Hmm. I guess we just need to spend a few thousand years drumming it into their heads that complaining or being resentful about not having a partner to make you feel sexually desirable or romantically fulfilled makes you a “sour old maid” or “bitter” or “envious” or “desperate”, and hence even more contemptible than the mere unpartnered “loser”.
If the experience of women is any guide, that should help them be more willing to accept being unpartnered without constantly whining about how unfair it is and how deprived they are!
(Or maybe we would also have to spend a few thousand years restricting men to second-class personhood and purely sexual/domestic and family roles. That might help them understand that there are worse things than being unpartnered.)
IMO, men who are unsuccessful in finding a partner are still going to be scorned as “losers.” If they’re not wannabe PUAs (bad), MGTOW (bad), they are losers (bad.) This has coarsened over the recent years, men used to be treated more respectfully in this regard. Not today.
I think the big difference is that while they don’t have to have girlfriends/relationships, they’re not getting laid either, and in some sense have lost relative status among other men because of that. Or at least that’s how they perceive it. Basically it was that since men have (probably) always measured status by how many women they’ve slept with and how good looking they are, back in the days when relationships were expected, there was still a sort of baseline that nearly all men would end up in some sort of relationship or marriage, because that was the expectation, and you had to be a real weirdo or loser to remain single after a certain point.
But when the pressure to be in relationships eased, I think a lot of people were confused by it and just didn’t end up having relationships. For the women, this is viewed as empowering. But for many of the men, it just means that they feel like they’ve been relegated into the “real weirdo or loser” category.
Some internalize this and blame themselves- they’re the ones who go to PUA seminars and try to figure out how to change it from within. Others blame it on women- they’re the Incels who think that it’s women’s fault that they’ve been left behind/left out of the game.
I guess I am curious on exactly how the whole “empowerment of women” angle is supposed to change or improve relationships.
Empowerment is all well and good, but as I stated before, presumptively heterosexual women still find men attractive. Empowerment isn’t going to change that. They should still want to have relations with men. Other options are celibacy, lesbianism, or sharing a man with other women. They are free to pursue all of these. I do find it curious and indicative that lesbianism is less popular with women than homosexuality is with men.
Men and women, we were all the product of an egg and a sperm, then carried by a woman to birth. Then we live out our lives until we all die. I should think that we’re all members of the same species and can treat each other equally.
My experience in relationships is that the women I am with, over time, are more critical of me and less tolerant than I am towards them. Growing up I also saw some of the Carrie-style viciousness of women towards other non-compliant women that exceeded anything I saw from men in that regard. I can only say what I saw.
I think it is an authentic experience for women that they are more critical of others than men are. I think this experience has been more front loaded in our current society. I am divorced and currently single. I may well gear up again and attempt more relationships. I no longer expect equal treatment from a female partner in a relationship. That was something I once believed in, but no longer. I am resigned to the fact that I will need to be more generous and do more of the giving as long as I am with a particular woman. My personal opinion is that front loading subjective experience in this case is creating a divide. I am a man, I identify as a man. Men and women are of equal merit.
If women are the ones controlling the access to sex for heterosexual men, then they have every reason to be more critical and demanding, and men would need to be more tolerant and accepting. Beggars can’t be choosers, as the saying goes.
And I think that back when there was a lot more pressure on women to be paired up/in a relationship/married, that meant that they were more inclined to be more tolerant of men, as they needed men for more than they do now.
Look at it this way; what incentive does a woman, ANY woman have these days to go out with some man who they perceive as low status? Very, very little if the pressure to not be single is out of the equation. For many, it’s considered preferable to go out with nobody, than to go out with some of the man-children who are out there.
Only, AFAICT, by making relationships more mutually consensual and voluntary.
The more women (and men) are empowered to lead fulfilling independent lives, without societal pressure to be in a relationship just because “everybody’s supposed to be in a relationship”, the more likely it is that people who are in relationships actually want to be there.
I do not believe, nor am I arguing, that improved autonomy and decreased “pairing pressure” somehow means that all relationships will be good ones. Individual people are still going to make bad decisions and exhibit bad behavior sometimes, just as they do now.
Now now, are you sure you’re not just becoming a sour and bitter old maid? I’ve heard that single men in particular really need to guard against that.
(Oh yeah, and “vinegary spinster”: another classic epithet to discourage unpartnered women from expressing resentment or blame for their unpartnered status. Don’t be a vinegary spinster, boys!)
But if women and men are to exist in a mutually beneficial partnership, at some point they have to recognize each other’s equality and love each other.
Honestly, we are doing everything as a society to shout down what you are saying, really what the PUAs are saying, that what goes on between men and women is more transactional and less mutually beneficial. But I guess we’re fooling ourselves.
What I see from surveys about attractiveness is that women do not find their peer men attractive. They only find higher quality men attractive. Despite heterosexual men and women being at approximately a 1x1 ratio, women don’t find the peer men that are available for a mutually beneficial relationship attractive. Evidently they would rather fight or hold out for the higher quality man than “slum it” with an equal man. I am just reporting what is in all of these surveys of attractiveness.
So there is a disconnect between my personal morals and dignity and how women view me as a potential sexual partner. Not unlike how other minorities have been perceived by in power groups. They should not look upon those opinions as valid measures of their self worth, and neither should I. Moreover, I have both male and female children to raise and lessons to teach, examples to set. Those who want sexual relations to be transactional, so be it.
I’m not saying society looks at it in a transactional sense, just a lot of the guys at the bottom of the dating food chain, so to speak. Their big mistake is thinking that women are something other than people, and that they’re somehow like a slot machine- instead of a quarter, you put in the right phrases, and maybe some food or drink, and you have a chance of sex.
For some it might. But that’s also a problem - thinking of women as homogeneous automatons who all react in the same, predictable, transactional way based on a non-representative sample.
Rather than, you know, as individual human beings with unique personalities, interests, and desires.
The two women I’ve been in relationships were far different. But that doesn’t mean that women can’t share an overall sensitivity to quality of relationship, or become more likely to be dissatisfied. Tendencies are tendencies. I fully accept that men are far more violent than women, both towards other men and other women. But this does not mean that all men are violent. Still, it’s a risk factor for women, something they need to be aware of to some degree all of the time.
It’s not all just about men at the bottom. There is no relationship “safe zone” for me. I can get into another relationship. Some of the manosphere/PUA types do believe in “marriage game”, attempting to manipulate in their LTR as they would with a pickup. Of course this requires work on their part that is not reciprocated by their partner. I don’t believe that this works or can be maintained, I don’t think the risk factor can be eliminated.
What a lot of people weren’t given the option of is wanting a range of relationships with different people, of different kinds. Not necessarily a locked in, strictly defined notion of a lifetime, exclusive pairing involving one person, and one person only. Even current same-sex marriage model seeks to copy this.
I see it as a societal and cultural prison, really. Why should all these things–companionship, sex, household partnership, child-rearing, recreation, finances, etc.–be locked in a box of a single monogamous relationship?
If I were to re-make my life, I would seek to have relationships, yes, close relationships, and long-term relationships, even. But I would not lock all the many aspects of a person’s life into this one box.
For many centuries, women had to seek this as a rule, because otherwise their entire lives were in the gutter. Society made sure that marriage to a “suitable” man was the only way for a woman to have a somewhat secure life.
And, really, that’s the origin of the whole trope of women being desperate to "catch* a man, and men pushing back against being caught. It was really a social straitjacket for both of them, but a man could actually survive without marriage. Most women would be living much, much worse lives without it.
This has little to do with the PUA fad that was, but in today’s world, for many, supply and demand.
Not only are there more women becoming higher educated than in years past, there are more more women than men becoming more highly educated. Educational status is not only status in and off itself, it correlates with other status items. There are simply not enough college educated (and above) men to go around. A 36 year old educated man with a professional career could find many educated professional career accomplished attractive women interested in him, even if he’s a bit of a jerk. A 36 year old educated woman with that same career, same level of general average attractiveness, may not.
They are either fine with that or they are not. Frankly though they may intimidate or simply not match well in other ways with many men of significantly lower educational and professional status.
To the degree that there actually was a popularity to PUA books and classes, I’d consider that we have had a prolongation of adolescence. Many were developmentally still teens well into their late 20s and still fantasized of being the cool kid that they thought everyone else had been, defining it in very immature ways. That decade had the Millennial surge of them in that age group.
You basically summed up 6 seasons of Sex and the City.
I don’t have the data to support my hypothesis, but I imagine a lot (maybe most) of men who were involved in the PUA were closer to the college educated 36 year old professional than the immature 20/30 something “cool kid”. More Ted Mosley than Stifler. The Stiflers of the world don’t care. They are content to throw on their stupid weekend shirt, hit the local meat market bars, get drunk, and basically pester girls until they find one who will go home with them. Sheer audacity, persistence, and numbers works for them.
The Ted Mosleys are the guys who maybe studied their ass off in college, got a good job, and now after years of success and maybe a few relationships, find that marriage hasn’t happened for them and don’t really know where or how to meet women.
It’s not just that there are “more more women than men becoming more highly educated” (I think the discrepancy is not that great, actually). The real issue is that many women (and men) are looking for a relationship where the man earns more and/or is even more educated. So even to the extent that you have the same level of income/status among men and women, this is a problem for women who are looking to “marry up” education/financial-wise.
In addition, the reverse is not true to nearly the same extent. Meaning that many men and women are comfortable with the man being more educated than the woman. So a lot of the comparably-educated men are removed from the pool by virtue of marrying lesser-educated women.
Really it’s something of a societal disconnect, at this time.
The Mosleys are part of that surge of delayed adolescents. 2000 to 2010 had a lot of unmarried 20 to 30 year olds still developmentally teenagers. Even a small fraction interested in PUA was a decent market niche.
Interestingly there were also a quite a few of “failure to launch” comedies about young adults in their 20s and 30s who had to be dragged kicking and screaming into adulthood around the same time as the PUA movement.
I suppose I have to ask what we mean by “delayed adolescents”? Is it simply delaying the traditional trappings of “adulthood” such as steady corporate job, house with a mortgage, marriage, kids, etc? Or is it a specific immature mindset that not only prevents these things, but also causes people to continue exhibit selfish self-destructive irresponsible behaviors long after they should have outgrown them?
In my usage and as observed in my adult children and more so their peers, both. My nerdy take is that it goes hand in hand with longer life expectancy - it’s the same fraction of life devoted to these issues.
Not sure if there is an arrow of causation. Did I have a professional career marriage and kids because I had a mature mindset or did having those things impose a mature mindset on me or a bit of both?
