8 ms·

One thing that struck me about this is that all the messages from people worried their data are from men. Troy even states that explicitly: "very close to 100%

One thing that struck me about this is that all the messages from people worried their data are from men. Troy even states that explicitly: "very close to 100% of the emails I got were about men having accounts on the site". Why is that? Is it because men are more likely to cheat, or because men are more likely to need the help of online services to do so? I suspect both are true, but can say with confidence that the latter is definitely true. Women don't need sites to help them cheat; all they have to do is go out and they will be hunted down. As a woman I find this a clear sign of the remaining, quite sinister, gender inequality.

RodericDay 11y ago
of "the remaining" gender inequality?
- _cpancake 11y ago
  I'm not quite sure what you're confused about. The gender inequality that still exists. It's pretty straightforward.
  - metamet 11y ago
    There will always be some form of inequality. That's what happens when you have two distinct things and compare them.
    - ketralnis 11y ago
      And that's honestly what you think people mean when they say gender inequality?
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
transfire 11y ago
You don't understand what it is like to be a man then. It has nothing to do with "inequality". When it comes to sex it is woman that hold most of the cards. For a man, unless they are handsome, wealthy and well endowed (i.e. perfect) then they are at the mercy of women. Which means they have two choices, they either "beg" for it or try to "take" it. Both come in a variety of subtle and overt forms. In either case it is a very insecure state for a single man. And ironically woman can sense that. Woman are always more interested in the taken man because that insecurity is no longer present. So in a cruel twist of fate, a taken man who struggled to woo his current mate discovers now he has many more options for the taking.
- roymurdock 11y ago
  I agree with you that women (and men for that matter) find confidence attractive. You don't have to be in a relationship to be confident. I would be careful of conflating the two. From my experience, most women are not interested in holding sex as a trump card. Like you and I, they are simply looking for companionship - for someone they can count on for support and non-judgement during times of crisis, but who will also push them to become better and achieve their goals. Like you and I, most are at least partially attracted to looks, confidence, humor, power, intellect, etc. It sounds like you're pretty bitter about something or other. I think you should make more friends that are women so that you can talk to them about the way they view relationships.
  - cousin_it 11y ago
    > It sounds like you're pretty bitter about something or other. I think you should make more friends That's a pretty unkind thing to say to a stranger on the internet. I lose a bit of faith in humanity every time I see such things.
    - acqq 11y ago
      I don't see that mean, it matches the impression I have from transfire's comment. Nobody is saying that transfire's comment fully reflects the person who made it, but based only on the comment, it is an appropriate response, as far as I see it.
balabaster 11y ago
Or perhaps there are alternative explanations(?): Women don't care enough to check if they were exposed; less women are aware of the breach; men aren't paranoid enough to check up on their women; men don't care as much that their wife/spouse/gf may or may not have been on there at some point (or currently) and could have been/is cheating; perhaps there were even some couples that were into that together. [Not saying that I believe any of these are true statements, just that one could draw some odd conclusions from what isn't being said, just as easily as what is being said] It's funny that there seems to be an assumption that most were either men checking about themselves or paranoid/untrusting spouses checking on the status of their men. From the information that's being reported, there seems to be remarkably few men checking up on their women... Not sure if that's a valid observation, but it's an interesting one that is telling of the mental/emotional differences between men and women on the whole. Who knows, people are a weird bunch. The more you know about them, the more you realize that all this shit that goes on behind closed doors that people judge in public eventually leaks and then when you analyze enough data about the state of humanity, appears to be "completely normal behaviour"... Then when everyone realizes it's completely normal behaviour they're like "okay then, perhaps we should just change the rules so that we can all stop hiding and be publically equal and love who we are in public again." We're all human, we all fuck up from time to time and we all get caught in embarrassing moments where we hope the ground would open up and swallow us occasionally. Perhaps not in ways that get leaked all over the internet, or to be used as blackmail against us, but it happens. Given the few women on there (by all accounts), one would have to wonder how many men could actually have ended up cheating with anyone... from the sound of things, all the female accounts were either fake or sex professionals... so who were all these millions of men cheating with?
peterwwillis 11y ago
Yes, technically men cheat a little more than women, according to studies that aren't done by dating companies. But the 'why' is varied. It's illogical to say "they cheat because they are more likely to cheat". They cheat because of many factors, but according to surveys, they cheat more often out of a need for physical satisfaction, while women cheat more out of a need for emotional or intimate satisfaction. As far as need for online services to help? That's completely dependent on the person, again. True, women get hit on more often & indiscriminately, so they'd have more choice. But they also can't necessarily get the emotional satisfaction they're looking for, so that narrows the field. Men just need to be attractive enough to get laid, which again definitely depends on the man. -- As a side rant: Assuming sex and gender were considered about the same, gender inequality is a function of gender differences. In other words, it's not only inevitable, it's normal. Women request [and should get] special care for breastfeeding/pumping, maternity leave, they have higher incidences of breast and ovarian cancer, they naturally have less muscle and are shorter on average, etc etc. These aren't controversial statements, and yet, they show simple examples of how women are different, and in some cases should be treated different in order to provide care. How would one make these differences "equal" among the genders? (obviously sex isn't gender, but clearly there's more cis-women than trans-women)
- rdancer 11y ago
  > men cheat a little more than women, according to studies Women admit to cheating less than men, and this is reflected in a bias of studies whose methodology includes self-reporting. In general, women self-report about one third less sex partners than men. That presents a curious mathematical problem: who are all those extra men partnering with? Let's say the average reported number of sex partners for males is 11.7 [1]. Now that means that the set of men has a number of connections into the set of women times 11.7. Say, the number of men in the set is 31M [2], then the number of connections is 362.7M. For the set of women, the numbers are 7.7, 32.2M, and 247.94M, respectively. The connections can terminate in either of the sets, so we can have M-M, M-F, or F-F connections. At one unlikely extreme, we could have no heterosexual (M-F) pairings at all, so that means 11.7 gay partners for men, and 7.7 lesbian partners for women. Clearly, this isn't the reality, not even in the UK. But even if we map all the connections from the female set to males, we'll end up with 247.94M hetero connections, no lesbian connections, and 114.76 connections from the male set onto itself, or 8.0 hetero + 3.7 gay connections per male, and 7.7 hetero + 0 lesbian connections per female. There may be a large number of spinsters, and a small number of gay people may be skewing the mean away from the mode for the males, but the important take-away is that, mathematically, hetero-sexual partnerships always draw from both sets equally, and therefore the mean number of heterosex partners is always the same across the whole population. [1] http://www.nhs.uk/news/2013/11November/Pages/Results-of-UK-Sex-Survey-Published.aspx http://www.nhs.uk/news/2013/11November/Pages/Results-of-UK-S... [2] http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/census/2011-census/population-and-household-estimates-for-the-united-kingdom/stb-2011-census--population-estimates-for-the-united-kingdom.html http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/census/2011-census/population-...
jberryman 11y ago
> Women don't need sites to help them cheat; all they have to do is go out and they will be hunted down. As a woman I find this a clear sign of the remaining, quite sinister, gender inequality. Can you expand on what you mean by that? (Specifically by "hunted down" and how what you're talking about relates to inequality)
- JohnBooty 11y ago
  Have you ever been to a bar? A single woman will attract lots of male attention. A single man won't have a similar level of females flocking to him unless he's got movie star looks. These are vast generalizations with plenty of exceptions, but surely you have noticed that in most cultures men tend to pursue women more actively than vice-versa?
  - jberryman 11y ago
    Right, but it wasn't clear to me that that was mayaross's point exactly, or if it was her whole point. I'm interested in what women think about the dynamics of dating and courtship, as it's something I think a lot about and sort of struggle with in some ways.
andygates 11y ago
The membership seems to have been a sausage-fest. Lots of men, lots of fake female profiles and lots of female sex workers, but very few legit female profiles. So the worried responses would be from users, and the user base displays bias.

RodericDay 11y ago

of "the remaining" gender inequality?

_cpancake 11y ago
I'm not quite sure what you're confused about. The gender inequality that still exists. It's pretty straightforward.
- metamet 11y ago
  There will always be some form of inequality. That's what happens when you have two distinct things and compare them.
  - ketralnis 11y ago
    And that's honestly what you think people mean when they say gender inequality?

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

transfire 11y ago

You don't understand what it is like to be a man then. It has nothing to do with "inequality". When it comes to sex it is woman that hold most of the cards. For a man, unless they are handsome, wealthy and well endowed (i.e. perfect) then they are at the mercy of women. Which means they have two choices, they either "beg" for it or try to "take" it. Both come in a variety of subtle and overt forms. In either case it is a very insecure state for a single man. And ironically woman can sense that. Woman are always more interested in the taken man because that insecurity is no longer present. So in a cruel twist of fate, a taken man who struggled to woo his current mate discovers now he has many more options for the taking.

roymurdock 11y ago
I agree with you that women (and men for that matter) find confidence attractive. You don't have to be in a relationship to be confident. I would be careful of conflating the two. From my experience, most women are not interested in holding sex as a trump card. Like you and I, they are simply looking for companionship - for someone they can count on for support and non-judgement during times of crisis, but who will also push them to become better and achieve their goals. Like you and I, most are at least partially attracted to looks, confidence, humor, power, intellect, etc. It sounds like you're pretty bitter about something or other. I think you should make more friends that are women so that you can talk to them about the way they view relationships.
- cousin_it 11y ago
  > It sounds like you're pretty bitter about something or other. I think you should make more friends That's a pretty unkind thing to say to a stranger on the internet. I lose a bit of faith in humanity every time I see such things.
  - acqq 11y ago
    I don't see that mean, it matches the impression I have from transfire's comment. Nobody is saying that transfire's comment fully reflects the person who made it, but based only on the comment, it is an appropriate response, as far as I see it.

balabaster 11y ago

Or perhaps there are alternative explanations(?): Women don't care enough to check if they were exposed; less women are aware of the breach; men aren't paranoid enough to check up on their women; men don't care as much that their wife/spouse/gf may or may not have been on there at some point (or currently) and could have been/is cheating; perhaps there were even some couples that were into that together. [Not saying that I believe any of these are true statements, just that one could draw some odd conclusions from what isn't being said, just as easily as what is being said] It's funny that there seems to be an assumption that most were either men checking about themselves or paranoid/untrusting spouses checking on the status of their men. From the information that's being reported, there seems to be remarkably few men checking up on their women... Not sure if that's a valid observation, but it's an interesting one that is telling of the mental/emotional differences between men and women on the whole. Who knows, people are a weird bunch. The more you know about them, the more you realize that all this shit that goes on behind closed doors that people judge in public eventually leaks and then when you analyze enough data about the state of humanity, appears to be "completely normal behaviour"... Then when everyone realizes it's completely normal behaviour they're like "okay then, perhaps we should just change the rules so that we can all stop hiding and be publically equal and love who we are in public again." We're all human, we all fuck up from time to time and we all get caught in embarrassing moments where we hope the ground would open up and swallow us occasionally. Perhaps not in ways that get leaked all over the internet, or to be used as blackmail against us, but it happens. Given the few women on there (by all accounts), one would have to wonder how many men could actually have ended up cheating with anyone... from the sound of things, all the female accounts were either fake or sex professionals... so who were all these millions of men cheating with?

peterwwillis 11y ago

Yes, technically men cheat a little more than women, according to studies that aren't done by dating companies. But the 'why' is varied. It's illogical to say "they cheat because they are more likely to cheat". They cheat because of many factors, but according to surveys, they cheat more often out of a need for physical satisfaction, while women cheat more out of a need for emotional or intimate satisfaction. As far as need for online services to help? That's completely dependent on the person, again. True, women get hit on more often & indiscriminately, so they'd have more choice. But they also can't necessarily get the emotional satisfaction they're looking for, so that narrows the field. Men just need to be attractive enough to get laid, which again definitely depends on the man. -- As a side rant: Assuming sex and gender were considered about the same, gender inequality is a function of gender differences. In other words, it's not only inevitable, it's normal. Women request [and should get] special care for breastfeeding/pumping, maternity leave, they have higher incidences of breast and ovarian cancer, they naturally have less muscle and are shorter on average, etc etc. These aren't controversial statements, and yet, they show simple examples of how women are different, and in some cases should be treated different in order to provide care. How would one make these differences "equal" among the genders? (obviously sex isn't gender, but clearly there's more cis-women than trans-women)

rdancer 11y ago
> men cheat a little more than women, according to studies Women admit to cheating less than men, and this is reflected in a bias of studies whose methodology includes self-reporting. In general, women self-report about one third less sex partners than men. That presents a curious mathematical problem: who are all those extra men partnering with? Let's say the average reported number of sex partners for males is 11.7 [1]. Now that means that the set of men has a number of connections into the set of women times 11.7. Say, the number of men in the set is 31M [2], then the number of connections is 362.7M. For the set of women, the numbers are 7.7, 32.2M, and 247.94M, respectively. The connections can terminate in either of the sets, so we can have M-M, M-F, or F-F connections. At one unlikely extreme, we could have no heterosexual (M-F) pairings at all, so that means 11.7 gay partners for men, and 7.7 lesbian partners for women. Clearly, this isn't the reality, not even in the UK. But even if we map all the connections from the female set to males, we'll end up with 247.94M hetero connections, no lesbian connections, and 114.76 connections from the male set onto itself, or 8.0 hetero + 3.7 gay connections per male, and 7.7 hetero + 0 lesbian connections per female. There may be a large number of spinsters, and a small number of gay people may be skewing the mean away from the mode for the males, but the important take-away is that, mathematically, hetero-sexual partnerships always draw from both sets equally, and therefore the mean number of heterosex partners is always the same across the whole population. [1] http://www.nhs.uk/news/2013/11November/Pages/Results-of-UK-Sex-Survey-Published.aspx http://www.nhs.uk/news/2013/11November/Pages/Results-of-UK-S... [2] http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/census/2011-census/population-and-household-estimates-for-the-united-kingdom/stb-2011-census--population-estimates-for-the-united-kingdom.html http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/census/2011-census/population-...

jberryman 11y ago

> Women don't need sites to help them cheat; all they have to do is go out and they will be hunted down. As a woman I find this a clear sign of the remaining, quite sinister, gender inequality. Can you expand on what you mean by that? (Specifically by "hunted down" and how what you're talking about relates to inequality)

JohnBooty 11y ago
Have you ever been to a bar? A single woman will attract lots of male attention. A single man won't have a similar level of females flocking to him unless he's got movie star looks. These are vast generalizations with plenty of exceptions, but surely you have noticed that in most cultures men tend to pursue women more actively than vice-versa?
- jberryman 11y ago
  Right, but it wasn't clear to me that that was mayaross's point exactly, or if it was her whole point. I'm interested in what women think about the dynamics of dating and courtship, as it's something I think a lot about and sort of struggle with in some ways.

andygates 11y ago

The membership seems to have been a sausage-fest. Lots of men, lots of fake female profiles and lots of female sex workers, but very few legit female profiles. So the worried responses would be from users, and the user base displays bias.