I think the way you square the circle between the belief that teens are not fucking enough and that hookup culture must go is that the actual thing that is supposed to happen is shotgun weddings.
You get a woman trapped in a marriage in her home town before she can find herself and then it becomes her responsibility to manage the disfunction of the young man she is stuck to rather than a societal problem.
I think that’s exactly right. I do think conservatives have a point that the idea used to be get married, get established in a career, have kids, buy house. And it’s not great for marriage rates to expect everyone to wait to get established before marrying. And in some ways it is easier to get established in a career with a spouse. Especially for men, whose earnings rise after marriage and kids.
But the opposite is true for women. Our earnings fall after marriage and especially after kids.
And they seem to ignore that earlier marriages are more likely to end in divorce.
There’s no real effective way to encourage early marriage while avoiding unnecessary divorces without looking at the macroeconomic inputs which lead people to the delay or avoidance in the first place. I wish conservatives would accept that reality.
I think that, to the extent they acknowledge these problems around paying for a family and timing, there solution is to sufficiently oppress women so that divorce and career success are not options and then women will have no choice but to devote themselves to fixing all these issues.
It's funny how we take notice when we hear about someone having sex. It’s always felt somewhat exciting and important to hear that so-and-so fucked whats-his-face. And when you add up a lifetime of noticing, it can start to feel like people are fucking constantly! But when we stop to notice the people we know *not* having sex, or having very little sex, that’s probably the much bigger trend. It’s just not exciting to notice, and hard to notice the lack of something in the first place.
I don't think that has anything to do with conservatives writing exaggerated articles about sex. I don’t think most conservatives mean a word of what they write.
I'm in that 10%, as someone that roughly identifies as asexual. The biggest reason I had so many sexual partners wasn't porn or a bunch of women eager to have sex with me, but because I was incapable of developing a healthy relationship. I grew up in an environment that didn't prepare me to create healthy intimate relationships, so I kept getting into new ones.
All those sexual partners, even the ones I had sex with on the first date, were intended to be something more. However, my childhood didn't prepare me for healthy intimate relationships because my parents bought into the patriarchal purity culture. Instead of clearly figuring out who I was to bring to a romantic relationship, I was given a pitifully thin (figurative) rulebook about what is and isn't allowed in dating. Rulebooks work at the beginning and if you know *why* those rules exist, but it serves as an awful foundation for a fulfilling relationship that leads to a successful, long marriage.
Your assessments are on point as always, and you've stated pretty much everything I would if I had the opportunity!
I find it very sad that our society overall is trending towards less sex, especially after the increase seen during the 90's. Somehow, the right-wing, conservative hand-wringing over human sexuality has successfully shamed the country back towards sexlessness, whether via politics or media presence. I know it's been said before, but that conservative mindset seems to be uncomfortable with any lifestyle that doesn't resemble what they're familiar with... or are currently miserable living themselves. A shift away from mono-normativity and/or repressive, puritanical values either frightens or angers them because it's perceived as a threat to what they're comfortable with. They simply can't "live and let live", they have to make sure everyone has the same lifestyle as they and make all the same life choices.
I wonder, is it that our society is regressing backwards to framing sex as only existing/valued for procreation and within a committed monogamous relationship? Seeing sex as simply endemic of any healthy life, alongside exercise, meditation, healthy foods, socializing, etc, seems anathema to some. Sex can be recreational, casual, transactional, emotional... independently or simultaneously, and some can't wrap their heads around this nuanced acceptance. Sex is morally neutral. I include sex as part of my weekly healthy habits of yoga, Pilates, meditation, therapy, time with friends, whether with my primary partner or another person, because I enjoy it's relational value, mind/body benefits and it's super fun too. And honestly, I think I also just like being naked with other people!
Ty! I also think sex is inherently morally neutral. But that idea makes a lot of people extremely uncomfortable. Especially people with a more authoritarian personality.
The Manosphere squares increasing sexlessness with rampant hook-up culture as follows. A small minority of attractive "alpha males" (called Chads and Tyrones) are having the majority of hook-up sex with a large number of women while the vast majority of average guys (beta males) are going without. This allows for most young men to be sexless and most young women to be "thots".
Yeah, we know this, but the Manosphere lives in another universe. They focus on podcasts and youtubes like "Fresh And Fit" and "The Whatever Podcast" where panels consisting of attractive young women who frequent Miami nightlife try to give the impression that all attractive women everywhere are being "flewed out" to Dubai to have sex with oil sheiks and be lavished in luxury. One of the women asked the male host to estimate what % of college girls he thought was being "flewed out" and he said somewhere around 70 or 80%. This is how delusional these guys are. I think it's a sort of projection because these guys would love to be "flewed out" and paid for sex themselves, so they think naturally a young attractive woman is going to jump at the chance, or if not offered the chance, try to make it so she will be by initiating first contact with some rich exotic foreign guy. They simply cannot imagine a world where the vast majority of women, no matter age or attractiveness level, are leading lives with relatively little sex and having to put in real effort to get educated, find work and pay bills. They really think young cute women are just being given money and perks wherever they go just for being young and cute.
Something new to the mix, and I don't know if you've noticed this, is the recent popularization of Islam within the Manosphere. There is a crossover now with what you can call "the Muslim Manosphere" so that modest "7 partners over an entire lifetime" number now is starting to sound like a whole helluva lot because these Muslim influencers are introducing them to the concept of "virgin on wedding night".
I think the way you square the circle between the belief that teens are not fucking enough and that hookup culture must go is that the actual thing that is supposed to happen is shotgun weddings.
You get a woman trapped in a marriage in her home town before she can find herself and then it becomes her responsibility to manage the disfunction of the young man she is stuck to rather than a societal problem.
That's how it worked in past gens of my family.
I think that’s exactly right. I do think conservatives have a point that the idea used to be get married, get established in a career, have kids, buy house. And it’s not great for marriage rates to expect everyone to wait to get established before marrying. And in some ways it is easier to get established in a career with a spouse. Especially for men, whose earnings rise after marriage and kids.
But the opposite is true for women. Our earnings fall after marriage and especially after kids.
And they seem to ignore that earlier marriages are more likely to end in divorce.
There’s no real effective way to encourage early marriage while avoiding unnecessary divorces without looking at the macroeconomic inputs which lead people to the delay or avoidance in the first place. I wish conservatives would accept that reality.
I think that, to the extent they acknowledge these problems around paying for a family and timing, there solution is to sufficiently oppress women so that divorce and career success are not options and then women will have no choice but to devote themselves to fixing all these issues.
It's funny how we take notice when we hear about someone having sex. It’s always felt somewhat exciting and important to hear that so-and-so fucked whats-his-face. And when you add up a lifetime of noticing, it can start to feel like people are fucking constantly! But when we stop to notice the people we know *not* having sex, or having very little sex, that’s probably the much bigger trend. It’s just not exciting to notice, and hard to notice the lack of something in the first place.
I don't think that has anything to do with conservatives writing exaggerated articles about sex. I don’t think most conservatives mean a word of what they write.
The power of defaults! So underrated! Totally. No one shows up to brunch and loudly declares who they didn’t fuck last night.
I'm in that 10%, as someone that roughly identifies as asexual. The biggest reason I had so many sexual partners wasn't porn or a bunch of women eager to have sex with me, but because I was incapable of developing a healthy relationship. I grew up in an environment that didn't prepare me to create healthy intimate relationships, so I kept getting into new ones.
All those sexual partners, even the ones I had sex with on the first date, were intended to be something more. However, my childhood didn't prepare me for healthy intimate relationships because my parents bought into the patriarchal purity culture. Instead of clearly figuring out who I was to bring to a romantic relationship, I was given a pitifully thin (figurative) rulebook about what is and isn't allowed in dating. Rulebooks work at the beginning and if you know *why* those rules exist, but it serves as an awful foundation for a fulfilling relationship that leads to a successful, long marriage.
I’m sorry. Purity culture is such a mind-fuck.
Your assessments are on point as always, and you've stated pretty much everything I would if I had the opportunity!
I find it very sad that our society overall is trending towards less sex, especially after the increase seen during the 90's. Somehow, the right-wing, conservative hand-wringing over human sexuality has successfully shamed the country back towards sexlessness, whether via politics or media presence. I know it's been said before, but that conservative mindset seems to be uncomfortable with any lifestyle that doesn't resemble what they're familiar with... or are currently miserable living themselves. A shift away from mono-normativity and/or repressive, puritanical values either frightens or angers them because it's perceived as a threat to what they're comfortable with. They simply can't "live and let live", they have to make sure everyone has the same lifestyle as they and make all the same life choices.
I wonder, is it that our society is regressing backwards to framing sex as only existing/valued for procreation and within a committed monogamous relationship? Seeing sex as simply endemic of any healthy life, alongside exercise, meditation, healthy foods, socializing, etc, seems anathema to some. Sex can be recreational, casual, transactional, emotional... independently or simultaneously, and some can't wrap their heads around this nuanced acceptance. Sex is morally neutral. I include sex as part of my weekly healthy habits of yoga, Pilates, meditation, therapy, time with friends, whether with my primary partner or another person, because I enjoy it's relational value, mind/body benefits and it's super fun too. And honestly, I think I also just like being naked with other people!
Ty! I also think sex is inherently morally neutral. But that idea makes a lot of people extremely uncomfortable. Especially people with a more authoritarian personality.
The Manosphere would dub you an "alpha male". Call you Chad, or Tyrone, depending on your demographic.
Brendan Case's ears must be burning! And deservedly so. Excellent putdown of an ignoramus with an agenda.
I can’t believe he’s at Harvard and I’m in Huntsville hokay
The Manosphere squares increasing sexlessness with rampant hook-up culture as follows. A small minority of attractive "alpha males" (called Chads and Tyrones) are having the majority of hook-up sex with a large number of women while the vast majority of average guys (beta males) are going without. This allows for most young men to be sexless and most young women to be "thots".
Yeah, except as I stated in the post, most young women are not, in fact, "thots." The average US woman has up to 7 partners her whole life. "The median American woman born in the 1980s has had three sex partners in her lifetime." https://ifstudies.org/blog/does-sexual-history-affect-marital-happiness#:~:text=The%20median%20American%20woman%20born,the%20happiness%20of%20her%20marriage.&text=The%20first%20column%20includes%20the%20baseline%20estimates.
Yeah, we know this, but the Manosphere lives in another universe. They focus on podcasts and youtubes like "Fresh And Fit" and "The Whatever Podcast" where panels consisting of attractive young women who frequent Miami nightlife try to give the impression that all attractive women everywhere are being "flewed out" to Dubai to have sex with oil sheiks and be lavished in luxury. One of the women asked the male host to estimate what % of college girls he thought was being "flewed out" and he said somewhere around 70 or 80%. This is how delusional these guys are. I think it's a sort of projection because these guys would love to be "flewed out" and paid for sex themselves, so they think naturally a young attractive woman is going to jump at the chance, or if not offered the chance, try to make it so she will be by initiating first contact with some rich exotic foreign guy. They simply cannot imagine a world where the vast majority of women, no matter age or attractiveness level, are leading lives with relatively little sex and having to put in real effort to get educated, find work and pay bills. They really think young cute women are just being given money and perks wherever they go just for being young and cute.
Something new to the mix, and I don't know if you've noticed this, is the recent popularization of Islam within the Manosphere. There is a crossover now with what you can call "the Muslim Manosphere" so that modest "7 partners over an entire lifetime" number now is starting to sound like a whole helluva lot because these Muslim influencers are introducing them to the concept of "virgin on wedding night".