Explaining Sex Rate Changes

I'm still highly suspicious of the narrative all of this is premised on.

TFA mentions the low sample size of the original study, and augments it with Twitter polls. But TFA author's Twitter follows aren't exactly a representative sample of the population...

Furthermore, monogamy and sexual activity remains strong for people in their 30s, and I expect this will continue to be true in the future. Women are having children later, but there's still a strong preference for monogamy among people who choose to have children.

This article does a good job at summarizing the problems with the narrativein OP's post: https://ifstudies.org/blog/male-sexlessness-is-rising-but-no...

> It remains to be seen what the end result will be this time around.

More men will learn how to make themselves attractive people, so that women who aren't ready to have children yet are none-the-less invested in forming a strong and lasting relationship that includes a sexual component.

Some men won't accept this and they will be celibate for a good chunk of their 20s.

Oh well.

What should not happen is a regression to the sexual and gender role "morals" of the past. Quantitatively, there are at least as many women as men in the world. Qualitatively, "celibacy during your 20s" is not even remotely similar to the level of harm experienced by the bottom third of women for most of human history.

I also think that will not happen, and fears about social stability are enormously overblown. It's exceptionally unlikely that a small subgroup of men who already refuse to adapt is large enough and motivated enough to hold the rest of society at gunpoint.

Funny thing you mentioned it. While I personally think nobody should read his works, Houellebecq is the writer to peruse after contracting a terminal case of spiritual malaise. One thing I want to add is that Houellebecq's body of work is an assortment of potential solutions to this modern day problem which has become more pronounced in the US lately.

The Extension of the Domain of the Struggle (Whatever) is his first novel. The motif is that similar to economic inequality, due to sexual liberation, the sociosexual arena has become more winner-take-all, hence the extension in the title. The plot chronicles the disillusionment of a sexless programmer in denial after going on a road trip with a similarly dysfunctional co-worker who ended up commiting suicide. The story ends the protagonist going postal but offers no practical solution.

His next book The Elementary Particles follows two half-brothers who were dysfunctional in opposite ways. One was a complete sex addict who failed to individuate and the other became a monk like molecular biologist responsible for making sexual reproduction obsolete.

His next novel Platform is an in-depth analysis of the discontentment of sex tourism from the perspective of his alter ego, which is clearly formed by his own lived experience in Indonesia. I think it's his least coherent work FWIW.

The Possibility of an Island arguably follows the timeline of Atomised and describes the nature of love through the narrative of three clones of the same person from the hedonistic present, totalitarian future and hunter-gatherer post-apocalytic future.

Submission is about the return to traditionalism after a Muslim party won the election in France. The effect is complex but nominal as we all know there is no going back.

I am waiting for the English translation of Serotonin which should be released before end of next year.

> There is nothing even close to an economy around sex.

Absolutely wrong. Dating is one of the most efficient markets. Every individual decides who they will sleep with, date and marry based on a hierarchy of what they can get, what they think they're worth and how attractive they find the other person. There is far more agreement than disagreement in standards of attractiveness from person to person, if not, it would be fairly easy to go out and date just anyone. But no one wants to do that. Everyone tries to date the most attractive person they can get.

For sure it's debatable but this is simply not true:

> Studies show that women have the same hard coded visceral, visual sexual physiological response as men

I don't know what studies you're looking at but you're misinformed. Women don't have the same physiological response to visual stimuli as men do.

I don't know what you mean by "doing the same things" but even if we assume that women are doing those things it doesn't follow from that they are the same as men at a sexual level.

> Isn’t this observation kinda the point of the assertion kids need a stable set of rules at home going back to one source above others whether that is either parent or both as a pair.

That assumes that their parents are the ultimate source of authority and in many cases they aren't. Parents don't typically enforce much of a dress code for instance, but schools will often require uniforms. Kids have to learn a different set of rules for different contexts.

> That’s what prevents them from endlessly pushing their boundaries out.

The only thing that seems to prevent it (or limit it anyway) is constant enforcement, but that's also usually limited to where they have authority. A rule not being enforce in one context is a rule that will probably be broken in that context. Once in a while breaking these rules might even make them appreciate them.