[sethrin]

I feel like the author is writing from a perspective of women being an alien species with incomprehensible motives, and their view of women is limited to how they are useful to men (most of the commentary here also seems to share this myopia).

> I don't say slutshaming was good - I say that when it comes to intra-male relationships, the current situation might be even worse. During the times of slutshaming, there were two kinds of women: Good ones and bad ones. Post-slutshaming there is only one kind of woman, graded on a scale from one to ten in physical and social attractiveness. Competition for the tens is bitter.

Read this from the perspective of a woman, but especially a slut. You have invented a whole philosophy based on the idea that women have some sort of numerical rating, and that sex is some kind of competition. Presumably you're "losing" unless you're having sex with a "10".

Women often have impossible beauty standards marketed towards them, with the intent of making us feel bad so we spend money on self-improvement. This is the masculine equivalent. Nothing is tearing the "social fabric", you're tearing at yourself.

[GloomyBoots]

> Read this from the perspective of a woman, but especially a slut. You have invented a whole philosophy based on the idea that women have some sort of numerical rating

That’s the nature of the world today. Everything is quantified, everything is transactional. It’s not particularly true of women.

> and that sex is some kind of competition

I find the reduction of human sexuality to mere biological competition distasteful, but there’s no denying that it is competitive.

> Women often have impossible beauty standards marketed towards them, with the intent of making us feel bad so we spend money on self-improvement. This is the masculine equivalent. Nothing is tearing the "social fabric", you're tearing at yourself.

Note the difference in passivity with which you describe women and men. This is done to women, whereas men do it to themselves.

There are extreme, systemic problems affecting both, which is exactly what tearing the social fabric describes.

[sethrin]

Sex doesn't have a goal, neither does biology more generally. Reproduction as distinct from sex might be a safer argument, but reducing sex to reproduction is inapt, particularly in a discussion of human social behavior.

The active vs passive voice is depicting the angst as a choice, a reaction which is under voluntary control. No one is required or forced to feel social distress, certainly not by advertising or philosophy.

Systemic problems assuredly exist, but this article sheds no light on them.

[GloomyBoots]

> Sex doesn't have a goal, neither does biology more generally.

I’m trying to take this in good faith, but I’m struggling, and it feels like a convenient way to divert this conversation into meaningless hair-splitting about whether by biology you mean the science itself or the processes biologists study, and whether by goal you mean an consciously intended outcome or a mechanistic one. Neither of which topics has any real bearing on what I said.

> Reproduction as distinct from sex might be a safer argument, but reducing sex to reproduction is inapt, particularly in a discussion of human social behavior.

It’s impossible to disentangle reproduction from sexual behavior, and, again, I’m having trouble taking this in good faith.

It’s more troubling since I specifically voiced my distaste for the reduction of sexuality to mere biological processes. I’m in the middle ground between the extremes of biological essentialism and positions like your own that biology has no meaningful relation to human sexuality.

> The active vs passive voice is depicting the angst as a choice, a reaction which is under voluntary control. No one is required or forced to feel social distress, certainly not by advertising or philosophy.

This, again, seems to be a very extreme and basically religious position to take. People are affected, whether they intend to be or not, by those around them. None of us is a being of pure reason divorced from the world around us, or anything even close to it. We can’t choose to be unaffected by our social environment any more than we can choose to be unaffected by our physical one.

[sethrin]

Instead of "I'm struggling to take this in good faith" you might try asking clarifying questions; it's less rude that way.

Talking about goals is a way of suggesting that sex isn't competitive. It is simply an act, with what meaning humans impart.

> It’s impossible to disentangle reproduction from sexual behavior

Gay people beg to differ.

I'm not going to engage in generalities about how people affect each other; the subject at hand was a philosophy that encourages people to feel badly about themselves if they're not having sex with a "10", with an analogy to beauty product advertising. The claim was that subscribing to that philosophy was a choice. Happy to hear your thoughts regarding that.

[jfengel]

Gay people beg to differ.

As do straight people. Most straight people, most of the time, take considerable pains to avoid reproduction.

Evolutionary psychology often proposes badly oversimplified models, and people draw invalid conclusions, even in non-human animals. But even more importantly, human conscious goals are categorically different from "every action is a selfish gene making a choice".

[piva00]

I think frustrated men have gone to the extremes of "reasoning" to find logic in why they are undesirable. Seems to stem from a deep sense there's a "code to crack" about why they are lonely, trying to apply logic to something that is simply not logical, or at least not answerable.

They still seek answers, in the midst of their social inadequacy the only answers they can find is through other similarly frustrated men, and so they start spiraling into made up reasons or logic in how sexual and emotional attraction work... Instead of experience through living, through feeling their ways into this world they attempt to intellectualise it (in big quotes because it's pure stupidity), not looking into themselves, their relationships and bit by bit fixing their issues causing the loneliness, they want a framework, a rulebook, an easy way out.

It's just... Sad.

[yCombLinks]

The problem is the things these guys are told to do to attract a girl simply don't work. So they are trying to find the things that do work. I have a couple of guy friends that are nice, cheerful, try to do all the things girls say a guy should do. They can't get any dates. I don't do any of that and have been very successful with women. Society fed my friends a line of bullshit that doesn't work, and they are angry about it. They also want to understand what does work.

[piva00]

> The problem is the things these guys are told to do to attract a girl simply don't work

The problem is already there, believing that there are things to cross off on a to-do list and will generally attract girls, as if they were a homogeneous group that shares a common rulebook to follow.

The only rule to follow is: treat people as people, as human beings, be respectful, be genuine and honest. That's the only foundation to have (even for friendships amongst men), from there one needs to figure out how to be themselves, and that's the whole issue, this is not easy, it doesn't come with a step-by-step framework, telling someone "just be yourself" is the most vague guidance to get, you can only know how to do it after you've done it, after you've found yourself and are comfortable being it.

These men are trying to shortcut this to get sex, that's all to it, instead of doing the work which takes time and effort, they try these little rules told by other men about what women want: you need to have a good job/salary, you need to dress like X or Y, you should be nice, etc., but they follow these with the expectation of having sex, and get frustrated when they feel they "followed all the rules" and get nothing in return.

Does it suck to learn who you are, how to present that to someone you are attracted while being respectful but sexy at the same time? Yes, it does suck, it takes time, it takes effort, it requires knowledge of yourself, but if you want a fulfilling relationship, even if just sexual, you kinda need this wisdom to find someone.

There are no shortcuts, all the shortcuts will lead to dissatisfaction at some point.

Unfortunately, like much wisdom, it's not something someone can pass down to you, you can hear all of that and still it will take tons of experience to actually ingrain that wisdom, desperately lonely men trying the rulebook do not have the patience to gain that experience and just keep bumbling around, becoming angrier in the process, which takes them further away from their goal of finding emotional/sexual connection.

In the end they blame women, because they think "I've done everything right", and that's the trap: thinking you followed the "right" rules and still got nothing, so there's nothing wrong with them but with others.

[youraverageuser]

In the same manner that you're against the guys lumping the women into homogeneous group that abides by some rulebook (which it might), in the same manner you're grossly misunderstanding the motivation of the guys who have trouble finding a good relationship. There may be some crazy representatives, but normal people just want normal things.

At the end of the day, those people want to have an understanding of what is going on and reassuring that they are not a failure compared to their ancestors, but a "work-in-progress", especially when nobody actually encourages, pushes them on or provides guidance. Of course, one must still walk the journey, but you're not exactly helping.

I don't know where you are in life, but I hope you're in a good position, having achieved your goals. The problem is that you don't really want to understand the hardships that people are going through, even if you gone through them yourself at some point. I know I did become less empathetic to people until I got back into the same shoes.

Another problem is that no one really offers a good advice. "No more Mr.Nice guy" is a book that attempts to read too much into people's motivation and seems to see everyone as an entitled narcissist. The only good thing that came out of it is some small guidelines in which direction to move and some encouragement along the way. But I still hate the fact that it pushed me into becoming less kind and more cynical towards the others, something that I'm trying to fix in myself.

Anyhow, if the solution to the problem was easy, you'd expect that the world would have corrected itself. Maybe there is some underlying situation going on, that we are conveniently oblivious to?

[jfengel]

So they are trying to find the things that do work.

The problem is that they're trying to get things that "work". The thing they need to do is to throw all of that out, and to want to be with women because they like women. If the women themselves are secondary to their goal, then the women are not going to be very interested in it.

[sethrin]

The worldview here seems to be that women are sex objects and treating them like human beings is optional -- there is no utility in being "nice" or "cheerful" if it doesn't get you laid.

A lot of dating advice for men is women trying to explain how they feel about people who are larger, stronger, and think that they have some sort of right to sex.

[friend_and_foe]

I see the points you're making and largely agree, but I think people see people as objects generally speaking. If you live in a somewhat densely populated place, where a part of the environment you have to navigate day to day is people you don't know, you grow to see people this way, as obstacles or as useful, like a crab viewing another crab as a step up towards the top of a bucket. We tend to view people we don't know as simply forces on the world around us, traits of the environment, like a tree or a hill. Only when we get to know the individuals a bit can we even begin to see the person inside, until then they're just another face with unknown motives and drives behind it.

So yeah, people treat dating like a meat market. It's unfortunate, and it is exacerbated by cultural trends, but I generally think it is unavoidable for people who live in an environment with a lot of other people they're not immediately familiar with, which is a majority of us.

[sethrin]

The point I was making was not about objectification but about risk. I don't necessarily approve of objectification but I don't see it as a deciding factor in sexual success. Someone who sees other people as things to be used is probably not great, but someone who will react violently to being denied sex is a serious threat, particularly if they also happen to have physical advantages.

Any given day, hey, maybe I feel like being treated like a piece of meat, but thinking I owe you sex in exchange for your being "nice" or "cheerful" is dangerous.

[true_religion]

For most people, the angst isn’t even about having sex. The idea of having sex is a far off goal. They are simply trying to get to step one: dating. Or even step zero: reciprocal attraction.

[yCombLinks]

I don't think that lines up with my worldview at all. I'm not sure how you get to that interpretation. Most men's deepest connection comes from their romantic relationships. Romantic relationships are (usually) started from mutual sexual attraction. Being overly nice and cheerful is far more likely to get you placed in in the asexual bucket. It's exactly your shaming attitude these overly nice men are trying to placate.

[antisthenes]

> and that sex is some kind of competition.

There may be a number of bad takes in the article, but this one isn't it. Sex is undeniably a competition in every society, has been and will be throughout history. This is obviously from a male perspective. Men and women don't compete for the same things.

To deny that is a delusion in its own category of absurdity.

> Women often have impossible beauty standards marketed towards them

Not anymore, really. That was the trend in the 90s. You're about 30 years late. None of the women I regularly speak to has expressed any kind of pressure to conform to these standards.