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On incels, dead bedrooms and the hard problems of loneliness

residentcontrarian.substack.com

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

#801

Post by kelnos »

odiroot wrote: post #424

The longer I live, and especially after having read that post, the more I think the civil institution of marriage is a mistake. We would be better off, if it remained a purely religious or traditional ceremony, without the government putting a stack of papers into the equation. Just let people be happy together; even bound by a promise, if they wish so, but without the external pressure and the fallout in case they f…

A breakup sans marriage is still going to be devastating. At minimum, how do you decide who gets what, without some sort of legal framework around it?

What if you end up in the hospital, unconscious? Who makes care decisions for you? Sure, we can have a legal framework just for that, but that's just one more thing you have to do. What if you die? Who gets your stuff? Sure, you should have written up a will, but many people haven't done it. More overhead.

Something to consider is how long homosexual communities have fought for marriage equality. Yes, part of it is certainly symbolic, but I've spoken to gay/lesbian friends who (when they couldn't get married) were anxious all the time about not having the legal benefits around marriage.

I think it'd be possible to not have legal marriage anymore, but you'd still have to have a bunch of legal constructs around the idea of being partnered to someone in order for many life things to work properly. Whether or not that would be better or worse is certainly up for debate.

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

#802

Post by spoonjim »

nradov wrote: post #708
spoonjim wrote: post #537

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not talking about 18-21 year old women now, I’m talking about those who got married when extramarital sex was taboo. The best place I’ve seen to hear about how they chose their spouse is a radio site called StoryCorps.

People (especially young people) make those decisions based on impulse and emotion, then rationalize after the fact. You can't believe the explanations they give. Most people just say what they think they're supposed to say, or what they think would please the interviewer.

One piece of concrete data is that a huge fraction of people in US cities 100 years ago married people who lived in their same block, and a substantial fraction in their same apartment building. That’s evidence of a different approach to mating.

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

#803

Post by Seattle3503 »

bigthymer wrote: post #530
schnevets wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am frequently surprised by the number of "dead bedrooms" I know about among friends, and I sincerely believe the problem is the western world's secretly coy perception of sex. There is a superficial surface level that is extremely wrong (for example, Successful people have sex, the most successful people have the hottest sex with the hottest partners; Sex isn't about planning it's about letting the desire overcome…

> I think this is a very Americanized perspective, though, so I would be especially interested in hearing perspectives from other cultures. From my understanding, in Islam, sex is a normal, expected part of marriage. If one partner doesn't want to have sex, it doesn't give the other partner the right to demand it. Rather, if there is a lack of desire for sex, it is grounds for divorce.

It was the same with the puritans. You had to produce children somehow.

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

#804

Post by landryraccoon »

kreft wrote: post #451
landryraccoon wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Man this thread sure must be depressing if you're single. Single? That's your problem, that your single. Go get a relationship and be happy! Way to dogpile on people when they're down. I say enjoy being single. If a relationship happens, good for you, but don't listen to people that say you're damaged / worse off / going down the drain because you're single. They're just jealous you can travel and play video games wh…

> They're just jealous you can travel and play video games whenever you want. =) To infantilize people like this is more hurtful really. We both know your allotted time with a Nintendo isn't a source of envy. It's a problem, it needs addressing. If you've successfully overridden one of your most primal biological instincts then good for you, you don't need to read all this. However, I suspect most people who say they…

I'm honestly very surprised at this entire thread.

Clearly the smiley face at the end didn't convey that I was half speaking in jest. But people seemed to have taken my position as an assault on their entire world view.

Let me ask you this though:

> overridden one of your most primal biological instincts

Have you considered the existence of individuals that are gay, lesbian, or asexual? How do these individuals fit into your apparently biological-reproductive-imperative based view of happiness?

Or would you go further to say that those individuals also cannot be happy, since they can't be truly fulfilling their biological instincts either?

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

#805

Post by kelnos »

didibus wrote: post #331
iammisc wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Religious couples tend to have the most fulfilling sex lives. Conservative religious couples have the best: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7060099/Highly-reli... Myself, as a highly conservative married man, my findings confirm the daily mail article, esp. when I look at the sex lives of my married friends who were more libertine in their youth. EDIT: A few theories: 1. My wife is not on birth control, whic…

That survey describes personal satisfaction. So it doesn't mean that they have more sex, or better sex, simply that to their own standards and expectations they are satisfied with their sex life. With this in mind, I'm not surprised that religious couple feel more satisfied. Having said that, maybe society does set unrealistic expectations when it comes to sex, and it's possible that skews people's perspective and ma…

I'm on your side here (in that I have little patience or care for religious dogma around anything, let alone sex), but I think the point you bring up argues the opposite of what you're arguing.

> That survey describes personal satisfaction. So it doesn't mean that they have more sex, or better sex, simply that to their own standards and expectations they are satisfied with their sex life.

The thing is, that's literally all that matters in this kind of survey. If I'm 10-out-of-10 happy, that is objectively better than someone who is 7-out-of-10 happy, even if those numbers were arrived at via subjective means. Wouldn't you rather be the guy who says "I literally could not be happier", vs. the guy who says "I'm pretty damn happy, but my life is still lacking in some ways"? Ignorance really can be bliss, sometimes.

Your "knowing better" argument is probably a big factor. But isn't that an argument for only having sex with one person? If you end up enjoying sex with that person, then you have nothing to compare it to; most importantly, nothing to compare it to unfavorably. If you don't end up enjoying sex with that person, then yes, you do have a problem. But the survey data seems to suggest that lifelong-monogamy must not produce that outcome often enough to matter.

Not saying everyone should opt for religiously-motivated lifelong monogamy. It's definitely not something I was ever interested in. But obviously there are benefits to it, or no one would do it. (Well, ok, true believers might cite fear of divine consequences as their reason for doing it, which isn't great.)

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

#806

Post by troway357924 »

CapCade wrote: post #769

I expect this will get lost in the commotion here, but: The author uses language around sex that I think treats it, subtly but disturbingly, as a commodity. They write of a "withholder/withholdee", of "women who want to provide sexual intimacy" (note the word "provide"), and of "women... putting out". The problem with this framework (which is endemic to the larger culture) is that it runs against bodily autonomy for…

If your weekly tennis partner started canceling on you at the last minute, you'd get annoyed too.

The difference is sex is often intrinsic to the relationship. When someone wants it a lot less or more or different than before then the terms of the relationship unexpectedly become worse for at least one person. That can feel like bad faith even if it wasn't.

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

#807

Post by TylerLives »

tryonenow wrote: post #523
jfengel wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 re…

I really take offense to the notion that simply for criticizing the feminist movement or acknowledging the romantic power dynamic, I "resent women". Nor have I implied that "this one thing gives women all of the power". Neither of these are arguments, instead they are cheap, disingenuous dismissals which only stifle meaningful discussion. I am merely explaining that this is a particular domain over which women have m…

What can be done about this though? I don't think it's a good idea to make life harder for those who are privileged in some way, because it will just lead to a world where everyone is equally miserable. And it would be wrong to put all the women in this category, because not all of them have the privilege that you talk about.

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

#808

Post by tryonenow »

GavinMcG wrote: post #781
zajio1am wrote: post #748

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gatekeeping is relevant only when there is scarcity. If there is a pair of people (A, B) where A's desire for sex is three times bigger than B's, then although both A and B have full bodily autonomy (that nobody disputes), in practice only B would be a gatekeeper, as sex for A is scarce, while sex for B is plentiful (relative to their desires). The same argument could be generalized to society. If one gender has on a…

Exactly, which gets back to the actual underlying dynamic: the accusation of gatekeeping only makes sense on a societal level, not an individual one, and can only be turned into an equality issue if one (silently) shifts back to the perspective of an individual who believes they are entitled to an equal amount of sex.

This is a common and disingenuous misconstrual of the argument. It isn't about feeling entitled to sex, it's about making access to sex more evenly distributed across society, for both genders. Not because of entitlement, but because of better overall happiness for both genders.

You are talking about a movement which on its face is about social equality, but refuses to acknowledge that is explicitly engineering norms which are already creating oppressive social inequality. You clearly have disdain for them but whether you want to admit it or not, "incels" are a low status social class, and if they are the way they are because of the efforts of others then by modern progressive logic they are oppressed - by feminists. The refusal to even acknowledge the possibility that this could be happening is a form of disenfranchisement, and is inevitable when your entire worldview is based on a false oppressor/oppressed binary, which is the essence of modern feminism (progressivism really).

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

#809

Post by [deleted] »

silicon2401 wrote: post #507
landryraccoon wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be frank, you response sounds a bit more defensive than mine. Are you arguing that if someone claims that it's possible to be perfectly content and happy while single, that that somehow undermines the happiness you've found with your partner, as if the mere claim that contentment can be found without a partner invalidates the fact that you're happy with your partner? I can easily read your response as saying somet…

Your reading would be an unreasonable stretch, as I explicitly acknowledge in my comment that for a random person, > it may or may not be true that being in a (good) relationship would make them happier. I don't know if person XYZ would be happier single in a relationship, and I don't have an opinion on it. Everyone should be free to do what they want, whether or not it makes them happy, and I don't care either way.…

[deleted]

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

#810

Post by xiphias2 »

a_puppy wrote: post #798
xiphias2 wrote: post #773

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no easy solution, but there is a simple solution (simple is often hard to do): work out 5x1.5 hours a week for a year (and then don't stop) and eat healthy. I was incel for a long time because I believed that personality matters with dating (it matters for finding a long term partner, but not for getting laid). The ,,game'' helped incels (including me) to go even more on the wrong path.

I appreciate you trying to help, but I don't think your advice is really applicable to me personally. My problem isn't that I'm ugly; in fact, I'm probably slightly above average attractiveness. My problem is that I have trouble forming relationships because my social skills are broken, and I have a ton of lingering trauma from being shunned by my peers for most of my childhood. (But everybody's situation is differen…

I see, I understand. I had to go through a lot of change in my personality to get from a point where I think about what the other person thinks of me to the point where I'm more concerned about whether the relationship is working. But it took about 15 years for me.
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