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Young U.S. men having a lot less sex in the 21st century, study shows

reuters.com

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Re: Young U.S. men having a lot less sex in the 21st century, study shows

#221

Post by tomp »

cambalache wrote: post #90
eigenvalue wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is exactly right. Apps like Tinder that normalized online "dating" (before the apps it was much less common among younger people) have allowed the "apex predator" men with good jobs/looks/personalities to have sex on demand with virtually unlimited numbers of women. This has also been made possible because a lot more women are now willing to be in non-exclusive sexual relationships at the beginning when…

> believe many of these men will eventually find someone once enough of the women who are now rejecting them face biological realities and are forced to settle if they want to have children. Who wants to be last choice? Maybe many of these men will wise up and marry a foreign girl(despite the usual shaming) or just hire sexual workers.

> Who wants to be last choice? Maybe many of these men will wise up and marry a foreign girl

Is being a desperate choice of someone who faces "economic realities" so much better than being a desperate choice of someone who faces "biological realities"?

Re: Young U.S. men having a lot less sex in the 21st century, study shows

#222

Post by jeffreyrogers »

ashtonkem wrote: post #111
tharne wrote: post #12

They buried the lede here. > Sexual activity was largely unchanged among unmarried women, along with no notable decline among gay men, researchers reported. Basically sex is following the pattern of wealth. Men as a group aren't having less sex, instead there's a winner take all effect where a small number of men are having a lot of sex with a lot of women while a large number of men are having little to no sex. It'l…

Marriage is also becoming stratified by economic class. Poorer Americans used to marry at the same rate as wealthy Americans, but that changed in 2008. Since then poorer Americans are significantly less likely to get married than their richer peers.

It's also interesting to see the fertility rate by income. Basically only bottom 20% and top 1% of US are above replacement rate. I can't find the graph I wanted to show this, but this one is pretty close: https://twitter.com/cschmert/status/993934031174725632

Re: Young U.S. men having a lot less sex in the 21st century, study shows

#223

Post by cperciva »

starpilot wrote: post #126
tharne wrote: post #12

They buried the lede here. > Sexual activity was largely unchanged among unmarried women, along with no notable decline among gay men, researchers reported. Basically sex is following the pattern of wealth. Men as a group aren't having less sex, instead there's a winner take all effect where a small number of men are having a lot of sex with a lot of women while a large number of men are having little to no sex. It'l…

A lot of those top 10% men are going polyamorous, and so you have an uptick in complaints from women about finding a monogamous guy. I've seen it on Tinder and Reddit. The thing is, the vast majority of men are still monogamous. They're just ignored and unacknowledged by most women.

the vast majority of men are still monogamous

A third of men aren't monogamous -- they're oudengamous.

Re: Young U.S. men having a lot less sex in the 21st century, study shows

#224

Post by eloff »

codingslave wrote: post #50

This is a widespread societal change that I think most people are completely unaware of. The majority of women are sleeping with the top 10% of men, sometimes only the top 3-5%, with the rest barely getting any at all. the sexual revolution was never about free love or sexual freedom, it was about womens rights to sleep with the few men they are all attracted to. The lower 80% of men instead saw their sexual freedom…

This is closer in some ways to historically the way things have always worked. The men of status had multiple partners while the majority of men remained single and childless. We know this both from historical record and DNA analysis.

What's new is women can do this without settling down or having children, casually IOW.

Monogamy is better for raising children and for societal stability, but monogamy seems alive and well, just most women have to lower their standards and settle for a regular guy as time runs out on their biological clock and their desirability drops with age. That's making a lot of sweeping generalizations bordering on the offensive, but seems necessary to talk about society in general. Obviously individual motivations and paths in life vary widely.

I wonder what the societal implications are for having a majority of young men be very undesirable and a majority of women start on top of the world at 18 and steadily fall down from there and have to settle. It doesn't seem to be good for either gender.

Re: Young U.S. men having a lot less sex in the 21st century, study shows

#225

Post by starpilot »

tonystubblebine wrote: post #175

There are two coaching perspectives that I think are useful for single men. We don't have many dating coaches in the coaching community I run, but I've been in long conversations with coaches outside that community whose job it is to help men date. One perspective is that it's almost always faster to focus on being more interested rather than more interesting. That means focusing on status and alpha male activities i…

Or you can pretend to be a hot, high-status guy on Tinder and see how much easier life is for them. Spoiler: it's an entirely different world.

Re: Young U.S. men having a lot less sex in the 21st century, study shows

#226

Post by [deleted] »

tharne wrote: post #12

They buried the lede here. > Sexual activity was largely unchanged among unmarried women, along with no notable decline among gay men, researchers reported. Basically sex is following the pattern of wealth. Men as a group aren't having less sex, instead there's a winner take all effect where a small number of men are having a lot of sex with a lot of women while a large number of men are having little to no sex. It'l…

[deleted]

Re: Young U.S. men having a lot less sex in the 21st century, study shows

#227

Post by joelbluminator »

Vysero wrote: post #182
joelbluminator wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most women are people just like you, they want a real relationship and want love. I know it's shocking, but they're not all after sleeping with muscular wealthy men any more than you are with sleeping with an 18 year old blonde with huge breasts. Stop being so superficial and start looking at women as real people.

What makes you think I am not interested in sleeping with an 18 year old blonde with huge breasts? That's EXACTLY who I am interested in sleeping with... personally, I am not interested in a relationship at all nor am I attacking women here so I am not sure where you are coming from.

You sound super mature and very different than the women you described, good luck

Re: Young U.S. men having a lot less sex in the 21st century, study shows

#228

Post by wutbrodo »

georgeburdell wrote: post #94
tharne wrote: post #12

They buried the lede here. > Sexual activity was largely unchanged among unmarried women, along with no notable decline among gay men, researchers reported. Basically sex is following the pattern of wealth. Men as a group aren't having less sex, instead there's a winner take all effect where a small number of men are having a lot of sex with a lot of women while a large number of men are having little to no sex. It'l…

>I wouldn't be surprised to see a serious push for legalized polygamy in a few years. I mentioned the same thing to my wife, only half-joking. Many of her friends are single, professional women who don't want to date down. The problem is that all of the men they're interested in (millionaires in their 30s and 40s) get married quickly after they signal they're on the market. It seems to me there's presently an "ineffi…

As I enter my thirties, this dynamic has started to shift dramatically. All the women I know who haven't settled down by their early 30s are having crises about their inability to find a compatible mate, just as their physical attractiveness is declining precipitously[1]. As the priority shifts from sex/light companionship to deeper relationships, women's position in the modern dating market goes from very good to very bad: most of the age-30ish men I know who aren't in longterm relationships are dating attractive 25 year olds, while knowing that there's a deep bench of women their age that they can get dates (and sex) with relatively easily.

This sudden fall of a cliff, which only takes a few years, has to be extremely disorienting for those women that don't enter committed relationships by that point in their life (or those who exit them). It's also very predictable, but it's hard to blame twenty-somethings for living in the moment and frittering away their most attractive years having lots of sex. Assuming that marrying down is a better fate than remaining a spinster, it's not clear to me how these dynamics balance out.

I know this all sounds rather harsh, but it's an inevitability of looking at the "market dynamics" of a matching problem.

[1] I don't say this to be insulting, it's just a fact of male attraction in the same way that the massive skew towards the tiny top decile is for female attraction.

Re: Young U.S. men having a lot less sex in the 21st century, study shows

#229

Post by selimthegrim »

eigenvalue wrote: post #43
tharne wrote: post #12

They buried the lede here. > Sexual activity was largely unchanged among unmarried women, along with no notable decline among gay men, researchers reported. Basically sex is following the pattern of wealth. Men as a group aren't having less sex, instead there's a winner take all effect where a small number of men are having a lot of sex with a lot of women while a large number of men are having little to no sex. It'l…

I think this is exactly right. Apps like Tinder that normalized online "dating" (before the apps it was much less common among younger people) have allowed the "apex predator" men with good jobs/looks/personalities to have sex on demand with virtually unlimited numbers of women. This has also been made possible because a lot more women are now willing to be in non-exclusive sexual relationships at the beginning when…

You say forced to settle, but why is it that women never get to "grow up" in this scenario?

Re: Young U.S. men having a lot less sex in the 21st century, study shows

#230

Post by gertlex »

Grimm1 wrote: post #114
tharne wrote: post #12

They buried the lede here. > Sexual activity was largely unchanged among unmarried women, along with no notable decline among gay men, researchers reported. Basically sex is following the pattern of wealth. Men as a group aren't having less sex, instead there's a winner take all effect where a small number of men are having a lot of sex with a lot of women while a large number of men are having little to no sex. It'l…

I'm a high earner in tech like I imagine many people on the forum, and also like many people on the forum my life is super busy. My last relationship ended really badly took like two years to get over it and then I was suddenly really busy and I've kept being really busy as my titles have changed and my personal interest in starting my own business has increased etc etc and now we're in a pandemic. I'd argue that the…

> I'd argue that there's a whole group of young guys who are just so freaking busy and not really in a place where they can meet a bunch of single women ...

I'm not sure this is new? I also wonder how large is the group is, and whether this category is as applicable outside of tech (which is a small fraction of the population in my mind). I suspect it's not that large, and groupings by other categories discussed elsewhere in these comments are more relevant.

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