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Sexual loneliness: A neglected public health problem?

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Re: Sexual loneliness: A neglected public health problem?

#551

Post by zajio1am »

godelski wrote: post #413
formerly_proven wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a bunch more and coincidentally most of them are also leading countries for human trafficking.

I'm looking at Europe and I'm a bit confused how this would be a causal relationship. 9 countries have legalized prostitution: Germany, Netherlands, Austria, Switzerland, Greece, Hungary, Latvia, and Turkey.[0] Human trafficking, in order of severity, is most linked to: Netherlands, UK, Romania, France, Germany, Bulgaria, Italy, Poland, Hungry, Portugal. From this list alone (these tend to follow power laws) there's…

I think there is some confusion about used terminology, where legalization is more like 'regulation', while many european countries do not criminalize prostitution but do not have legal framework for prostitution (e.g. 'abolitionism' in the Wikipedia link). In these countries prostitution is perfectly legal (but not necessary 3rd party involvement, which may may be used to bully prostitutes by attacking their business partners, e.g. landlords renting flats).

Re: Sexual loneliness: A neglected public health problem?

#552

Post by benj111 »

thw09j9m wrote: post #542
benj111 wrote: post #518

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whos considering you in the top 10% v bottom 50%? How you you know there isn't a cultural difference where one group replies that you're attractive to be polite where as the other says the opposite because they feel you're being rude?

Probably because they're not letting me bang them out of politeness.

So is this statistic based on people you've shagged? This appears to be a self selecting group at best.

Did you find more people to have sex with in one group, and concluding you are more attractive to that group? Are you getting more matches from one group? Is the percentage of matches that leads to sex in one group higher? Non of those necessarily mean you were more attractive to one group.

I mean you could be extremely attractive to devout Muslim women and only averagely attractive to college girls. What do you think the stats would say about how many of each group you slept with after a first date?

Re: Sexual loneliness: A neglected public health problem?

#553

Post by zajio1am »

godelski wrote: post #503
foldr wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s more than 9. It’s also legal in the blue-colored countries confusingly labeled with ‘Abolitionism’. It in fact appears to be legal in most of the countries on your human trafficking list.

I don't think it is confusing and I don't think it is what you're suggesting. The wiki explicitly says that the act of prostitution is legal but the act of procuring it is illegal. Essentially you get arrested for paying for sex. The John. This is often done so that women have more of a safety net and can feel more comfortable going to police if they are abused. In other areas if you are trafficked you might feel sca…

That is true in orange 'Neo-abolitionism', not in blue 'Abolitionism', where buying sex is also legal, just not 3rd-party involvement.

Re: Sexual loneliness: A neglected public health problem?

#554

Post by poloniust »

wpietri wrote: post #122
RajT88 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Lol religious conservatives. This is the solvable part. They don't run the country; they're a minority. > Encourage men to have sex with men? Religion is a fig leaf here. The dislike of LGBTQ+ people is retroactively justified by religion, but it just isn't about religion. If it really was about religion, there'd be a lot more weird hills they'd be dying on, since most of the Anti-Gay stuff is in the Old Testament,…

> My theory is that gay men, as well as trans women are a subversion of traditional gender roles which is why conservatives get worked up about it Exactly. The traditional gender roles come out of the tradition of patriarchal exploitation of women and subordinate men. The extreme version of this is seen in groups like the FLDS [1] and make the dynamics more apparent. But it's the same basic deal even on the softer co…

The irony of transgenderism is that it's just yet another form of patriarchal exploitation of women, in its drive to eradicate female-only spaces, in encouraging actual female women to mutilate themselves to reach some twisted ideal of masculinity, and in reifying gendered impositions as the epitome of womanhood, for the pleasure of men.

Conservatives don't see it from this point of view, of course, but feminists - the radical ones, at least - certainly do.

It's a movement that hides behind the LGB to paint itself as progressive, but really this is a wolf in sheep's clothing. Indeed, without regressive gender roles, there would be no transgenderism. How else would men be able to pretend they are women without the cloak of false femininity to wrap themselves in.

Re: Sexual loneliness: A neglected public health problem?

#555

Post by yamtaddle »

alexose wrote: post #193
notch656c wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tinder is straight up depressing for the median dude. My mind was blown just how much harder it was to get a date on tinder vs getting a date in real life. I can do the latter pretty easily but trying to get one on tinder would be like months of constant effort to then get ditched before the date even starts. It feels like 90% of women on there are chasing the top 10% of dudes and not settling for anything else.

I think our generation will be remembered for over-optimization more than anything. We keep chasing the best hotel, the best restaurant, the best partner, not realizing that things that give us meaning and happiness are intangible, unique, weird, and usually right in front of us.

I often wonder exactly how much happier I am having a billion excellent choices for entertainment, versus the small set we might have in the '90s.

I doubt it's that much. Is the very-best movie from last year, uncovered by ten or fifteen minutes of targeted searching and reading, likely to be better than whatever I'd have picked up at the video store based on gut feeling and what a few friends had told me? Oh, god yes, of course it is. Am I happier this way, though? I'm less certain about that. Probably a little? But I don't think it's a large effect.

Ditto having "the world's knowledge at your fingertips" (well, ignore that it's far from all of it and that you're probably still better off hitting the books for a lot of things, but it's good at the trivial stuff anyway). Can I answer most silly little "I wonder..." questions in five to ten seconds? Yep. Am I happier this way? I'm not so sure, since before the Internet was available nearly everywhere nearly all the time I rarely even became consciously aware of such trivial thoughts and they were very easy to dismiss when I did.

Re: Sexual loneliness: A neglected public health problem?

#556

Post by bmn__ »

0xbadcafebee wrote: post #108

This is hilarious. They found that young men are having less sex, young women are not having less sex, and some young men are having way more sex. And they conclude the problem is "loneliness". No, dude, the problem is young men are increasingly not worth having sex with. This of course has precedence in the natural world. Not every male is always having sex. Most often, a smaller number of males that are considered…

> No, dude, the problem is young men are increasingly not worth having sex with.

That's some victim blaming if I've ever seen one. No, dude, the problem is not that men have changed, but societal circumstances have, and women just act according to the new environment they have been afforded.

Increasing one's market value (desirability) works, but that's doctoring the symptoms instead of healing the root cause. It ceases working if everyone hears about the idea and does it.

Re: Sexual loneliness: A neglected public health problem?

#557

Post by lechacker »

soco wrote: post #550
lechacker wrote: post #517

As a 30+ year old kissless virgin I have recently began noticing that the loneliness part has began affecting me more deeply than usual. I suppose noticing the first signs of aging in my face led to the realization of all things not-done. I've had a couple of episodes of despair in the past few months because of this. Unfortunately people like me become helpless. You'll be alone because you _are_ alone: you don't hav…

I may be totally wrong, but please bear with me: what do you feel about going out? Not for dates but for "honing" some social skills and maybe even creating opportunities (okay less of that but still).

I can't "hone" social skills because I have none. And at my age you can't "get" these skills because in order to get them you need to interact with other people, and in order to interact with people my age you need social skills.

Like I commented elsewhere: exposing oneself to more scenarios of rejection can only drive one deeper into misery. Like wanting to cure an autistic child's sensitivity to noise by exposing him to a string of loud, crowdy concerts.

Re: Sexual loneliness: A neglected public health problem?

#558

Post by agentwiggles »

benj111 wrote: post #526
haunter wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And to the list the once more common community places, like church which pretty much disappearing from modern life (at least in the US and Europe). I'm not religious but more and more I think that church as a community place back then had a postive effect on local communites.

So church is a place you can go to hook up and have sex? They seem to be underselling that feature.

I'm going to answer assuming you're not being deliberately obtuse: Yes.

Obviously it's not a bar where you're looking for a one night stand or a casual hookup. But churches as a general rule encourage their congregations to get together in a myriad of social settings. So yeah, if you were looking to meet a person who shared similar beliefs and values to you, joining a church would be a pretty decent way to get frequent exposition to those people.

I don't attend a church now, but my parents were heavily involved in our local Catholic church when I was a kid. Not a week went by where I wasn't taken to some sort of social event - fish fries, Sunday 'socials' (i.e. donuts and coffee after mass), volunteering opportunities. Not to mention just general small talk after services.

If you didn't grow up religious, it's really hard to oversell just how much church events are part of your life, and how much the people you meet can become a community for your family. My dad loves to tell a story of how one year they gave a family friend a few hundred dollars around Christmas, because they knew the guy had just lost his job. A few years later, unprompted, they returned the favor, at a time that turned out to be really helpful for my family.

I don't take my family to church but I do really miss the communal aspects of the whole enterprise, and wish there was a good way to get a similar vibe without the aspects of religion I don't like. But I think there is something special about a group of people with a shared commitment to a set of beliefs that makes the upsides of church difficult to replicate in secular settings.

YMMV. Just my own experience and rambling.

Re: Sexual loneliness: A neglected public health problem?

#559

Post by [deleted] »

poloniust wrote: post #554
wpietri wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My theory is that gay men, as well as trans women are a subversion of traditional gender roles which is why conservatives get worked up about it Exactly. The traditional gender roles come out of the tradition of patriarchal exploitation of women and subordinate men. The extreme version of this is seen in groups like the FLDS [1] and make the dynamics more apparent. But it's the same basic deal even on the softer co…

The irony of transgenderism is that it's just yet another form of patriarchal exploitation of women, in its drive to eradicate female-only spaces, in encouraging actual female women to mutilate themselves to reach some twisted ideal of masculinity, and in reifying gendered impositions as the epitome of womanhood, for the pleasure of men. Conservatives don't see it from this point of view, of course, but feminists - t…

[deleted]

Re: Sexual loneliness: A neglected public health problem?

#560

Post by avmich »

nkingsy wrote: post #468
weatherlite wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Might be simple but still unattainable to a huge swath of guys. It's like trying to tell someone not to freak out before a job interview - just go there, be yourself and don't care about the outcome. Let me know how well that worked out...

Correct. If I had a cure I might still be doing it. Like I said, some people are broken. What I've described is more fundamental. It probably will be of more assistance to people doing okay with some hangups than people whose self esteem is not in a place where flirting can be an uplifting activity. Edit: -Therapy -Dance classes (not for flirting, just having positive touch experiences)

What kind of therapy?

Dance classes could be still a downlifting experience but yes, could still be beneficial, even though not by much. Some numbing could be achieved, when after downfall one reaches a plato where for some range of input conditions the output doesn't worsen.

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