20 ms·
Power imbalances and sex
- birdyrooster 5y agosex appeal is a paltry consolation prize for real power
- commandlinefan 5y ago> real power Something that very few people - men or women - actually have.
- bsedlm 5y agopower comes in many sizes. small largely inconsequential power during an evening at a party, or the power of a clerk in a bureaucracy are both power, albeit small (short-term) power. They're both power
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- snvzz 5y agoIt also expires real fast.
- symlinkk 5y agoIt is real power though. Did you just read the WSJ article about the McDonalds CEO who was denied a $100 million severance package because he was caught having sex with employees?
- whatshisface 5y agoUnless the employee got the severance package the CEO was denied, that's not an example of what you're referring to.
- tacomonstrous 5y agoWhat is this supposed to illustrate? That finally abuse of power is getting noticed and punished?
- adamrezich 5y agowould Theranos have gone the same way if it was a man larping as Steve Jobs instead of a woman?
- fallingfrog 5y agoInterestingly enough there are cultures where the problem was solved using method #1, and they tend to be matriarchal type cultures where women are not monopolized by a single person sexually but are free to do whatever they please. (From what I've read, grain of salt). So on some level the power imbalance itself might be said to come from patriarchy.
- PaulHoule 5y agoThe status quo is often justified though by an egalitarian argument: that is, if you let things happen "naturally" you would see all of the women end up with 30% of the men and the rest would be left with nothing.
- goodpoint 5y ago> all of the women end up with 30% of the men Anthropologists studied many cultures that have no concept of monogamy and sexual shame: it's quite the opposite.
- SuoDuanDao 5y agoDo you know whether any of those cultures had the potential for wealth differentials among men the way we do today? The only cultures of that nature I heard of were either communal or men literally couldn't own more property than they could carry themselves.
- throwawaygal7 5y agoMany of the popular examples are hotly contested and based on acendata
- bongoman37 5y agoName a few?
- beebeepka 5y agoI've read about this before but I not buying it. I think someone is pushing an agenda with this "explanation" because it is a defeatist stance. The strongest stallions getting all the women while everyone else is stuck with their VR girlfriends. Totally not a thing on a global scale because we are getting more and more. No, don't cite me aging population stats. They may be real but the math doesn't work out with your 30%
- wayoutthere 5y agoI think this is a very white, cisgendered view of the problem. If you fit within the mainstream beauty standards, great! You have some power over men and I think that’s awesome. If you don’t, most of the guys interested are fetishizing the things that make you not part of those standards. They’re looking for someone to fulfill a porno fantasy, not a partner. As a trans woman who passes for cis, I can tell you that lots of men want to sleep with me, but far fewer want to have a real relationship with me after I disclose that I’m trans (and from talking to women of color, this is not unique to trans women). There’s no power there other than transactional. So I’ve had to learn to always be on guard and find ways to filter out the fetishists to meet the men who aren’t ashamed to date me.
- Chris2048 5y ago> I can tell you that lots of men want to sleep with me, but far fewer want to have a real relationship with me Is this different from being a cis-woman?
- wayoutthere 5y agoYeah, very much so. Once you hit your 30s people are looking for more than hookups. I have cis girlfriends who have a much easier time finding decent guys. Heck I have no trouble finding them, they just don’t stick around after they find out I’m trans. I basically just gave up on men my age and date guys ~10 years younger since they don’t seem to have as much of a hangup about it.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- ketzo 5y agoI think the subtext is "a lot of men want to sleep with me only because I am a trans woman," and then are freaked out by the idea of actually dating her, which is an extremely common occurrence for trans women. There is, as OP alluded to, a very strong fetishization of non-white, non-cis women.
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- PaulHoule 5y agoPart of the story of men and women is that a women's sexual value is at a peak very early (let's say 18) but a man's sexual value peaks later (at least 30+). The sexual invisibility many men feel as teenagers is a trauma that will live with them for the rest of their lives. Eva Illouz writes about this stuff eloquently https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsereviewofbooks/2012/05/24/book-review-why-love-hurts/ https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsereviewofbooks/2012/05/24/book-rev... and says that 30+ women who are still single want more of everything out of relationships than men will give them, including sex.
- toomuchtodo 5y agoPre acquisition, Okcupid’s data scientist cofounder did a bunch of research on this and confirms your assertion. https://www.npr.org/2014/09/06/345884282/online-dating-stats-reveal-a-dataclysm-of-telling-trends https://www.npr.org/2014/09/06/345884282/online-dating-stats... And it looks like I wrote a comment about this five years ago! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12710536 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12710536 OkCupid blog post I cited: https://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/the-case-for-an-older-woman/ https://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/the-case-for-an-older-wom...
- magicalist 5y ago> Okcupid’s data scientist cofounder did a bunch of research on this and confirms your assertion said assertion: > women's sexual value is at a peak very early (let's say 18) but a man's sexual value peaks later (at least 30+)...sexual invisibility many men feel as teenagers... OKcupid data scientist cofounder says in that article: > Women generally like a guy to be the same age as them up until the guys hit about 40. But when you flip it around, when you look at how men perceive women, it's pretty much a just straight ticket vote for 20, which is the lowest age I looked at in my data set So young men aren't invisible according to this data. And: > This is just measuring people's opinions, not what they actually go out and do. What you see when you actually look at what people do, you see the realism set in. So these 40-year-old guys ... they people they actually have the courage to actually go out and message are a lot older: it's 30, 35-year-old women So stated value is 20, but in actual practice women older than this are also doing just fine.
- vorpalhex 5y agoThe most obvious question is whether or not the sexual gaze and power dynamic happens in reverse. The answer is of course, yes. From male strippers, to host clubs in Japan (compared to hostess clubs), and so on. The next obvious question is whether or not this happens outside the traditional gender role with people who identify as queer or non-gendered? And yeah, it seems to. That suggests to me that this piece has missed the underlying cause.
- mdorazio 5y agoI don't think that's the case. There will of course be counter-examples, but the ratio is so massively different that it might as well be one-sided. If a specific power dynamic is split 90/10 between the genders then that's a pretty strong underlying cause regardless of the fact that the other 10% enjoys the same thing.
- vorpalhex 5y agoWe can argue about the ratio but that doesn't actually matter. Whether it's 50/50, 90/10 or 99/1. We only care that the alternate case does occur genuinely (and we should exclude cases where it happens as satire or a political statement). One of the reasons why I like the host club example is because it's a business in demand, it has a big focus on privacy and it has an audience that choses to be there. The female patrons of the host club aren't there to put on a performance or make a political statement. Put another way. Let's take nursing, which tends to be female dominated. Do you think the female/male power balance still occurs? Does it occur in the same way? Is it flipped? A lot of male nurses report sexual harassment problems. That suggests to me that the underlying cause is not an innate male/female power structure. There is some other root cause at play.
- mdorazio 5y agoI think you misunderstand the dynamics of, for example, host clubs. Women don't generally go to hosts seeking primarily sex - they tend to go seeking fantasy love & engagement-based interactions. Articles like [1] shine a bit of light on it. I'm genuinely having trouble following your logic on this issue - it seems fairly obvious that heterosexual males are highly desirous of sex with attractive women, which creates a power dynamic based on that desire. [1] http://feministing.com/2009/08/09/japan-male-hosts-and-female-customers-who-love-them/ http://feministing.com/2009/08/09/japan-male-hosts-and-femal...
- gavinray 5y ago> "The first seems to be present in more liberal, hippie-esque communities I’ve been in. In some circles, all the men seem to be satisfied, and all the women seem to have a lot of sex with a lot of people. I’m extremely curious about what are the causal factors of these types of groups. They seem to have solved the problem." Anecdotal evidence, but this gels with me. I lived in Denver/Boulder for a long time, and Boulder was one of the few places I've ever been where the concept of groupsex/threesomes and non-monogamy wasn't strange at all. Have several friends in tech that it turned out privately had lots and lot of groupsex or other such kinky things. Generally, with a dedicated friendgroup who had partners, where this was a habitual thing. I don't consider myself hippie or what you'd term neo-liberal (I've done a lot of psychedelics and if I have to paint myself into a corner, it'd be "Libertarian") but I've also had non-monogamous relationships. Not sure what exactly it is but it boiled down to me not having insecurities about the relationship and viewing sex as mostly hedonism. There's no logical reason for two people to deny each other the opportunity for more sex besides "I don't want you to." Romanticism and love aren't things I equate with sex, and sex isn't something I do to someone because I love them, to phrase it another way. This mortifies most people I've mentioned this to, and they can't seem to come to grips with it. It's not for everyone, that's for sure.
- SuoDuanDao 5y agoI've seen references to studies that imply it's largely a function of social inequality. The more egalitarian a society is, the data seemed to suggest, the more likely women were to engage in casual sex with multiple partners. Not sure how that relates to the Denver/Boulder area which I think of as quite capitalist, but maybe there are wrinkles either the studies I saw or the descriptions of Colorado I heard didn't capture.
- gavinray 5y agoBoulder is very, very liberal and hippie. Denver, also liberal, less hippie.
- neltnerb 5y agoI mean, this seems like stating the obvious but are they not less likely to be homophobic? Polyamory is a heck of a lot simpler when people have flexible sexuality.
- darkengine 5y agoThis articulates something that feels quite truthful, but one has to take care not to assume that every sexual phenomenon is biological. For example in the States, in matching tools like group dating events and dating apps, men typically outnumber women by a sizeable margin. One could ascribe this to biology (with women as the choosing sex, like we see in a lot of primates and other species). I had to reconsider this when I saw some pictures from a group dating event among Chinese international students at my university, in which the women outnumbered the men! I was told by a Chinese person this wasn't uncommon for such events in China. I found out later that group dating events in Japan are similar in terms of gender balance as well. I would very much like to hear some hypotheses for the reasons for what seems to be a pretty big cultural difference. To me it casts a bit of doubt on the author's narrative of "women have it and men want it" -- in some cultures, it seems like women want it too.
- csa 5y agoAs someone who has lived in Japan and China, I can say that I have seen this happen. I have also seen a similar phenomenon at Ivies (at the undergrad level) if you exclude the athletes, so it’s not even a race or national culture thing. Imho, the short answer is that it is the way a large portion of that sub-population is raised - lots of study, very limited socialization (esp. wrt the males), very few positive male role models who are like them in home life or in popular culture.
- mdorazio 5y agoI have no data to back this up beyond the anecdotal (ex. "Christmas cake" women stigma in Japan), but a possible explanation is ageism differences between the cultures. E.g. American men may be less age-selective than their Chinese or Japanese counterparts, which would naturally lead to gender composition changes in dating events that target people in demographics older than early 20s.
- the_only_law 5y ago> which would naturally lead to gender composition changes in dating events that target people in demographics older than early 20s. Do dating events in America target 20 something’s? Every one I’ve ever seen is nearly exclusively middle aged or retired divorcees
- AlexandrB 5y agoUgh. I think this whole post starts with a flawed premise. It may be true that heterosexual men want sex. But so do heterosexual women and homosexual men and women as well, as well as those who are somewhere in the vast spectrum between these identities. The question to consider then is why does male heterosexual lust get special consideration? For example, consider the framing of calling the ability to reject male advances "power". Anyone can reject sexual advances from others for any reason, but it's rarely framed as a special position of "power" other than when applied to heterosexual male advances.
- zionic 5y agoHaving something a lot of other people want with the ability to deny them is textbook power.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- bendbro 5y ago> The question to consider then is why does male heterosexual lust get special consideration Male lust is given special consideration because it is the overwhelming majority of the lust expressed, leading to all the problems this article discussed. Perhaps it is a US-only thing.
- ipaddr 5y agoThat's a core issue. Lust not being expressed in some genders. The other core issue is not respecting natural biological function need based on gender
- dayvid 5y agoWomen definitely want sex, but it's not as urgent because they usually know that it's easily available for them. I taught English overseas right after college with other people from the states and it was the first time I saw women sexually frustrated. The local guys were too shy to approach the female teachers and most of the male teachers were going after the foreign women. It was also the first time I had women actively approach me, which shows you a completely different side of women than if you're an average guy (and showed me how where you live can VASTLY change your value).
- pwdisswordfish0 5y agoWhy is there so much talk about sex bots? Every time this problem comes up, people bring up sex bots. This article elides the problem that technology is currently dozens of years away from robots capable of anything even remotely resembling actual sex, if that is even possible at all, by qualifying that they would have to be “amazing” and “realistic”. To me that is still missing the point. People aren’t just starved of sex, they are also starved of intimacy, romance, connection, eroticism, whatever. If your mother dies and I “solve” this by presenting you with an amazingly realistic mom bot, at best you’ll laugh me out of the room and at worst our relationship will be forever soured. Sex bots cannot fill the holes some people apparently think they can. They can replace or complement “ceci n’est pas une sex” aka “porn”. They can help you masturbate. They can’t replace “sex with a person”.
- 80sfilmtrivia 5y agoThat's the entire plot of 1987 film "Cherry 2000". A true trash classic. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092746/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092746/
- SuoDuanDao 5y agoI think they get brought up so often because they reliably make everyone uncomfortable. They make men uncomfortable because we imagine being so lonely it seems like the best option, and they make women uncomfortable because they wonder whether that's really the extent to which men value them. And of course, realising we're insecure enough to have thoughts of that nature makes it doubly uncomfortable.
- mikepurvis 5y agoThis logic mostly extends to the substitutes available today— pity sex, porn, prostitution, cheating. The connection has always been the more important thing; sex is just a proxy for that.
- ipaddr 5y agoThey make everyone uncomfortable because everyone knows they are the answer in the end but it shifts women out of a role. Things are taboo for a reason. A robot seems far away. VR seems closer but right now men are falling in love with women providing the faux girlfriend experience through fan experience sites, cam girls, custom videos.
- par 5y agoI like it, interesting read. But why is it on HN?
- sokoloff 5y agoYour first sentence answers your second.
- ketzo 5y agoSomething that I think is particularly interesting (and that is not immediately obvious from the post) is that the author used to do porn, and is considering doing it again. She's written about how that really fucks with your self-image, the experience of online stalkers/harassers, and also how porn basically saved her from homelessness at one point – and that she really enjoys making it. She's intimately familiar with the power – and costs – of The Thing.
- standardUser 5y agoThere is a way out of this conundrum and it is absolutely not to double down on traditional gender roles or to throw our hands in the air and say "it's evolution!". That way is to embrace and encourage sex work, to be open to non-monogamy and other non-traditional arrangements, deprogram ourselves from all of our subtle and not-so-subtle slut-shaming, stop pretending the naked body is illegal and sex is bad or dirty, stop dramatizing and fear-mongering over the impact of STDs, and just generally embrace a broader, vaster and more open perspective on sex and romance and intimacy.
- PrimalDual 5y agoThat’s a nice idea but how do you do credit assignment for childrearing purposes? Sadly even in modern society, sex is not entirely unliked from reproduction and we still expect, often legally demand, fathers invest resources in their children. I thought part of the deal with monogamy came from ensuring stable male parental investment and a good way to achieve this is through monogamy as a proxy for fatherhood.
- whatshisface 5y agoBirth control is what holds the whole thing together, that's the implied part that's not usually mentioned. I grant that IQ 145 people can get together and subconsciously arrange an equitable polycule childcare system, and they don't realize why that would be a problem for anyone else. Moving away from exceptional cases, you have what are more or less roomates, and they manage to stay roomates through birth control. If you're wondering, "what happens to people that have a good gut feeling for fairness, but who aren't smart enough to subconsciously work out how 5 people are going to take care of a child, and who want kids," then the answer is, they are the vast majority of the population and they're not going to fit the non-monogamous system unless massive inequality (see bronze age) forces them there.
- symlinkk 5y agoI’m betting on monogamy since that has worked for thousands of years.
- madflame991 5y agoRelated and on topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0RqK00b7Q4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0RqK00b7Q4 Sexual Economics: A Model of Heterosexual Behavior by Dr. Kathleen Vohs
- sleepysysadmin 5y agoI enjoyed reading. >A catcall isn’t just a catcall, it’s a symbol for the entire social structure around the power exchange of sex. The traditional gender roles were well balanced. throughout recorded history there were differing cultures and different approaches but it was generally balanced; but egalitarianism since roughly the 1960s broke this balance. Economically and culturally this has been one of the best things we have done. However, that's what broke the balance on things like catcalling. Virtually nobody is doing it anymore and that's kind of a problem. It's worse, now we have tinder and tremendous amounts of high quality porn. The women's 'thing' has drastically reduced in value. Even if we want to get back to the balance, we cannot anymore. We must now find a new balance. >Sometimes I feel like women who are trying to end the game don’t realize that the game exists because women have the Thing, and people want the Thing and aren’t getting it. Oh yes, those folks who want to break the game don't understand the situation at all. Worse yet, this effort is not only doomed but the effort itself will only make the game worse in their eyes. This is the complicated part. We have moved to a new balance and I'm not sure what this balance is or will become.
- kharak 5y ago>However, that's what broke the balance on things like catcalling. Virtually nobody is doing it anymore and that's kind of a problem. How is not catcalling a problem?
- sleepysysadmin 5y ago>How is not catcalling a problem? Let me requote the article. A catcall isn’t just a catcall, it’s a symbol for the entire social structure around the power exchange of sex. It is no longer a compliment – an acknowledgement of the desirability of their Thing – but rather an insult, a claim that they are only desirable for their Thing. Catcalls on the street are fine, because they are 100% okay with being a one dimensional sex object to strangers. That's what the article said on the subject. Some women see the catcall as a compliment, others dont. This is the balance. This isn't toxic masculinity being eliminated. This is men not being interested in 'the thing' and therefore the balance shifts accordingly. Men are thusly some amount more powerful and in control. Here's kind of a big caveat as well. There's a wall on this balance. There is a point in which there's too much risk in sex and you will never catcall. When catcalling ends, it's because we are at that wall. Moreover, now what are the consequences of being at the wall? Negative birthrates when excluding immigration. Huge increase in open border immigration. Reversal of abortion rights is certain. Birth control will almost certainly get banned. Obviously 'catcalling' aka free speech isn't the problem. It's just a clear canary in the coal mine.
- kkjjkgjjgg 5y ago"Catcalls on the street are fine, because they are 100% okay with being a one dimensional sex object to strangers." That is just feminist ideology. Why is being sexually attractive "being reduced to a one dimensional sex object"? Why is "having the thing" separate from being a woman? Humans in general are sexual beings. Also the comparison is just between women and rich men. What about the vast majority of men who are not rich. The "power game" also is not that hard to understand, mostly women want something valuable in exchange for "their thing" (to keep with the language of the article). And rightfully so - one of the ironies of feminism is that they want women to give away the services of their wombs for free. They are supposed to birth babies, sacrificing months of their lives and risking their life, and then still go to work as if nothing happened. How exactly that is empowering probably requires a gender studies degree to understand.
- ketzo 5y agoYou're misreading the point. The sentence you're quoting is from the perspective of a woman who is totally fine with, even enjoys, The Game. > Why is being sexually attractive "being reduced to a one dimensional sex object" It's not. Being catcalled is. That's what the quoted sentence is saying.
- kkjjkgjjgg 5y agoIt's not "being reduced to", it's just an announcement of sexual attraction. What exactly does "object" even mean in that context? Do men also catcall sex dolls, which are actual objects?
- themacguffinman 5y agoI'm reasonably confident that feminism argues women aren't "supposed" to birth babies, it'd be their choice, it'd also be their choice to go to work with children if they want to. The empowering part would be that you have a meaningful choice instead of the traditionally immense social pressure for women to always have children and always stay at home if they do.
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- slibhb 5y agoControl-f "child," "children," "pregnancy" -- nothing. We should think carefully about the tools various cultures use to deal with sex. Ultimately, sex is about children, humans are a species that reproduces sexually. Even if there's no chance of pregnancy, the chemicals and emotions involved are premised on the possibility of pregnancy. > The first seems to be present in more liberal, hippie-esque communities I’ve been in. In some circles, all the men seem to be satisfied, and all the women seem to have a lot of sex with a lot of people. I’m extremely curious about what are the causal factors of these types of groups. They seem to have solved the problem. One of the basic functions of a culture or civilization is to reproduce itself through multiple generations. These communities do not last over long periods of time.
- PrimalDual 5y agoI strongly agree with your statement. Free sex and love are fine as long as there are no consequences. But sadly even with all our technology there must be consequences since we don’t know of any other way to propagate the species into the future. For the advocates of sexual libertinism I have a question: how do you ensure male parental investment? As a society we value it and often legally demand it. I certainly could not argue for the alternative. How do you assign fathers under complete sexual liberation? A common thread is that somehow you socialize childrearing but I am seriously skeptical of the scalability of that approach beyond small tribal societies.
- ipaddr 5y agoSociety raises children. The state provides qualified parents for children which allow the parents to work and live and keep spending. You could say parents belong with their children but parents outsource raising a child now to daycare, school and social groups.
- Out_of_Characte 5y ago"This [desire for sex] is how we’ve continued the human race for thousands of years" This article is about the road leading up to children and how people select each other. How we raise children today is completely different from our past and deserves its own article. Not to mention sex today doesn't always involve pregnancy for everyone.
- jawns 5y agoThe ideas presented here don't really account for the fact that in many cases, the men who do the most damage in terms of sexism and misogyny are those who are already married or otherwise have ready access to sexual partners. They are not necessarily chasing sex. They already have sex. In at least some cases, they're quite satisfied with the sex they have and aren't looking to cheat on their wives. Yet we still see sexism and misogyny coming from this group. Why? Because sexism, while it might be caused sometimes by an unfulfilled desire for sex, is fundamentally distinct from that desire, and it can exist on its own, regardless of how much sex a man might be having.
- thriftwy 5y agoOr maybe because they can afford to be that way since they're no longer in the race and do not have to score points.
- bitslayer 5y ago"people want to have sex with women" Actually approximately 50% of people want to have sex with men.
- commandlinefan 5y agoAlthough your assertion makes logical sense, there appears to be a lot of evidence to the contrary.
- dqpb 5y ago> either we all start giving away the Thing until it’s no longer a rare commodity, or we invent amazing sex robots with good mobile joint movements and realistic audio sounds. It will always be a rare commodity because sex is costlier for women (because of pregnancy). These discussions seem to always miss that basic game-theoretic dynamic.
- themacguffinman 5y agoI don't think it's quite so immutable, the cost inequality is changed dramatically by a few modern factors: - affordable birth control - affordable abortion - mandatory paternal child support
- dqpb 5y agoThe instincts tuned to this dynamic exist at a totally different layer of abstraction.
- amanaplanacanal 5y agoPretty sure we understand how to prevent pregnancy now. You must be talking about historical societies.
- guerrilla 5y agoThe power imbalance obviously comes directly from a difference in demand. The only thing that would fix this is to increase women's sex drive or decrease men's sex drive. We know they are very unequal because prostitution is 99.99% done by women which tells us exactly what the demand is. We have already literally quantified the difference. From what I understand, a difference would have originated due to the danger and cost of pregnancy which can be as low as zero for men and as high as 100% for women (it can literally be cause death and they can be entirely abandoned.) This mostly ended with birth control, better healthcare and child support-like laws, but the unequal drives did not.
- SuoDuanDao 5y agoIt's an interesting perspective. Due to a confluence of paraphilias I find myself in possession of 'the Thing' in regards to a female friend who does not have 'the Thing' in regards to me. I've never been in a position of having to deny a woman 'The Thing', and it's odd how much more uncomfortable it was than denying gay men 'The Thing'. I would assume that's partially because I assume gay men who shoot their shot with straight men are more comfortable with rejection than straight women, and partially because I have a self-image as a straight man, so I have no second thoughts about a man having 'the thing' in a non-obvious way. That might help explain why some cultures are so different in regards to how 'the thing' is dispersed. What I find particularly interesting about my experience having 'the Thing' is how instinctively I want to properly commoditize it. I can't price it out in monetary terms, but I have a very close estimate of what would be a balanced level of mutual vulnerability. Very strange feeling, and I wonder how much of it is my personal idiosyncrasy and how much is a natural instinct for anyone who has any version of 'The Thing'.
- nigel182 5y agoCan you elaborate on the very close estimate of mutual vulnerability?
- SuoDuanDao 5y agoProbably not without sounding like I'm making things up, but sure. She has, and is a member of a community of people who have, a fascination with drinking human blood. She's asked to drink mine and I find myself uncomfortable with the prospect of giving something that personal away. I've never really thought about what I'd sell a blood sample for, but I know it would be a different price if I were to sell it for medical purposes as opposed to this one. It feels wrong to put a price on myself in that way when I don't understand the need it would be fulfilling. However, I happen to be interested in diy bio experiments and intrigued by the secrecy of the community she's a member of. If she and another member were to provide me with the results of DNA tests, and give their blessings to my trying to find genetic idiosyncrasies they share, I'd consider that a fair trade for providing small amounts of blood every so often.
- safun3 5y agoI tend toward a kind of moderate defeatism, where you accept that for the foreseeable future, men are going to face a dystopia of constant rejection, and women are going to get way more romantic attention than they ever wanted (a lot of it shallow). Sex is just one (probably the most glaring) example of the whole "men compete/women choose" power dynamic. I'm not arguing for some weird Spartan-style separation of the sexes like the MGTOW/TRP people say. Most people are going to be happier having relationships; it's just a necessary suffering of life, like looking for a job or getting dental care. On the positive side, things do start to equalize as people get into their 30s and 40s, because women face the time pressure to have kids. But I wouldn't say it evens out all the way.
- bilirubin 5y agoThe core analogy in the essay is flawed. The difference between being a woman that everyone wants the Thing from and being a rich person that poor people want money from is that at no time in history have the poor people had their hands on political levers by which they attempt to control how the rich person gives away money. Focusing on how women have "power" because they can deny sex obfuscates that men have always had true institutional power and have wielded it for centuries to control women's bodies. It's possible that straight men are most incensed by this "power" women have because it's the one area left where they don't have domain (and hopefully will have less and less of it as time goes on).
- jacknews 5y agoSexual Economics: Sex as Female Resource for Social Exchange in Heterosexual Interactions http://assets.csom.umn.edu/assets/71503.pdf http://assets.csom.umn.edu/assets/71503.pdf