On incels, dead bedrooms and the hard problems of loneliness • Hacker News Board

Re: On incels, dead bedrooms and the hard problems of loneliness

#401

Post by Kaze404 » Tue, May 04, 2021, 7:13 PM UTC

textgel wrote: post #346

krastanov wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are making some pretty wild misrepresentations of reality: https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2020/07/07/a-centu... The closest thing I can find to your interpretation is that women of color are less probable to adopt the term "feminist" because they are less probable to feel the movement has done enough for them. I do not know who has convinced you of an alternative definition of the word, but feminism me…

Literally the first google result of "women identifying as feminst" https://www.ipsos.com/en-us/american-women-and-feminism And plenty more for the willing student; however an ideology that considers "men are on average taller and stronger than women" to be a controversial statement might understandably place some difficulty on those in need of finding these things. And funnily enough the definition of a group has no…

> an ideology that considers "men are on average taller and stronger than women" to be a controversial statement

Citation needed

Re: On incels, dead bedrooms and the hard problems of loneliness

#402

Post by colmvp » Tue, May 04, 2021, 7:13 PM UTC

rc-1140 wrote: post #279

One thing about the post in its entirety, not just the content, that really stood out to me was that there was a commenter "kayla" who behaved exactly in the manner that the author outlined when talking about the "feminist" and "MRA" subgroups. They immediately jumped onto the aggressor's bandwagon, saying that the lowercase-i incels were simply too lazy to fix their problems even though extremely-generalized and dis…

Yup, and that's why it's practically impossible to talk about in real life. All they do is push people who experience this into the darkest places of the internet.

Their beliefs that all you have to do is try harder belong in /r/thanksimcured

Re: On incels, dead bedrooms and the hard problems of loneliness

#403

Post by intergalplan » Tue, May 04, 2021, 7:13 PM UTC

Manuel_D wrote: post #254

edgyquant wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve seen this thrown around by Jordan Peterson and his fans but I’ve never met anyone, regardless of how crazy their ideology was, advocate for equality of outcomes outside of basic necessities. I’m convinced it’s a strawman.

I worked at a company that set a diversity target of 33% women in tech roles. In the same all-hands that announced this target leadership said using our definition of a "tech role" 20% of the workforce was women. To achieve this, we gave women two chances to pass the pre-onsite coding interview instead of one. Sure, this isn't as forceful as a hard 50/50 quota but it is pushing the needle away from equality and towar…

> And progressive taxation.

Point of order: I'm taxed the same on my one-millionth dollar of income (assuming the same source) as Jeff Bezos is.

... I just don't have a one-millionth dollar of income to tax, but if someone wants to shift things toward equality rather than equity I'll happily accept donations toward that end. To make things more equal for Bezos and to strike a blow against equity, naturally.

Re: On incels, dead bedrooms and the hard problems of loneliness

#404

Post by cblconfederate » Tue, May 04, 2021, 7:13 PM UTC

Everything has already been said about this subject. Looking at it as a technology problem, it's not a novel problem, i think every advanced and successful society has dealt with it in the past. In ancient athens, Solon's 'technological' solution was to create state brothels for everyone with regulated prices. Rome's foundational myth contains the abduction of the Sabine women, which fulfilled the needs of Roman incel warriors for wives. Victorian age london was full of brothels. The second part of this 'technological' solution was the subjugation of women.

Nowadays, as the article says, it's hard to deny that the problem exists, but it's fair to say that the solutions above are not going to recur in any advanced society. However, we do have sex tech that is advancing by leaps, and we should be able to solve the physical/sexual part of the problem soon. We don't have a tech solution for the intimacy deficit, but I think that it can be dealt with alternative bonds and more generally with doing things that are fulfilling. We are not far from the first ex utero children, which should contribute to solving that intimacy deficit.

Now, i don't know how many startups are working in this area at the moment; there are definetly some teledildonics companies.

Re: On incels, dead bedrooms and the hard problems of loneliness

#405

Post by ceilingcorner » Tue, May 04, 2021, 7:13 PM UTC

toyg wrote: post #396

ceilingcorner wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These aren’t either or situations. Acting as if the only options are an abusive marriage or prostitution is really misleading. There are plenty of ways to incentivize monogamy, disincentivize divorce, and yet still allow for individual freedom. Why haven’t these been tested? I’ll suggest because like all movements, the gender equality movement has been driven largely by extremist activists (who gain social power) and…

> Why haven’t these been tested? Have they not? Marriage is widely incentivized in most societies. The UK reality at the moment, for example, heavily punishes singles: the housing markets optimizes for two incomes, pricing out singles; the taxing system favours spreading income over two individuals; and you have plenty of other marriage-related allowances. I'd be surprised if this was significantly different in the U…

I wouldn’t say that it’s incentivized at all. Weddings are expensive, divorces are financially disastrous (yet easy to initiate), and a sizable segment of the population thinks the idea of marriage is “uncool”, for lack of a better word. Things like adultery are nearly outright encouraged in Netflix shows and novels.

It doesn’t surprise me at all that many people look at marriage as it currently stands and just say, no thanks. This goes against pretty much every society, historically.

https://www.ranker.com/list/best-tv-shows-about-cheating/ran...

Re: On incels, dead bedrooms and the hard problems of loneliness

#406

Post by spoonjim » Tue, May 04, 2021, 7:14 PM UTC

tsm_sf wrote: post #358

spoonjim wrote: post #140

Essentially, what we have right now in the sexual marketplace echoes what we have in the economy... a lot of the sex is being had by a small fraction of the people. The need for sex is perhaps as high as the need for money but nobody talks about this crushing inequality, perhaps because there is no practical way to “tax and redistribute” sex. The problem is worse for men since a man needs a certain set of skills and…

The problem is this bizarre set of expectations that's sprung up with some folks. Sex isn't equal. It never has been. It never will be. Think about it for real for a minute.

You can say the same about wealth, or height, or anything, that doesn’t change the fact that the people who don’t have any want some.

Re: On incels, dead bedrooms and the hard problems of loneliness

#407

Post by jfengel » Tue, May 04, 2021, 7:16 PM UTC

tryonenow wrote: post #42

giantg2 wrote: post #3

"It’s 2021, and it would be pretty hard to find someone who would come out and say that women deserve to be treated worse than men by default, and similarly difficult to find someone believes men shouldn’t have rights. In that sense at least we are all feminists and men’s rights activists, but nearly 100% of everyone reading this would have felt some emotional recoil from being called at least one of those two things…

The problem with the definition of equality within the modern feminist movement is that it does not make allowance for the social power that females intrinsically have over men. In particular it completely ignores that, as in the vast majority of sexually dimorphic species, women are (at social scales) effectively the gatekeepers of the bedroom, and this gives females massive influence over male behavior. The dominan…

That's not "gatekeeping the bedroom". That's called "bodily autonomy". They're allowed to decide who gets to stick what inside their body -- exactly the same as you have.

You appear to resent women for being allowed to decide what happens to their own bodies. You also seem to think that this is the only thing in society that actually matters -- that this one thing gives women all of the power.

I believe you should reconsider these positions. Bodily autonomy is a bare minimum. What is it about access to a woman's body that is so vitally important to you?

Re: On incels, dead bedrooms and the hard problems of loneliness

#408

Post by standardUser » Tue, May 04, 2021, 7:17 PM UTC

at_a_remove wrote: post #376

standardUser wrote: post #369

There are some real solutions to be had here... 1) Decriminalize sex work. 2) Implement a national healthcare system that fully covers mental health services, including regular therapy sessions. 3) Expand sex education to include more diverse types of sex and relationships, including non-monogamy. These won't solve the problem. They will absolutely make the problem less severe.

We have plenty of places decriminalizing sex work. What they are not decriminalizing, however, is purchasing sex work. Both are required for the first item on your list to do anything. And it that is going to require a lot of nuance, too. I recall seeing someone reacting to a post by a former sex worker who lamented how these men had been "raping her body." If that is considered a valid viewpoint, then even more work…

Right, it must be decriminalized entirely, not just select aspects. It reminds me of when a lot of places decriminalized marijuana possession, while somehow forgetting that weed does not materialize out of thin air but must be grown and distributed. Meaning the thing they just "decriminalized" was still part and parcel of illegal acts. So far only those same cowardly half-measures have been used towards sex work in most of the US.

Re: On incels, dead bedrooms and the hard problems of loneliness

#409

Post by Ajedi32 » Tue, May 04, 2021, 7:17 PM UTC

Loughla wrote: post #109

edgyquant wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve seen this thrown around by Jordan Peterson and his fans but I’ve never met anyone, regardless of how crazy their ideology was, advocate for equality of outcomes outside of basic necessities. I’m convinced it’s a strawman.

I don't know why you're being down-voted, you're right. I haven't met anyone, even in the insanely left and progressive university circles that I run in, who advocate for equality in outcome. It's equality in opportunity that's important. It's about letting 'your freedom as an individual to choose your own destiny' actually be 'free' from the start and not constrained by social mores, ingrained biases or discriminati…

My impression is that progressives and conservatives seem to disagree about what constitutes "outcome" vs "opportunity". For example, imagine a tech company found that 20% of it's employees were female and 80% were male, and decided to try to change this by instituting a new program exclusively focused on recruiting women.

A progressive might argue that this program gives women a better "opportunity" to succeed, whereas a conservative would say that the program was created for the purpose of influencing "outcomes", and that by focusing exclusively on women the program is intentionally creating unequal "opportunities".

Re: On incels, dead bedrooms and the hard problems of loneliness

#410

Post by SpicyLemonZest » Tue, May 04, 2021, 7:19 PM UTC

djoldman wrote: post #374

After reading the article, I'm not sure what the main thrust of it is besides, "there are people with relationship problems stemming from one party wanting more sex than the other." There's a discussion about incels and statistics cited, as well as an appeal for sympathy towards those with these difficulties. Is there something I'm missing? I think some of the language isn't quite right but it easily passes consideri…

The article is arguing against the contrary position, common the author's circles (and in my own), that these problems aren't real and the people who express them deserve condemnation rather than sympathy.