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

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

#511

Post by dnissley » Tue, May 04, 2021, 8:30 PM UTC

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote: post #457

thelean12 wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if you can't get women, it's entirely your fault I'm curious, and this will probably be too curt but I am honestly trying to figure it out: Whose fault is it? Because incels believe it's the women's fault, and this message is the opposite. It doesn't seem productive to tell them that it's society's fault or some other external thing. What are they supposed to do about that? Most men that I know, including myself, f…

It's often fault of a psychological trauma suffered in childhood. Sexual abuse, for example. So counseling is one thing that society could provide to such men. Sexual therapy treatments have been used successfully in some countries.

Hadn't considered that -- but has there been a rise in childhood psychological trauma? There's definitely been a shift in the way we talk about trauma, just in the sense that we open up about it more, so that could be part of it.

The example I'm coming back to though are people like my younger brothers, who had relatively happy childhoods (afaik), but still have failed to launch for some reason or another. To be fair my father has anger problems to some degree, but nothing too crazy, just a proclivity to yelling more than was really necessary.

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

#512

Post by Kaze404 » Tue, May 04, 2021, 8:31 PM UTC

textgel wrote: post #433

Kaze404 wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5nu_INVli0

You can find footage of people defending literally any controversial take you might have. Doesn't mean there are enough subscribers to consider their position.

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

#513

Post by jfengel » Tue, May 04, 2021, 8:31 PM UTC

scarmig wrote: post #450

jfengel wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Toxic gender norms hurt both men and women, but we're only willing to consider toxic gender norms that hurt women as a politicized issue. "Patriarchy hurts men" is a feminist slogan. It gets hundreds of thousands of hits on Google. The front page is full of lefty think-pieces saying that we need to consider toxic gender norms hurt men. https://www.google.com/search?q=patriarchy+harms+men The fact that it needs to be…

The issue is that the slogan "patriarchy hurts men" is nearly always used in a way that still puts the onus on men to stop policing gender norms on other men. The reality is that women have every bit as much agency and power in upholding patriarchy that men do, but few women (feminist or not) are willing to acknowledge the extent they enforce toxic gender norms, or even that women enforce toxic gender norms at all.

Women absolutely, positively enforce toxic gender norms. Women are part of the patriarchy. In fact, for many women, the best strategy for them is to embrace the patriarchy as hard as they can. That sets them up for rewards from the dominant paradigm.

Ending patriarchy requires both men and women to reject it. But the ones calling for for an end to patriarchy are the feminists -- which includes both women and men. Feminists absolutely, positively call out women who are guilty of entrenching the patriarchy.

That's not few women. It's lots and lots of women. And lots of men, too.

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

#514

Post by sudosysgen » Tue, May 04, 2021, 8:32 PM UTC

jimbokun wrote: post #473

sudosysgen wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It absolutely isn't. Progressives, when they see inequality of outcomes at the group level , correctly identify an inequality of opportunity. There's no progressive in the world that thinks that everyone should have the same outcomes. That's different from wanting similar outcomes between groups of millions of people, because those almost invariably come from inequality of opportunity. I don't know of any left tenden…

> That's different from wanting similar outcomes between groups of millions of people, because those almost invariably come from inequality of opportunity. Can you cite any evidence that this is the case? It seems you are simply defining inequality of outcome to mean the same thing as inequality of opportunity at the group level.

Unless you believe there are innate differences between the ability of these groups, then yes the two are logically equivalent. If you don't believe so, I'm not going to get in this debate today.

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

#515

Post by Manuel_D » Tue, May 04, 2021, 8:33 PM UTC

sudosysgen wrote: post #236

textgel wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You believe in quotas, you believe in equality of outcome. In fact I could be inclined to agree with you in some ways; its more accurate to state that progressives don't believe in equality of outcome in much the same way as they don't really hold any disdain for racism/sexism or any of the other causes that claim to champion but they like the power that comes from doing so. For example no progressive has any issues…

I don't believe in quotas. I don't think people from every different group should do the exact same in every job. I don't think that quotas are an effective way of dealing with inequalities either. I do believe that roughly speaking, for an equal amount of work, black and white people should have similar salaries, for example. Something that is not the case today. This is a disparity that can't be explained away by c…

If the goal is to have equal opportunity, but inequity is assumed to be indicative of unequal opportunity then that's just a long-winded way of saying the goal is equity.

> Same in tech. There are stigmas and discrimination against women in tech at every level. For example, different countries have massively different amounts of women in engineering. Women in countries where this amount is lower often report discrimination. So this is clearly not a question of choice, and is thus a gap in opportunities led by sexism.

Do you have a source for this claim? Because this contradicts the sources I have read on this topic. The share of women in engineering varies, but not by much. Most countries fall between the 20-30% range. We see no countries where women make up the majority. Furthermore, the representation of women in countries with better gender equality is actually lower than ones that are highly misogynistic [1].

1. https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/02/the-more...

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

#516

Post by TheAdamAndChe » Tue, May 04, 2021, 8:33 PM UTC

colinmhayes wrote: post #487

TheAdamAndChe wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a generalization about social trends. These traits often show on a bell curve, with some outliers on each side, but those outliers don't mean that the trend isn't real.

source?

Here[1] is one, Ctrl+F "our traits and abilities tend to be distributed normally, in a bell shaped curve."

[1] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/insight-therapy/2011...

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

#517

Post by scarmig » Tue, May 04, 2021, 8:37 PM UTC

rafaelero wrote: post #400

scarmig wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> having a romantic and sexual relationship is not a requirement for a happy life. This is a bit silly: either it's trivially true but irrelevant, if the claim is that there exist people who can live happy lives without (sexual) relationships; or it's flatly false, if the claim is that everyone can be equally happy without relationships as they would be with them. Relationships bring significant happiness. People who…

Not disagreeing with your main point, but twin studies show that marriage status account for only 1% of variance in happiness. So maybe the idea that most people need a romantic relationship to be happy is a little overblown?

Do you have a particular study you could point me to? I do find twin studies useful.

I found

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3629371/

which addresses a variation of the question. The unpaired half of twins with discordant marital status show significantly (in the case of men) higher rates of depression; women also seem to too, but because there were so few twins of discordant marital status in general, the test is pretty underpowered and so the confidence intervals are huge. Given that, it's actually pretty impressive that it was able to find any significant differences at all.

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

#518

Post by dukeofdoom » Tue, May 04, 2021, 8:37 PM UTC

I watched this average looking girl on youtube go to stunning. She started by caring about her appearance. And started looking to basically start upgrading her self, one step at a time.

1) She started to work out regularly

2) She got a nose job

3) Buys well fitting designer clothes

4) Spends money on hair and nails

5) Wears gold jewelry and hand bags.

All of these complement her appearance.

When some girls go to so much effort to look good. While the incel guy does nothing to improve their appearance. And often does the opposite. Terrible diet and sometimes even terrible hygenie. Yet expects to date a girl like this.

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

#519

Post by spoonjim » Tue, May 04, 2021, 8:37 PM UTC

phkahler wrote: post #462

toyg wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there is no practical way to “tax and redistribute” sex. But there is a way to improve supply: give dignity to prostitution.

>> But there is a way to improve supply: give dignity to prostitution. Better yet, guys need to learn to be the kind of man women want to fvck. They're not obligated and attraction is non-negotiable. Reality can be harsh. Guys need to treat themselves with dignity and put themselves together.

The problem is that teaching men to become the kind of men that women want to fuck generates pretty toxic men if there isn’t anything beyond the “fuck.“ I really do believe the old model, where you taught men to be the kind of men that women want to marry, is fundamentally different even though sex and marriage are closely related. A 18-21 year old woman looking for a man to spend the rest of her life with is going to look at a broader set of criteria, and thus incentivize a broader set of achievements by men, than a woman looking to just spend the next hour with a guy. Being the kind of guy who women want to marry, so that you have the broadest choice of women to marry, requires some effort towards the criteria for sexual desirability: muscles, grooming, etc., but also things like having a good reputation in the community, having a good job, being perceived as one who would be a good father, etc.

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

#520

Post by bonoboTP » Tue, May 04, 2021, 8:38 PM UTC

phkahler wrote: post #449

colanderman wrote: post #154

I feel a common issue with such "dead bedroom" discussions is the seeming lack of capacity of some parties (including some prominent toplevel comments here) to understand how deep a need for sex many people have. To think sex can be replaced with "strong friendships" is laughable to anyone who actually feels a strong desire for sex. The dead bedroom situations I've seen with my friends (M->F equally as well as F->M)…

>> I feel a common issue with such "dead bedroom" discussions is the seeming lack of capacity of some parties (including some prominent toplevel comments here) to understand how deep a need for sex many people have. When I first saw Maslow's hierarchy of needs sex appeared on it TWICE. Once on the bottom level as a basic physical need (to what extent varies of course) and again I think on the 3rd level or so as a for…

It's not a basic physical need. It's a psychological need. We know, because many people can go years or decades without sex. That's fundamentally different from food, air, water and shelter from the elements.

Not saying it isn't an important psychological need, but it's not a literal "basic physical need". Words mean things.