# The shit of the 21st century is demotivating me to do... pretty much anything **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [January 24, 2023, 5:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-shit-of-the-21st-century-is-demotivating-me-to-do-pretty-much-anything/978736 "2023-01-24T17:35:19Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![EinsteinsHund](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/einsteinshund/32/8400_2.png) [@EinsteinsHund](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EinsteinsHund)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2023, 10:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-shit-of-the-21st-century-is-demotivating-me-to-do-pretty-much-anything/978736/61 "2023-01-26T22:36:50Z")
> [@Pardel-Lux](#): > > Have you heard about the [Mediocrity Principle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mediocrity_principle)? I hadn’t heard about it before, but yeah, I’ve always been a slacker, so I subscribe to the principle. ---
**Author:** ![octopus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/octopus/32/3716_2.png) [@octopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/octopus)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2023, 10:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-shit-of-the-21st-century-is-demotivating-me-to-do-pretty-much-anything/978736/62 "2023-01-26T22:47:20Z")
I would disagree. I think we have access to more news and news is designed to capture attention by triggering an emotional response. People are aroused by bad news and when it’s almost inescapable it can have a negative effect on how the world is perceived. What I have found perplexing is that there is a method to mitigate the worst effects but as simple as it sounds the reality has proven difficult for many. The solution is to, if you find you are being seriously negatively effected by a particular medium, is to limit engagement. If, as an example, AM talk radio is a drag on your life turn the dial. ---
**Author:** ![Aeschines](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aeschines/32/16251_2.png) [@Aeschines](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aeschines)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2023, 11:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-shit-of-the-21st-century-is-demotivating-me-to-do-pretty-much-anything/978736/63 "2023-01-26T23:02:22Z")
> [@octopus](#): > > What I have found perplexing is that there is a method to mitigate the worst effects but as simple as it sounds the reality has proven difficult for many. The solution is to, if you find you are being seriously negatively effected by a particular medium, is to limit engagement. If, as an example, AM talk radio is a drag on your life turn the dial. I already mostly do this. I agree that the media has found a way to monetize negativity much better than it used to do. “If it bleeds, it leads,” is old, but today’s methods are much, much more sophisticated. We have a vast system of feeding outrage on both the left and right, although the right is far guiltier in this respect. ---
**Author:** ![Spice\_Weasel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spice_weasel/32/5435_2.png) [@Spice\_Weasel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spice_Weasel)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2023, 11:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-shit-of-the-21st-century-is-demotivating-me-to-do-pretty-much-anything/978736/64 "2023-01-26T23:36:35Z")
> [@octopus](#): > > The solution is to, if you find you are being seriously negatively effected by a particular medium, is to limit engagement. If, as an example, AM talk radio is a drag on your life turn the dial. This is like telling someone who is fat to just eat less. These systems are seriously exploitative of human neurology and they are hard to ignore. I have struggled with addiction (for lack of better word) to social media and this very board for most of my adult life. I actually saw a therapist about it once, but they didn’t really consider it a major concern compared to say, a heroin addiction. I did break away from almost all social media and now this is really my only outlet for expressing how I feel Ways About Stuff. And the news cycle is still hard to avoid. I do okay at that these days, but I scroll my news feed more than I would like. For people who are seriously habituated, you will get a ton of rationalizing about how vitally important it is to Know Things. My Aunt has this addiction to news even though it exacerbates her mental health problems and I wanna say… It’s not like you would accidentally vote Republican if you were to limit news for a year. Are you petitioning your legislature to provide arms to Ukraine? Then maybe quit worrying about things you have no intention of doing anything about. Easier said than done, I know. My intent is not to judge so much to explain… It’s complicated. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2023, 11:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-shit-of-the-21st-century-is-demotivating-me-to-do-pretty-much-anything/978736/65 "2023-01-26T23:48:13Z")
> [@Aeschines](#): > > Regardless of that, here is where I think the problem ultimately lies. I think it’s fair to call it scientifically proven to say that men have a higher sex drive than women. Thus, access to sex is a greater motivating factor for men than women in forming a couple. It’s my speculation that, back in the day, being a parent was a greater motivating factor for women than for men in forming a couple (regardless of whether this difference came from coercion or elsewhere). I kind of question those assumptions, except for the basic-biology one of men having on average stronger testosterone-fueled physical sexual impulses than women. I think you are projecting modern social expectations of “men want humpies while women want mommyhood” back onto premodern societies without sufficient evidence. In very many premodern societies, it was considered EXTREMELY important for a man to father a son, for example. > [@Aeschines](#): > > In short, taking away the motivation to have kids makes women less motivated to be in relationships, while men’s desire to have sex remains unchanged. Ergo, today, men want women more than women want men. This may always have been the case (I suspect it was), but I think it’s particularly egregious today. Now that marital rape is less tolerated in modern societies, I think men in general are much less likely to see marriage as an unlimited season pass for sex. I think men are choosing to marry mostly for other reasons. (Consider trends among gay men, for example, who tend to have far more casual nonmarital sex than straight men do, but who nonetheless in many cases get married.) > [@Aeschines](#): > > Another factor: If it’s true that “women are sex objects, men are success objects” (and, sadly, I think it is largely true), then leveling out men’s and women’s success in the economy reduces men’s value as “success objects” and makes them less appealing to women. Yeah, but again, this all kind of comes down to the same basic fact that in patriarchal societies, marriage is set up to be, as the saying is, “beneficial for men, mandatory for women”. Of course, countless individual marriages throughout history have been very happy ones for men and women alike, or more beneficial for the wife than for the husband, etc. But overall, women’s participation in marriage has been fundamentally skewed by the fact that most premodern cultures socialized women to believe that they HAD to get married, because any unmarried life they could realistically aspire to was going to be considerably worse than marriage. You’re right that since modern societies now offer more real autonomy (as well as more expectations of lifelong paid-workforce participation) for women, the “success object” status of most men is substantially diminished. I sorta? sympathize with their dismay at having fewer marital options in a world where women have more non-marital options. But I’m not sure they realize the psychological price that women used to pay for that “marriage-friendly” setup. > [@Aeschines](#): > > It’s not quite a death spiral, but it is a negative feedback loop in which men get sick of the game or have a genuinely antisocial reaction to it. Hence incels, MGTOW, etc. AKA the modern gender-swapped reboot of the “bitter old maid” stereotypes, now with more mass shootings and other gender-based violence. > [@Aeschines](#): > > Let’s take the 1950s vs. today. Black people had to put up with much worse racism. Women were stuck more in the home. But my guess is that, on average, Black people and women were happier then than now _despite_ the social ills they faced. Why? For the same reason I think that, on average, all Americans were happier then than now: families were stronger, life was simpler, America seemed on the right track, and the future looked brighter than the present (including for Black people, owing to progress in the Civil Rights Movement). I think this speculation is very suspect. Definitely does not seem to align with, for example, the findings of [this 2010 study going back as far as 1975:](https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2010/09/why-african-americans-are-happier-and-whites-aren-t/344172/) > [@](#): > > A recent study by two University of Pennsylvania economists finds that black Americans have become, on average, much happier than they were 35 years ago, and that whites have maintained about the same level of happiness. […] > > “The most obvious [cause of the shift] is the decrease — though certainly not the elimination — in day-to-day racism. ‘The decline in prejudice has been astounding,’ says Kerwin Charles, a University of Chicago economist who has studied discrimination. Well into the 1970s, blacks faced ‘a vast array of personal indignities that led to unhappiness,’ he noted. Today, those indignities are unacceptable in many areas of American life. … It isn’t hard to see how the decline in discrimination improves people’s lives, above and beyond their pay.” > [@Aeschines](#): > > For sure, a lot of the happiness of the time was based on ignorance and other limitations. It was also strongly shaped by the recent past. Americans in the 1950s had come through the Great Depression and WWII, and naturally, to white Americans at least, the future looked brighter. > [@Aeschines](#): > > We can’t go back. But we can still, I think, feel a bit wistful about being able to live a life like that. I dunno. Who was it who actually had a “life like that”? What was it that made “families stronger”? How much of it was genuine contentment and how much was women’s lack of options, social normalization of sexism, and social repression of deviance? Consider [this article,](https://time.com/3426225/domestic-violence-therapy/) for example: > [@](#): > > An article in the issue of TIME dated 50 years ago today — Sept. 25, 1964 — highlights a mind-boggling study that concludes couples stay in abusive relationships because their fighting can “balance out each other’s mental quirks.” […] > > The study, which was published in the _Archives of General Psychiatry_ , looked at 37 cases of assault between couples in Massachusetts courts and found a common trend: “though reasonably hard-working and outwardly respectable, [the husbands] were in reality ‘shy, sexually, ineffectual mother’s boys.’ The wives also fitted a pattern—’aggressive, efficient, masculine and sexually frigid.'” […] > > Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that 1960s scientists subscribed to such rigid gender norms wherein shy men were “mama’s boys” and bold women were “frigid.” But the science behind alcohol causing a role reversal in every couple, which was another element of the study, is questionable at best: “Usually the wife was boss, and her weak-willed husband was content to play the subservient role — until he had a few drinks. Then ‘role alternation’ would take place, and the husband would insist belligerently upon his conjugal rights.” (By “insisting on conjugal rights” the writer does probably mean rape.) > > What’s most shocking is that doctors believed that a man beating his wife under these circumstances was actually a _good_ thing. They called it “violent, temporary therapy”: > > > [@](#): > > > > ‘The periods of violent behavior by the husband,’ the doctors observed, ‘served to release him momentarily from his anxiety about his ineffectiveness as a man, while giving his wife apparent masochistic gratification and helping probably to deal with the guilt arising from the intense hostility expressed in her controlling, castrating behavior.’ > [@Aeschines](#): > > I get that a lot of people are threatened by the browning of America, but I am not, and it’s other stuff that bothers me. I believe you. But my point is that I think your nostalgic, “wistful” romanticization of the recent past as a “happier” time is to some extent shaped by your perspective as a straight white man. You are claiming that “we” as a society feel a certain way because of certain changes, but your “we” is doing a lot of work there. ---
**Author:** ![Pardel-Lux](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pardel-lux/32/20182_2.png) [@Pardel-Lux](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pardel-Lux)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2023, 12:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-shit-of-the-21st-century-is-demotivating-me-to-do-pretty-much-anything/978736/66 "2023-01-27T00:09:40Z")
It has taken longer than I thought until somebody came up with a reply to **Aeschines** theses in that post: I had the urge to do it myself, but I refrained because I thought somebody would express it better than I could. I second what **Kimstu** writes. Thank you for that and your pertinent quotes, **Kimstu**. ---
**Author:** ![Aeschines](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aeschines/32/16251_2.png) [@Aeschines](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aeschines)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2023, 12:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-shit-of-the-21st-century-is-demotivating-me-to-do-pretty-much-anything/978736/67 "2023-01-27T00:44:10Z")
In general, this sociological stuff is hard to prove. I recognize that. But I think it cuts both ways. > [@Kimstu](#): > > I kind of question those assumptions, except for the basic-biology one of men having on average stronger testosterone-fueled physical sexual impulses than women. I think you are projecting modern social expectations of “men want humpies while women want mommyhood” back onto premodern societies without sufficient evidence. In very many premodern societies, it was considered EXTREMELY important for a man to father a son, for example. Yes, and we’re not going to get pre-20th century polling on almost anything. It’s also hard to say how people felt in an extremely coercive environment, inasmuch as most people bought into what society preached. > [@](#): > > Now that marital rape is less tolerated in modern societies, I think men in general are much less likely to see marriage as an unlimited season pass for sex. I think men are choosing to marry mostly for other reasons. (Consider trends among gay men, for example, who tend to have far more casual nonmarital sex than straight men do, but who nonetheless in many cases get married.) It depends on the society, but I think more and more people in the US and Europe don’t get married at all unless they are having kids, and now in Europe apparently that is becoming less common as well. I think the unspoken deal when people are in romantic relationships is that they can expect to be sexually satisfied within reason. If that gets taken away, then that is a big impetus to leave the relationship, right? > [@](#): > > Yeah, but again, this all kind of comes down to the same basic fact that in patriarchal societies, marriage is set up to be, as the saying is, “beneficial for men, mandatory for women”. Pretty much all historical societies are patriarchal, no? So that would mean that marriage was always the case for women, everywhere. I think here you are back-projecting (again, cuts both ways) our modern umbrage at how shit things were for women onto how women felt at the time. My guess is the vast majority of people until relatively modern times were happy with their societies and their place and role in them. But I can’t prove that scientifically. Also, both ancient Rome and China used to fine men for being unmarried. It could be quite coercive for men, too. > [@](#): > > But overall, women’s participation in marriage has been fundamentally skewed by the fact that most premodern cultures socialized women to believe that they HAD to get married, because any unmarried life they could realistically aspire to was going to be considerably worse than marriage. This is perhaps a bit unfair to those societies in that survival was much more difficult than it was today, and the relatively greater strength of men was of genuine value (it still is, though it is often ignored or even denigrated today). Plus, societies had to reproduce in order to survive. The coercive nature of marriage in those times is not something to celebrate, but it is understandable. > [@](#): > > I sorta? sympathize with their dismay at having fewer marital options in a world where women have more non-marital options. But I’m not sure they realize the psychological price that women used to pay for that “marriage-friendly” setup. I’m not sure their not realizing that really affects what they deserve in the present day, or that balancing out the suffering of the women of the past and the men of today has any value. Not that you said exactly that, but it seemed somewhat implied. > [@](#): > > AKA the modern gender-swapped reboot of the “bitter old maid” stereotypes, now with more mass shootings and other gender-based violence. For real tho. > [@](#): > > I think this speculation is very suspect. Definitely does not seem to align with, for example, the findings of [this 2010 study going back as far as 1975:](https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2010/09/why-african-americans-are-happier-and-whites-aren-t/344172/) I said the 1950s. I would not hold up the 1970s as being a great era for Black families, etc. White people (and I would say other people also, though no doubt not all people) were nostalgic for the 1950s in the 1970s and 1980s. That’s why _Back to the Future_ had such resonance in 1985. > [@](#): > > It was also strongly shaped by the recent past. Americans in the 1950s had come through the Great Depression and WWII, and naturally, to white Americans at least, the future looked brighter. Yep, but as I said, Japan was a defeated, bombed-out wreck at the dawn of the 1950s, and yet it was an extremely positive society. > [@](#): > > I dunno. Who was it who actually had a “life like that”? What was it that made “families stronger”? How much of it was genuine contentment and how much was women’s lack of options, social normalization of sexism, and social repression of deviance? Are you doubting that people have had a lot of nostalgia for that time and cite their own reasons? That includes women, too. > [@](#): > > Consider [this article,](https://time.com/3426225/domestic-violence-therapy/) for example: That is interesting but a bit hard to digest on the fly. It does recall the specter of Freudian psychology that was soaked into the media narrative. (That’s another point of “positivity”: the utter confidence that science had figured everything out already, even if a bunch of it was dubious stuff like Freud. We can look back at it now and go “smh,” but I think it’s easy to forget the incredible confidence with which TPTB used to speak, and that could be comforting to people.) > [@](#): > > I believe you. But my point is that I think your nostalgic, “wistful” romanticization of the recent past as a “happier” time is to some extent shaped by your perspective as a straight white man. Yeah… this gets a bit too “identity politics” for my taste. I am a straight white man who has been known to wear makeup and skirts in public and who lived in Japan for eight years and makes a living bridging two languages and culture. Like anyone else, I don’t like being reduced to surface-level qualities. That said, I think white privilege is a thing, and I’ve benefited from it. But I don’t think you can look at the surface of someone and instantly calculate their influences, etc. > [@](#): > > You are claiming that “we” as a society feel a certain way because of certain changes, but your “we” is doing a lot of work there. In a messy convo like this, various claims will be made with varying levels of certainty and justification (cites, etc.). But anything outside of lab science is pretty hard to prove, as I said. I hardly think I’ve made rock-solid arguments here. ---
**Author:** ![Aeschines](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aeschines/32/16251_2.png) [@Aeschines](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aeschines)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2023, 12:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-shit-of-the-21st-century-is-demotivating-me-to-do-pretty-much-anything/978736/68 "2023-01-27T00:47:07Z")
> [@Pardel-Lux](#): > > It has taken longer than I thought until somebody came up with a reply to **Aeschines** theses in that post: I had the urge to do it myself, but I refrained because I thought somebody would express it better than I could. I second what **Kimstu** writes. Thank you for that and your pertinent quotes, **Kimstu**. I didn’t know I had a thesis! ---
**Author:** ![Aeschines](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aeschines/32/16251_2.png) [@Aeschines](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aeschines)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2023, 12:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-shit-of-the-21st-century-is-demotivating-me-to-do-pretty-much-anything/978736/69 "2023-01-27T00:54:00Z")
> [@Pardel-Lux](#): > > Having being raised a Catholic myself and therefore being extremely anticlerical in general I wonder if limiting this critique of religion’s hypocrisy only to Catholicism is not a bit too restrictive. I can think of a couple of sects or denominations from the other Abrahamic religions that are based mainly on hypocrisy too. > But if you’re not careful **Aspenglow** will come and warn you for hijacking your own thread! 😉 A very interesting thread, btw. Thanks! I feel okay beating up on Catholicism because I experienced it directly. I am also not too enamored of evangelical Christians these days. I certainly have issues with other expressions of organized religion, but I mostly just go for the Jesus types. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2023, 4:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-shit-of-the-21st-century-is-demotivating-me-to-do-pretty-much-anything/978736/70 "2023-01-27T04:35:38Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > > [@Aeschines](#): > > > > I get that a lot of people are threatened by the browning of America, but I am not, and it’s other stuff that bothers me. > > I believe you. But my point is that I think your nostalgic, “wistful” romanticization of the recent past as a “happier” time is to some extent shaped by your perspective as a straight white man. You are claiming that “we” as a society feel a certain way because of certain changes, but your “we” is doing a lot of work there. I think the hope was that women, gays, minorities, and other marginalized groups would experience the same benefits that white straight men traditionally enjoyed. Instead it seems like everyone who isn’t a billionaire gets shit on these days. > [@Aeschines](#): > > Now that marital rape is less tolerated in modern societies, I think men in general are much less likely to see marriage as an unlimited season pass for sex. I don’t know that I’ve ever heard anyone speak of marriage as an “unlimited season pass for sex”. Quite the opposite usually. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Aeschines](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aeschines/32/16251_2.png) [@Aeschines](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aeschines)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2023, 5:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-shit-of-the-21st-century-is-demotivating-me-to-do-pretty-much-anything/978736/71 "2023-01-27T05:11:38Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > I think the hope was that women, gays, minorities, and other marginalized groups would experience the same benefits that white straight men traditionally enjoyed. Instead it seems like everyone who isn’t a billionaire gets shit on these days. We are all unequal in our un-billionaire-hood. > [@](#): > > I don’t know that I’ve ever heard anyone speak of marriage as an “unlimited season pass for sex”. Quite the opposite usually. 😃 It was actually **Kimtsu** who said that, not I. My problem hasn’t been partners refusing sex (including my actual ex-wife). They’ve flaked out in other ways. ---
**Author:** ![Bootb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e19b73/32.png) [@Bootb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bootb)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2023, 6:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-shit-of-the-21st-century-is-demotivating-me-to-do-pretty-much-anything/978736/72 "2023-01-27T06:05:39Z")
> [@Aeschines](#): > > > [@Llama\_Llogophile](#): > > > > I’m roughly the same age as the OP, and I trace a lot of current misery to 9/11. Or rather, our response to it. > > Yeah, I think it was the death of the US as we knew it. I bet a lot of people felt the same way in Dec. '41. ---
**Author:** ![Aeschines](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aeschines/32/16251_2.png) [@Aeschines](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aeschines)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2023, 6:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-shit-of-the-21st-century-is-demotivating-me-to-do-pretty-much-anything/978736/73 "2023-01-27T06:50:16Z")
> [@Bootb](#): > > I bet a lot of people felt the same way in Dec. '41. I’m curious whether you really believe this or thought about it at all. Of course not. People were angry at Japan and wanted to fight back. That’s it. ---
**Author:** ![Spice\_Weasel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spice_weasel/32/5435_2.png) [@Spice\_Weasel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spice_Weasel)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2023, 2:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-shit-of-the-21st-century-is-demotivating-me-to-do-pretty-much-anything/978736/74 "2023-01-27T14:02:40Z")
I am guessing it’s about more than sex for the men. I’m not saying that’s not important to them, but I think it’s also important for them to feel taken care of, and to not have to do so much housework. Because one thing we know is that men still expect women to do most of it. To be able to come home to a clean house and just relax is, I imagine, very appealing, and I mean that in the more profound sense of providing a sense of security. When I was pregnant, I hung out on a lot of mommy boards and it was a very eye opening experience. It was common for Dad to immediately dump all the childcare burden on Mom, sometimes within days of childbirth. I’m sure it was _more_ common in the past, but those attitudes have not died. I’m incredibly grateful to have an equal partner in this regard. The only time I really feel the strain is when something unexpected happens and I have to be the one to cover. He tries, but the nature of his job makes it difficult. He often has clients in crisis. My main issue is that it triggers a feeling of abandonment and loneliness stemming from my childhood. It’s my issue and not his. The question I often ask myself is whether these women bear any responsibility for marrying selfish jerks. I’m not talking about abusive relationships, but cases where the red flags were there that they would not receive any support, and they ignored them. Sometimes I feel like they are rewarding these men for being chauvinist, which encourages other men to behave the same way. Other times I feel like I shouldn’t blame them for their own oppression. Many women still have economic hardship without a partner. We see this all the time at my agency (where women actually are abused) one of the biggest obstacles is financial independence. Especially if they are home taking care of the kids, it’s very easy for them to become trapped. But at the same time… Man, I see a lot of women make stupid relationships decisions. Starting with my Mom who is on her fifth marriage. I decided I would rather be alone than end up like that. ---
**Author:** ![Ulfreida](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ulfreida/32/8014_2.png) [@Ulfreida](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ulfreida)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2023, 2:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-shit-of-the-21st-century-is-demotivating-me-to-do-pretty-much-anything/978736/75 "2023-01-27T14:57:41Z")
> [@EinsteinsHund](#): > > Is it? I’m unaware of that, so do you have a cite? [NIH](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22552705/#:~:text=Sexual%20desire%20is%20typically%20higher,in%20studies%20of%20sexual%20desire.) Lead paragraph: Sexual desire is typically higher in men than in women, with testosterone (T) thought to account for this difference as well as within-sex variation in desire in both women and men. However, _ **few studies have incorporated both hormonal and social or psychological factors** _ in studies of sexual desire. Emphasis mine. If one takes as evidence that both gay men and women report much better sexual satisfaction than straight women, I’d say this last sentence is pertinent. ---
**Author:** ![Ulfreida](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ulfreida/32/8014_2.png) [@Ulfreida](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ulfreida)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2023, 3:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-shit-of-the-21st-century-is-demotivating-me-to-do-pretty-much-anything/978736/76 "2023-01-27T15:04:58Z")
> [@Aeschines](#): > > mass shootings and other gender-based violence. What violence isn’t gender-based? Over 90% of all physical violence, including rape and sexual harassment, is by men. Mass shootings are close to 100%. ---
**Author:** ![Ulfreida](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ulfreida/32/8014_2.png) [@Ulfreida](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ulfreida)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2023, 3:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-shit-of-the-21st-century-is-demotivating-me-to-do-pretty-much-anything/978736/77 "2023-01-27T15:05:41Z")
> [@Spice\_Weasel](#): > > Other times I feel like I shouldn’t blame them for their own oppression. Ya think? ---
**Author:** ![Spice\_Weasel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spice_weasel/32/5435_2.png) [@Spice\_Weasel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spice_Weasel)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2023, 4:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-shit-of-the-21st-century-is-demotivating-me-to-do-pretty-much-anything/978736/78 "2023-01-27T16:18:11Z")
I was a child impacted profoundly by the terrible relationship decisions of my mother. And yes, I do hold her accountable for those decisions. Knowing the social context of those decisions does not absolve her of responsibility for making my childhood a revolving door of men due to her consistent inability to have a stable relationship with any halfway decent man. I don’t ascribe to the idea that all women are always forced into relationships with losers, not in this day and age, sorry. ---
**Author:** ![Aeschines](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aeschines/32/16251_2.png) [@Aeschines](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aeschines)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2023, 4:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-shit-of-the-21st-century-is-demotivating-me-to-do-pretty-much-anything/978736/79 "2023-01-27T16:29:53Z")
> [@Ulfreida](#): > > What violence isn’t gender-based? Over 90% of all physical violence, including rape and sexual harassment, is by men. Mass shootings are close to 100%. You were quoting a phrase a didn’t write. But this is something I wanted to talk about. In current feminism, and in the world of the left in general (of which I am a part), it isn’t clear whether it is politically correct to believe that men and women are, if not physically, then mentally a “blank slate”: i.e., they would behave exactly alike except for conditioning by the Patriarchy, and no mental differences come down to biology. There seems to be a kind of Schroedinger’s politics in which one is required to believe both things and deny both things at once. On the one hand, men are worse people, as you point out, and most violence can be attributed to them. I’ve argued with someone on this board before who was advocating the blank slate theory. I pointed out that societies are not in the business of turning men into bigger criminals than women; on the contrary, one of the big issues that any society must deal with is men’s violence and violent men. On the other hand, while men are worse, it’s kinda sorta still wrong to believe in mental differences that are due to biology! Any suggestion that men might be better at something cognitively (take chess for example) is shot down–can’t be true! So yeah, I want to see the Feminist Manifesto and know what I’m supposed to believe on this point… Purring my cards on the table: I’m Liberal and believe in sexual equality. I think men and women are quite variable and overlap a lot in terms of behavior but still exhibit significant cognitive and behavioral differences that cannot be attributed to social conditioning alone. And I think feminism is in a rather inchoate state these days. This is a good time to point out, per my original post, I don’t see feminists in the media who really seem to lead and paint a vision for the future. I don’t even know who are considered to be the leaders these days. I don’t see Liberals point them out or cite them. ---
**Author:** ![Aeschines](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aeschines/32/16251_2.png) [@Aeschines](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aeschines)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2023, 4:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-shit-of-the-21st-century-is-demotivating-me-to-do-pretty-much-anything/978736/80 "2023-01-27T16:32:08Z")
> [@Ulfreida](#): > > Emphasis mine. If one takes as evidence that both gay men and women report much better sexual satisfaction than straight women, I’d say this last sentence is pertinent. It just means that straight women are a lousy lay. j/k [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-shit-of-the-21st-century-is-demotivating-me-to-do-pretty-much-anything/978736.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-shit-of-the-21st-century-is-demotivating-me-to-do-pretty-much-anything/978736.md?page=5)