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Pornography and the Butterfly Effect

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Re: Pornography and the Butterfly Effect

#191
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2013/09/19/224183763...

No one but etymologists would think of the phrase that way, so the origin doesn't really matter.

Did you look at the linked article? The point is that it reinforces a potential implicit bias.

"Rather than taking the chance of unintentionally offending someone or of being misunderstood, it is best to relinquish the old innocuous proverbial expression all together."

No one is attacking you and there is no need to defend.

Re: Pornography and the Butterfly Effect

#192
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s also been a shift due to online and apps that give women an unlimited choice of men while giving the majority of men nearly no choice — the dating world for most men has become a lot more difficult over the last couple of years. I see my male friends really struggle and I see my female friends have unlimited options.

Women have always had the upper hand in terms of choosing a mate. What's changed now is that their selection pool has gotten a lot larger than just the people they encounter and interact with in person.

I don't think so. I mean, that is a change that has occurred, but I think the more important change was women's liberation. Society used to enforce that women could not attain social status or sustain their own quality of life except via a husband. Now that women can have careers and operate independently in society, they have significantly reduced pressure to couple and consequently tend only to do so on their own terms.

This is good if you believe in egalitarianism, as I do, but it does have consequences. It would seem, though I'm not sure to what extent available data backs this up, that women will tend to couple only with a relatively small percentage of men, and without societal pressure to behave otherwise, are either willing to share them or simply not couple at all.

Unfortunately for them men who aren't in that category, their hormonal drive to mate is significantly stronger, and our culture still ostracizes and humiliates men who are unsuccessful with women. The upshot of which seems to be that there are an increasing number of sexually frustrated young men in society, and they are held in very low regard because of it, which one has to imagine is a very dangerous and destabilizing trend.

Re: Pornography and the Butterfly Effect

#193
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s also been a shift due to online and apps that give women an unlimited choice of men while giving the majority of men nearly no choice — the dating world for most men has become a lot more difficult over the last couple of years. I see my male friends really struggle and I see my female friends have unlimited options.

> There’s also been a shift due to online and apps that give women an unlimited choice of men while giving the majority of men nearly no choice How can that be? Why would it be empowering for one gender but not the other? What would the underlying reason be to explain that kind of social phenomenon? > I see my male friends really struggle and I see my female friends have unlimited options. I can counter your anecdata…

>>I don't see an obvious reason why online dating would make things harder for men but not harder for women and vice versa. I think the broader trend in online dating is that it's harder for unattractive people to find partners, regardless of sexual identity...

On dating sites, men rate 50 percent of women as below average (in line with the statistical expectation), while women rate 80 percent of men as below average.

It is a fact that women are pickier than men on average, and that women are less willing to marry down and to settle for less, than men are.

This is why there is gender assymetry in how increased information efficiency in the dating market affects SMV (sexual market value) of men and women.

Re: Pornography and the Butterfly Effect

#194
post #61

> Did you know that teens are having substantially less sex than the previous few generations? It’s true! And generally interpreted as a good thing. But Ronson suggests that this is in large part because porn is replacing sex, and, in fact, making real sex with real woman seem alienating and difficult. Further down the author specifically mentions the correlation/causality fallacy but there are surely other explanati…

> making real sex with real woman seem alienating and difficult I think the proper word is: boring

[deleted]

Re: Pornography and the Butterfly Effect

#195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I absolutely agree. I was responding to parent who was posing this elaborate hypothetical whereby the person who goes incel (or whatever) is somehow absolved of the responsibility for their situation. I would argue that there are profound differences too between institutional racism and male sexual resentment.

"I would argue that there are profound differences too between institutional racism and male sexual resentment." Of course, institutional racism is several orders of magnitude more severe. (Update: wow, I get downvoted for this. Nice!)

[deleted]

Re: Pornography and the Butterfly Effect

#196
post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jordan Peterson is a blowhard conservative who's had more success wooing impressionable edgy teenagers than any actual academic pursuits. I don't understand how anyone takes him or his ideas seriously.

Er, no, he's actually a classical liberal. Specifically "classic British liberal". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhEG69ZGwUI In regards to academics - he taught at Harvard and University of Toronto for decades, has written books and released hundreds of hours of lectures for free.

The centrist wings of both modern American conservatism and liberalism are both grounded in classical liberalism (the language is different in most of the rest of the West, where liberalism tends to be classical liberalism but widely recognized as a center-right position), so even if true, that wouldn't rebut that he is a modern conservative.

Peterson, OTOH, seems to be a common modern conservative blend of elements from classical liberalism and classic conservatism with modern scientific-sounding rationalization for the classically conservative elements.

Re: Pornography and the Butterfly Effect

#197
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This skirts a taboo that you can barely talk about: that personal preferences in dating are not judged to the same standard, and that movements of empowerment and positivity are clashing with everyone's free will in pursuing -- and especially articulating -- what they do and don't like. Declining to date someone because they're fat is now firmly seen as a bullying tactic, but not dating someone because they're shor…

While I agree that the message sounds a bit like that, I think he is right about that point. For me an eye opener was Tinder. Where I live it seems like half of the women have something like "Don't even try if you are less than 1.80cm" or something like that in their profile. I am actually relatively tall and happy with my sex life, so I don't take the offense personally, yet I can't help but wonder what would happen…

A lot of people here are basing their view of gender dynamics (such as women being given 'the upper-hand' and so on, whatever that means) on Tinder and related websites/apps. It may be worth mentioning that the vast majority of people on Earth (or even the developed world) do not, in fact, use any dating apps at all. Most people's flirting activities still take place in meatspace, with all the associated awkwardness. In fact, in many parts of the world there is no concept of 'dating' at all, or at least not in its codified form as happens in the US.

I respect your experience and it may be that women do have much more power than men in the online dating world - that doesn't mean it's not an extremely skewed representation of the actual social dynamics that happens between humans. This is due to the many cultural biases of the people who make these apps and the audience they're targeting, both of which being typically college-educated urban American millenials.

Not everyone's approach to relationships is like that of a college-educated urban American millenial.

Re: Pornography and the Butterfly Effect

#198
post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Women have always had the upper hand in terms of choosing a mate. What's changed now is that their selection pool has gotten a lot larger than just the people they encounter and interact with in person.

It's just perceived selection pool, mostly consisting of guys they despise and use for feeling better about themselves and desirable (they will tell you openly once they are comfortable with you they would prefer those guys not to exist at all), or momentarily top guys that are difficult to reach even for the prettiest/smartest of them, and where there is a literally brutal competition between them. If you are one of…

I’m not judging but this reads, to me, like you’re bitter. The majority of men and women may pursue mates based on superficial qualities but there are plenty who do not.

I separated three years ago, divorced recently and met someone a month after deciding to date. I used Bumble. It was easy. She’s beautiful, smart (smarter than me), kind, honest, athletic, hard working, loving and a wonderful mother to her 10 Y.O.

I live well below my means and only after commiting to a relationship did I realize just how poor she thought I was. My advice to you is that any women who would pursue a man for his looks and money isn’t worth your time. If you can’t find what you’re looking for you either need to work on your self or you need to look somewhere else.

Again, I’m not judging but the idea that enforced monogamy is better for society leads me to believe that you’re the problem.

Re: Pornography and the Butterfly Effect

#199
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jordan Peterson, whose being referenced here explained what he meant[0] and it doesn't seem unreasonable. It's uncharitable to jump to a conclusion here without going beyond our presuppositions. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yn60-8Ql_44

Peterson seems to have a knack for not explaining himself well and expecting people to just understand where he's coming from. He's also really bad at phrasing. He constantly seems to get into hot water for what he says, and then if you try to figure out what he says he actually said it's never for what we're told he says. I think he'd do much better if he wrote more books and had a really good editor .

My take so far (with limited research) is that Peterson is trying to evoke debate on the issues in a centrist fashion reminiscent of Plato and his cave. The ‘shapes’ of traditional societal structures are being bound to new normals on the ‘wall’ of the human condition; solving this jig-saw of a problem necessitates open debate & negotiation.

Re: Pornography and the Butterfly Effect

#200
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2013/09/19/224183763...

No one but etymologists would think of the phrase that way, so the origin doesn't really matter.

Perhaps I should have clarified that I wasn’t accusing the parent of being racist, but I do think it is an incidentally racist phrase we can probably do without.

Maybe just because I am from the south and old enough to remember older relatives using the word spade in an overtly racist way (“Dennis Rodman is as black as a spade,” and such), but I don’t think the etymology is particularly academic.

Anyways, sorry for the off topic tangent.

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