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

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

wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 146 posts

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

#91

Post by faissaloo »

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...

A relationship is alot more than being conventionally attractive, many men simply don't even know where to begin when it comes to looking for a relationship or have serious self-confidence issues.

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

#92

Post by big_chungus »

MrsPeaches wrote: post #78
ronnier wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Study after study show that women rate the majority of men as unattractive whereas the scale is pretty balanced for men’s views of women attractiveness. In general, there’s no longer social or religious pressure for people to pair off so women flat out don’t pick those unattractive men. Women are the selectors. Men tend to take whatever they can get.

Do you have a source for this? Any decent meta-analyses?

I believe these are the data to which he is referring. Published by okcupid, which is probably one of the better data-sets which you could hope for, given the topic.

http://web.archive.org/web/20170307114500/https://theblog.ok...

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

#93

Post by big_chungus »

tibiapejagala wrote: post #74
Aloha wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Move forward to today: a large percentage of men are totally removed from the dating market, 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. I'm very skeptical of this. Attractiveness is sort of a constant across population, and sorts into several bucketed gradients,…

Attractiveness is constant, but how it is perceived might have shifted. I vaguely remember that OkCupid did some "study" that men rate most woman around average attractiveness and the distribution is symmetric, but women rate most men as below average attractiveness and the distribution is skewed towards unattractive. The post seems to be gone though.

Archived copy; very telling: http://web.archive.org/web/20170307114500/https://theblog.ok...

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

#94

Post by faissaloo »

MrsPeaches wrote: post #78
ronnier wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Study after study show that women rate the majority of men as unattractive whereas the scale is pretty balanced for men’s views of women attractiveness. In general, there’s no longer social or religious pressure for people to pair off so women flat out don’t pick those unattractive men. Women are the selectors. Men tend to take whatever they can get.

Do you have a source for this? Any decent meta-analyses?

I believe they were referring to this OkCupid study: https://web.archive.org/web/20180419093226/https://theblog.o...

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

#95

Post by ReptileMan »

bilbo0s wrote: post #87
mellosouls wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

They are not slaves to their libidos but to the supply demand in the dating market. If you seek more high status males (and at the coasts of US you have women outeducating men by a sizable margin, so the ratio of single women to men with higher status than the women is favorable towards the latter) the high status males can demand more risky stuff and be more reluctant to commit. And unless the women want to date down they have to accept it. And dating down is still beginning as a process.

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

#96

Post by big_chungus »

EliRivers wrote: post #54
ronnier wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not by choice that they are not in the dating market. Nobody buys what they have to offer.

I believe you are conflating "being in the market" with "not being successful in the market". You said they're not in the market ("totally removed"). If they're not in the market, attempting to make a sale, the odds of ever making sale are zero. If you're in the market, and nobody is buying, you need to improve your product or target other potential customers. If this was about software or other such, everyone would…

Right, but with humans, the only viable option to fulfill this proposition is a positional arms race of plastic surgery. Innovation in a market is usually good and has brought huge benefits; you can't really "improve" your looks after possibly weight loss and personal care without a doctor. Of course you can usually improve yourself, but dating apps usually mean judgement by attractiveness. It's basically the difference between actual product innovation and better advertising, to use your analogy. You'll just get huge spikes in chin implants and steroids, and everyone will be worse.

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

#97

Post by Andrew_nenakhov »

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…

Just go learn some dancing. You dance well, you get laid.

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

#98

Post by AtlasBarfed »

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 theory, if true (which is nigh-impossible to prove) seems to lead to percentages that align with the theory of the disposable male.

That theory, last I glanced at it, was that 70% of females expect to reproduce in any given generation compared to 30% of males, and was then used as explanations for higher risk behavior in males.

What that was based on (species used, or timelines in human society, etc) I do not know.

It was also attached to some dubious headlines like "the myth of male power" which undermined IMO the theory, but the core theory seems to explain a large amount of strange things in society, even though technology has upended the conditions from which it arose.

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

#99

Post by bilbo0s »

ReptileMan wrote: post #95
bilbo0s wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

They are not slaves to their libidos but to the supply demand in the dating market. If you seek more high status males (and at the coasts of US you have women outeducating men by a sizable margin, so the ratio of single women to men with higher status than the women is favorable towards the latter) the high status males can demand more risky stuff and be more reluctant to commit. And unless the women want to date dow…

>And unless the women want to date down they have to accept it.

And, these women. They are so averse to the "date down" idea in your view, that they are willing to contract HIV to avoid dating firemen or truck drivers?

I'm probably too old to understand anymore. But I'll just say that in my day, more women were in college than men. Even so, that idea of risky sex because a guy has a degree would have been patent nonsense. Very few women in my day would have been willing to risk their lives to have sex with you. A guy's degree was just not that attractive.

I find it difficult to believe that women have changed very much in that regard. But, hey, I guess if you guys say so.

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

#100

Post by pushcx »

ReptileMan wrote: post #89
pushcx wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

Compare sources. First, there is no long-term trend: https://gssdataexplorer.norc.org/variables/5057/vshow

Second, and more importantly: the GSS is an survey of 1,000 people. There were 396 people in this age range (https://gssdataexplorer.norc.org/variables/53/vshow) and 45% were men (https://gssdataexplorer.norc.org/variables/81/vshow). Seems safe to assume those variables are independent, so that's 178 men in the age range. You are hanging a sweeping claim that there's been a total upheaval in heterosexual sexual activity whereby a "large percentage of men are totally excluded from removed from the dating market" on literally 31 guys answering one question differently. The CDC studies linked above had tens of thousands of subjects.

Post reply on HN