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Gift link to this Atlantic article: Redshirt the BoysHere’s an article by Reeves about “redshirting” boys from a couple of years ago in The Atlantic.
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Should be able to bypass the pay wall with 12ft.io or a similar tool.
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Gift link to this Atlantic article: Redshirt the BoysHere’s an article by Reeves about “redshirting” boys from a couple of years ago in The Atlantic.
![]()
Should be able to bypass the pay wall with 12ft.io or a similar tool.
When I was on the dating market, I met plenty of divorced women whose marriages crumbled because their husbands didn't touch them any more. They preferred to jack off to porn.porn
As long as they are not the type that believe it's ok to shoot your dog.At this point I am going with this...But it is pretty fascinating what is happening with College Admissions .I will admit if the majority of our leaders are Female in 20 years-I am all good with that
Well, that's the point of having discussions. I would respond that you think it's more productive because you are a priori favoring the economic factors. It's more in your wheelhouse of discussion. I do not think that's what the evidence shows. Again, it reminds me of the "productive" discussions of how economic anxieties were responsible for MAGA when in reality it never was about that.I think this thread has been a lot more productive since we got off the sexual stuff. I don’t think that is nearly as important as economic factors. It’s fine that you think that, but it’s clear a lot of people don’t agree.
Yeah, I just don't see this low-T and alpha/beta nonsense as the result of poor economic opportunities or educational struggles. Certainly the folks peddling it don't have those issues. We tend to think of Jordan Petersens or Andrew Tates as grifters who are doing nothing more than selling what their audience wants to hear. I don't see it that way at all. I think the psychologist Jordan Petersen became influencer Jordan Petersen because he actually believes it (note: some of his early academic work had weird sexual dimensions, including IIRC something of an obsession about pheremones). Andrew Tate quite obviously believes it, I think, or he wouldn't be in a Romanian prison.This kind of political culture is making things worse, IMO:
I believe there is an overlap between the lack of opportunity and males being susceptible to the those pushing the red pill phenomenon.This discussion has taken a turn, which is fine but it's important to distinguish between two issues:
A. Red-pilling and the embrace of toxic masculinity;
B. Stagnating economic or educational opportunities for boys
1. I think there are a lot of people on this thread contending, with various degrees of explicitness, that these two phenomena are linked, and specifically that A is a reaction to B. That's not necessarily true, right? It's an optimistic theory that XY individuals will become "men" -- that is, respectful, caring and supportive of other people -- when their economic anxieties are resolved and they find stable, satisfying employment. Until then, they are vulnerable to being red-pilled by people taking advantage of those anxieties.
But that's not necessarily the relationship between those two factors. It could be that A is causing B, which is an unsettling prospect, but one that I think is probably a significant causal pathway. Or it could be that both are happening, but there's no causality between them.
Notice above I used the phrase "economic anxieties." I think that's a fair encapsulation of much of the discussion in the last page or two. If that reminds you of the exhausting conversations from 2016-18, when we read countless profiles of run down rural areas where the jobs left and the people only turned to Trump because of the bitterness created by the lack of economic opportunities -- well, that's the point. And I think most people have come to accept that the appeal of MAGA isn't really about that at all. That's merely a symptom.
I'm not any more convinced that incels or the red-pilled more generally are economically anxious. By and large, incels are not economically desperate. The stereotype of guys who live in basements with little education and no job isn't wholly false, but those also aren't the guys slurping up Andrew Tate's misogyny. The majority of incels or "bros" have college degrees and above salaries. Some have graduate or professional education.
2. It's worth considering the primacy of Asian men in incel culture. I have no idea whether Asians are actually disproportionately incel (good data is hard to find about this community, not surprisingly), but they are prevalent enough to have their own moniker: ricecels. And it was a ricecel who killed all those people in California (Isla Vista).
These men often have good jobs and good educations, and feel as though they should be successful with women. Why aren't they? By their telling, it's because people think they have small penises. According to my son, whose male friends are almost all East or South Asian, this is a persistent fear. I've also talked with Asian men, and seen them on incel forums, and the small dick anxiety is real. It probably creates a feedback loop, in which stereotypes about SDs create unattractive SDE. It sure doesn't help that Asian men are shorter than average in the U.S.
And Asian men are also angry about interracial dating because they think that white men steal their ladies. They think black dudes have it great, because they have a whole pool of women to choose from. After all, white guys rarely go after black women (that's one of the rarest interracial combos), and studies of dating sites have shown that black women are the least sought-after demographic. Asian women, by contrast, were found to be the most attractive -- while Asian men are often found to be the least sought-after group. So short black guys can find a lady; short Latino guys can find a lady; but Asian men are at the bottom.
To me, this suggests that red-pilling is less about economic or professional anxiety, and more about sexual or romantic anxiety.
No freaking doubt. The sexual shit is just plain weird. Relevant or not, I can't say, but it's just odd and counterproductive to any sort of rational discussion from my view.I think this thread has been a lot more productive since we got off the sexual stuff. I don’t think that is nearly as important as economic factors. It’s fine that you think that, but it’s clear a lot of people don’t agree.
Some things that changed:The sexual factors that you talk about have always been present. Men have always had anxiety about that sort of thing. What has changed it that regard in the last two-three decades?
Yes, it's weird that someone might be talking about "sexual shit" in relation to a topic of men behaving badly on sexual topics. It would be like talking about weird shit like racism when discussing politics in the South.No freaking doubt. The sexual shit is just plain weird. Relevant or not, I can't say, but it's just odd and counterproductive to any sort of rational discussion from my view.
I would say that there is a lot of overlap, though you are correct that incels aren't co-extensive with red-pilled.Super is right in that a large portion of the red pill community is obsessed with this type of stuff, but he’s conflating incels/black pill with red pill in general. There is overlap, but they are distinct.
Redpill content definitely has a sexual flavor do it, but again, I think that is secondary in terms of what draws men to the content in the first place.
A man who wears eyeliner. Duh.He’s a freaking high school football coach military veteran with a wife and kids who appear to love him. What the fuck kind of testosterone are these people looking for?
I'm not trying to push it back to what I want to talk about. I was just pointing out that, to me, it's gone somewhat astray. If y'all want to keep talking about economic factors, it's a free country and anyway some of it is interesting. I have a bunch of the links from previous pages open on my browser right now.I’m still not seeing a compelling reason why any of that would push men across the globe towards the type of content we are talking about here.
Based on your own thread about your sexual experiences and anxieties, I think you might have your own set of prior assumptions about what is causing this trend.
The discussion on the thread has naturally moved towards other factors, and now you come in and declare that the thread has taken a turn and try to get it back on what you want to talk about.
Typical porn only adds to the anxiety.Some things that changed:
1. The sexual revolution. That's not super-recent, but if we're talking about things that have "always" been there, that hasn't.
2. Social expectations about masculinity. What we call "toxic" these days was the norm three decades ago. Trump described his pussy-grabbing as locker room talk, and while that's a ridiculous explanation for what he actually said, it's not entirely wrong that a man of Trump's age grew up with permission to talk about women in demeaning terms.
3. The internet.
4. The widespread availability of porn.
I think we should also have a discussion about the changing nature of porn. Now, I'm pretty far from an expert, as the only porn I've watched in my life has been 1) something I saw while stoned at a frat party when I was 14, and 2) the videos they had in the IVF clinic. But my understanding is that the porn of yesteryear wasn't nearly as graphic as today. In the 19th century, a picture of a scantily clad woman was porn. In 20th century mags, porn focused on women as objects, almost always posing for the camera. I don't think mags showed much in the way of participation. Strippers show off their bodies. Peep shows show off women.
It wasn't until the VHS revolution in porn of the 1980s that men, en masse, saw men and women having sex. That's what produces the sexual anxieties in spades. Every teenage boy wonders, "am I big enough"? And the answer to that question can be yes, if you're getting off to a nude model posing suggestively. But when you see Jon Holmes banging three women, it's harder. For whatever reason, porn seems frequently to involve guys with huge penises who can pleasure women indefinitely, and thus do the women lust after their manliness. How much porn features dudes with small dicks?
Thanks for this, Paine. Works like a charm...Should be able to bypass the pay wall with 12ft.io or a similar tool.
We should also mention hip-hop, which absolutely is global and also full of sexism and misogyny (not all of it, of course).I’m still not seeing a compelling reason why any of that would push men across the globe towards the type of content we are talking about here.
1. This is a message board. We always talk in generalities. I'm not going to make any assumptions about "all Trump voters" or red-pilled young men. But unless our posts are going to become academic papers, we talk about large groups of people in general.I think you make the same assumptions about all Trump voters being MAGA as you make about all redpilled young men being worried primarily about performance in bed.
Is there a segment of Trump voters that are going to vote for him purely based on the hate and anger that he espouses? Yes, absolutely. That being said, in 2016 and 2020, we know for a fact that not everyone that voted for Trump subscribed to this worldview. We’re seeing it in this election with low information voters who say their primary concern is the economy.