really don't buy that JP or Tate are helping people, at least not relative to readily available alternatives. I understand disaffected young men looking into all sorts of stuff when they're figuring themselves out, but I don't think it's typical to stay there unless the core resonates with them, and that's not one of addressing male issues. If that's the case the problem embedded in "why are men hard to help" is in that core.
Healthy, well-adjusted men don't buy MLM packages from Andrew Tate. They aren't the "rootless white males" Steve Bannon or the Proud Boys recruit. They don't buy $8k merch/seminars from PUAs and get homicidal when that doesn't work.
JP gives pretty generic self-help advice, and we're also living in the era with the most readily available mental health resources. Ones better supported than Jungianism. I took a course on CBT (I swear I thought it was the other kind) and it was great; 10/10, should do more of if I wasn't lazy. I listened to more JP than I would've liked to years ago to support someone in my life and... yikes. It's towards an extreme, but stuff like this just makes me wince.
From my own limited anecdotes the people I've known that got into JP became worse for it. It's hard to say that means anything since sometimes crutches are load-bearing.
As a role model he is someone who eats a carnivore diet, gets addicted to benzos to after health complications from that, then flies to Russia for a needlessly risky medical treatment. His daughter apparently dated Tate, who at best is a MLM honcho/webcam pimp and at worst a violent sex trafficker.
If the antidote is less insecurity, materialism, and jockeying for status, JP, Tate, and a lot of what I've seen of the manoverse are a poison that swapped labels. Even if they helped people on an individual scale, it just becomes some tragedy of the commons where they make the ecosystem of relationships so much worse.
What sets the stage for women to be afraid of men of men approaching them on the street? Or not accepting rejection? Who is calling women cock carousels and men virgin soy boys betacucks, spamming a thousand dating app websites with canned messages, or causing trauma that takes years to get back to a good space from?
I had a former housemate who was heading to work and didn't respond to someone hollering at her. That person went on to say "fuck you bitch" and give a pretty graphic rape threat. She's now probably never going to respond well to being approached on the street, and it's her and maybe a future partner that have no deal with that aftermath, not the guy that shouted it.
I don't think progressives or women are the source of devaluing someone because of virginity in either direction. Some definitely do, and I hate to see it because people get hurt in the crossfire. And because that's the sort of core concept that probably needs serious rethinking.
For some more oversharing, I dated someone for several years who, due to a medical condition, wasn't able to have penetrative sex. If nothing else it made it very obvious what a ridiculous thing virginity is.
I'm not in love with the delivery sometimes, but the argument of progressives/feminists that may come across as shaming or doing nothing for men is that some post-patriarchy world where we've normalized people treating others with respect is one where women get to be free to be equally sexually/romantically forward as men, and where men don't have to worry about where on the spectrum from asexual to Pepe le Pew they place their chip.
I don't mean to say you were implying JP and Tate are helping young men in a way that actually works--feel free to weigh in-- but any flocking towards them is part of a story in which progressives are failing them.
At the end of the day people do what they want. If the aforementioned roommate decides that he's going to ignore a talk on nutrition where facts are less murky, what is to be done? I explain how calories/macronutrients work when he asks about losing weight... and he ends the conversation deciding to get his "daily fruit" from fruit juice.
I could pitch him some specious rule like "do it after you lift" or tell him refrigerating it will lower his body temperature and burn it off, and he'd come to me for more. Reality will remind us both that sometimes people are hard to help.
It seems as though there are a third group of men who are almost by definition getting overshadowed and ignored here: the quiet, timid, poorly-advised, disillusioned, unsuccessful men who do still...
It seems as though there are a third group of men who are almost by definition getting overshadowed and ignored here: the quiet, timid, poorly-advised, disillusioned, unsuccessful men who do still recognise the abhorrence of red pill/incel/manosphere ideology for exactly what it is. The people who aren't extremists, but if they were would be something more akin to hikikomori than incels.
I don't think these are the internet nice guy archetype either - we're not talking about people who think they are a great catch, but people who know or believe that they aren't and don't know what to do about it. It's a demographic that's very easy to overlook because it isn't a community or cult, because the people who fit the description are intrinsically quiet, and because their evil-twin counterparts on the far right are an active and immediate threat.
These aren't the ones who are at risk of violence or radicalisation; they're at risk of suicide. They're a meaningful chunk of the men who we only realise are "lost" when we look at statistics like the article we're all discussing here. And I'm sadly willing to believe there are a lot more of them out there than most people realise.
I occasionally check theredpill and various other alt-right, manosphere, and incel subreddits to keep apprised of whatever new horrible things they're up to, and I actually remember that thread...
Here's an upvoted thread a few months ago titled How To Use The Desperation of Ukrainian War Refugees to Your Sexual Advantage
I occasionally check theredpill and various other alt-right, manosphere, and incel subreddits to keep apprised of whatever new horrible things they're up to, and I actually remember that thread because of how absolutely vile it was. I reported it, and this was the infuriating response I got:
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It has since been removed, but only several months later after it got mentioned in a popular thread on /r/ukraine, which caused a shitstorm there. However, it should be noted that the user who posted it is still active on reddit, and constantly posting even more equally vile shit to /r/theredpill and elswhere.
For the life of me, I honestly can't figure out why that subreddit and others like it are still only quarantined and not outright banned, and why those type of users don't ever seem to get banned either... other than suspecting someone near the top at reddit HQ is sympathetic to their cause. Fuck theredpill, fuck whichever reddit policy maker is allowing those subreddits to remain on the site, and fuck the "safety team" admins who keep giving this sort of shit a pass whenever it gets reported, only ever taking action once enough negative attention finally comes their way. I fucking hate reddit so much because of shit like this. :(
I think it’s generally good to get advice from people who have accomplished what you are trying to accomplish. Find men about your age that have a healthy heterosexual relationship and talk with...
I think it’s generally good to get advice from people who have accomplished what you are trying to accomplish. Find men about your age that have a healthy heterosexual relationship and talk with them.
My only partially qualified advice is you should just be honest and straightforward with yourself and the other person. Don’t worry if you’re afraid that shifting into manual and talking things out won’t work. If being straight doesn’t work then it was already a dead end.
For me, the vast majority of my male friends in a long term relationship met their SO in college. Most of them take one look at the current dating scene of apps and everything else and say "wow...
Find men about your age that have a healthy heterosexual relationship and talk with them.
For me, the vast majority of my male friends in a long term relationship met their SO in college. Most of them take one look at the current dating scene of apps and everything else and say "wow that sounds awful, I genuinely have no advice for you". I often wonder what my life would be like if I went to a more generic state school rather than an engineering school (3:1 M/F ratio)...theres a chance I would be in a happy relationship and while my job prospects out of school wouldn't have been as good, I still would be making STEM money and have been fine. I don't necessarily regret going to the school I did - I have great lifelong friends, a fancy degree, and well-paying job. But if I did it again, I'd probably do it differently and pick a school with a better ratio and chance of finding someone.
Horrible. I give it a shot every so often, and I typically get <5 (non-bot) matches in the first few weeks before I give up. All of the "strategies" make me feel dishonest, sort of like lying on...
Horrible. I give it a shot every so often, and I typically get <5 (non-bot) matches in the first few weeks before I give up. All of the "strategies" make me feel dishonest, sort of like lying on your resume. And a few weeks of swiping with no results, I usually end up rationalizing that the effect on my mental health isn't worth it - especially since I don't need a relationship.
Its about time to give it another shot...maybe it will be different this time. But we'll see. Time to download hinge, bumble, and OKC...
A few conversations - most end up with one of us not responding. I do basically revise/recreate my profile and update with new pictures each time. Between not wanting to play the "lying to make...
A few conversations - most end up with one of us not responding. I do basically revise/recreate my profile and update with new pictures each time. Between not wanting to play the "lying to make yourself look better" game and being a ...lets say a "work in progress" physically, online dating just doesn't do much for me.
In theory I should try and do more activities that are in mixed company, as most of my current hobbies (and work) are male-dominated. But that gets back to some of the other comments where its been drilled into my head to never talk to a woman at the gym or any public place, even though I intellectually know theres a difference between cold approaching and building up conversation over time.
Thanks for responding. Taking good care of your body is definitely important for attracting people, but also critical for the person who’s got to live in that body. I think it’s helpful to think...
Thanks for responding. Taking good care of your body is definitely important for attracting people, but also critical for the person who’s got to live in that body.
I think it’s helpful to think in terms of what you’re looking to get out of dating. Are you looking for a spouse? Someone to share time with? A co-parent? Some combination? Other things? That’ll make it more clear what you need to do to signal to that type of person you’re who they’re looking for as well. You shouldn’t feel like you’re being dishonest or cheating the system.
For example, if you’re looking for a co-parent then one obvious and traditional way to signal that is to take care of a high-ish maintenance pet like a dog. That gives you some obvious photo advantages as well. You’re not cheating anything because you’re legitimately raising an animal. Girl or not that dog is your companion - everyone wins. That might not be the approach for you, but hopefully that gives you an idea of the mindset I think you could benefit from.
It’s difficult because the amount of work needed to get positive feedback is high. But once you start getting positive feedback you’re actually pretty close to success. I wasn’t interested in dating until I was about 21. I wasn’t interested in sex until I was 23. I’ve spent my 20s so far working on my career, my health, my non-romantic relationships, my relationship with myself, and my hobbies. There’s been some trial-by-fire dating, falling in love in undesirable circumstances. I found someone this year who I think fits the role I’ve learned to look for, and she seems to think the same of me. Circumstances are keeping us apart for a couple of months but I’m optimistic about us restarting things soon.
It’s important with online dating to really come to the table with a bounty of things. These are things that you are reaping the benefits of - not offerings. A desirable partner will have their own collection. In my opinion women in America have seen their prospects flourish and feel empowered to take shit into their own hands and make something out of themselves. Why would a person like that be interested in someone that has convinced themselves that they’re something far less?
Job prospects are bad for a lot of people. It should not be this hard. We should all be guided to our own paths of success by a healthy system.
I was lucky to have amazing and financially comfortable parents. So take my advice with that in context. I did have a leg up.
There's nothing wrong with this advice and these are all important things but I think you're missing the most important part that is initial contact and conversation. All of the above means...
I think it’s helpful to think in terms of what you’re looking to get out of dating. Are you looking for a spouse? Someone to share time with? A co-parent? Some combination? Other things? That’ll make it more clear what you need to do to signal to that type of person you’re who they’re looking for as well. You shouldn’t feel like you’re being dishonest or cheating the system.
There's nothing wrong with this advice and these are all important things but I think you're missing the most important part that is initial contact and conversation. All of the above means nothing if you can't even establish contact from the beginning. I'm a reasonable attractive guy who never had that much trouble talking to women IRL but holy fuck are dating apps fucking confidence killers and just plain demotivating no matter what type of guy you are it seems.
I think it’s important to realize that most people on dating apps do not know what they want and are not trying to get anything out of them. If someone doesn’t match it doesn’t mean anything about...
I think it’s important to realize that most people on dating apps do not know what they want and are not trying to get anything out of them. If someone doesn’t match it doesn’t mean anything about you. If they don’t respond after matching it doesn’t mean anything about you. If they can’t hold a conversation it does not mean anything about you.
People that are trying to get shit done don’t fuck around. There are people on apps that are actually trying to meet people. But they’re a shockingly small minority.
I know that... I'm not taking any of it personally but the experience is just not good either way. I sympathize with guys who haven't had positive IRL experiences prior to online dating and...
I know that... I'm not taking any of it personally but the experience is just not good either way. I sympathize with guys who haven't had positive IRL experiences prior to online dating and thereby nothing to compare with.
People that are trying to get shit done don’t fuck around.
What does this mean? If it means that people who knows what they are looking for don't fuck around that's fine and all but when intention is rarely transparent that's useless.
Possibly, thinking of it as "setting up coffee dates for practice" might make it less stressful? Despite everyone's best efforts, online "resumes" tend to make people seem less interesting than...
Possibly, thinking of it as "setting up coffee dates for practice" might make it less stressful? Despite everyone's best efforts, online "resumes" tend to make people seem less interesting than they are, so you're working against that.
Ultimately one of the problems is that successful people don’t tend to talk about their journey. But unsuccessful people do complain about their issues. You end up having masses of people...
Ultimately one of the problems is that successful people don’t tend to talk about their journey. But unsuccessful people do complain about their issues. You end up having masses of people complaining about a subject and seeming to come to a consensus or radicalizing further (cf. the manosphere), when in reality they make up a minority of people with respect to that issue (the majority having “solved the problem”).
That's why I'm very passive around women. It's the fear of not only rejection but also reprisal. One wrong move could lead to a HR complaint being made against you, or the non-work equivalent of...
They don't understand how their advice is actually interpreted in the heads of virgin young men who don't know any better, where basically it means "if you ever take an active role ever, you're a creep and harassing women".
That's why I'm very passive around women. It's the fear of not only rejection but also reprisal. One wrong move could lead to a HR complaint being made against you, or the non-work equivalent of having others label you a creep and ostracize you.
I actually learned the hard way in secondary school (yay autism) to not pursue a lady who had already turned me down. During Year 10 I had a major crush on a classmate and tried asking her out several times. She never told me to my face that I was making her uncomfortable but told others behind my back. My actions turned a few people I previously considered friends against me, including two girls who proceeded to bully me throughout the next year until I left secondary, like they would pretend to flirt with me one moment then call me a stalker and tell me to kill myself the next. Looking back, I wish I had saved MSN chat logs, because I think I could've gotten them expelled, if not arrested for their actions. I only complained about this to teaching staff after one of their friends went over and physically attacked me during break once.
One of those two ladies was incredibly remorseful and profusely apologized in the years after for how she treated me in school. We're now on relatively good terms. The other refused to even acknowledge that she ever did anything bad towards me. It's the latter that gets on my nerves.
The year I stopped listening to their advice is the year I actually started being able to date with success and get into a real relationship, despite me being told all my life I was such a wonderful, kind, funny, smart guy (tall and fit to boot) and having had more female friends than male friends! But years of following feminist advice on how to date women and what was the end result? I was completely alone, baffled as to what I was doing wrong, because I genuinely thought I was doing the right thing by taking dating advice from women instead of men
Exactly. I've been told similar things. In fact, if I had 20 pence for every time I've been told that I'm a great genuine guy and that I'd find somebody soon, I'd probably be able to pay off my fucking student loan.
It's going to take me a very long time to drive the feminist dating advice I've been given over the years out of my head.
Actually, I've debated just hiring an escort and losing my virginity that way, but I'd probably go to the Netherlands or Germany for that since they have legal and regulated sex industries. Prostitution is not illegal here in Britain but many of the activities commonly associated with it (like kerb crawling, running a brothel, etc) are.
You're right to not do that. Generally, the way I've seen people given dating advice for attracting the opposite sex if they happen to ALSO be that opposite sex is that they give advice from the...
I genuinely thought I was doing the right thing by taking dating advice from women instead of men, but all it taught me to do was to be completely passive and to never take even the mildest risks, for fear that I would somehow traumatize or scar her for life and she'd soon be venting to someone about the terrible, awful way I sexually harassed her. Their advice made the male sex drive feel completely demonized, and that I was somehow inherently evil for having one, and that I should instead always wait for the woman to be the one to first state any kind of direct romantic or sexual interest.
You're right to not do that. Generally, the way I've seen people given dating advice for attracting the opposite sex if they happen to ALSO be that opposite sex is that they give advice from the standpoint of you being someone they're already incredibly attracted and interested in. For instance, women will say "Don't ask her out at the gym. She'll find ways to come talk to you afterwards then you can just ask for your number". The issue there is that in their heads, they're thinking about what they'd do if there was a man they were ridiculously, incredibly attracted to at the gym. Most guys are not that dude. Most guys will never have a girl become that attracted to them simply by existing, because to be honest, women don't find most men all that physically attractive at first glance. (the same is true the other way, but to less a degree I think).
The best dating advice is to become as absolutely attractive as you can. There's a lot you can do to make yourself more handsome, it just takes work. Lifting weights and dieting is hard, developing a fashion sense is hard, making sure your teeth are straight and white is hard, and taking care of your hair is hard, so a lot of guys just let themselves go and wonder why they can't get dates.
Bullshit pick up artist peddlers sell the idea that it doesn't matter what you look like as long as you have game when it comes to dating as a man, but that is the most blatant lie in the world. If you had to pick a single variable that would predict a man's success in the dating market, it would be his looks. Your physical attractiveness will by FAR affect your success in dating more than any other single thing. If you've ever had very attractive male friends and seen women around this you can see this firsthand. Women are willing to put up with a LOT of bullshit from a handsome man, even if many of them don't admit it.
For some reason we've decided that women being into hot men isn't acceptable but men being into hot women is, so many women will lie through their teeth about this to keep up appearances. Whereas most guys will freely admit that the most important aspect in a potential mate is her looks, women generally won't, even though verifying that is as simple as looking at their behavior on dating apps.
I think because of this a lot of guys go down wildly wrong paths trying to be successful with women, when they could just be working on getting hot instead.
I think the best book for men regarding dating ever written is "Models" by Marc Manson. That said, I think that book even overcomplicates things a bit. You really just have to look good, then put yourself out there constantly.
My experience, both personal and seen in others, is that for men being attractive leans a lot on charisma, confidence, and general social validation as well as physical appearance. I think you're...
My experience, both personal and seen in others, is that for men being attractive leans a lot on charisma, confidence, and general social validation as well as physical appearance.
I think you're right about both the importance of being attractive and the ability to influence it with sufficient hard work. I also think you're right about just how much impact attractiveness has over and above other qualities - often a lot more than people (regardless of gender) are readily willing to admit to either themselves or others.
I just don't think optimising purely for looks is the right answer for most men, at least once they've put in enough work to hit a decent baseline. I'd bet on the decent looking guy who the whole room rotates around over the model sitting in the corner on his phone.
Photo filters aside, the only thing you can get from a person's dating profile is their looks. Of course people will prioritize the most verifiable attributes. That doesn't mean that's the most...
Photo filters aside, the only thing you can get from a person's dating profile is their looks. Of course people will prioritize the most verifiable attributes. That doesn't mean that's the most important attribute, just the most likely to be real.
I'm about the last person who would know, but don't most people meet online using dating sites nowadays? When I was single I would go to parties in part because I figured that's how you have to do...
I'm about the last person who would know, but don't most people meet online using dating sites nowadays?
When I was single I would go to parties in part because I figured that's how you have to do it (you're not going to meet anyone sitting at home) but in the end it wasn't. I met my wife through a dating site.
I can’t see into everyone’s lives, but surely there must be a sizable population of women that themselves don’t have amazing financial prospects and wouldn’t expect their partner to be the...
I can’t see into everyone’s lives, but surely there must be a sizable population of women that themselves don’t have amazing financial prospects and wouldn’t expect their partner to be the solution to their financial problems. Put another way - I can’t imagine poor people are doomed to solitude.
Background info on the publication for context, possible agenda. AEI Board of Trustees
Background info on the publication for context, possible agenda.
National Affairs is a quarterly journal of essays about domestic policy, political economy, society, culture, and political thought. It aims to help Americans think a little more clearly about our public life, and rise a little more ably to the challenge of self-government. The journal makes its home at the American Enterprise Institute, and draws upon a broad, diverse array of authors from a range of backgrounds and points of view.
If motivation is, as the author speculates, a major part of the underlying reasoning here my main question is why aren’t women equally demotivated? It seems as though despair and demotivation are...
If motivation is, as the author speculates, a major part of the underlying reasoning here my main question is why aren’t women equally demotivated?
It seems as though despair and demotivation are fairly reasonable reactions to a lot of societal and economic trends facing both the men and the women in question. They might not be productive reactions, but they’re very understandable - so in a lot of ways I’m not surprised at the men giving up, I’m surprised that the women aren’t.
Some random thoughts: Porn: the stuff of the internet is not your father’s nudie mag hidden in a shoebox in his workshop. It’s free, it’s almost ubiquitous, it’s audio-visual, it’s hardcore, and...
Some random thoughts:
Porn: the stuff of the internet is not your father’s nudie mag hidden in a shoebox in his workshop. It’s free, it’s almost ubiquitous, it’s audio-visual, it’s hardcore, and it’s often rough/violent. It also tends to have addictive properties, especially for those who don’t have a partner. It probably satisfies maybe 80% of his sexual needs, which is sufficient in the short/medium term. The other 20% requires an IRL relationship (a visit to an escort would only cover 10%).
Video games: I’m no Jack Thompson, but video games today are extremely immersive, and like porn, can have addictive properties, especially with loot box setups.
Housing costs: housing is more expensive, and so more young men are living at home with their parents. If you don’t have to pay for a roof over your head, there’s not a lot of motivation to move out, especially if you can just jerk off to porn (1) and play vidya (2) all day. Even if they get a low-end service job, they can instead save the money for a new gaming PC.
Historical situation: For a long time, I suspect in many cases, success just fell into place for many men. After high school, they’d get a job at a local factory or machine shop through a friend of their dad’s or by walking into the local union hall. They’d marry a woman they knew from town or high school; there was the expectation to get married, and I have a feeling many women just settled. Many of those marriages probably turned out okay, maybe the couple didn’t always align, but they likely had a reasonable fit.
I suspect the combination of all these items is what demotivates men.
Internet porn and video games were only popular from the late 90's and onwards. Women have been enrolling at college/ university at greater rates than men from the 70's and 80's. So I think...
Internet porn and video games were only popular from the late 90's and onwards. Women have been enrolling at college/ university at greater rates than men from the 70's and 80's. So I think something else is at play. Also, these natural explanations are easily thought of and easily tested, and one of the interesting comments from the article is that experts are genuinely confused, which indicates the answer is not simply thought of and tested.
I can see why more men would be less interested in prioritizing the opportunity cost college or university now for a potentially better job later. What's unusual to me is that the men aren't...
I can see why more men would be less interested in prioritizing the opportunity cost college or university now for a potentially better job later.
What's unusual to me is that the men aren't simply attending college or university to get laid now, plus the bonus of a better job later.
I think the education system, especially early childhood education, is so heavily dominated by women that they just don’t do a great job of interacting constructively with difficult boys. I expect...
I think the education system, especially early childhood education, is so heavily dominated by women that they just don’t do a great job of interacting constructively with difficult boys. I expect this has only gotten worse with the emphasis on testing and deemphasis on practical skill development since young girls develop communication skills faster and are better at sitting still/being complaint.
Add to that tendencies to punish boys harder, zero tolerance policies around fighting/roughhousing, defunding athletics and music and other programs that let non-bookish kids tap into something they might enjoy that let’s them cultivate their self-discipline and practice skills. Small individual effects like that can have big impacts in aggregate.
One of my coworkers’ sons started daycare this year. After she signed him up, she found out that his caretaker at the daycare was actually a former male student of ours. She was thrilled that he...
One of my coworkers’ sons started daycare this year.
After she signed him up, she found out that his caretaker at the daycare was actually a former male student of ours.
She was thrilled that he was a familiar face and someone she’d trust (the guy was not only a great student but was also a great overall person), but also she was thrilled that her son had a male caretaker. It is so phenomenally rare — at that age especially.
Guys that work in early childhood caretaking and education are heroes.
This is an important point. Reflecting on my time in school, I now strongly believe we must radically broaden childhood education beyond the current model of "sit quietly in a classroom and...
young girls develop communication skills faster and are better at sitting still/being complaint.
This is an important point. Reflecting on my time in school, I now strongly believe we must radically broaden childhood education beyond the current model of "sit quietly in a classroom and receive instruction".
It's clear that we need a diverse spectrum of programs to stimulate and cultivate the minds and character of children in ways that suit their individual as well as gender dispositions.
Expand PE and introduce multiple opportunities for physical activity in the school day
Create safe and light work opportunities for children.
For the entirety of human history up until modern times, children worked alongside adults.
I think that a lot of children deep down yearn to feel useful. I think that most of modern teenage detachment and identity issues—which I too very intensely experienced when I was young—stems from teens feeling like they don't have a solid place in society. And it's true! They don't for the first 18–22 years of their lives until they enter the workforce and can experience what it's like to have concrete impact (homework graded by a teacher is abstract) on society.
Working and experiencing tangible consequences/rewards are important to cultivating discipline and psychological reward loops. Grades are abstract, and is it really compelling to a child to know that if they study hard and get grades for 12+4 years (some multiple of their current lifespan) then they can reap some unquantifiable reward down the line?
Experiencing different kinds of work can help children better think about what role they want in society. Do they want to make things? Care for others? Organize things?
Part-time apprenticeships in middle through high school can help the non-academically-oriented build skills early so they can enjoy stable livelihoods sooner.
I really like the concept of this, and I think it's a hugely important conversation to be having, but a couple of things did jump out as being the opposite of my own experience at school....
I really like the concept of this, and I think it's a hugely important conversation to be having, but a couple of things did jump out as being the opposite of my own experience at school. Admittedly I wasn't explicitly the target market of this - I hated school but still did well, rather than hating it and failing - but it does make me wonder if there's an opportunity to cover even more bases here.
I think that a lot of children deep down yearn to feel useful. I think that most of modern teenage detachment and identity issues—which I too very intensely experienced when I was young—stems from teens feeling like they don't have a solid place in society. And it's true! They don't for the first 18–22 years of their lives until they enter the workforce and can experience what it's like to have concrete impact (homework graded by a teacher is abstract) on society.
My experience was that the "real world" was even worse for this. I definitely did have that feeling in school, but I also understood that the environment was temporary and artificial. For all the emotional difficulty of doing so, I could at least hold onto the intellectual knowledge that I was in a bubble and not yet able to make my own decisions.
The thing that nearly broke me was reaching adulthood and seeing that a huge number of people (I won't go as far as to say most, but still one hell of a lot) were doing jobs that provided nothing for society. The idea of spending the majority of my waking life contributing little, or even negatively, to society in an exchange for food and shelter was just too much to handle when there was no end in sight. It was as if everything I'd just barely endured because it had an expiry date the first time around came back at full force with no escape in sight.
I have, over the years, managed to temper that a bit: I do a job that I find reasonably meaningful, and worth the lower pay compared to doing something actively harmful to others. But I still see millions of people forced to grind away in hopelessness every day, and I struggle to cope with living in a society that encourages and enforces that.
Grades are abstract, and is it really compelling to a child to know that if they study hard and get grades for 12+4 years (some multiple of their current lifespan) then they can reap some unquantifiable reward down the line?
Very closely tied with what I said above, I found it much easier to handle the reasonable certainties of grading than the abstract weirdness of the reward systems in adult life.
Grading was straightforward: do assignments and exams within a predefined set of parameters, get rewarded with approval. I had a lot of problems with the rest of the schooling system, but that part was at least clear and easy to deal with.
Compare that to the realities of who wins in the working world and who loses, the incredibly complex dance of status, social hierarchy, misaligned incentives, luck, networking, and all the rest. I find it far harder knowing that I make far more in a medium effort office job than others do in essential, high stress, high risk medical positions. Harder still knowing that if I were to do that exact same same office job in an industry I consider more harmful to the world, I would make twice as much again.
I don't really have an answer to any of this - I like the idea of bringing more "reality" into schooling. I just find reality to be even more disillusioning than I did school in many ways, and I worry about the impact that realisation could have had if it'd come to me even earlier.
I can't help but feel that part of the reason why men are having a hard time these days is because society has spent a long time (so long that it affected me as a kid) keeping them as children as...
I can't help but feel that part of the reason why men are having a hard time these days is because society has spent a long time (so long that it affected me as a kid) keeping them as children as long as they can. While women have the benefit of a strong feminist voice telling them that they can do anything, men find themselves limited by ideals of masculinity as well as societal expectations of what an adult is.
This might sound a bit crazy, so buckle in a bit while I go back to the beginning and explain myself a little better.
Talk to young adults about what it means to be an adult and if they feel like they are one. Chances are, they won't feel like they are. In the past, adulthood was relatively simple; you're an adult if you have left school (ideally because you graduated, though that's not a requirement) and joined the world of employment. Of course, in the past, if you were to do that you'd also be generally making enough money to be able to support yourself and you could move out of your family's house and live the way you wanted to.
But now we have two major shifts that are keeping people feeling infantalized. First of all, in most places it's practically impossible to get a job that will actually allow you to be financially independent right out of school, regardless of if you graduated or not. And on the other hand, higher education has become dramatically more important, so kids are much more likely to go to college and university. This is where a lot of young men in particular start to feel lost in life, as if they are wasting their time working on their studies when they could be out earning money instead of accruing debt.
The other part I doubt there's any good source of data for, but I know a lot of parents don't do a very good job of treating their older teenagers like they are young adults. Young men are constantly being infantilized, especially in roles where their behavior is being controlled from an authoritarian standpoint, where the rules don't exist to protect anything but are just there arbitrarily. When I was attending a community college it was quite common to see a number of young men with the mentality that they were only there because they were told to be there, were not engaged in the topic or field, and didn't even seem to have the minimum interest you'd have if you realized the value of the education you were receiving.
Furthermore, there are a lot of other things that are part of the "adult" checklist that society holds that have shifted and made things much more difficult to obtain. A lot of this is economic in nature; one of the bigger parts of it was obtaining financial independence, and that's an extremely difficult thing to achieve right now. Some people have even more complex ideas of what it means to be an adult. Some won't accept it until they're married and have kids. And then, surprisingly, there's a large number of men who will get to this point where they're financially independent, married, and have kids, and still not feel as if they are an adult. That's what happens if you are initialized long enough; you're going to believe it no matter what.
This is definitely something worth thinking about, though I'm not sure if it isn't more generational rather than a gender divide. My friends group are all around ~30 and none of us consider...
In the past, adulthood was relatively simple; you're an adult if you have left school (ideally because you graduated, though that's not a requirement) and joined the world of employment. Of course, in the past, if you were to do that you'd also be generally making enough money to be able to support yourself and you could move out of your family's house and live the way you wanted to.
...
Furthermore, there are a lot of other things that are part of the "adult" checklist that society holds that have shifted and made things much more difficult to obtain. A lot of this is economic in nature; one of the bigger parts of it was obtaining financial independence, and that's an extremely difficult thing to achieve right now. Some people have even more complex ideas of what it means to be an adult. Some won't accept it until they're married and have kids. And then, surprisingly, there's a large number of men who will get to this point where they're financially independent, married, and have kids, and still not feel as if they are an adult. That's what happens if you are initialized long enough; you're going to believe it no matter what.
This is definitely something worth thinking about, though I'm not sure if it isn't more generational rather than a gender divide. My friends group are all around ~30 and none of us consider ourselves "real adults". Whenever this comes up in conversations with older generations, especially when talking about being ready for kids - the answer is always "no one is ready for kids" and "thats how it is for everyone". But its hard to feel like thats the case. I'm sure theres some element of kids looking at their parents or other adults from a narrow point of view and not seeing every aspect of their life. But as you say, the "adult checklist" seems to have shifted as well. We've got the obvious economic shifts - the ability to provide for yourself, let alone a family, requires a lot more than it used to. Even "successful" adults are locked out of buying a house for many years. Many folks are also single for a lot longer, which means a more young folks have the full load of running a household - which can be physically and mentally demanding. Many people also end up starting their "adult life" with a college degree and debt - which likely delays "real adulthood".
There is also increased complexity in just living as well. Every adult needs a crash course in personal finance that covers debt, credit scores, credit cards, banks, 401ks, IRAs, taxes, nutrition, phones, computers, and much more. If all you knew of personal finance was that your money coming in needs to be more than your expenses - you're likely in a difficult position today. If you go back 50-70 years ago, you'd be able to go a lot further on that knowledge. Some knowledge in how to do things on a computer is basically a requirement to live nowadays. The world is also much more obese than it was before (for many obvious reason, but also several unknown ones) - so weight loss has become a much greater concern that people need to keep track of. Sure, eating eggs and bacon for breakfast and steak and potatoes for dinner probably resulted in high cholesterol and wasn't healthy, but normal everyday food didn't result in the levels of obesity we have now.
These things are also hard to quantify. How much of it is biased by looking through rose-colored glasses? How much of it is anecdotal? When we looked at our parent and saw adults, we were certainly not seeing the full picture...but is the rest of the picture the same for adults today?
I spent time at universities in the UK and US and I was really surprised at how much less the one in the US allowed and encouraged their students to be independent adults. First years were forced...
When I was attending a community college it was quite common to see a number of young men with the mentality that they were only there because they were told to be there, were not engaged in the topic or field, and didn't even seem to have the minimum interest you'd have if you realized the value of the education you were receiving.
I spent time at universities in the UK and US and I was really surprised at how much less the one in the US allowed and encouraged their students to be independent adults. First years were forced to live on campus, forced to have a meal plan (and not trusted to cook), obliged to share rooms, and had to engage in a number of large, mandatory classes that I thought were really quite basic for the age range.
Some of the incentives there were definitely in the university's financial interest - accommodation and food was priced at a premium over the local area and students were a captive market, whereas in the UK it was provided at a discount as far as the university was able and there was still something of a "public service" kind of ethos to how things were run - but there was a definite air of social expectation that 18-20 year olds were basically just large kids as well.
The educational side was more complex: for me, the freedom of the US system provided several significant opportunities that I hadn't had in the UK, but I happened to have a very strong idea of what I wanted to achieve. For anyone entering without that, I can see it acting as more of a safety blanket to drift around without committing too strongly to a path.
This is such an interesting article, thank you. In both America, and worldwide, the percent of people attending tertiary education rose from 10% to almost 40%... While America had more females...
This is such an interesting article, thank you.
In 1972, Congress passed Title IX — a landmark statute to promote gender equality in higher education. Quite rightly, too: At the time, there was a 13 percentage-point gap in the proportion of bachelor's degrees going to men compared to women. Just a decade later, the gap had closed. By 2019, the gender gap in bachelor's degrees was 15 points — wider than it had been in 1972, but in the opposite direction. Today, women far outperform men in the American education system.
In both America, and worldwide, the percent of people attending tertiary education rose from 10% to almost 40%...
While America had more females than males in higher education by the early 80's, most other western countries saw a change in the late 80's early 90's, and it is a gradual change, not a sudden change that can be pinpointed to any specific event such as gender equality legislation, the popularity of TV or video games.
I wonder if perhaps, as more people feel pressure to attend college/ university, women are just simply more inclined towards that path than men. If that were the sole factor, I would expect gender equality to happen at a point similar to the USA, which was when 16% of the most likely population attended college/university. I don't see that in the data, so obviously there are additional factors at play, such as the ability to find non-college jobs and the gender bias in each countries education.
The most common high-school grade for girls is now an A; for boys, it's a B. Girls account for two-thirds of high-school students in the top 10% of their classes ranked by GPA, while the proportions are reversed at the bottom rung. To be sure, boys still perform better than girls on most standardized tests. But this gap has narrowed sharply in recent years — down to a 13-point difference in the SAT.
I wonder if there is a natural gender bias in schools. Perhaps women are much better at being well behaved and so get better grades and are more comfortable with the idea of continuing education. I would imagine that anything easy would have been tested already, such as the effect of male teachers vs female teachers on gender bias.
This is going to be a controversial comment by me, and I just want people I mean it to be a sincere question about the underlying assumptions we have about equality. I'm speaking as someone who's...
This is going to be a controversial comment by me, and I just want people I mean it to be a sincere question about the underlying assumptions we have about equality.
I'm speaking as someone who's boomeranged several times from inceldom, alt-right, manosphere to uber-progressive, bloomer, socialist and back again. Also an absolute loser by the way. But if you're like me and you need to be hand-held through society, through every little interaction, do you really deserve any kind of help. In terms of sex and money, it seems already that the top tier of men are already doing more than enough to compensate for the bottom majority. Do we really deserve to be more than financial peasants and sexual embarrassments?
Someone else commented that "Young men are passive, without ambition, without agency, deadly afraid of expressing the slightest direct interest in a woman" and that describes to me pretty well. If you're like this, why do you deserve to be cared for? Is it really beneficial for society to expend resources trying to bring you back from this deep hole taht you dug yourself? I don't think so.
I think that it depends on how ruthless you think society should be. I think that people are deserving of help to live their best lives, not because every individual will be productive in ways...
I think that it depends on how ruthless you think society should be. I think that people are deserving of help to live their best lives, not because every individual will be productive in ways that can be quantified, but because they are inherently worthy as a person. Wounded people are still people, and still deserving.
My word! You are a living breathing ape which fully qualifies you in my mind for deservedness. Yipes, buddy, can I suggest therapy? If you're yoyo-ing ideologically and feeling unworthy of...
My word! You are a living breathing ape which fully qualifies you in my mind for deservedness. Yipes, buddy, can I suggest therapy? If you're yoyo-ing ideologically and feeling unworthy of personal support... You sound like the kind of person we'd want to bring into the fold.
Edit: there's ways to engage with the question you asked, maybe. Like I could imagine a discourse around whether it is possible to be wasteful when reaching in for people who sound as discouraged as you do. But to be totally frank I am so alarmed by your comment that my honest response is just to send you lots of love and hope you do okay today
I will reply to both you and @MimicSquid here. You two are better people than I am and remind me of when I used to be more optimistic. Just to clarify my stance though, I don't think failures...
I will reply to both you and @MimicSquid here. You two are better people than I am and remind me of when I used to be more optimistic. Just to clarify my stance though, I don't think failures should be treated as second-class citizens in the legal and systemic sense. I think they should have full rights as a human. But also if you've failed so much socially, you kinda deserve to be left behind. There's no point spending labor and capital on lost causes.
Edit: I understand the need to 'help' men as a preventative measure though. There's a strong argument that sending incels and wayward men to therapy would very likely prevent a lot of violent crimes and shootings, at least in America. But a better justice system and assault rifle bans could also do the same thing.
I think you should be kinder to yourself. I don't know your personal history, but failure is a key part of the life. If you don't fail, you don't grow or gain empathy. It sounds like your...
I think you should be kinder to yourself. I don't know your personal history, but failure is a key part of the life. If you don't fail, you don't grow or gain empathy. It sounds like your experience provides unique perspective where you can understand the frustrations of these more toxic communities but can see the issues with the misogynistic conclusions many of them reach. It means you can think critically, learn, and grow. That is the kind of person I would want in my society and someone I would happily spend time and resources on. Just from these comments I can tell you are an empathetic person and I wish you would extend that same understanding to yourself. Feel free to reach out if you want to chat.
Do we really deserve to be more than financial peasants and sexual embarrassments?
To answer your earlier question, emphatically yes. There isn't a corollary between wealth/sexual prowess and benefit to society or even success. The "value" framework in many of those male centered communities is warped to reinforce rage, how things work in reality is much more nuanced.
I can't do either of these things. Sure I guess I can be empathetic but I don't have any useful thoughts. If you're providing to society in any way then sure you deserve help in other parts of...
but can see the issues with the misogynistic conclusions many of them reach. It means you can think critically, learn, and grow.
I can't do either of these things. Sure I guess I can be empathetic but I don't have any useful thoughts.
There isn't a corollary between wealth/sexual prowess and benefit to society or even success.
If you're providing to society in any way then sure you deserve help in other parts of your life. I was talking about men that don't provide any value and are probably a net negative on society.
Even the way you're talking about it in these comments shows critical thinking. I'd argue that many of the people we laud as successful are net drains on society. Also, someone who may not be...
I can't do either of these things. Sure I guess I can be empathetic but I don't have any useful thoughts.
Even the way you're talking about it in these comments shows critical thinking.
If you're providing to society in any way then sure you deserve help in other parts of your life. I was talking about men that don't provide any value and are probably a net negative on society.
I'd argue that many of the people we laud as successful are net drains on society. Also, someone who may not be 'providing any value' now can have huge impacts later in life. I really think you're thinking about this too immediately. Life is a long winding road, there will be lots of opportunities to participate positively. I think I remember from some of your other posts that you are still pretty young, forgive me if that isn't true. It's hard to help society when you yourself are just getting established. Take time for yourself and then when you're ready reach out to help others. And be easier on yourself.
Framing problems around “what people deserve” seems unhelpful. Speaking very generally, there are people with negative traits that could be fixed. Not doing anything about it is an enormous waste....
Framing problems around “what people deserve” seems unhelpful. Speaking very generally, there are people with negative traits that could be fixed. Not doing anything about it is an enormous waste. Or to put it another way, there’s a lot of unrealized potential, if we can figure out how to tap into it.
I think it’s also true that everyone is limited in who they decide to help, that some problems are hard to fix, and often people don’t get the help they need. But ideally, you’d try to help everyone. People aren’t neglected because someone has decided that they, personally, are undeserving, in some cosmic sense. (Or if someone says that, they’re mean and you should ignore them. That includes the voice in your head.) But we live in a large, atomized society and it’s easy to be overlooked.
It sure seems like being discouraged shouldn’t be an unfixable problem. At the same time, I do know what it’s like to be discouraged, having been single (and not dating) for many years. I met my future wife at 40. I missed out on a lot.
Society just doesn’t have a good script for this. (If we needed a lot of soldiers, we’d know what to do.) So it’s left to individual efforts.
I’m trying to think of what advice I’d give to my younger self. (My dad suggested dance lessons at Authur Murray, which I thought was hopelessly old-fashioned.)
God, my mom suggested the same thing when I was in my 20s. It feels about as relevant as walking up to a manager with a printed out resume and a firm handshake. In reality I'd suggest meeting...
My dad suggested dance lessons at Authur Murray, which I thought was hopelessly old-fashioned.
God, my mom suggested the same thing when I was in my 20s. It feels about as relevant as walking up to a manager with a printed out resume and a firm handshake.
In reality I'd suggest meeting potential partners at activity based events like intramural pick-up leagues, community sporting groups (running groups like hashers or swimming ones like kelp crawlers), or non-sporting activities like pub quiz. When it isn't specifically about dating and you're expected to interact, it's a lot easier to lay non-threatening groundwork. That and you can make friends too.
There are other kinds of dancing, too. I've never been, but I've seen videos taken at contra dancing events and it looks pretty fun. I don't know what's going on with COVID though.
There are other kinds of dancing, too. I've never been, but I've seen videos taken at contra dancing events and it looks pretty fun. I don't know what's going on with COVID though.
Social dancing is great! I started to take ballroom dancing classes in my mid twenties, and I think was one of the biggest factors in breaking out of my shell. Had my first serious relationships...
Social dancing is great! I started to take ballroom dancing classes in my mid twenties, and I think was one of the biggest factors in breaking out of my shell. Had my first serious relationships thanks to dancing events, which they held every month (no alcohol). Such a great opportunity to get to know people smoothly. I wasn't much of a drinker and normal parties just often felt awkward. Granted, it was organised by a student association so everyone was pretty much my age.
There's just something about that instant connection and proximity when dancing, that really breaks some walls. Shame if it's seen as old-fashioned.
That's awesome! Sounds like a great opportunity. I've done some social dancing as well, a few salsa classes and some Irish dancing at the local pub. I really enjoyed it. My "oh mom..." comment was...
That's awesome! Sounds like a great opportunity. I've done some social dancing as well, a few salsa classes and some Irish dancing at the local pub. I really enjoyed it.
My "oh mom..." comment was more targeted at Arthur Murray specifically. At least locally it attracts an older demographic.
I see! I have no idea who that is so I misinterpreted a bit 😅. Glad you have also found dancing fun. That reminds me, I really need to get back at it; I'd really like to learn something like Lindy...
I see! I have no idea who that is so I misinterpreted a bit 😅.
Glad you have also found dancing fun. That reminds me, I really need to get back at it; I'd really like to learn something like Lindy Hop.
I think we just disagree on whether there's any potential or not. I think people are undeserving because of their own failures. That doesn't mean that they can't find success in whatever they're...
Not doing anything about it is an enormous waste. Or to put it another way, there’s a lot of unrealized potential, if we can figure out how to tap into it.
I think we just disagree on whether there's any potential or not.
But ideally, you’d try to help everyone. People aren’t neglected because someone has decided that they, personally, are undeserving, in some cosmic sense.
I think people are undeserving because of their own failures. That doesn't mean that they can't find success in whatever they're seeking, but I think after a certain point it becomes pointless to help someone. I am speaking generally here though, and everyone has their own way of determining whether someone deserves help or not.
I can respect someone who wishes to be left alone. I wish I understood your conviction a little better, though. What is it you've experienced that has convinced you so thoroughly that there is no...
I can respect someone who wishes to be left alone. I wish I understood your conviction a little better, though. What is it you've experienced that has convinced you so thoroughly that there is no "potential" in you? What is your lifestyle like?
I can't really answer that beyond saying that I've failed in every field possible: finances, romance, friendship, family, intelligence, and skill. And I'm irredeemably ugly and unhealthy. I'm not...
I can't really answer that beyond saying that I've failed in every field possible: finances, romance, friendship, family, intelligence, and skill. And I'm irredeemably ugly and unhealthy.
I'm not really looking for help though Just sharing my point of view because I can't really do it anywhere else. Nowhere else on the internet approaches controversial thought the way Tildes does.
Yes, this is difficult to discuss in the abstract. I can say that, sometimes, people who fail due to their own shortcomings eventually figure it out, and also that it's not true that people get...
Yes, this is difficult to discuss in the abstract. I can say that, sometimes, people who fail due to their own shortcomings eventually figure it out, and also that it's not true that people get what they deserve. Saying that seems to imply some kind of cosmic justice as part of the natural order of things. But the "natural" penalties for being careless are often randomly distributed and can be extremely harsh. (Consider who suffers from accidents and diseases.) The world is an unjust place, and whatever justice there is happens because there are people who work to make the world a little less unfair. That work never ends.
But in the end this is a (mostly) anonymous forum and there's only so much we can discuss without actually knowing each other.
I think I don't fully agree with this statement. Or I guess if I do, I just don't think everyone can get fairness, and young useless men should be on the bottom of the list.
The world is an unjust place, and whatever justice there is happens because there are people who work to make the world a little less unfair.
I think I don't fully agree with this statement. Or I guess if I do, I just don't think everyone can get fairness, and young useless men should be on the bottom of the list.
Saying that everyone deserves help is more an ideal than a practical statement. Of course you can’t help everyone, but it’s not ruling anyone out arbitrarily. It’s refusing to be prematurely...
Saying that everyone deserves help is more an ideal than a practical statement. Of course you can’t help everyone, but it’s not ruling anyone out arbitrarily. It’s refusing to be prematurely judgemental.
Also, I’m not sure that “young useless men” is a relevant category when you decide who to help. People decide who to help based on all sorts of idiosyncratic reasons. Maybe they’re a friend or relative? Or, maybe they’re a teacher and people get help because they’re in the class. Or it’s just random since they happened to meet them.
Thanks to a group of anonymous benefactors, students educated in [Kalamazoo's] K-12 school system receive paid tuition at almost any college in the state. Other cities have similar initiatives, but the Kalamazoo Promise is unusually generous. It's also one of the few programs of its kind to have been robustly evaluated — in this case by Timothy Bartik, Brad Hershbein, and Marta Lachowska of the Upjohn Institute. They found that the Kalamazoo Promise made a major difference in the lives of its beneficiaries — more so than other, similar programs made in theirs.
But the average impact disguises a stark gender divide. According to the evaluation team, women in the program "experience very large gains," including an increase of 45% in college-completion rates, while "men seem to experience zero benefit." The cost-benefit analysis showed an overall gain of $69,000 per female participant — a return on investment of at least 12% — compared to an overall loss of $21,000 for each male participant. In short, for men, the program was both costly and ineffective.
[...]
Among women, the Fort Worth initiative tripled associate-degree completion. This is a huge finding: That kind of effect is rare in any social-policy intervention. But as with free college in Kalamazoo, the program had no impact on college completion rates for men.
Why not? Again, the evaluators can only speculate. James Sullivan, one of the scholars examining the program, candidly admits, "we don't know." This is a recurrent sentiment among scholars working in the field. Sullivan's research team does note that the case managers assigned to work with students were all women. When a program relies heavily on a close one-to-one relationship, matching the gender of the provider and recipient may be an important factor.
But Stay the Course and the Kalamazoo Promise are just two among dozens of initiatives in education that seem not to benefit boys or men. An evaluation of three preschool programs — Abecedarian, Perry, and the early Training Project — for example, showed "substantial" long-term benefits for girls but "no significant long-term benefits for boys." Project READS, a North Carolina summer reading program, boosted literacy scores "significantly" for third-grade girls — giving them the equivalent of a six-week acceleration in learning — but there was a "negative and insignificant reading score effect" for boys.
[...]
Of course, there are programs that do show positive results for both genders, such as the community-college mentoring scheme Accelerated Study in Associate Programs (ASAP), as well as some early education programs. But where there is a difference by gender, it is essentially always in favor of girls and women. The only real exception to this rule is in some vocational programs or institutions, which do seem to benefit men more than women — one among many reasons we need more of them.
[...]
Tyreese is exactly the kind of person the Kalamazoo Promise is intended to help: His father died when he was five years old, and two of his brothers are in prison. He observes major differences between the women and men around him. The first is one of motivation: "The women are so driven," he notes. "They know they have to provide for their family." A second factor is independence: "They [the women] don't really need a relationship; they can do it on their own." The third is persistence: "When stuff gets hard, the guys tend to run away. The girls don't." The fourth is planning: "Women tend to live in the future," he says, while "men tend to live in the present." Put these together — motivation, independence, persistence, and planning — and it's no wonder, to Tyreese at least, that women are doing better than men in school.
[...]
Motivation and ambition — which are almost impossible to capture quantitatively — are certainly a big part of the story: Young women are seizing opportunities with much greater zeal than young men.
Take studying abroad as an example. In recent decades, foreign study has become much more popular, with increasing numbers of undergraduates grabbing their passports and phrase books and heading overseas. And why not? Living in another country for a few months is a great opportunity for both learning and fun. A joint report by the American Institute for Foreign Study and the Institute of International Education extols the value of studying abroad, as one might expect. But they appear to be onto something: Employers do seem to like hiring graduates with broader horizons, and many of the skills honed in a foreign country seem to be useful later in life. But strikingly, female students are more than twice as likely as their male peers to study abroad. One might suspect that women are simply more likely to be interested in subjects offering more study-abroad options, like languages and the arts. But no — the study-abroad gender gap can be found in all subjects.
I haven't read the original article so I might be cherry picking this, but additionally I wonder if this doesn't correlate with the students of which subjects travel out more. What's the point in...
One might suspect that women are simply more likely to be interested in subjects offering more study-abroad options, like languages and the arts. But no — the study-abroad gender gap can be found in all subjects.
I haven't read the original article so I might be cherry picking this, but additionally I wonder if this doesn't correlate with the students of which subjects travel out more. What's the point in doing a semester abroad if you study somethin like computer science, mechatronics or the like, because from anecdotal experience, the people who study such subjects are far more prone to not engage in typical social activities and also those subjects are fucking hard. It doesn't matter if you sit in Amsterdam or Barcelona when you study those things, because you'll be mostly inside anyway, and the point of a semester abroad is, ironically, to let the studying drag a little.
The snippet you just quoted seems to indicate that they compared people taking the same subject. But without looking further into it, I’d be somewhat skeptical that they adjusted for everything...
The snippet you just quoted seems to indicate that they compared people taking the same subject.
But without looking further into it, I’d be somewhat skeptical that they adjusted for everything correctly. It can be difficult to do.
I'm not at all shocked that today's men are becoming demotivated. The problem honestly goes beyond higher education, which is an increasingly female-dominated area except in STEM subjects. Here in the UK 56.3% of participants in higher education are female. Heck, I actually studied at a UK university where women outnumbered men by 4 to 1 at the time.
This (and other problems with today's society that I won't delve into because I'd honestly be writing a whole essay on this) have created a social underclass of mainly men who can't find decent jobs or be homeowners because they don't have a joint income, and can't find sexual partners because they don't have the financial assets or social status to actually find a suitor. Adulthood has turned into a catch-22 for them.
I am one of these people, a 31 y/o virgin earning less than people around my age group, despite having a Bachelors degree and accounting technician qualifications. Though in my case disability (Asperger's) has also put me at a disadvantage.
As for the statistics... 27% of US men between 18 - 30 are virgins, compared to just 8% of women., and this is a figure that had trebled over the previous decade.
There is a reason why the manosphere (namely the incel, red pill and MGTOW communities) have seen explosive growth in recent years, and why increasing numbers of people are turning to controversial self-proclaimed playboys like Andrew Tate for guidance.
Cancelling people for misconduct or for supporting hateful ideas isn't going to fix the problem because you're just playing a game of whack-a-mole and not resolving the issues that are making people turn towards more radical ideologies. Reining in our heavily capitalistic and materialistic society will. The more that wealth inequality grows, the more these problems will be exacerbated, and lawmakers need to realise that they're playing a dangerous game here.
Replying to the bits of the thread in one post instead of separately. Apologies in advance for the length, poor structuring, incoherenece from rushing, and related inability to reply to anything for a while.
The causality in the original post is reversed, at least within the context of the article. Men aren't demotivated because they aren't graduating, they aren't graduating because they aren't motivated or otherwise struggling with school in ways that show up at age 5 and widen from ~9-13.
Understanding the root of that dysfunction is needed to try to address it. The article mostly puts out "we don't really know" as for why. Maybe trade schools, more male teachers, or other mentioned reforms could close the gap. Maybe there's some sexual dimorphism at play.
Another possible explanation is boys are performing worse because there's something about the way they're raised that prepares them poorly for the future. Starting early, and often reinforced.
I'm all in favor of improving income equality, a less materialistic society, better treatment of teachers, education reform, and any other sensible policy... but I think there's observable differences in boys and girls before they're worrying about their career, and they track with differences that show later in life.
You don't hear about 8 year old girls throwing out slurs and making rape threats in voice chats. They're not the audience of TheFappening or revenge porn.
There's things that suck for each gender and I don't really think it's helpful to try to make hard comparisons. I think the language of "X to Y" pipeline is a useful reminder that most people get to where they are incrementally, and it's important for improving society by making it desirable at every step of the way for someone to change for the better.
I believe you, but this is not advice I've seen. The informal advice I've seen is roughly:
Talking to someone isn't the same thing as trying to hitting on them, and flirting with someone at work isn't the same thing as being a sex pest. I've never met someone saying don't give a "keep it up!" in passing at a gym that becomes a conversation on yoga the next week and an invitation to an event. That's different from walking up to someone running with earbuds in that you know nothing about except you find them attractive and expecting them to interrupt their routine to talk to you.
It probably varies regionally, but a 2017 Stanford survey says most people find each other online. Bars/restaurants/presumably other spaces where flirting or hook-ups are sanctioned (e.g., clubs, festivals, mini golf) became more common, and the rest shrunk proportionally to the increase of online dating since 1995.
I can't think of anyone that met their partner from while they were shopping at a grocery store, approaching them on the street, or at any other one-off non-sanctioned venue.
I trust that your perspective comes from your own experience with female friends or people online. Personally, I relate to it. My earliest memories are a divorce with domestic violence and other accusations. I always hated "locker talk", and it took a while to grow out of being overly protective to just treat women as people.
It's hard to see a lack of good advice being out there as the issue, since I feel like I've seen it without searching. There's never been more access to hear the intimate, candid, anonymous details of strangers. You can read hundreds of stories about a woman's best date, what they find attractive, where they met their partner, what's a red flags, thoughts on virgins, etc. You can get the same from men, subpopulations, whatever. From that you can probably get a better idea of the spectrum of different people out there than you could from a guru trying to simplify and package the complexity of human preference.
I've also had housemates that considered themselves feminist enough to want that to be an interview question for future housemates. They were all pretty sex-positive and open. One (with a theater background) snagged her long-term boyfriend at a concert and to his mild-chagrin would show off a picture book with holes cut to turn a male member into an astronaut, santa... maybe a Mongolian death worm? I forget. None of them resemble the type of person that would label someone a "creepy evil misogynist". If anything they tried encouraging me to be more social.
Your problem of being a great catch concerned about women's comfort to the point you don't know what you find attractive doesn't seem to be one most of the manosphere seem to have.
Do you think the rhetorical incel/PUA/whatever is having problems sexualizing or "checking out" women? My limited experience is they can't avoid it. Platonic relationships with women become impossible because they feel some claim of the woman, getting upset if someone they had designs for starts dating.
Bullmaestro asked someone out several times. It's awful that they got bullied in the fallout. I'm also likely on the spectrum (go team?) and had a pretty messy childhood, so my heart goes out to the people who have to struggle every step of the way to internalize what comes easily for others.
My first roommate in college bought courses on how to hypnotize women in a sketchy way. Someone else I knew advocated the "shotgun approach" to dating. Shoot your shot at everyone. You may end up creeping out dozens of women, but you'll find that one that responds to negging, wants to be a trad wife, or was looking for something casual when you asked for sex in the first conversation. Others were blasé about leveraging alcohol.
A later roommate bought flowers and others gifts for multiple of women who had partners, after they'd explicitly asked him not to. A couple times he made scenes at their place of work.
There were many informal and a couple formal "interventions" where people patiently tried to explain why what he was doing wasn't appropriate, why it wouldn't work, what he could try, etc. Different tones and approaches were used. A few offered to start a fitness routine with him. It always ended up being in one ear and out the other because he didn't want it.
He wanted to be a James Bond figure, a high status male. He didn't want to pursue anyone except attractive women. He didn't want to learn when to move on and take polite-then-direct refusals as legitimate. If women weren't taken by his ballroom dancing or wine tasting the mistake never lay with the desire or expectation.
This was the bit that got me to write a reply. Helping out that roommate didn't fail to shift the needle because of a lack of effort or good advice from guys/gals that were romantically successful. It failed because of some deep world view/desires/motivations that clashed with reality.
I don't follow progressive talking heads (Breadtube? no idea), but if there isn't an anti-Tate out there it may be because there is no appetite for it. The manosphere is an industry and it promotes, justifies, and reifies what it sells. It doesn't need to give good advice. It will exist and find a spokesperson as long as it says what people want to hear.
Once you get the inertia of /r/theredpill's 200k+ active member sub it is capable of growing itself divorced from any external force that "drives" young men to it. The number of users becomes an endorsement that maybe there's something to it. They make secret language and special knowledge and other culty things.
They look for examples that justify their worldview and ban dissent. A shrill blue-haired harridan of the month gets packaged and spread, or old ones are used, and that works because monkey brains use the availability heuristic. Distort or outright fabricate.
They act presentable when recruiting, as @cfabbro pointed out elsewhere, while the head mod advocates straight up rape. People that benefit from it steer and advertise it. Those in it defend it aggressively, maybe because it's a toxic community that rewarded toxic behavior, or maybe from the sunk cost.
Here's an upvoted thread a few months ago titled How To Use The Desperation of Ukrainian War Refugees to Your Sexual Advantage.
It's beyond disgusting, and the plug at the bottom says it isn't even the spicey stuff.
In the highly unlikely event that you, the esteemed reader of the Red Pill sexual strategy forum, have had the opportunity to leave your video game and pornography pleasure bunker, you may have noticed that there has been a sudden change in the media narrative. Our beloved, all-knowing science–man Anthony Fauci has mysteriously disappeared from television and has been surreptitiously replaced with very evil bad man Vladimir Putin. Now, as a reader of the Red Pill you might not know much about taking regular showers or preventing your underwear from turning moist and brown on the inside. However, as a refined video game connoisseur you do know that emotionally vulnerable grief-stricken women are a source of quests, and quests are how you obtain rewards and experience points. There are many such women on the television right now, so obviously there are a lot of quests. Therefore, the logical question for any contemporary rational male is: How to Use the Desperation of Ukrainian War Refugees to your Sexual Advantage?
Speaking of taking advantage of Ukrainian women. What are the sexual advantages of Ukrainian women? I’m glad you asked. Unlike American women, who on average weigh 170 pounds at 5 feet 4 inches, Ukrainian women still possess a modicum of self-respect and have not gorged themselves into grotesque proportions like barnyard hogs. Unlike sexual intercourse with American women, the use of a headlamp is not a prerequisite during sex with Ukrainians as the vaginal opening is not hidden beneath a maze of creases, wrinkles, fat flaps and folds. Consequently, sex is easier, more straightforward and reasonably hygienic.
Another stark contrast is that Ukrainian women possess souls. American women power wash away all semblance of personality via hormonal birth control, antidepressants, recreational drugs and social media. Ukrainian women, on the other hand, live simpler lives and spend their days digging for potatoes and playing the accordion. Their bloodstreams have not been colonized by big pharma and they are capable of face-to-face social interaction without turtling up in their smart phone at the slightest inconvenience. This means that Ukrainian women are not grotesque science experiments with soulless hollow eyes and can still be biologically classified as human beings. Finally, the most important difference between Ukrainian and American women is that the former are capable of providing you with healthy, viable offspring, while the latter will misappropriate your DNA and birth a transformer whose only life skill is genital self-mutilation and attaching itself to ceiling fans in creative ways.
Now that you understand the comparative value of Ukrainian females, it’s important to understand the driving factors behind the current sexual marketplace deep discount. Here at The Red Pill, we pride ourselves on being brilliant amoral sexual strategists. Hypergamy doesn’t care about your feelings, yada yada yada. Well, uncle Vladimir has given us a belated Christmas present: hot, young, fertile Ukrainian refugees. The last refugee wave was in 2015 when Europe got flooded with brownies. That only benefited obese 50-year-old white spinsters and an unmentionable Middle-Eastern country that doesn’t get along with its neighbors.
As far as sexual strategy is concerned, all you need to know is that Ukraine trusted a comedian with the fate of a nation and now holds a bizarre state ideology consisting of a contradictory mix of fascism and kindergarten homosexuality class]. The big takeaway here is that if the Ukrainian state is willing to delude itself with an incoherent ideology while getting defiled with foreign biological weapon labs and IMF loans, then Ukrainian women are willing to get deluded by your incoherent PUA bullshit while you defile them with your penis. A nation behaves on a macro scale the same way its people behave on a micro scale. As above so below.
The devastation of Ukraine was purposefully engineered to flood the West with cheap, high-quality labor. So why not benefit from the situation by taking advantage of cheap, high-quality Ukrainian sexual labor? Financial advisors always talk about buying the dip; now’s the time to invest your penis by dipping into Ukrainian vagina. The sexual market is no different than the stock market. You have to eke out every advantage you can get. We are well past the easy sexual marketplace of 2005 when a fedora and copy of the Mystery Method were sufficient to get you lady-hole. You don't have to be a genius to understand that the world is rapidly deteriorating and that opportunities are becoming harder to come by.
Luckily for the Red Pill, Ukrainian women are already acclimated to living in basements on dirty mattresses and as such represent a perfect fit for the lifestyle of our readership. They’ve already been negged by uncle Putin. All you need to do is be nice to them and find them living space between your elite gaming rig and boxes of Mountain Dew. Best of all, they won't know how socially uncalibrated you are because of their limited English.
From a practical standpoint, all you need to know about Ukrainian women is that they will be arriving primarily in Central Europe and major western cities as refugees. They are easily identifiable by their stoic facial expressions, out-of-date choice of fashion and slim figures. At the level of game, Ukrainian women are no different than any other second world woman which is to say they want to ride a dick into a first-world lifestyle. They are shallow, materialistic and willing to do anyone and anything that will give them the assets necessary to make their girlfriends at home jealous. If you do not manage the relationship properly you will find yourself in the same financial situation as the men who fell for the mail order bride scam in the 90s when the Soviet Union collapsed. If you do manage the relationship properly, she’ll be on the receiving end of your meat missile while her devoted husband is on the receiving end of a Kalibr cruise missile.
When you’re defeated in war, someone else takes your women and passes on their superior genetics to them. When a simple Ukrainian man gets conned into joining Right Sektor and fighting on behalf of gay Aryan Rimjobs by a country that shall not be named, his wives and daughters flee abroad and get drilled by foreigners. That's just basic War Bride Theory. We the Red Pill didn't create the situation nor do we have any power over it. What we can do however is take advantage of it with our penises. After all these Ukrainian vaginas have to get fucked by someone. Why not us?
Train your body and expand your mind with heterodox philosophies so you can have the strength to turn the challenges of our time to your personal advantage Fill out my form and we'll get in contact.
I’ve created a public Telegram channel, an uncensorable fortress, for Red Pills so spicy they can't be posted on Reddit.
I'll be the one to say it: fuck that. Fuck everything about people who could ever find their way into that thread. No one got driven into that. It was selling a world where women are subhuman trophies and toys, and anyone there was buying. By extension, and from the many dozens of (less ranty, sorry) conversations I've had, most people who use the canard of being driven into some anti-social or anti-Democratic position struggle to justify it.
I really don't buy that JP or Tate are helping people, at least not relative to readily available alternatives. I understand disaffected young men looking into all sorts of stuff when they're figuring themselves out, but I don't think it's typical to stay there unless the core resonates with them, and that's not one of addressing male issues. If that's the case the problem embedded in "why are men hard to help" is in that core.
Healthy, well-adjusted men don't buy MLM packages from Andrew Tate. They aren't the "rootless white males" Steve Bannon or the Proud Boys recruit. They don't buy $8k merch/seminars from PUAs and get homicidal when that doesn't work.
JP gives pretty generic self-help advice, and we're also living in the era with the most readily available mental health resources. Ones better supported than Jungianism. I took a course on CBT (I swear I thought it was the other kind) and it was great; 10/10, should do more of if I wasn't lazy. I listened to more JP than I would've liked to years ago to support someone in my life and... yikes. It's towards an extreme, but stuff like this just makes me wince.
From my own limited anecdotes the people I've known that got into JP became worse for it. It's hard to say that means anything since sometimes crutches are load-bearing.
As a role model he is someone who eats a carnivore diet, gets addicted to benzos to after health complications from that, then flies to Russia for a needlessly risky medical treatment. His daughter apparently dated Tate, who at best is a MLM honcho/webcam pimp and at worst a violent sex trafficker.
If the antidote is less insecurity, materialism, and jockeying for status, JP, Tate, and a lot of what I've seen of the manoverse are a poison that swapped labels. Even if they helped people on an individual scale, it just becomes some tragedy of the commons where they make the ecosystem of relationships so much worse.
What sets the stage for women to be afraid of men of men approaching them on the street? Or not accepting rejection? Who is calling women cock carousels and men virgin soy boys betacucks, spamming a thousand dating app websites with canned messages, or causing trauma that takes years to get back to a good space from?
I had a former housemate who was heading to work and didn't respond to someone hollering at her. That person went on to say "fuck you bitch" and give a pretty graphic rape threat. She's now probably never going to respond well to being approached on the street, and it's her and maybe a future partner that have no deal with that aftermath, not the guy that shouted it.
I don't think progressives or women are the source of devaluing someone because of virginity in either direction. Some definitely do, and I hate to see it because people get hurt in the crossfire. And because that's the sort of core concept that probably needs serious rethinking.
For some more oversharing, I dated someone for several years who, due to a medical condition, wasn't able to have penetrative sex. If nothing else it made it very obvious what a ridiculous thing virginity is.
I'm not in love with the delivery sometimes, but the argument of progressives/feminists that may come across as shaming or doing nothing for men is that some post-patriarchy world where we've normalized people treating others with respect is one where women get to be free to be equally sexually/romantically forward as men, and where men don't have to worry about where on the spectrum from asexual to Pepe le Pew they place their chip.
I don't mean to say you were implying JP and Tate are helping young men in a way that actually works--feel free to weigh in-- but any flocking towards them is part of a story in which progressives are failing them.
At the end of the day people do what they want. If the aforementioned roommate decides that he's going to ignore a talk on nutrition where facts are less murky, what is to be done? I explain how calories/macronutrients work when he asks about losing weight... and he ends the conversation deciding to get his "daily fruit" from fruit juice.
I could pitch him some specious rule like "do it after you lift" or tell him refrigerating it will lower his body temperature and burn it off, and he'd come to me for more. Reality will remind us both that sometimes people are hard to help.
It seems as though there are a third group of men who are almost by definition getting overshadowed and ignored here: the quiet, timid, poorly-advised, disillusioned, unsuccessful men who do still recognise the abhorrence of red pill/incel/manosphere ideology for exactly what it is. The people who aren't extremists, but if they were would be something more akin to hikikomori than incels.
I don't think these are the internet nice guy archetype either - we're not talking about people who think they are a great catch, but people who know or believe that they aren't and don't know what to do about it. It's a demographic that's very easy to overlook because it isn't a community or cult, because the people who fit the description are intrinsically quiet, and because their evil-twin counterparts on the far right are an active and immediate threat.
These aren't the ones who are at risk of violence or radicalisation; they're at risk of suicide. They're a meaningful chunk of the men who we only realise are "lost" when we look at statistics like the article we're all discussing here. And I'm sadly willing to believe there are a lot more of them out there than most people realise.
I occasionally check theredpill and various other alt-right, manosphere, and incel subreddits to keep apprised of whatever new horrible things they're up to, and I actually remember that thread because of how absolutely vile it was. I reported it, and this was the infuriating response I got:
It has since been removed, but only several months later after it got mentioned in a popular thread on /r/ukraine, which caused a shitstorm there. However, it should be noted that the user who posted it is still active on reddit, and constantly posting even more equally vile shit to /r/theredpill and elswhere.
For the life of me, I honestly can't figure out why that subreddit and others like it are still only quarantined and not outright banned, and why those type of users don't ever seem to get banned either... other than suspecting someone near the top at reddit HQ is sympathetic to their cause. Fuck theredpill, fuck whichever reddit policy maker is allowing those subreddits to remain on the site, and fuck the "safety team" admins who keep giving this sort of shit a pass whenever it gets reported, only ever taking action once enough negative attention finally comes their way. I fucking hate reddit so much because of shit like this. :(
I think it’s generally good to get advice from people who have accomplished what you are trying to accomplish. Find men about your age that have a healthy heterosexual relationship and talk with them.
My only partially qualified advice is you should just be honest and straightforward with yourself and the other person. Don’t worry if you’re afraid that shifting into manual and talking things out won’t work. If being straight doesn’t work then it was already a dead end.
For me, the vast majority of my male friends in a long term relationship met their SO in college. Most of them take one look at the current dating scene of apps and everything else and say "wow that sounds awful, I genuinely have no advice for you". I often wonder what my life would be like if I went to a more generic state school rather than an engineering school (3:1 M/F ratio)...theres a chance I would be in a happy relationship and while my job prospects out of school wouldn't have been as good, I still would be making STEM money and have been fine. I don't necessarily regret going to the school I did - I have great lifelong friends, a fancy degree, and well-paying job. But if I did it again, I'd probably do it differently and pick a school with a better ratio and chance of finding someone.
What's your experience been with dating apps?
Horrible. I give it a shot every so often, and I typically get <5 (non-bot) matches in the first few weeks before I give up. All of the "strategies" make me feel dishonest, sort of like lying on your resume. And a few weeks of swiping with no results, I usually end up rationalizing that the effect on my mental health isn't worth it - especially since I don't need a relationship.
Its about time to give it another shot...maybe it will be different this time. But we'll see. Time to download hinge, bumble, and OKC...
Any conversations with those matches? Do you at least revise your profile on each attempt?
A few conversations - most end up with one of us not responding. I do basically revise/recreate my profile and update with new pictures each time. Between not wanting to play the "lying to make yourself look better" game and being a ...lets say a "work in progress" physically, online dating just doesn't do much for me.
In theory I should try and do more activities that are in mixed company, as most of my current hobbies (and work) are male-dominated. But that gets back to some of the other comments where its been drilled into my head to never talk to a woman at the gym or any public place, even though I intellectually know theres a difference between cold approaching and building up conversation over time.
Thanks for responding. Taking good care of your body is definitely important for attracting people, but also critical for the person who’s got to live in that body.
I think it’s helpful to think in terms of what you’re looking to get out of dating. Are you looking for a spouse? Someone to share time with? A co-parent? Some combination? Other things? That’ll make it more clear what you need to do to signal to that type of person you’re who they’re looking for as well. You shouldn’t feel like you’re being dishonest or cheating the system.
For example, if you’re looking for a co-parent then one obvious and traditional way to signal that is to take care of a high-ish maintenance pet like a dog. That gives you some obvious photo advantages as well. You’re not cheating anything because you’re legitimately raising an animal. Girl or not that dog is your companion - everyone wins. That might not be the approach for you, but hopefully that gives you an idea of the mindset I think you could benefit from.
It’s difficult because the amount of work needed to get positive feedback is high. But once you start getting positive feedback you’re actually pretty close to success. I wasn’t interested in dating until I was about 21. I wasn’t interested in sex until I was 23. I’ve spent my 20s so far working on my career, my health, my non-romantic relationships, my relationship with myself, and my hobbies. There’s been some trial-by-fire dating, falling in love in undesirable circumstances. I found someone this year who I think fits the role I’ve learned to look for, and she seems to think the same of me. Circumstances are keeping us apart for a couple of months but I’m optimistic about us restarting things soon.
It’s important with online dating to really come to the table with a bounty of things. These are things that you are reaping the benefits of - not offerings. A desirable partner will have their own collection. In my opinion women in America have seen their prospects flourish and feel empowered to take shit into their own hands and make something out of themselves. Why would a person like that be interested in someone that has convinced themselves that they’re something far less?
Job prospects are bad for a lot of people. It should not be this hard. We should all be guided to our own paths of success by a healthy system.
I was lucky to have amazing and financially comfortable parents. So take my advice with that in context. I did have a leg up.
There's nothing wrong with this advice and these are all important things but I think you're missing the most important part that is initial contact and conversation. All of the above means nothing if you can't even establish contact from the beginning. I'm a reasonable attractive guy who never had that much trouble talking to women IRL but holy fuck are dating apps fucking confidence killers and just plain demotivating no matter what type of guy you are it seems.
I think it’s important to realize that most people on dating apps do not know what they want and are not trying to get anything out of them. If someone doesn’t match it doesn’t mean anything about you. If they don’t respond after matching it doesn’t mean anything about you. If they can’t hold a conversation it does not mean anything about you.
People that are trying to get shit done don’t fuck around. There are people on apps that are actually trying to meet people. But they’re a shockingly small minority.
I know that... I'm not taking any of it personally but the experience is just not good either way. I sympathize with guys who haven't had positive IRL experiences prior to online dating and thereby nothing to compare with.
What does this mean? If it means that people who knows what they are looking for don't fuck around that's fine and all but when intention is rarely transparent that's useless.
Possibly, thinking of it as "setting up coffee dates for practice" might make it less stressful? Despite everyone's best efforts, online "resumes" tend to make people seem less interesting than they are, so you're working against that.
Ultimately one of the problems is that successful people don’t tend to talk about their journey. But unsuccessful people do complain about their issues. You end up having masses of people complaining about a subject and seeming to come to a consensus or radicalizing further (cf. the manosphere), when in reality they make up a minority of people with respect to that issue (the majority having “solved the problem”).
The journey never ends but I’m definitely happy with the trail I’ve blazed so far.
That's why I'm very passive around women. It's the fear of not only rejection but also reprisal. One wrong move could lead to a HR complaint being made against you, or the non-work equivalent of having others label you a creep and ostracize you.
I actually learned the hard way in secondary school (yay autism) to not pursue a lady who had already turned me down. During Year 10 I had a major crush on a classmate and tried asking her out several times. She never told me to my face that I was making her uncomfortable but told others behind my back. My actions turned a few people I previously considered friends against me, including two girls who proceeded to bully me throughout the next year until I left secondary, like they would pretend to flirt with me one moment then call me a stalker and tell me to kill myself the next. Looking back, I wish I had saved MSN chat logs, because I think I could've gotten them expelled, if not arrested for their actions. I only complained about this to teaching staff after one of their friends went over and physically attacked me during break once.
One of those two ladies was incredibly remorseful and profusely apologized in the years after for how she treated me in school. We're now on relatively good terms. The other refused to even acknowledge that she ever did anything bad towards me. It's the latter that gets on my nerves.
Exactly. I've been told similar things. In fact, if I had 20 pence for every time I've been told that I'm a great genuine guy and that I'd find somebody soon, I'd probably be able to pay off my fucking student loan.
It's going to take me a very long time to drive the feminist dating advice I've been given over the years out of my head.
Actually, I've debated just hiring an escort and losing my virginity that way, but I'd probably go to the Netherlands or Germany for that since they have legal and regulated sex industries. Prostitution is not illegal here in Britain but many of the activities commonly associated with it (like kerb crawling, running a brothel, etc) are.
You're right to not do that. Generally, the way I've seen people given dating advice for attracting the opposite sex if they happen to ALSO be that opposite sex is that they give advice from the standpoint of you being someone they're already incredibly attracted and interested in. For instance, women will say "Don't ask her out at the gym. She'll find ways to come talk to you afterwards then you can just ask for your number". The issue there is that in their heads, they're thinking about what they'd do if there was a man they were ridiculously, incredibly attracted to at the gym. Most guys are not that dude. Most guys will never have a girl become that attracted to them simply by existing, because to be honest, women don't find most men all that physically attractive at first glance. (the same is true the other way, but to less a degree I think).
The best dating advice is to become as absolutely attractive as you can. There's a lot you can do to make yourself more handsome, it just takes work. Lifting weights and dieting is hard, developing a fashion sense is hard, making sure your teeth are straight and white is hard, and taking care of your hair is hard, so a lot of guys just let themselves go and wonder why they can't get dates.
Bullshit pick up artist peddlers sell the idea that it doesn't matter what you look like as long as you have game when it comes to dating as a man, but that is the most blatant lie in the world. If you had to pick a single variable that would predict a man's success in the dating market, it would be his looks. Your physical attractiveness will by FAR affect your success in dating more than any other single thing. If you've ever had very attractive male friends and seen women around this you can see this firsthand. Women are willing to put up with a LOT of bullshit from a handsome man, even if many of them don't admit it.
For some reason we've decided that women being into hot men isn't acceptable but men being into hot women is, so many women will lie through their teeth about this to keep up appearances. Whereas most guys will freely admit that the most important aspect in a potential mate is her looks, women generally won't, even though verifying that is as simple as looking at their behavior on dating apps.
I think because of this a lot of guys go down wildly wrong paths trying to be successful with women, when they could just be working on getting hot instead.
I think the best book for men regarding dating ever written is "Models" by Marc Manson. That said, I think that book even overcomplicates things a bit. You really just have to look good, then put yourself out there constantly.
My experience, both personal and seen in others, is that for men being attractive leans a lot on charisma, confidence, and general social validation as well as physical appearance.
I think you're right about both the importance of being attractive and the ability to influence it with sufficient hard work. I also think you're right about just how much impact attractiveness has over and above other qualities - often a lot more than people (regardless of gender) are readily willing to admit to either themselves or others.
I just don't think optimising purely for looks is the right answer for most men, at least once they've put in enough work to hit a decent baseline. I'd bet on the decent looking guy who the whole room rotates around over the model sitting in the corner on his phone.
Photo filters aside, the only thing you can get from a person's dating profile is their looks. Of course people will prioritize the most verifiable attributes. That doesn't mean that's the most important attribute, just the most likely to be real.
I'm about the last person who would know, but don't most people meet online using dating sites nowadays?
When I was single I would go to parties in part because I figured that's how you have to do it (you're not going to meet anyone sitting at home) but in the end it wasn't. I met my wife through a dating site.
I can’t see into everyone’s lives, but surely there must be a sizable population of women that themselves don’t have amazing financial prospects and wouldn’t expect their partner to be the solution to their financial problems. Put another way - I can’t imagine poor people are doomed to solitude.
Background info on the publication for context, possible agenda.
AEI Board of Trustees
Husband of Betsy DeVos, U.S. Secretary of Education under Trump. Interesting.
If motivation is, as the author speculates, a major part of the underlying reasoning here my main question is why aren’t women equally demotivated?
It seems as though despair and demotivation are fairly reasonable reactions to a lot of societal and economic trends facing both the men and the women in question. They might not be productive reactions, but they’re very understandable - so in a lot of ways I’m not surprised at the men giving up, I’m surprised that the women aren’t.
Some random thoughts:
Porn: the stuff of the internet is not your father’s nudie mag hidden in a shoebox in his workshop. It’s free, it’s almost ubiquitous, it’s audio-visual, it’s hardcore, and it’s often rough/violent. It also tends to have addictive properties, especially for those who don’t have a partner. It probably satisfies maybe 80% of his sexual needs, which is sufficient in the short/medium term. The other 20% requires an IRL relationship (a visit to an escort would only cover 10%).
Video games: I’m no Jack Thompson, but video games today are extremely immersive, and like porn, can have addictive properties, especially with loot box setups.
Housing costs: housing is more expensive, and so more young men are living at home with their parents. If you don’t have to pay for a roof over your head, there’s not a lot of motivation to move out, especially if you can just jerk off to porn (1) and play vidya (2) all day. Even if they get a low-end service job, they can instead save the money for a new gaming PC.
Historical situation: For a long time, I suspect in many cases, success just fell into place for many men. After high school, they’d get a job at a local factory or machine shop through a friend of their dad’s or by walking into the local union hall. They’d marry a woman they knew from town or high school; there was the expectation to get married, and I have a feeling many women just settled. Many of those marriages probably turned out okay, maybe the couple didn’t always align, but they likely had a reasonable fit.
I suspect the combination of all these items is what demotivates men.
Internet porn and video games were only popular from the late 90's and onwards. Women have been enrolling at college/ university at greater rates than men from the 70's and 80's. So I think something else is at play. Also, these natural explanations are easily thought of and easily tested, and one of the interesting comments from the article is that experts are genuinely confused, which indicates the answer is not simply thought of and tested.
I can see why more men would be less interested in prioritizing the opportunity cost college or university now for a potentially better job later.
What's unusual to me is that the men aren't simply attending college or university to get laid now, plus the bonus of a better job later.
But then maybe I am just a corny horn dog.
Unless your family is wealthy or you're very academically gifted, that's going to be the most expensive screw of your life.
It's the potential for near term gratification sooner, with the worries of loans and jobs in the future.
I'd argue that this is a good piece of evidence for an argument against that stereotype.
I think the education system, especially early childhood education, is so heavily dominated by women that they just don’t do a great job of interacting constructively with difficult boys. I expect this has only gotten worse with the emphasis on testing and deemphasis on practical skill development since young girls develop communication skills faster and are better at sitting still/being complaint.
Add to that tendencies to punish boys harder, zero tolerance policies around fighting/roughhousing, defunding athletics and music and other programs that let non-bookish kids tap into something they might enjoy that let’s them cultivate their self-discipline and practice skills. Small individual effects like that can have big impacts in aggregate.
One of my coworkers’ sons started daycare this year.
After she signed him up, she found out that his caretaker at the daycare was actually a former male student of ours.
She was thrilled that he was a familiar face and someone she’d trust (the guy was not only a great student but was also a great overall person), but also she was thrilled that her son had a male caretaker. It is so phenomenally rare — at that age especially.
Guys that work in early childhood caretaking and education are heroes.
This is an important point. Reflecting on my time in school, I now strongly believe we must radically broaden childhood education beyond the current model of "sit quietly in a classroom and receive instruction".
It's clear that we need a diverse spectrum of programs to stimulate and cultivate the minds and character of children in ways that suit their individual as well as gender dispositions.
I really like the concept of this, and I think it's a hugely important conversation to be having, but a couple of things did jump out as being the opposite of my own experience at school. Admittedly I wasn't explicitly the target market of this - I hated school but still did well, rather than hating it and failing - but it does make me wonder if there's an opportunity to cover even more bases here.
My experience was that the "real world" was even worse for this. I definitely did have that feeling in school, but I also understood that the environment was temporary and artificial. For all the emotional difficulty of doing so, I could at least hold onto the intellectual knowledge that I was in a bubble and not yet able to make my own decisions.
The thing that nearly broke me was reaching adulthood and seeing that a huge number of people (I won't go as far as to say most, but still one hell of a lot) were doing jobs that provided nothing for society. The idea of spending the majority of my waking life contributing little, or even negatively, to society in an exchange for food and shelter was just too much to handle when there was no end in sight. It was as if everything I'd just barely endured because it had an expiry date the first time around came back at full force with no escape in sight.
I have, over the years, managed to temper that a bit: I do a job that I find reasonably meaningful, and worth the lower pay compared to doing something actively harmful to others. But I still see millions of people forced to grind away in hopelessness every day, and I struggle to cope with living in a society that encourages and enforces that.
Very closely tied with what I said above, I found it much easier to handle the reasonable certainties of grading than the abstract weirdness of the reward systems in adult life.
Grading was straightforward: do assignments and exams within a predefined set of parameters, get rewarded with approval. I had a lot of problems with the rest of the schooling system, but that part was at least clear and easy to deal with.
Compare that to the realities of who wins in the working world and who loses, the incredibly complex dance of status, social hierarchy, misaligned incentives, luck, networking, and all the rest. I find it far harder knowing that I make far more in a medium effort office job than others do in essential, high stress, high risk medical positions. Harder still knowing that if I were to do that exact same same office job in an industry I consider more harmful to the world, I would make twice as much again.
I don't really have an answer to any of this - I like the idea of bringing more "reality" into schooling. I just find reality to be even more disillusioning than I did school in many ways, and I worry about the impact that realisation could have had if it'd come to me even earlier.
I can't help but feel that part of the reason why men are having a hard time these days is because society has spent a long time (so long that it affected me as a kid) keeping them as children as long as they can. While women have the benefit of a strong feminist voice telling them that they can do anything, men find themselves limited by ideals of masculinity as well as societal expectations of what an adult is.
This might sound a bit crazy, so buckle in a bit while I go back to the beginning and explain myself a little better.
Talk to young adults about what it means to be an adult and if they feel like they are one. Chances are, they won't feel like they are. In the past, adulthood was relatively simple; you're an adult if you have left school (ideally because you graduated, though that's not a requirement) and joined the world of employment. Of course, in the past, if you were to do that you'd also be generally making enough money to be able to support yourself and you could move out of your family's house and live the way you wanted to.
But now we have two major shifts that are keeping people feeling infantalized. First of all, in most places it's practically impossible to get a job that will actually allow you to be financially independent right out of school, regardless of if you graduated or not. And on the other hand, higher education has become dramatically more important, so kids are much more likely to go to college and university. This is where a lot of young men in particular start to feel lost in life, as if they are wasting their time working on their studies when they could be out earning money instead of accruing debt.
The other part I doubt there's any good source of data for, but I know a lot of parents don't do a very good job of treating their older teenagers like they are young adults. Young men are constantly being infantilized, especially in roles where their behavior is being controlled from an authoritarian standpoint, where the rules don't exist to protect anything but are just there arbitrarily. When I was attending a community college it was quite common to see a number of young men with the mentality that they were only there because they were told to be there, were not engaged in the topic or field, and didn't even seem to have the minimum interest you'd have if you realized the value of the education you were receiving.
Furthermore, there are a lot of other things that are part of the "adult" checklist that society holds that have shifted and made things much more difficult to obtain. A lot of this is economic in nature; one of the bigger parts of it was obtaining financial independence, and that's an extremely difficult thing to achieve right now. Some people have even more complex ideas of what it means to be an adult. Some won't accept it until they're married and have kids. And then, surprisingly, there's a large number of men who will get to this point where they're financially independent, married, and have kids, and still not feel as if they are an adult. That's what happens if you are initialized long enough; you're going to believe it no matter what.
This is definitely something worth thinking about, though I'm not sure if it isn't more generational rather than a gender divide. My friends group are all around ~30 and none of us consider ourselves "real adults". Whenever this comes up in conversations with older generations, especially when talking about being ready for kids - the answer is always "no one is ready for kids" and "thats how it is for everyone". But its hard to feel like thats the case. I'm sure theres some element of kids looking at their parents or other adults from a narrow point of view and not seeing every aspect of their life. But as you say, the "adult checklist" seems to have shifted as well. We've got the obvious economic shifts - the ability to provide for yourself, let alone a family, requires a lot more than it used to. Even "successful" adults are locked out of buying a house for many years. Many folks are also single for a lot longer, which means a more young folks have the full load of running a household - which can be physically and mentally demanding. Many people also end up starting their "adult life" with a college degree and debt - which likely delays "real adulthood".
There is also increased complexity in just living as well. Every adult needs a crash course in personal finance that covers debt, credit scores, credit cards, banks, 401ks, IRAs, taxes, nutrition, phones, computers, and much more. If all you knew of personal finance was that your money coming in needs to be more than your expenses - you're likely in a difficult position today. If you go back 50-70 years ago, you'd be able to go a lot further on that knowledge. Some knowledge in how to do things on a computer is basically a requirement to live nowadays. The world is also much more obese than it was before (for many obvious reason, but also several unknown ones) - so weight loss has become a much greater concern that people need to keep track of. Sure, eating eggs and bacon for breakfast and steak and potatoes for dinner probably resulted in high cholesterol and wasn't healthy, but normal everyday food didn't result in the levels of obesity we have now.
These things are also hard to quantify. How much of it is biased by looking through rose-colored glasses? How much of it is anecdotal? When we looked at our parent and saw adults, we were certainly not seeing the full picture...but is the rest of the picture the same for adults today?
I spent time at universities in the UK and US and I was really surprised at how much less the one in the US allowed and encouraged their students to be independent adults. First years were forced to live on campus, forced to have a meal plan (and not trusted to cook), obliged to share rooms, and had to engage in a number of large, mandatory classes that I thought were really quite basic for the age range.
Some of the incentives there were definitely in the university's financial interest - accommodation and food was priced at a premium over the local area and students were a captive market, whereas in the UK it was provided at a discount as far as the university was able and there was still something of a "public service" kind of ethos to how things were run - but there was a definite air of social expectation that 18-20 year olds were basically just large kids as well.
The educational side was more complex: for me, the freedom of the US system provided several significant opportunities that I hadn't had in the UK, but I happened to have a very strong idea of what I wanted to achieve. For anyone entering without that, I can see it acting as more of a safety blanket to drift around without committing too strongly to a path.
This is such an interesting article, thank you.
In both America, and worldwide, the percent of people attending tertiary education rose from 10% to almost 40%...
While America had more females than males in higher education by the early 80's, most other western countries saw a change in the late 80's early 90's, and it is a gradual change, not a sudden change that can be pinpointed to any specific event such as gender equality legislation, the popularity of TV or video games.
I wonder if perhaps, as more people feel pressure to attend college/ university, women are just simply more inclined towards that path than men. If that were the sole factor, I would expect gender equality to happen at a point similar to the USA, which was when 16% of the most likely population attended college/university. I don't see that in the data, so obviously there are additional factors at play, such as the ability to find non-college jobs and the gender bias in each countries education.
I wonder if there is a natural gender bias in schools. Perhaps women are much better at being well behaved and so get better grades and are more comfortable with the idea of continuing education. I would imagine that anything easy would have been tested already, such as the effect of male teachers vs female teachers on gender bias.
This is going to be a controversial comment by me, and I just want people I mean it to be a sincere question about the underlying assumptions we have about equality.
I'm speaking as someone who's boomeranged several times from inceldom, alt-right, manosphere to uber-progressive, bloomer, socialist and back again. Also an absolute loser by the way. But if you're like me and you need to be hand-held through society, through every little interaction, do you really deserve any kind of help. In terms of sex and money, it seems already that the top tier of men are already doing more than enough to compensate for the bottom majority. Do we really deserve to be more than financial peasants and sexual embarrassments?
Someone else commented that "Young men are passive, without ambition, without agency, deadly afraid of expressing the slightest direct interest in a woman" and that describes to me pretty well. If you're like this, why do you deserve to be cared for? Is it really beneficial for society to expend resources trying to bring you back from this deep hole taht you dug yourself? I don't think so.
I think that it depends on how ruthless you think society should be. I think that people are deserving of help to live their best lives, not because every individual will be productive in ways that can be quantified, but because they are inherently worthy as a person. Wounded people are still people, and still deserving.
My word! You are a living breathing ape which fully qualifies you in my mind for deservedness. Yipes, buddy, can I suggest therapy? If you're yoyo-ing ideologically and feeling unworthy of personal support... You sound like the kind of person we'd want to bring into the fold.
Edit: there's ways to engage with the question you asked, maybe. Like I could imagine a discourse around whether it is possible to be wasteful when reaching in for people who sound as discouraged as you do. But to be totally frank I am so alarmed by your comment that my honest response is just to send you lots of love and hope you do okay today
I will reply to both you and @MimicSquid here. You two are better people than I am and remind me of when I used to be more optimistic. Just to clarify my stance though, I don't think failures should be treated as second-class citizens in the legal and systemic sense. I think they should have full rights as a human. But also if you've failed so much socially, you kinda deserve to be left behind. There's no point spending labor and capital on lost causes.
Edit: I understand the need to 'help' men as a preventative measure though. There's a strong argument that sending incels and wayward men to therapy would very likely prevent a lot of violent crimes and shootings, at least in America. But a better justice system and assault rifle bans could also do the same thing.
I think you should be kinder to yourself. I don't know your personal history, but failure is a key part of the life. If you don't fail, you don't grow or gain empathy. It sounds like your experience provides unique perspective where you can understand the frustrations of these more toxic communities but can see the issues with the misogynistic conclusions many of them reach. It means you can think critically, learn, and grow. That is the kind of person I would want in my society and someone I would happily spend time and resources on. Just from these comments I can tell you are an empathetic person and I wish you would extend that same understanding to yourself. Feel free to reach out if you want to chat.
To answer your earlier question, emphatically yes. There isn't a corollary between wealth/sexual prowess and benefit to society or even success. The "value" framework in many of those male centered communities is warped to reinforce rage, how things work in reality is much more nuanced.
I can't do either of these things. Sure I guess I can be empathetic but I don't have any useful thoughts.
If you're providing to society in any way then sure you deserve help in other parts of your life. I was talking about men that don't provide any value and are probably a net negative on society.
Even the way you're talking about it in these comments shows critical thinking.
I'd argue that many of the people we laud as successful are net drains on society. Also, someone who may not be 'providing any value' now can have huge impacts later in life. I really think you're thinking about this too immediately. Life is a long winding road, there will be lots of opportunities to participate positively. I think I remember from some of your other posts that you are still pretty young, forgive me if that isn't true. It's hard to help society when you yourself are just getting established. Take time for yourself and then when you're ready reach out to help others. And be easier on yourself.
That's a very low bar.
That's a fair point.
Framing problems around “what people deserve” seems unhelpful. Speaking very generally, there are people with negative traits that could be fixed. Not doing anything about it is an enormous waste. Or to put it another way, there’s a lot of unrealized potential, if we can figure out how to tap into it.
I think it’s also true that everyone is limited in who they decide to help, that some problems are hard to fix, and often people don’t get the help they need. But ideally, you’d try to help everyone. People aren’t neglected because someone has decided that they, personally, are undeserving, in some cosmic sense. (Or if someone says that, they’re mean and you should ignore them. That includes the voice in your head.) But we live in a large, atomized society and it’s easy to be overlooked.
It sure seems like being discouraged shouldn’t be an unfixable problem. At the same time, I do know what it’s like to be discouraged, having been single (and not dating) for many years. I met my future wife at 40. I missed out on a lot.
Society just doesn’t have a good script for this. (If we needed a lot of soldiers, we’d know what to do.) So it’s left to individual efforts.
I’m trying to think of what advice I’d give to my younger self. (My dad suggested dance lessons at Authur Murray, which I thought was hopelessly old-fashioned.)
God, my mom suggested the same thing when I was in my 20s. It feels about as relevant as walking up to a manager with a printed out resume and a firm handshake.
In reality I'd suggest meeting potential partners at activity based events like intramural pick-up leagues, community sporting groups (running groups like hashers or swimming ones like kelp crawlers), or non-sporting activities like pub quiz. When it isn't specifically about dating and you're expected to interact, it's a lot easier to lay non-threatening groundwork. That and you can make friends too.
There are other kinds of dancing, too. I've never been, but I've seen videos taken at contra dancing events and it looks pretty fun. I don't know what's going on with COVID though.
Social dancing is great! I started to take ballroom dancing classes in my mid twenties, and I think was one of the biggest factors in breaking out of my shell. Had my first serious relationships thanks to dancing events, which they held every month (no alcohol). Such a great opportunity to get to know people smoothly. I wasn't much of a drinker and normal parties just often felt awkward. Granted, it was organised by a student association so everyone was pretty much my age.
There's just something about that instant connection and proximity when dancing, that really breaks some walls. Shame if it's seen as old-fashioned.
That's awesome! Sounds like a great opportunity. I've done some social dancing as well, a few salsa classes and some Irish dancing at the local pub. I really enjoyed it.
My "oh mom..." comment was more targeted at Arthur Murray specifically. At least locally it attracts an older demographic.
I see! I have no idea who that is so I misinterpreted a bit 😅.
Glad you have also found dancing fun. That reminds me, I really need to get back at it; I'd really like to learn something like Lindy Hop.
I think we just disagree on whether there's any potential or not.
I think people are undeserving because of their own failures. That doesn't mean that they can't find success in whatever they're seeking, but I think after a certain point it becomes pointless to help someone. I am speaking generally here though, and everyone has their own way of determining whether someone deserves help or not.
I can respect someone who wishes to be left alone. I wish I understood your conviction a little better, though. What is it you've experienced that has convinced you so thoroughly that there is no "potential" in you? What is your lifestyle like?
I can't really answer that beyond saying that I've failed in every field possible: finances, romance, friendship, family, intelligence, and skill. And I'm irredeemably ugly and unhealthy.
I'm not really looking for help though Just sharing my point of view because I can't really do it anywhere else. Nowhere else on the internet approaches controversial thought the way Tildes does.
This is a thorough list of troubles, with many overlaps between categories. Do you support yourself, mostly?
I can't support myself anymore.
Yes, this is difficult to discuss in the abstract. I can say that, sometimes, people who fail due to their own shortcomings eventually figure it out, and also that it's not true that people get what they deserve. Saying that seems to imply some kind of cosmic justice as part of the natural order of things. But the "natural" penalties for being careless are often randomly distributed and can be extremely harsh. (Consider who suffers from accidents and diseases.) The world is an unjust place, and whatever justice there is happens because there are people who work to make the world a little less unfair. That work never ends.
But in the end this is a (mostly) anonymous forum and there's only so much we can discuss without actually knowing each other.
I think I don't fully agree with this statement. Or I guess if I do, I just don't think everyone can get fairness, and young useless men should be on the bottom of the list.
Saying that everyone deserves help is more an ideal than a practical statement. Of course you can’t help everyone, but it’s not ruling anyone out arbitrarily. It’s refusing to be prematurely judgemental.
Also, I’m not sure that “young useless men” is a relevant category when you decide who to help. People decide who to help based on all sorts of idiosyncratic reasons. Maybe they’re a friend or relative? Or, maybe they’re a teacher and people get help because they’re in the class. Or it’s just random since they happened to meet them.
Those are fair points.
From the article:
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I haven't read the original article so I might be cherry picking this, but additionally I wonder if this doesn't correlate with the students of which subjects travel out more. What's the point in doing a semester abroad if you study somethin like computer science, mechatronics or the like, because from anecdotal experience, the people who study such subjects are far more prone to not engage in typical social activities and also those subjects are fucking hard. It doesn't matter if you sit in Amsterdam or Barcelona when you study those things, because you'll be mostly inside anyway, and the point of a semester abroad is, ironically, to let the studying drag a little.
The snippet you just quoted seems to indicate that they compared people taking the same subject.
But without looking further into it, I’d be somewhat skeptical that they adjusted for everything correctly. It can be difficult to do.