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On incels, dead bedrooms and the hard problems of loneliness

residentcontrarian.substack.com

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Re: On incels, dead bedrooms and the hard problems of loneliness

#881

Post by oblio »

throwaway8581 wrote: post #197
colanderman wrote: post #154

I feel a common issue with such "dead bedroom" discussions is the seeming lack of capacity of some parties (including some prominent toplevel comments here) to understand how deep a need for sex many people have. To think sex can be replaced with "strong friendships" is laughable to anyone who actually feels a strong desire for sex. The dead bedroom situations I've seen with my friends (M->F equally as well as F->M)…

Agreed. This is also ancient wisdom. The major religions all maintain that spouses have a duty to sexually please each other.

Not really. In many of them it's just about having kids.

Re: On incels, dead bedrooms and the hard problems of loneliness

#882

Post by BlargMcLarg »

NationalPark wrote: post #344
BlargMcLarg wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Modern feminism has actually been fairly two-faced on what it really wants. At this point, I can't tell whether feminism would prefer (given constraints only allow for one): * Working on an issue which only helps women a bit, but doesn't help men at all * Working on an issue which helps both women and men a lot Considering media has a routine narrative of painting men as demons and women as angels, any claim that fem…

I don't think it's helpful to think of "feminism" as a singular movement, the way it's often portrayed in conservative editorial writing and cable news. We're talking about 50+ years of academic scholarship and grassroots activism here, and all the complications and inconsistencies that implies. If you're looking for something in particular to make this case for you, I recommend reading the short book Feminism is for…

>It should set off alarm bells when you draw such stark lines in the sand as "any claim that feminism is for anything in regards to men, might need to be backed up with some strong cases" that you're missing some nuance or complexity.

What should set off alarm bells is this blind acceptance of written works and words, when the actions routinely do not reflect the words feminism espouses. There are entire subreddits and blogs online showing the many cases where feminism doesn't do anything, or worse, actively intervenes at the detriment of women. Your own example shows the same problem: "what she calls the patriarchal organization of society negatively affects men in different and unique ways". Cool, you talk about it, but what are you doing about it?

What is an intellectual disservice, is how quickly you circumvent my question only to berate my manner of writing. If people truly are such huge proponents of feminism, and feminism truly claims to "be good for men", surely they can answer a question this simple and provide clear examples. Do you not realize your own behavior is indication of the problem here? How can you not see that if you can't even answer "well duh, the second issue obviously" on an ideological basis, the claim that feminism is "for all" is complete bollocks?

If I really wanted to go full-on antifeminist, I could've mentioned the many issues that feminism causes for men and women that it seems to be utterly blind to. That's part of the question as well: a clear division between not only "we want the best for women", but "it doesn't need to be at the cost of men". If I really wanted to go and write on nuances, I could write a 12-page blog page and fight against the relentless nitpicking which will ensue. I'm not asking a simple, black-white question for the sake of trivializing a complex, multi-faceted subject. I'm asking it because ideologically, if we can't even answer this part first, there's no point going any further. It means the population of feminists is filled with people joining the movement, without knowing what it actually stands for. Including its most fierce proponents carrying the torches. Surely, I do not have to tell you about the many occurrences in human history where this didn't work out well.

Re: On incels, dead bedrooms and the hard problems of loneliness

#883

Post by ransElectronics »

twobitshifter wrote: post #136

The average man will go through a period of involuntary celibacy and I don’t believe this is a new thing but we’re now good at labeling. History shows that 80% of women reproduced compared to only 40% of men! https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/women-who-stray/2012... (Note not sure the primary source on this stat, but the general idea is that polygamy was once common leading to fewer men reproducing) We’re doing…

> I don’t think we would ever want to go back to those repressive systems that controlled women.

Why not?

Re: On incels, dead bedrooms and the hard problems of loneliness

#884

Post by kaba0 »

xiphias2 wrote: post #720
ceilingcorner wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These aren’t either or situations. Acting as if the only options are an abusive marriage or prostitution is really misleading. There are plenty of ways to incentivize monogamy, disincentivize divorce, and yet still allow for individual freedom. Why haven’t these been tested? I’ll suggest because like all movements, the gender equality movement has been driven largely by extremist activists (who gain social power) and…

> Why haven’t these been tested? They were tested and perfected a hundred thousand years ago when humans were living in tribes. In a tribe shaming people for being polygamous was part of the system to keep some checks and balances. With people moving to cities and dating online, those checks and balances are suppressed, and the market balance shifted towards polygamy (few high value man date many women).

That doesn’t even follow logically. Pairing one man with one woman will remove one of each from circulation. With polygamy being more accepted means that basically noone gets removed from circulation, a women can have more than one partner, increasing chances...

Re: On incels, dead bedrooms and the hard problems of loneliness

#885

Post by kaba0 »

serverholic wrote: post #644
Balgair wrote: post #466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but the fact is that women despise weak men. I'd say this is true for all genders and people. Homosexual people also display this tendency just as well as heterosexual males. Heck, even in friendships, it can be hard to enjoy being with a buddy that is going through a deep funk despite all your efforts to rouse them out of it. People want to be with people like themselves. Misery loves company, and vice-versa

A weak woman will still be able to find a man to take care of her. A weak man not so much.

There are plenty of women with strong mother instincts, that happily take on a “weak man”. But of course you would not want to be with someone not giving any sort of “benefit”. A relationship goes two ways, so without any other good qualities I’m not sure what they want.

Re: On incels, dead bedrooms and the hard problems of loneliness

#886

Post by alpaca128 »

ceilingcorner wrote: post #877
alpaca128 wrote: post #872

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If working as a porn actress/actor is acceptable and pays 10x the average salary, then what is consensual about this? You could say the same here, almost exact same profession other than a more limited pool of partners in exchange for less privacy. What do you say to the nurse in the US who was fired from her job and center of public outrage because as a nurse she got paid so little she decided to make extra money on…

OnlyFans is exactly the sort of thing I had in mind. Maybe it’s an unpopular opinion, but I see its popularity as being indicative of deep moral decline. Edit: Why do people downvote a comment seconds after it’s been posted? It’s absurd and immature. Leave that behavior back on Reddit, thanks.

> I see its popularity as being indicative of deep moral decline.

The behaviour of people didn't change, OnlyFans just gives them a simpler way for compensation. It's not the first of its kind, it just has more publicity than others.

In terms of moral decline I'm not sure what you mean. Unless you confuse morality with religious faith(some religious people like to equate the two) it's been a better time for morality than almost any other time in the history of humanity.

Re: On incels, dead bedrooms and the hard problems of loneliness

#887

Post by kaba0 »

serverholic wrote: post #759
kelnos wrote: post #754

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah yes, reddit, that great bastion of facts and well-sourced research. If you're a man and you're with a woman who stops being attracted to you because you've cried in front of her, that's a great thing, because you've dodged a bullet, and found a strong signal that you should find a better girlfriend.

I wouldn’t be talking about this if I hadn’t experienced it and seen it myself. If you want to roll the dice then fine. But some of us are sick of being hurt and seeing others getting hurt.

I’m sorry about what happened to you, but generalizing is unfair, when provably it is not true of many (or even most) women.

Re: On incels, dead bedrooms and the hard problems of loneliness

#888

Post by kaba0 »

skystarman wrote: post #622
rrradical wrote: post #596

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't mean to be glib, but, are you saying women who are in a poor state are desirable? I don't think so... Is it bad that women don't find some men attractive, when those same men probably wouldn't find some women attractive? I apologize if that misconstrues your opinion, but I've heard it elsewhere before: that somehow women 'should' be more forgiving of unattractiveness than men are, and that's really weird to m…

I have no data on this but my anecdata tells me that if a woman is in a poor state but is attractive plenty of men will be willing to treat her nicely and not consider her "pathetic" at least long enough to sleep with her. Doesn't really work the same way for dudes

And how is it a good rebuttal? It means that some men would exploit a women in poor mental health for a one-nighter.. They will most definitely not put up with her illness and dump her after a short play. The only difference is that a “weak men” may not be as desirable to have a one-nighter with.

Re: On incels, dead bedrooms and the hard problems of loneliness

#889

Post by amanaplanacanal »

proxyon wrote: post #783
supernovae wrote: post #668

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shorter work weeks, universal healthcare, affordable housing, open borders, freedom to travel, less consumerism, more time for friends/family...

> open borders No thanks. Feel free to go conduct extreme social experiments with your own life, not mine.

I wouldn’t call it extreme, as it has been done before. In the US, for example, borders were completely open for the first hundred years until anti-Chinese racism led to the passage of the Page Act in 1875.

Re: On incels, dead bedrooms and the hard problems of loneliness

#890

Post by dTal »

dqpb wrote: post #592
phkahler wrote: post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> I feel a common issue with such "dead bedroom" discussions is the seeming lack of capacity of some parties (including some prominent toplevel comments here) to understand how deep a need for sex many people have. When I first saw Maslow's hierarchy of needs sex appeared on it TWICE. Once on the bottom level as a basic physical need (to what extent varies of course) and again I think on the 3rd level or so as a for…

> That's as absurd as saying the need for food justifies armed robbery Before considering lofty philosophical ideas like "Justification", it's useful to consider basic system dynamics: "This paper provides an overview of the link between food insecurity and violent conflict, addressing both traditional and emerging threats to security and political stability." https://www.wfp.org/publications/occasional-paper-24-food…

>Before considering lofty philosophical ideas like "Justification"

But... that was the whole topic. We're not talking about whether hunger causes violence, or whether sexual frustration causes rape. No doubt they do. The point was that labeling "food" as an essential need doesn't constitute an endorsement of food-related violence, and by analogy labeling sex as essential doesn't constitute an endorsement of rape.

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