A very interesting piece. It endlessly frustrates me how most journalism on sexual relations is framed in terms of crude stereotypes...'Men' and 'Women'. Your piece does make subtle distinctions.....for instance between more/less promiscuous women and more/less randy men. But there are much bigger factors at play governing who gets more and who gets less of whatever they are after. I wrote about it in this piece: https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/the-less-desired "What always strikes me when I read most sex relations journalism is how it is always framed in terms of a generic species called ‘Women’ and a generic species called ‘Men’; as if the perceived ‘unfair’ asymmetries under discussion are entirely ones between the sexes. ..... The huge intra-sexual differences between the experiences of pretty women and ‘plain’ ones; and between confident ‘alpha’ males and ‘betas’ – this never gets considered.
>> Men still chased them, of course, but being a man who chased loose women was not a very honorable thing to be.
I would say that depending on the social context, it could go even more than that - into a form of male slut shaming.
Back in my high school days (15 years ago, in Poland), casual sex seemed unacceptable for both sexes. Hookup culture apparently didn't exist, the only acceptable options were to be single or have a boyfriend/girlfriend. Also, I recall no gossip about other people having casual sex whatsoever. Even discussing the desire for casual sex in a male group was frowned upon - I brought up the topic a couple of times and my friends thought I was a lunatic. I would then go home, watch American teenagers getting laid all the time in movies like American Pie and cry a little inside.
All of this was probably related to me attending one of the top schools in my city and/or hanging out with nerds. Shortly after graduating high school I found the local pickup artist community, the first people I met that truly believed in casual sex. But almost all of my high school friends went on to marry their high school or college girlfriends and, quite possibly, may have never experienced the joys of casual sex.
Anyways, it seems that the slut-shaming system worked exactly as described in the post, possibly to a greater extent. For some reason though, it didn't quite work on me - maybe I was too socially awkward / neurodivergent and focused too little on the social norms of real people around me (unable to give in to the 'casual sex is bad' (self)deception), and maybe too much on the social norms coming from the international mainstream pop culture, or the glimpses or American teenager life I saw in the online forums that included mentions of their sex lives.
But most guys are unattractive to most women, and most guys aren't learning how to be effective, so most guys stew in loserdom, or struggle to attract and maintain one woman. It's a sad equilibrium, but I hypothesize that most guys do not actually care about getting laid, https://theredquest.substack.com/p/most-guys-dont-care-much-about-getting-laid-i-hypothesize, and that for many of them, pr0n is an okay enough substitute, the same way e.g. dominos is an okay enough substitute for true food.
> the deeds of pick-up artists and their disciples seem less impressive than otherwise
The number of guys who learn any real pickup is miniscule. It's too hard.
I mean, the obvious solution is superhuman sexbots, right? People aren’t breeding anyways, they don’t really seem to like each other much for relationships qua relationships given “divorces and mutually unhappy marriage” rates, at least when given options and interesting Western lives.
Sexbots for everyone who wants them solves this problem permanently on both ends.
And given the advancements Eureka and others are making using LLM’s to train superhuman performance with simple verbal instructions, they honestly seem about 5 minutes away, so this age-old problem should fall relatively soon.
Then Western fertility rates will *really* become a problem! But so much more will be going on in that timescale, it either won’t matter or we’ll figure something out.
It's probably worth checking out Baumeister's publications. I have noted down "The laws of supply and demand can be substantiated in all sorts of marketplaces, and there is no reason that sex should be an exception." and my memory is that the rest of what I've read of him is along economic lines.
Humans are imitative and women perhaps even more so than men at least when it comes to follow a fashion. With feminists pushing for the social acceptance of "sluts" and their ubiquitous presence of social media lots of women feel the need to look like them. So, unintuitively, feminism led to a Great Undressing in which in all areas of life young women are wearing skimpier and more form fitting outfits than men even when doing the same activity. At the pool is swim trunks vs bikini, on hikes cargo pants vs yoga pants and in the office it's suits vs pencil skirts.
I think we are the first society in history in which men are wearing outfits that are more modest than women's.
This of course makes life even more painful for the set of men who see all this feminine beauty on display but they are not getting any action.
>>Humans are imitative and women perhaps even more so than men at least when it comes to follow a fashion.
Thinking about it, do we know feminism is the foremost culprit? Couldn't men be the foremost reason that women try to look sexually appealing? I mean, it is plausible that women choose to dress in clothes that reveal their bodies and hide their faces behind make-up are doing so because they earn something from it. On a collective level it might be damaging for both sexes: Men are distracted by what they in almost all cases can't get, women waste their time on their own appearances. Still, I have this feeling that the trend is difficult to reverse, because individuals gain from it.
> Men are distracted by what they in almost all cases can't get
February is the hardest month in northern New England, and not only because the snow keeps piling up beneath barren branches, but because women are covered in shapeless coats. Not until the spring thaws arrive do the lovely flowers, singing birds, and beautiful ladies once more begin to appear.
If some men become distracted and unhappy by all the flowers and birds they can't have sex with, nobody regards this as normal, or feels any concern for their immoderate desires. Shall we cover up the ladies, pull the jewelry from their necks, and wash the color from their faces for the sake of immature men and envious women?
A very interesting piece. It endlessly frustrates me how most journalism on sexual relations is framed in terms of crude stereotypes...'Men' and 'Women'. Your piece does make subtle distinctions.....for instance between more/less promiscuous women and more/less randy men. But there are much bigger factors at play governing who gets more and who gets less of whatever they are after. I wrote about it in this piece: https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/the-less-desired "What always strikes me when I read most sex relations journalism is how it is always framed in terms of a generic species called ‘Women’ and a generic species called ‘Men’; as if the perceived ‘unfair’ asymmetries under discussion are entirely ones between the sexes. ..... The huge intra-sexual differences between the experiences of pretty women and ‘plain’ ones; and between confident ‘alpha’ males and ‘betas’ – this never gets considered.
>> Men still chased them, of course, but being a man who chased loose women was not a very honorable thing to be.
I would say that depending on the social context, it could go even more than that - into a form of male slut shaming.
Back in my high school days (15 years ago, in Poland), casual sex seemed unacceptable for both sexes. Hookup culture apparently didn't exist, the only acceptable options were to be single or have a boyfriend/girlfriend. Also, I recall no gossip about other people having casual sex whatsoever. Even discussing the desire for casual sex in a male group was frowned upon - I brought up the topic a couple of times and my friends thought I was a lunatic. I would then go home, watch American teenagers getting laid all the time in movies like American Pie and cry a little inside.
All of this was probably related to me attending one of the top schools in my city and/or hanging out with nerds. Shortly after graduating high school I found the local pickup artist community, the first people I met that truly believed in casual sex. But almost all of my high school friends went on to marry their high school or college girlfriends and, quite possibly, may have never experienced the joys of casual sex.
Anyways, it seems that the slut-shaming system worked exactly as described in the post, possibly to a greater extent. For some reason though, it didn't quite work on me - maybe I was too socially awkward / neurodivergent and focused too little on the social norms of real people around me (unable to give in to the 'casual sex is bad' (self)deception), and maybe too much on the social norms coming from the international mainstream pop culture, or the glimpses or American teenager life I saw in the online forums that included mentions of their sex lives.
Most guys have abysmal fitness and nutrition habits, and worse game.
A lot of women will be up for a lot of things, if it's pitched well to them, https://theredquest.substack.com/p/how-many-women-are-open-to-sex-parties-and-partner-swapping-intermediate-advanced
But most guys are unattractive to most women, and most guys aren't learning how to be effective, so most guys stew in loserdom, or struggle to attract and maintain one woman. It's a sad equilibrium, but I hypothesize that most guys do not actually care about getting laid, https://theredquest.substack.com/p/most-guys-dont-care-much-about-getting-laid-i-hypothesize, and that for many of them, pr0n is an okay enough substitute, the same way e.g. dominos is an okay enough substitute for true food.
> the deeds of pick-up artists and their disciples seem less impressive than otherwise
The number of guys who learn any real pickup is miniscule. It's too hard.
I mean, the obvious solution is superhuman sexbots, right? People aren’t breeding anyways, they don’t really seem to like each other much for relationships qua relationships given “divorces and mutually unhappy marriage” rates, at least when given options and interesting Western lives.
Sexbots for everyone who wants them solves this problem permanently on both ends.
And given the advancements Eureka and others are making using LLM’s to train superhuman performance with simple verbal instructions, they honestly seem about 5 minutes away, so this age-old problem should fall relatively soon.
Then Western fertility rates will *really* become a problem! But so much more will be going on in that timescale, it either won’t matter or we’ll figure something out.
Seems like a first year economics student would probably have a solution for this, in both a personal and societal sense.
It's probably worth checking out Baumeister's publications. I have noted down "The laws of supply and demand can be substantiated in all sorts of marketplaces, and there is no reason that sex should be an exception." and my memory is that the rest of what I've read of him is along economic lines.
I will take a look at it!
Maybe they don't teach about collective action problems until the second year.
Humans are imitative and women perhaps even more so than men at least when it comes to follow a fashion. With feminists pushing for the social acceptance of "sluts" and their ubiquitous presence of social media lots of women feel the need to look like them. So, unintuitively, feminism led to a Great Undressing in which in all areas of life young women are wearing skimpier and more form fitting outfits than men even when doing the same activity. At the pool is swim trunks vs bikini, on hikes cargo pants vs yoga pants and in the office it's suits vs pencil skirts.
I think we are the first society in history in which men are wearing outfits that are more modest than women's.
This of course makes life even more painful for the set of men who see all this feminine beauty on display but they are not getting any action.
> This of course makes life even more painful for the set of men who see all this feminine beauty on display but they are not getting any action
Men can up their game but most choose not to.
And what is the purpose? To satisfy hedonistic desires? Which today are simply another pleasure trigger. Not leading to children, family or meaning.
That's always been my response to red quest and other pickup artists: it's mostly pointless hedonism.
In a zero-sum competition everybody uping their game just leads to the same result for more effort, what the chinese are calling involution.
Done right, it's positive sum, not zero sum.
How?
>>Humans are imitative and women perhaps even more so than men at least when it comes to follow a fashion.
Thinking about it, do we know feminism is the foremost culprit? Couldn't men be the foremost reason that women try to look sexually appealing? I mean, it is plausible that women choose to dress in clothes that reveal their bodies and hide their faces behind make-up are doing so because they earn something from it. On a collective level it might be damaging for both sexes: Men are distracted by what they in almost all cases can't get, women waste their time on their own appearances. Still, I have this feeling that the trend is difficult to reverse, because individuals gain from it.
> Men are distracted by what they in almost all cases can't get
February is the hardest month in northern New England, and not only because the snow keeps piling up beneath barren branches, but because women are covered in shapeless coats. Not until the spring thaws arrive do the lovely flowers, singing birds, and beautiful ladies once more begin to appear.
If some men become distracted and unhappy by all the flowers and birds they can't have sex with, nobody regards this as normal, or feels any concern for their immoderate desires. Shall we cover up the ladies, pull the jewelry from their necks, and wash the color from their faces for the sake of immature men and envious women?
The exception could be societies where men wear penis strings and women wear nothing at all.