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Public-Health Puzzle: Young People Having Less Sex, Contracting More STDs

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Re: Public-Health Puzzle: Young People Having Less Sex, Contracting More STDs

#81

Post by RangerScience »

ronnier wrote: post #35

The world is changing rapidly. The magic year of 2012 is when Tinder was release and then grew rapidly. Move forward to today: a large percentage of men are totally removed from the dating market (not by choice), they do not have sex, they have no hope of getting into a relationship. The reverse is not true for women, who have countless options and can at any time open their phone and have their pick of men. In gener…

> What matters more than anything now are your looks.

"Queer Eye" does a great job of demonstrating the impact of self-care on looks; aka; that a lot more is possible with what you're born with than you might be thinking. There's a great quote from one of the clients that I can't find, that's something along the lines of "showed me what was possible if I just cared."

If you feel like you're doing that, and still unhappy / unsuccessful, you might be https://www.ted.com/talks/joseph_gordon_levitt_how_craving_a... What I'm thinking now with this is that phrases like "trying too hard" and "just be yourself" are saying is that rather than try to do actions to cause some outcome, you need another level of indirection: do actions that express your inner self, and then adjust (aka, work on) that inner self until the outcomes of that expression are what you're after. It's like, I don't know, skipping leg day, or eating a balanced meal: you're a system, and to modify a system you have to approach it holistically.

Anecdotally, this is working for me (as much as I can actually assign causality). Recently, within a specific but repeating and thus suited for experimentation context, my "dating" life did a ridiculous 180. Most of what I did with my looks was keep the beard a lot more trimmed (theory: this way it can look taken care of) and have been doing a sort of mixed coached yoga / PT thing that's had a subtle but positive impact on my physique. The _other_ major change was my vibe, but that's a lot harder to describe; suffice to say "go to talk therapy." So either not a lot of appearance-based self-care / improvement had a massive impact, and/or a lot of emotional self-care had a huge impact.

That all said, I am not expressing agreement with your thesis; I am only expressing my own experience with impacting my dating life through long-term self-care.

Re: Public-Health Puzzle: Young People Having Less Sex, Contracting More STDs

#82

Post by buboard »

MrsPeaches wrote: post #66
ronnier wrote: post #35

The world is changing rapidly. The magic year of 2012 is when Tinder was release and then grew rapidly. Move forward to today: a large percentage of men are totally removed from the dating market (not by choice), they do not have sex, they have no hope of getting into a relationship. The reverse is not true for women, who have countless options and can at any time open their phone and have their pick of men. In gener…

This doesn’t stand up to even the most basic analysis. Just look at attractiveness ratings between sexes and races[1]. White men are consistently rated as the most attractive, with black women faring least well. Genuine question: why are the people who subscribe to this world view predominantly white men? [1] https://theblog.okcupid.com/race-and-attraction-2009-2014-10...

> Genuine question: why are the people who subscribe to this world view predominantly white men?

I would assume asians and indians would subscribe to it even more

Re: Public-Health Puzzle: Young People Having Less Sex, Contracting More STDs

#83

Post by [deleted] »

ronnier wrote: post #35

The world is changing rapidly. The magic year of 2012 is when Tinder was release and then grew rapidly. Move forward to today: a large percentage of men are totally removed from the dating market (not by choice), they do not have sex, they have no hope of getting into a relationship. The reverse is not true for women, who have countless options and can at any time open their phone and have their pick of men. In gener…

[deleted]

Re: Public-Health Puzzle: Young People Having Less Sex, Contracting More STDs

#84

Post by jnwatson »

MrsPeaches wrote: post #66
ronnier wrote: post #35

The world is changing rapidly. The magic year of 2012 is when Tinder was release and then grew rapidly. Move forward to today: a large percentage of men are totally removed from the dating market (not by choice), they do not have sex, they have no hope of getting into a relationship. The reverse is not true for women, who have countless options and can at any time open their phone and have their pick of men. In gener…

This doesn’t stand up to even the most basic analysis. Just look at attractiveness ratings between sexes and races[1]. White men are consistently rated as the most attractive, with black women faring least well. Genuine question: why are the people who subscribe to this world view predominantly white men? [1] https://theblog.okcupid.com/race-and-attraction-2009-2014-10...

Just because white men are racially preferred does not necessarily contradict the conclusion that it is more winner-take-all than it has ever been.

White males are still the plurality in the US dating market. If just the top 20% of those get dates, that leaves millions of US men lonely.

At the same time, the Tinder and the OkCupid markets are slightly different (but overlapping) markets; the less strictly hookup-oriented women on OkCupid might accept a wider range.

Re: Public-Health Puzzle: Young People Having Less Sex, Contracting More STDs

#85

Post by RangerScience »

MrsPeaches wrote: post #66
ronnier wrote: post #35

The world is changing rapidly. The magic year of 2012 is when Tinder was release and then grew rapidly. Move forward to today: a large percentage of men are totally removed from the dating market (not by choice), they do not have sex, they have no hope of getting into a relationship. The reverse is not true for women, who have countless options and can at any time open their phone and have their pick of men. In gener…

This doesn’t stand up to even the most basic analysis. Just look at attractiveness ratings between sexes and races[1]. White men are consistently rated as the most attractive, with black women faring least well. Genuine question: why are the people who subscribe to this world view predominantly white men? [1] https://theblog.okcupid.com/race-and-attraction-2009-2014-10...

> Genuine question: why are the people who subscribe to this world view predominantly white men?

Going theory:

If you are constantly told "you are the most attractive category" and yet your personal experience is of not being attractive, you will wonder why that is.

If you have underlying assumptions about the attractiveness of certain qualities (wealth, success, etc), and yet having them is not felt to impact your personal dating experience, you will wonder why that is.

If you are told that your demographic category means that you _should_ be successful simply by virtue of being in that category, and yet you feel you are not, you will wonder why that is.

After that, I think, simple https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/DB6wbyrMugYMK5o6a/correspond...

Re: Public-Health Puzzle: Young People Having Less Sex, Contracting More STDs

#86

Post by abjKT26nO8 »

I'm bisexual (male) and for a long time now I have had a lot more sexual success among men than among women (i.e. zero success in the latter case). I've been meaning to change this situation, so I tried Tinder with the settings adjusted, so that Tinder thinks I am only "interested in women". First try - no matches. Second try - one match, conversation ended with no explanation after 2 exchanges. Third try - 3 matches per day (here I tried different photos and a shorter bio). But it turns out that, even though men were quite willing to partake in one night stands, women - not a single one I matched with. Well... that's not entirely true. There were pairs who were willing to do that. And there were women looking for threesomes. I wouldn't want that to be my first time with a woman. Too stressful for a first time.

And I am not interested in a relationship. I've been alone for such a long time (not of my own volition, just didn't have too much success) that after all the time during which it was painful, this way of living got ingrained into me and I can't see myself sharing a life with anyone anymore. I do everything in my own peculiar way now. And if I wanted a relationship, I would want that to develop from a friendship, or generally more naturally, not "search for love" over the Internet...

I would like to have sex from time to time, but now it seems I can only do that with men. What a weird world I live in.

Re: Public-Health Puzzle: Young People Having Less Sex, Contracting More STDs

#87

Post by bilbo0s »

mellosouls wrote: post #53
ronnier wrote: post #35

The world is changing rapidly. The magic year of 2012 is when Tinder was release and then grew rapidly. Move forward to today: a large percentage of men are totally removed from the dating market (not by choice), they do not have sex, they have no hope of getting into a relationship. The reverse is not true for women, who have countless options and can at any time open their phone and have their pick of men. In gener…

I was going to post similar but hesitated because of just how toxic these discussions can become; the assumption of bad faith or a politically dubious agenda - especially as it has some commonality with themes expressed by some of the often unpleasant and mysoginistic "men's rights" subcultures. Tinder and the like (yep, the year stood out for me too) creating a magnifier effect on a previously geographically constra…

High ranking "Alpha Males", are "disease ridden"? And those are the males all the females want to have sex with? And these females crowd hookup sites where they prove so slave to their libidos that they forego asking for testing or, say, condoms?

I don't know man? Are you guys sure about this whole theory?

Re: Public-Health Puzzle: Young People Having Less Sex, Contracting More STDs

#88

Post by big_chungus »

james-skemp wrote: post #77
myspy wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well then, time to relocate and try the good old speaking to a girl instead of going through an app. Edit: woah, that's going down fast, what's the matter here? Are you expecting that girls should come where you live and do as you please?

Didn't downvote you, especially since I don't have the ability to, but: "try the good old speaking to a girl instead of going through an app" I think the issue may be that women are using digital tools to find relationships. Talking to my SO, being friends with a number of women, and reading the news, I can't say I blame them, as it allows them to be the selector on the first contact in a safer environment. So: "Are…

You have no social activities involving women outside of gym, store, and bar? Stop trying to "pick them up" in the first place. Find a social activity, and try to befriend a few people. If you're interested, ask a girl out.

It seems as though the root of this is less socialization. I always thought you were usually supposed to get to know someone before asking out. I know HN isn't big on religion, but churches served this function among others for a long time, and I don't think the large, secular group of young people has yet found an adequate replacement. In terms of a close-knit community with similar values, religion is hard to beat.

Re: Public-Health Puzzle: Young People Having Less Sex, Contracting More STDs

#89

Post by ReptileMan »

pushcx wrote: post #80
ronnier wrote: post #35

The world is changing rapidly. The magic year of 2012 is when Tinder was release and then grew rapidly. Move forward to today: a large percentage of men are totally removed from the dating market (not by choice), they do not have sex, they have no hope of getting into a relationship. The reverse is not true for women, who have countless options and can at any time open their phone and have their pick of men. In gener…

> a large percentage of men are totally removed from the dating market (not by choice) Please don't make up things like this. There's tons of well-researched data available from the CDC and NIH. None of it supports this misogynist conspiracy that men have stopped having sex. > Regarding opposite-sex sexual behavior, 95.3% of women and 93.5% of men aged 18–44 had ever had any opposite-sex sexual contact. There are pag…

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/03/29/share-ame...

The share of Americans not having sex has reached a record high

% of 18-30 year olds reporting no sex in the past year

2008

Women: 8% Men: 10%

2018

Women: 18% Men: 28%

The rate of change is twice higher for men. I guess reality is misogynist by your definition of misogyny

Re: Public-Health Puzzle: Young People Having Less Sex, Contracting More STDs

#90

Post by throwaway87378 »

ronnier wrote: post #35

The world is changing rapidly. The magic year of 2012 is when Tinder was release and then grew rapidly. Move forward to today: a large percentage of men are totally removed from the dating market (not by choice), they do not have sex, they have no hope of getting into a relationship. The reverse is not true for women, who have countless options and can at any time open their phone and have their pick of men. In gener…

> Move forward to today: a large percentage of men are totally removed from the dating market (not by choice), they do not have sex, they have no hope of getting into a relationship. The reverse is not true for women, who have countless options and can at any time open their phone and have their pick of men.

You are totally ignoring the demographic of women over 40. Older women have a very hard time dating.

> So, when it says young people are having less sex, it’s primarily men who are having less sex. The world changed, women do not need your money or your protection. The fancy jobs do not matter like they did before, nor does having a ton of money. What matters more than anything now are your looks.

This was already foreseen by many feminist and population control advocates in the middle of the 20th century, such as Mary Daly. Here is Terence McKenna's take on it in a 1994 talk:

"There are not only too many people, there are too many men. I would be very interested in seeing a set of social policies, tax incentives, medical policies, insurance policies, put in place to limit male birth. It is very rare in mammal populations that you have a 50/50 ratio of male to female. In fact, it is well known that male infants are less robust than female infants, and the reason we have a 50/50 sexual ratio is because we artificially support males and withdraw resources from females. I suspect that in the high paleolithic the ratio was closer to two to one. My supposition, in thinking about this, is probably that the best ratio is three to one. This is the way to feminize the human race, if you are serious. This is the way to advance women, if you are serious… I have never heard anyone say that male birth should be limited, but it obviously should… we can steer ourselves towards a population with a predominance of females, and those females should have only one child, and 75% of those children should also be female. I don't consider myself a gung-ho feminist… As a humanist, I advocate a reduction in male births. It just seems obvious that it is the way to go. If it does not seem obvious to you, then let's have a public debate about it, and at least make it part of the rhetoric of the culture, that this is an option to think about."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_IO7pHD3X9M

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