Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Male Sexlessness Is Rising, but Not for the Reasons Incels Claim

ifstudies.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 88 posts

Re: Male Sexlessness Is Rising, but Not for the Reasons Incels Claim

#51

Post by ravenstine »

insickness wrote: post #42

> But the 68% increase from 2002 to 2015 in the incel share of the male, never-married, 22-35-year-old population is mostly due to a decline in marriage, not never-married men having less sex. The authors of this article admit that involuntary celibacy is rising among young men. They admit that 20% of the men are having 60% of the sex while incels claim it's 80%--not that much of a difference. Marriage is declining--…

In general, groups based on men's issues tend to get labeled as misogynist. There's a few reasons for this that I can think of, one being that I do think that a lot of journalists don't seem to apply a lot of intellectual rigor to their work; any group of men is low-hanging fruit for a hit piece exposing them as women-haters who want to abolish women's rights, perpetuate rape culture, etc. Journalists with integrity usually have bigger fish to fry than groups like incels or MGTOW, or even men's rights activists for that matter.

That's why I don't trust the conclusion of the article, even if there are some nuggets of truth to it. It's pretty clear to me, based on the author's snotty attitude splattered here and there, that they aren't interested in understanding incels at all; they want a feather in their cap, and telling incels they're wrong is an excellent way to do that right now.

Secondly, each of these groups tends to have a few really outspoken advocates who hold the most low-brow opinions and ideas. I wouldn't label myself MGTOW(just so happens I don't bother with relationships these days), but I have some familiarity with MGTOW content creators and that group suffers from the problem of having one particularly misogynist advocate(namely Sandman) getting the majority of attention and search results. In reality, I've found men who call themselves MGTOW to be very diverse, most of whom do not harbor any ill-will towards women at all. A lot of MGTOW, just as with others of different male-oriented groups, don't even particularly like each other or agree on that many things. It's really a one-issue concept, but of course it wouldn't seem that way to a journalist who scans over /r/mgtow, completely discounting the fact that Reddit is generally a cesspool, and decides they've got another group they can label as alt-right nazi misogynists. I'm sure that incels suffer from much the same problem, possibly worse, because they're much angrier than MGTOWs because they still ultimately desire women and are very frustrated.

Re: Male Sexlessness Is Rising, but Not for the Reasons Incels Claim

#52

Post by DanBC »

insickness wrote: post #42

> But the 68% increase from 2002 to 2015 in the incel share of the male, never-married, 22-35-year-old population is mostly due to a decline in marriage, not never-married men having less sex. The authors of this article admit that involuntary celibacy is rising among young men. They admit that 20% of the men are having 60% of the sex while incels claim it's 80%--not that much of a difference. Marriage is declining--…

Incel is a distinct sub-group of the people who are involuntarily celibate. It is incorrect to use the term "incel" to refer to everyone who is involuntarily celibate.

> Incels are consistently written off as simply misogynist

Incels are defined by their misogyny, and not by their involuntary celibateness.

Re: Male Sexlessness Is Rising, but Not for the Reasons Incels Claim

#53

Post by tathougies »

insickness wrote: post #42

> But the 68% increase from 2002 to 2015 in the incel share of the male, never-married, 22-35-year-old population is mostly due to a decline in marriage, not never-married men having less sex. The authors of this article admit that involuntary celibacy is rising among young men. They admit that 20% of the men are having 60% of the sex while incels claim it's 80%--not that much of a difference. Marriage is declining--…

> cut off from the sexual marketplace.

Sex is not a marketplace, and it's not surprising that people who view it as such aren't having sex. It's like trying to learn to play the piano using the theory of relativity.

Re: Male Sexlessness Is Rising, but Not for the Reasons Incels Claim

#54

Post by tnzn »

bitL wrote: post #19
dsschnau wrote: post #8

If you're not aware 'incel's are the woman-hating group so vile they were kicked off reddit and one of them committed the van attack in Toronto recently.

Incel is a generic term for involuntarily celibate people. Volcel is for voluntarily celibate people. Both considered weird and unnatural by majority. Don't conflate it with some organized group that reused the name, that would be a pretty big scientific mistake, likely politically motivated.

Yeah, a political debate shouldn't be politically motivated. Boy those positivists.

Re: Male Sexlessness Is Rising, but Not for the Reasons Incels Claim

#55

Post by mlindner »

gumby wrote: post #27
mlindner wrote: post #2

Thus starts the demographic inversion. Hopefully we can fix it before we go the way of Japan.

What's the downside or "the way of Japan"? They had a terrible 20 year economic hangover due to a massive bubble poorly handled, and that definitely had massive negative social spillover effects. But over the past 15 years social surveys have shown increasing (and solidly net positive) happiness and satisfaction with the quality of life across all demographic groups except the extremely old. Notably, over the past de…

The downside of "the way of Japan" is that they'll shortly have no one to pay for all the old people. Keeping old people alive is expensive.

In the US young people pay old people's social security income. You see how many people are talking about the aging baby boomers right? Imagine that but much worse.

Re: Male Sexlessness Is Rising, but Not for the Reasons Incels Claim

#56

Post by mlindner »

sgarman wrote: post #5
mlindner wrote: post #2

Thus starts the demographic inversion. Hopefully we can fix it before we go the way of Japan.

My uneducated opinion is why try to keep adding MORE people to the planet?

Because having a family is a good way to a happy life.

Re: Male Sexlessness Is Rising, but Not for the Reasons Incels Claim

#57

Post by eveningcoffee »

paulcole wrote: post #49
eveningcoffee wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you ancestors had 10 kids then yes, maybe. Otherwise 1 kid per parent (on average) is what is sustainable.

> Otherwise 1 kid per parent (on average) is what is sustainable. Says who? People are responsible for climate change. I mean have a kid if you want to and think it'll be fun or whatever, but the idea that it's "sustainable" decision is a joke.

Well, if you want to work till death then be my guest.

If you believe that society should somehow support their old then I think that one should provide at least one replacement.

If you expect that somebodies else children should support you then I question your sanity. Why should they choose to do so?

If you think that you will be supported by riches you collect during your life time then keep in mind that riches are imaginary.

If you will have no children but 10 others will have 10 children (each) then which genes will prevail? Sustainable or not sustainable?

Edit: I think that it is sustainable to have 1 child per parent. It will keep the population constant. What is not sustainable is to have more than 1 per parent. If we could convince the majority of the world to follow this then the prospects will be much better than today.

What I consider a joke is a belief that if you die out next to the society with very high fertility then it somehow helps the planet. It does not make a dent.

Re: Male Sexlessness Is Rising, but Not for the Reasons Incels Claim

#58

Post by jenkstom »

dsschnau wrote: post #20
thrlskdjfa234 wrote: post #17

I think this misses the mark though. The main thesis of incels is basically that regardless of all other factors people can be so horribly ugly that no one in the right mind will ever desire them. Most of them don't fall into that bucket and have other issues going on, but objectively...is that idea wrong? I'd like to see the study address something like indian men under 5'4 (a strong incel demographic) and see how m…

Yeah it is wrong

Actually the article states that 20% of the men are having 50%-60% of the sex. That's a minority of men having a majority of sex. Different numbers, but not wrong.

Re: Male Sexlessness Is Rising, but Not for the Reasons Incels Claim

#59

Post by paulcole »

eveningcoffee wrote: post #57
paulcole wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Otherwise 1 kid per parent (on average) is what is sustainable. Says who? People are responsible for climate change. I mean have a kid if you want to and think it'll be fun or whatever, but the idea that it's "sustainable" decision is a joke.

Well, if you want to work till death then be my guest. If you believe that society should somehow support their old then I think that one should provide at least one replacement. If you expect that somebodies else children should support you then I question your sanity. Why should they choose to do so? If you think that you will be supported by riches you collect during your life time then keep in mind that riches ar…

How does forcing kids to care for dying parents have any impact on the sustainability/environmental impact of having kids.

> If you expect that somebodies else children should support you then I question your sanity. Why should they choose to do so?

Why are you so sure your own kids would choose to do so? Aren't you making a hundred-thousand-dollar-plus child-rearing bet that they'll feel guilty enough to care for you? Why not just spend that money on a paid caretaker?

> If you will have no children but 10 others will have 10 children (each) then which genes will prevail? Sustainable or not sustainable?

Just because other people are making a bad decision doesn't mean you have to make it, too.

Re: Male Sexlessness Is Rising, but Not for the Reasons Incels Claim

#60

Post by dogma1138 »

This isn’t a new issue and in past times societies found a solution for this, that solution is what some would call “patriarchy”.

Throughout our evolutionary history males have been terribly unsuccessful at procreating compared to females.

Which is why many societies essentially enforced rules of one woman for one men and made promiscuity a sin even more so for women.

Societies who didn’t tended to be much less stable and productive in the long run as they had a very large population of males that essentially had nothing to work for and no future.

This was also enforced by biology as sexual activity was very risky for women as the likelyhood of them getting pregnant was very high.

And a pregnant woman even today would find it quite difficult to manage on her own and most men do not want to raise someone else’s child.

Now in a very short period of time we have had 2 major social changes in regards to women.

Birth control which allowed women to have sex without the fear of getting pregnant and women entering the workforce in droves an for the most part as equals which meant that they were no longer dependent on men to provide for them and more importantly that a career became a socially acceptable life development path for women.

This essentially means that today women don’t need to settle for “lesser” men any more and can actively compete for the top percentage of men as they no longer compete for long term relationships and child caring support.

This inevitably would result in much larger percentage of men being left out of the game.

What makes this worse is that today society at least as far as the west goes essentially stepped out of its role as a matchmaker.

People don’t set people up anymore, even grandmothers don’t try to marry off their grandchildren anymore. And while that may sound archaic it was a pretty big deal in the past.

Events like debutante balls and high school dances all of these were essentially there to allow the sexes to mingle in a manner that would increase the chances of coupling and this is something that goes out do fashion by the day.

Despite not growing up in the US my teens were filled with events that essentially “forced” people to ask each other out and that was a pretty good way of teaching people how to actually well date or at least approach a member of the opposite (or same) sex.

I’ve used to dismiss the whole “incel” phenomenon but I’ve learned that many people that I interact with on a daily basis suffer from this to some extent, I’ve worked with more than a few “30 year old virgins” all of them were while not perfect couldn’t be further from some hate spewing troll on the internet.

Those who aren’t and do still manage date also struggle a lot especially if the only dating they have time for is online dating / tinder and especially if they have a limited social circle that can’t help them out.

I only hope is that we find a solution and strike a good balance before alternatives come into play or worse before socities would amass a critical mass of “incels” because when you have a lot of angry men who can’t get laid civil unrest is quite likely to follow.

Post reply on HN