[J-dawg]

Of all the elephants in the room when it comes to modern tech-enabled dating, this is possibly the biggest and ugliest.

The thought of ending up as one of those husbands genuinely makes my skin crawl. Imagine the woman you adore secretly resenting you for not measuring up to those alpha dudes she met on Tinder and dated for a few weeks at a time.

I sometimes wonder if we’ll see total change in relationship dynamics in my lifetime. Perhaps even a return to a “harem” system, where women decide that sharing a very high-value man is preferable to having a low-value one all to herself.

[Aunche]

I don't think this has anything to do with modern dating. Powerful men have had mistresses and before that they had concubines. Now that casual dating is socially acceptable, the tendency for high social class men sleeping with lower social class women is more visible, but it isn't necessarily more popular. The number of sexual partners millennials have is similar to that of Gen X and the Boomers.

Source: https://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-millenn...

[arandr0x]

There will always be women (and men) who want a single partner and don't really care about value or whatever it is you're on about.

It's just that, like me, by 25 they're married. If you're 35 these people are pretty much permanently unavailable to you unless you have very auspicious financial or cultural circumstances.

[thwy12321]

The weird thing is most people will call you a misogynist for bringing this up. I would argue that in most major US cities there is already a large "harem" dynamic. It's mostly invisible to the general population, but quite obvious if you're friends with men in the top 1 to 2% of dating potential.

[MRD85]

One of my friends at work is like this. He just keeps tripping over and finding women. He's been at work just this year and has been involved with nearly every available woman (and some that aren't), he plays football on the weekends and has the women involved in the club throwing themselves at him, etc. In any one week, he is courting literally 5-8 women despite the fact he does nothing to go out and meet them. It's like every woman in his social circles gravitates towards him. This year he's had 3 women break up with their boyfriends to chase him! It's crazy.

[J-dawg]

You’re right, and it’s happening throughout the western world. As someone who is definitely not in the top 2%, there are some difficult truths to confront.

It will be a strange time when & if it starts happening out in the open.

[0db532a0]

It already is:

https://www.instagram.com/danbilzerian/?hl=en.

[JimboOmega]

It is misogynist in its worldview; the woman's value is her attractiveness (which declines with age), and a man's attractiveness (which may be a function of money as well as just looks) is all she cares about.

Just because it is misogynist does not mean that women don't participate in it. But whenever you reduce human relationships to something "simple", you're likely doing something offensive.

[J-dawg]

Just because somebody finds something offensive doesn’t stop it being true.

[JimboOmega]

The implication that all people of a certain group behave and desire a certain thing is obviously false, especially when the group is as large as half the population.

Furthermore, even if it is true for a wide swath of the group, that does not mean it should not be criticized and torn apart for the assumptions that it rests on. A lot of people of both genders internalize negative messages about themselves and operate as though they are more fundamental truths.

Often, seeing them successfully challenged is what allows a person to grow and live a happier life.

The person in the original article believes, at least on some level, that her value as a person is tied to her attractiveness and thus her age. Clearly a lot of others in society believe that too. It's still harmful to her and often them as well and it is a misogynist belief. Simply because a lot of people believe it and operate on that assumption does not mean everyone does, and it does not mean that doing so is beneficial.

[J-dawg]

Your argument seems to be along the same lines as “my grandad smoked 2 packs a day and lived until he was 95”.

On average, smoking is harmful. On average, women’s perceived attractiveness is highly tied to their beauty and youthfulness.

It’s a shame if the woman in the article believes her value as a person is tied to her attractiveness and age. Given that “value as a person” is an entirely subjective concept, there’s no reason for this to be true.

However, her value in the “dating market place” is tied to her attractiveness and age. That’s a fact, it’s objectively measurable and it’s as cold and uncaring as natural selection. It certainly doesn’t care how offensive you find it.

[JimboOmega]

> It’s a shame if the woman in the article believes her value as a person is tied to her attractiveness and age

This is exactly my point (and that's why I used that phrase). The letter writer feels that her value in the world is diminished by her age; with her most fertile years squandered she hasn't much else to give it. The response author goes to pains to illustrate that even someone well into her 90s still has value - that she values her interactions with the older woman.

The letter writer's is a misogynist worldview. To get there, you have to assume that women aren't really contributing anything to the world beyond reproduction. Men's lives have meaning without a woman and children, perhaps, but women's don't.

Separately, I think saying that someone's value as a romantic partner is primarily in their physical attractiveness is obnoxiously reductionist. I went off on quite the drunken rant about that last night in another thread (not my best work, tbh).

But basically, I argue optimizing for the most attractive partner I can find for someone at my level of attractiveness and then locking that down (via marriage or similar monogamous institution) is a poor strategy, even if it is the most common one and one implied by genetics. My genes would also love me to sit in bed eating sugar all day, and that won't make me happy.

Ultimately: I accept that people approach dating (especially app dating) primarily by looking at attractiveness, aiming for someone in their "league" or a bit higher as evaluated visually. However, I don't think it's the best approach for your overall happiness, nor is it one that everyone employs.

I mean, can you imagine dating a teenager? They're at peak fertility. But not only is it illegal depending on the exact age and where you live, it sounds like a nightmare. Like just talking to them gives me a headache.

Me? I'm a transwoman and a lesbian so I'm a bit of an evo-psych nightmare. Despite having no real fertility to speak of and a noticeable lack of childbearing hips, I do quite alright. I'm doing much better dating women as a 36yo transwoman than I did as a 31yo cis male. I've been trying to figure out why, and the only explanation I have is that me being more authentic is, in fact, valuable to the people I date.

[jf-]

I think you’re assuming tabula rasa here; that there is no innate human nature, that everything is socially constructed. If there is such a thing as an innate, biologically derived measure of attractiveness, then your point doesn’t really hold up. Unless we’re comfortable with saying biology is misogynistic. That would be an interesting one.

Frankly it would be great to have real, impartial numbers about all of this so we could actually reach some conclusions, but it’s so politicised that’s effectively impossible.

[JimboOmega]

If you take this extreme reductionist viewpoint, "biology"is misandrist and misogynist both. It reduces human relationships to an exchange of genetic material and its optimization. The male human may as well be the the male anglerfish and the life of the female is barely more meaningful than that.

And, well, no. We live in an industrialized world where we have all the food we could ever need and yet we have fewer children than ever before in history. People make human decisions that are more than their genetics, even when choosing romantic and sexual partners. Why would we take the most socially complex species we're aware of, and then look at one of the most complex social interactions that species engages in, and say "well, but it's really just about making babies"?

Another way to put it - I accept these things as true 1) Physical attractiveness is important to most people in picking a partner 2) Physical attractiveness is correlated with fertility 2) Physical attractiveness negatively correlates with age

Yet I still argue that a woman's worth, not just to the world but even as a partner, is more than her physical attractiveness. Biologically, a post-menopausal woman is not contributing new humans to the world, but she still can contribute to the world as a whole, contributing happiness and meaning to others, doing all kinds of things that make the world a better place. I would argue that meaning in romantic relationships isn't limited to fertility, either.

I don't think is even that controversial a viewpoint, but as a woman, there is certainly a cultural notion that your value IS your attractiveness. If you justify the viewpoint that a woman in her 40s is of no value simply because her fertility is phbbt, that's misogynist.

It is a biological reality that men can remain fertile much longer than women. Using that fact to justify a worldview that women in general have less value, especially past a certain age, is misogynist.

[tomp]

No, even without innate human nature / assuming tabula rasa, it makes logical sense, because we still cannot escape biology (yet). Women can only have kids when young, so youth is hugely important when men choose their partners, and is proxied by beauty. Women also invest much more than men into each kid (9 months of their life and a chance of dying), so it makes sense for them to seek men of wealth, status, power.

In other words, differences in preferences for choosing sexual partners follow directly (logically) from sexual dimorphism, nothing else required, and are thus in a sense “correct”.

[thwy12321]

"It is misogynist in its worldview"

How can something that's an accurate description of reality be misogynist? Unless you are claiming what I said to be false.