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Dating, education, and sex ratios

robkhenderson.com

381–390 of 446 posts

Re: Dating, education, and sex ratios

#381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is there a common thread here? Can you imagine what might prompt such a response? What tends to prompt such responses in my experience is saying anything along the lines of "In my experience, I've noticed there is a tendency for (insert gender) to..." Actually, in hindsight, the inflammatory responses mostly only happen when the inserted gender is women.

I'm sometimes the one firing off the "inflammatory response", and it's usually in a group of men where someone says something blatantly misogynistic, not just stereotypical.

Right, that's the sort of Problem People that are being discussed here. Without a doubt you use the term "blatantly misogynistic" in ways so far removed from the actual meaning as to be both useless and unpredictable. I've seen people use this term to describe hiring people with specific skills, for example.

99% of the time something is described as woman-hating, which is what that word means, it's nothing of the sort. But feminist extremists react so extraordinarily over the top, and our culture unfortunately forbids firing people for this type of OTT reaction, that everyone else lives in fear of triggering them.

So help everyone out here. Next time you think you've heard something "blatantly misogynist", stay out of it. Let people talk.

Re: Dating, education, and sex ratios

#382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe y'all just need to appreciate the value of working class women? I married a child of immigrants who is thrifty, values experiences over things, works hard, and appreciates that we want to live modestly so we can be free to retire as soon as possible! Together seven years, married for three. Maybe when I was dating I was passed over by materialistic women because I drove an old car and don't wear fancy clothes,…

There's lots of luck involved, which is always missing from these conversations. I've taken a similar route to you, and it's working out spectacularly, but, damn, it took a long while.

Same here. Wife is amazing: razor sharp, smart, beautiful, hard worker, happy to cook and help out around the home (we divide the tasks). Self employed, working class. Not particularly ideological, if anything she's conservative in the way self employed non-office workers often are (understands the value of money and stuff).

She also teased me because when we first met she thought maybe I was poor (don't own a car and am happy to stay in cheap hotels when travelling for work), she also had no idea what high end SWE salaries could be. Same for her friends who were a bit suspicious at first that maybe I was borrowing money or something to buy her/us nice things. The wider world still hasn't really understood how well programmers can do, it seems. I guess because yeah there's no culture of flashing it around like in some other job sectors. They all expect bankers to be rich.

And yeah, damn it took a while here too! Many years of searching to find her and in the end I got lucky.

Re: Dating, education, and sex ratios

#383
post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As food for thought: relationships are often greater than the sum of their parts. My tribe/community/circle enriches my life well beyond the experiences I could have by myself.

But there in lies the condition. You need to have a tribe/community/circle to take you in. There's going to be people for whom no community will accept them.

You can create your own community. Rarely will anyone else do it for you.

Re: Dating, education, and sex ratios

#384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting that future security, free time to spend with your partner and do housework, and hobbies don't count as something to offer (at least relative to a flashy lifestyle). But, yes, a guy needs to find an effective angle that's in demand on the relationship market.

Maybe y'all just need to appreciate the value of working class women? I married a child of immigrants who is thrifty, values experiences over things, works hard, and appreciates that we want to live modestly so we can be free to retire as soon as possible! Together seven years, married for three. Maybe when I was dating I was passed over by materialistic women because I drove an old car and don't wear fancy clothes,…

There aren't enough women like that.

Re: Dating, education, and sex ratios

#385

This is a known issue but the down stream effect won’t be felt for a while. Let’s be clear we’re talking about general behavioral trend, not trying to police an individual, which is the crux of contention for these topics. Many women still hold on to the idea of finding a partner that is wealthier and more educated. This is due to the past (over)reliance of their partners for stability. But this is no longer true. Th…

> The education gap between men and women are growing. More women enroll and graduate from college then men. Many young men, mostly lower-middle class, (whether fairly or not) feel like the education system does not work for them. So, like, isn't the question "why"? Why do boys, particularly lower- or lower-middle class, not believe in the education system as much as their sisters? School sucks, work sucks, then you…

It's because the education system is systematically biased against males and they pick up on this, correctly perceiving education as a system run by sexists that will penalize them for their gender and which doesn't really want them there.

Anti-male hiring bias in academia:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35762380

Grading biases in high school:

https://mitili.mit.edu/sites/default/files/project-documents...

I use a combination of blind and non-blind test scores to show that middle school teachers favor girls when they grade. This favoritism, estimated in the form of individual teacher effects, has long-term consequences: as measured by their national evaluations three years later, male students make less progress than their female counterparts. Gender-biased grading accounts for 21 percent of boys falling behind girls in math during middle school. On the other hand, girls who benefit from gender bias in math are more likely to select a science track in high school.

This is a problem with society but especially amongst liberals, who dominate the education system. Your own comments display very clear and strong anti-male bias, ascribing the issue to parents being indulgent (!), boys uncontrolled aggression being the problem, the media, that men don't apply themselves ... any explanation except the obvious one that teachers aren't treating people fairly.

Re: Dating, education, and sex ratios

#386
post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Added bonus of selecting for the 0.01% of men: if you're extraordinarily lucky to secure him, you have a new problem: the man has options.

Thats one thing I don't understand about hypergamy (dating app data proves it), why would a woman be in a situation in which she is easily the second, third wheel or worse

Status signaling to other women, I imagine. But perhaps also media/social media fueling these unrealistic expectations and incorrectly normalizing them.

Re: Dating, education, and sex ratios

#387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's insulting in the sense that the stoicism of many men is considered unintelligent, primitive, underdeveloped. I've heard a lot about men needing to be more expressive and open about their inner emotional state, but I've never heard people mention stoicism in the same context or that stoicism necessarily leads to the opposite of that. Or that stoicism is associated with being unintelligent, primitive or underdev…

I'm not a native speaker so it could be the wrong word. I wasn't aiming for Stoicism, the philosophy. Instead trying to describe the effect where some men seem emotionally indifferent, or present themselves as such.

Okay, that makes a lot more sense.

Re: Dating, education, and sex ratios

#388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me of the period of people coming to America during colonial times. That there were stories and tales of people joining Native American tribes, completely leaving their old lives behind and becoming happier but you never heard accounts of the reverse. Native Americans willing joining the colonist, this rarely, if ever, happened.

I don't think is a good comparison. Native Americans couldn't join the colonists because the colonists were very racist against them, whereas apparently the Natives were more accepting of colonists who wanted to join them.

"...when white persons of either sex have been taken prisoners young by the Indians, and lived a while among them, tho’ ransomed by their Friends, and treated with all imaginable tenderness to prevail with them to stay among the English, yet in a Short time they become disgusted with our manner of life, and the care and pains that are necessary to support it, and take the first good Opportunity of escaping again into the Woods, from whence there is no reclaiming them."[0]

I don't think "Natives were less racist" is a convincing explanation for how badly white colonists wanted to return to living with them (even when, according to Franklin, the white society they had returned to was as kind as possible to convince them to stay). It may be a part of it, but doesn't explain why everyone who lived in Native culture was so disgusted with white culture after.

[0] https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-04-02-01...

Re: Dating, education, and sex ratios

#389

All the data is good, but the way it is framed is a bit misleading. First, lets get one thing straight: dysfunction in the dating world negatively affects both men and women. So framing it as "men floundering, women most affected" is disingenuous. What is it about the prospects a man has that he has no desire to become desirable? If men's lives are less rewarding wouldn't it be them, not the women, that are the most…

[flagged]

Well written, and agreed.

What I find in particularly striking is how dating/marriage in both articles and comments is described in such mechanical terms. As a market. You being the consumer matching specs against supply.

The absolute most important thing, actual love for somebody, seems an outdated concept. It's utility now. What can you do FOR ME, the obvious center of the universe?

Some seem angry with this "product" marriage. It doesn't seem to do exactly what they want, kind of like a bad product to be returned.

Hyper-individualist consumerist society.

Re: Dating, education, and sex ratios

#390

All the data is good, but the way it is framed is a bit misleading. First, lets get one thing straight: dysfunction in the dating world negatively affects both men and women. So framing it as "men floundering, women most affected" is disingenuous. What is it about the prospects a man has that he has no desire to become desirable? If men's lives are less rewarding wouldn't it be them, not the women, that are the most…

[flagged]

You make a very wide set of assumptions about some kind of metaphysical complementarity inside a couple that erases homosexuality and presupposes some naturally ordained monogamy.

I am sorry, but unless you substantiate it in anthropological terms, it is utterly unfalsifiable and the argument should be thrown out in its entirety.

The lived experiences of many queer and polyamorous people, plus the evidence of "deviant" behaviours in many animal species and historical and present societies contradicts your prescriptions.

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