One thing that’s overlooked is that men have to optimize their friend group to attract woman, because woman care about social status. When I went to an all boys high school nerds, jocks different ethnicities attractive,not attractive guys all hung out with each other,when I transferred to an inter gender school much more segregated
I wonder if there's any observed relationship between the degree of gender equality in a society and the size of the loneliness gap. After all those studies finding counterintuitively that greater gender equality sometimes seems to be associated with larger gender gaps on various psychological and social-behavioral dimensions, I don't know which way the relationship would even go. I bet Alice Evans would be up on that research, though.
Also, I am maybe too far down the "Albion's Seed explains everything!!!" rabbit hole at this point, but it sure does seem like a disproportionate amount of the distinctively toxic masculinity in US culture comes from the Borderer and Cavalier settler subcultures. So either across US localities or states, or across the whole Anglosphere, you could plot size of loneliness gender gap vs percent of population with Borderer/Cavalier descent and see what you get.
This was good. I think there's also the addition that the expectations on what's required of men to be successful socially have been far harder to actually meet than before. 2008 put good incomes and full time jobs out of reach for a lot of men and I strongly believe caused them to shut themselves in. That just creates a bad feedback loop and makes the situation worse.
But of course it wasn't just 2008 either. Gender roles are dramatically changing and men are being increasingly expected to take more caring roles that pay less, and to be stay-at-home Dad types. The problem is their own expectations on how to be successful and be social just can't mesh with that. You can't simultaneously expect your future to be an unemployed stay-at-home Dad and expect to find meaning and a sense of self-worth with a good job. We can tell men "well you should learn to find meaning being a stay-at-home Dad" but is it realistic to expect most men to just change their feelings like that?
I actually wrote something that touched on the expectations and and loneliness element here.
One thing that’s overlooked is that men have to optimize their friend group to attract woman, because woman care about social status. When I went to an all boys high school nerds, jocks different ethnicities attractive,not attractive guys all hung out with each other,when I transferred to an inter gender school much more segregated
That’s super interesting
I wonder if there's any observed relationship between the degree of gender equality in a society and the size of the loneliness gap. After all those studies finding counterintuitively that greater gender equality sometimes seems to be associated with larger gender gaps on various psychological and social-behavioral dimensions, I don't know which way the relationship would even go. I bet Alice Evans would be up on that research, though.
Also, I am maybe too far down the "Albion's Seed explains everything!!!" rabbit hole at this point, but it sure does seem like a disproportionate amount of the distinctively toxic masculinity in US culture comes from the Borderer and Cavalier settler subcultures. So either across US localities or states, or across the whole Anglosphere, you could plot size of loneliness gender gap vs percent of population with Borderer/Cavalier descent and see what you get.
I'd never heard of Alice Evans but this is her *fave* books list: https://www.draliceevans.com/gender-history-books. Wow. And I'll have to read Albion's Seed. Added it to my wish list.
This was good. I think there's also the addition that the expectations on what's required of men to be successful socially have been far harder to actually meet than before. 2008 put good incomes and full time jobs out of reach for a lot of men and I strongly believe caused them to shut themselves in. That just creates a bad feedback loop and makes the situation worse.
But of course it wasn't just 2008 either. Gender roles are dramatically changing and men are being increasingly expected to take more caring roles that pay less, and to be stay-at-home Dad types. The problem is their own expectations on how to be successful and be social just can't mesh with that. You can't simultaneously expect your future to be an unemployed stay-at-home Dad and expect to find meaning and a sense of self-worth with a good job. We can tell men "well you should learn to find meaning being a stay-at-home Dad" but is it realistic to expect most men to just change their feelings like that?
I actually wrote something that touched on the expectations and and loneliness element here.
https://noahwrites.substack.com/p/pride-and-loneliness
I was writing about it from a more gender neutral sense, but I think it does impact men more than women.