I'm reading Haven in a Heartless World by Christopher Lasch. I just read the part about the sociologist Willard Waller and was struck by how Waller's analysis of dating in the late thirties/early forties still resonates today.
Lasch says that "the heart of Waller's thought: the recognition that romantic conventions conceal a fierce sexual struggle; or better, that the struggle expresses itself, in disguised form, in the very conventions that supposedly lead to the perfect union of the sexes."
It seems to me that the intensification of this struggle in recent years is what men and women both find so exhausting about dating. You ask if men even like women anymore, but I assure you that there are many men that wonder the same thing about women. I don't think people dislike the thought of companionship but the subtle battle that is constantly taking place before and during a relationship.
As you observe, expressing interest is seen as a sign of weakness, Lasch also writes: "At a deeper level, both partners instinctively understand the validity of what Waller calls the principle of least interest, according to which "that person is able to dictate the conditions of association whose interest in the continuation of the affair is least." Falling in love carries with it the risk of emotional dependency and disappointment... Therefore one tries to remain detached while feigning the opposite, meanwhile attempting to lure the other into making wholehearted emotional commitments. Waller takes us so far but leaves it to his readers to ask the obvious question: Is it any wonder that modern men and women complain of being "unable to love"?"
These attitudes are not new, and modern expressions of disinterest in the opposite sex from both men and women could be this "principle of least interest" playing itself out on a mass scale. Another observation by Lasch that "the dating system repudiates those who make the mistake of falling in love and awards its highest prizes to the cynical" is even more true today than it was before. It is not surprising that both men and women are trying to suppress genuine desires when the dating market actively encourages it for success.
I think you're right that this lack of desire is a sign of a lack of vitality in the society, but it really stems from hatred for this fierce competition, and is only being masked by the vitriol between the sexes right now. The logic of the market has taken over the courtship process and instead of being a relief from competition in society, relationships are often just another battlefield.
I do agree with you and Lasch here, but I nevertheless think it is worth interrogating what is happening at the present that is causing these sentiments to rise in this way. Sure, people in the 40s expressed similar resentment toward dating and sexual competition, but the conditions between then and now have obviously changed. And of course, the question of whether women even like men is worth asking, and I plan to continue that in another essay.
There is one great lacuna in journalism about sexual relations. Most of this journalism is written by women and consequently both more-feminist and less-feminist perspectives loom large. Then there is the perspective of the 'manosphere'....cocky angry Andrew tate types which gets disproportinate attention because it is so click-baity. The lacuna is the perspective of 'nice' beta males....the great majority of males infact. These are the males who want a girlfriend or a wife. They don't want to sex-choke her or slag her off but they tend not to write about their perspective.... perhaps because they see it as a hiding-to-nothing.
I expanded on this theme in this essay: https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/the-less-desired....a snippet: "the focus in recent years on calling out sexual harassment (although broadly a positive thing) can, if taken to excess, create a new kind of unfairness. Now, a perfectly decent young man hungry for romance can find himself in Catch 22: he knows from ancient folklore that faint heart never won fair lady but he also knows that - in lore of feminist-chic – one definition of sexual harassment is merely being hit on by someone other than the one that you had secretly been wanting it to be."
A few years ago, I met an interesting man at my old college bar. He told me every American - no matter their background - is born with a tiny puritan in their heart. He peddles the intoxicating liquors of moral superiority, judgement, and most of all, resentment. Most of us never quite manage to get rid of him. That’s always stuck with me.
I hope that man from the bar is doing well. Your writing reminds me of him. Thanks, Magdalene.
As the father of a 14-year old boy who watches more YouTube than I would like, this is all a very real concern. We hope that modeling a healthy relationship and demonstrating respect for women will serve as an antidote to the worst toxicity, and so far it has, but we still fear what the algorithm might someday feed him…
I don’t think it’s so surprising men are less motivated; look at women’s writing, there are about a thousand articles in every venue about how somebody became celibate and it made them happier/sexier/more productive. There’s a discourse around decentering men, there’s the boysober trend.
But there are differences: approximately zero of those celibacy articles are by men; there’s no “girlsober” trend, instead we have MGTOW who are something very different.
So I think the question is not, why are men disengaged, but why are they so salty about it?
""So I think the question is not, why are men disengaged, but why are they so salty about it?""
Well I think men can only hear that women would rather be pursued by the bear, or kill all men, so many times before they start thinking that women don't really like men and that the man had better mind their own business. And somehow kill all men isn't considered being salty?
In my lifetime of 78 years I have always preferred the company of women. Even as a child my playmates were girls. I loved dating in high school and college. Aside for my military service which was male, I have been fortunate to associate myself with feminists and working women. And I have been married for 56 years to the same woman. I worked from home for a few years taking care of my daughter and son, supporting my wife’s career. I have two cool granddaughters as well! With a couple exceptions my doctors are all women including my urologist. My best friends are female these days—but I am not dating!
Hyper sexualization in a culture will focus undue attention on women. The erotic will be given more importance than it deserves. A good deal of men are realizing this, and it doesn't mean they hate women or don't still desire them.
When sex is divorced from child-rearing things go haywire. The erotic should serve the greater good of bringing up the next generations. It should take a back seat otherwise. If men are starting to realize this (I think they are) I say good for them. The only women who should be nervous are those who idolize the erotic at the expense of children and future generations.
I think women are starting to realize that monogamy, and connecting sex with child rearing and long term relationships, was actually to their benefit.
You can try to indoctrinate an entire generation of men to believe that promiscuity is GOOD, and your partners sexual history totally doesn’t matter. But when the rubber hits the road, they’re still going to listen to their well honed instincts. And a lot of women find themselves in their late thirties alone and childless.
In retrospect, reading this after your follow-up article, I think we can basically summarize these as follows:
Men don’t like women as a coping mechanism for not being able to get women
Women don’t like men as a coping mechanism for getting men and discovering their flaws
I think these are related. The less access men have to sex, the more they see the pursuit of women as being fundamentally sexual, and the less they plan out being in a relationship. Because men plan less, they seem to take women for granted because they literally do not know what to do, and as a result women start to dislike being with men.
Fortunately this mode, does not apply universally, but it seems to describe a very specific subset of men and I think we don’t really yet know what is causing this problem. I believe it starts very early though and has to do with the social dynamics of early education, which has changed a lot over the recent decades.
From a Lacanian perspective "There is no sexual relationship." Just as Lacan believes in a split aka inconsistent irreconcilable Subject, the same logic also applies to the sexual relationship.
For a sexual relationship to function it needs to be externally mediated by some sort of fantasy. Unfortunately western culture is collapsing and so are all of its narratives. Hollywood cannot even put together a good Rom Com for couples to project their romantic fantasies onto.
I'm the absence of fantasy all that is left is alienation. Andrew Tate sees women as prostitutes that he can exploit in his web cam studio, and by proxy so do all his fans.
Men don't hate women. Culture is collapsing which means they now view women as commodities.
While I agree with your sentiment the situation is much worse. Great article.
“ Culture is collapsing which means they now view women as commodities.” Men have viewed women as commodities for *centuries* if not millennia. There is nothing new here.
The advent of the internet created a new kind of male hatred of women. The added bonus of anonymity has also taken it to another level. While yes, it has always been there, social media has only exacerbated it sadly. That's why I think it's so important to create physical communities where people can all be together in one space and learn to just be themselves and not create a false persona of who they are or want to be like can so easily be done online. Not to mention any guy who doesn't love and appreciate and value women is probably a loser!
Do men even like women anymore? The better question is do women like men. Have you been on Reddit and gazed at any of the marriage, relationship, dating or women related subreddits? Oh heavens. Men get brutally slammed on nearly every posting there and by a wide margin. According the them, men are lazy, entitled, good for nothing, scheming, cheating assholes. Everything that men do or do not do is deconstructed with the utmost of hate. You can feel it as you read their descriptions of what men do and who they are. Thousands and thousands of hateful comments
On the other hand, men are much more charitable towards women. Sure there are some misogynists there. But nowhere near the kind of vitriol that is thrown men's way.
I would also note that men are not the creators of "kill all men", "the future is female" and of course "I'd rather date the bear". Women are the creators of this
No man likes all women some men like most of the women, most men like some women, a few men like none of the women. It was always like this it will always be like that.
Remember the Calhoun experiment? The colony declined and eventually became extinct because the males sequestered themselves, avoided the females, and spent all their time grooming themselves.
I suspect that the human race, at least in the civilized nations, has become the rats in that experiment.
Cringe cope. Given that you're getting hit on in the street all the time, I can't see why you're moaning. You surely don't want to get hit on by men who don't like you, or do you?
I think we should be open to people becoming disinterested in relationships or sex so long as they’re doing it for the right reasons. If anyone (including straight guys) just finds life more fulfilling or right for them in way that deprioritizes sexual desire or romantic relationships (& it actually is more fulfilling, they don’t just think that) I think it’s bit evil for a society to shame them away from that.
I think you’re being too harsh on yourself when you say “ Do I really even have much of a newsletter or a writing career at all if I can’t vaguely employ my own desirability upon the page? Where would I be without my parasocially-connected male readers? I’m not shy about the fact that my work hinges upon my own position in our sexual culture, even if only from an observational perspective.”. I think even if every man were to magically become asexual tomorrow there would still be people interested in what you have to say on things. I think that’s true for everyone because everyone has unique perspectives and ways of thinking about things that can become of interest if they learn to refine and articulate them well enough.
I'm reading Haven in a Heartless World by Christopher Lasch. I just read the part about the sociologist Willard Waller and was struck by how Waller's analysis of dating in the late thirties/early forties still resonates today.
Lasch says that "the heart of Waller's thought: the recognition that romantic conventions conceal a fierce sexual struggle; or better, that the struggle expresses itself, in disguised form, in the very conventions that supposedly lead to the perfect union of the sexes."
It seems to me that the intensification of this struggle in recent years is what men and women both find so exhausting about dating. You ask if men even like women anymore, but I assure you that there are many men that wonder the same thing about women. I don't think people dislike the thought of companionship but the subtle battle that is constantly taking place before and during a relationship.
As you observe, expressing interest is seen as a sign of weakness, Lasch also writes: "At a deeper level, both partners instinctively understand the validity of what Waller calls the principle of least interest, according to which "that person is able to dictate the conditions of association whose interest in the continuation of the affair is least." Falling in love carries with it the risk of emotional dependency and disappointment... Therefore one tries to remain detached while feigning the opposite, meanwhile attempting to lure the other into making wholehearted emotional commitments. Waller takes us so far but leaves it to his readers to ask the obvious question: Is it any wonder that modern men and women complain of being "unable to love"?"
These attitudes are not new, and modern expressions of disinterest in the opposite sex from both men and women could be this "principle of least interest" playing itself out on a mass scale. Another observation by Lasch that "the dating system repudiates those who make the mistake of falling in love and awards its highest prizes to the cynical" is even more true today than it was before. It is not surprising that both men and women are trying to suppress genuine desires when the dating market actively encourages it for success.
I think you're right that this lack of desire is a sign of a lack of vitality in the society, but it really stems from hatred for this fierce competition, and is only being masked by the vitriol between the sexes right now. The logic of the market has taken over the courtship process and instead of being a relief from competition in society, relationships are often just another battlefield.
I do agree with you and Lasch here, but I nevertheless think it is worth interrogating what is happening at the present that is causing these sentiments to rise in this way. Sure, people in the 40s expressed similar resentment toward dating and sexual competition, but the conditions between then and now have obviously changed. And of course, the question of whether women even like men is worth asking, and I plan to continue that in another essay.
There is one great lacuna in journalism about sexual relations. Most of this journalism is written by women and consequently both more-feminist and less-feminist perspectives loom large. Then there is the perspective of the 'manosphere'....cocky angry Andrew tate types which gets disproportinate attention because it is so click-baity. The lacuna is the perspective of 'nice' beta males....the great majority of males infact. These are the males who want a girlfriend or a wife. They don't want to sex-choke her or slag her off but they tend not to write about their perspective.... perhaps because they see it as a hiding-to-nothing.
I expanded on this theme in this essay: https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/the-less-desired....a snippet: "the focus in recent years on calling out sexual harassment (although broadly a positive thing) can, if taken to excess, create a new kind of unfairness. Now, a perfectly decent young man hungry for romance can find himself in Catch 22: he knows from ancient folklore that faint heart never won fair lady but he also knows that - in lore of feminist-chic – one definition of sexual harassment is merely being hit on by someone other than the one that you had secretly been wanting it to be."
A few years ago, I met an interesting man at my old college bar. He told me every American - no matter their background - is born with a tiny puritan in their heart. He peddles the intoxicating liquors of moral superiority, judgement, and most of all, resentment. Most of us never quite manage to get rid of him. That’s always stuck with me.
I hope that man from the bar is doing well. Your writing reminds me of him. Thanks, Magdalene.
As the father of a 14-year old boy who watches more YouTube than I would like, this is all a very real concern. We hope that modeling a healthy relationship and demonstrating respect for women will serve as an antidote to the worst toxicity, and so far it has, but we still fear what the algorithm might someday feed him…
I don’t think it’s so surprising men are less motivated; look at women’s writing, there are about a thousand articles in every venue about how somebody became celibate and it made them happier/sexier/more productive. There’s a discourse around decentering men, there’s the boysober trend.
But there are differences: approximately zero of those celibacy articles are by men; there’s no “girlsober” trend, instead we have MGTOW who are something very different.
So I think the question is not, why are men disengaged, but why are they so salty about it?
I guess you’ve never heard of NoFap? Probably not as talked about in the Huffington Post but it’s definitely a real movement.
""So I think the question is not, why are men disengaged, but why are they so salty about it?""
Well I think men can only hear that women would rather be pursued by the bear, or kill all men, so many times before they start thinking that women don't really like men and that the man had better mind their own business. And somehow kill all men isn't considered being salty?
In my lifetime of 78 years I have always preferred the company of women. Even as a child my playmates were girls. I loved dating in high school and college. Aside for my military service which was male, I have been fortunate to associate myself with feminists and working women. And I have been married for 56 years to the same woman. I worked from home for a few years taking care of my daughter and son, supporting my wife’s career. I have two cool granddaughters as well! With a couple exceptions my doctors are all women including my urologist. My best friends are female these days—but I am not dating!
Hyper sexualization in a culture will focus undue attention on women. The erotic will be given more importance than it deserves. A good deal of men are realizing this, and it doesn't mean they hate women or don't still desire them.
When sex is divorced from child-rearing things go haywire. The erotic should serve the greater good of bringing up the next generations. It should take a back seat otherwise. If men are starting to realize this (I think they are) I say good for them. The only women who should be nervous are those who idolize the erotic at the expense of children and future generations.
"When sex is divorced from child-rearing things go haywire. The erotic should serve the greater good of bringing up the next generations. "
We can argue later whether this is correct (I suspect that, like most things, it has good and bad parts). Things are very different for cats.
It doesn't matter. Good luck, getting that genie back into the bottle.
I think women are starting to realize that monogamy, and connecting sex with child rearing and long term relationships, was actually to their benefit.
You can try to indoctrinate an entire generation of men to believe that promiscuity is GOOD, and your partners sexual history totally doesn’t matter. But when the rubber hits the road, they’re still going to listen to their well honed instincts. And a lot of women find themselves in their late thirties alone and childless.
In retrospect, reading this after your follow-up article, I think we can basically summarize these as follows:
Men don’t like women as a coping mechanism for not being able to get women
Women don’t like men as a coping mechanism for getting men and discovering their flaws
I think these are related. The less access men have to sex, the more they see the pursuit of women as being fundamentally sexual, and the less they plan out being in a relationship. Because men plan less, they seem to take women for granted because they literally do not know what to do, and as a result women start to dislike being with men.
Fortunately this mode, does not apply universally, but it seems to describe a very specific subset of men and I think we don’t really yet know what is causing this problem. I believe it starts very early though and has to do with the social dynamics of early education, which has changed a lot over the recent decades.
From a Lacanian perspective "There is no sexual relationship." Just as Lacan believes in a split aka inconsistent irreconcilable Subject, the same logic also applies to the sexual relationship.
For a sexual relationship to function it needs to be externally mediated by some sort of fantasy. Unfortunately western culture is collapsing and so are all of its narratives. Hollywood cannot even put together a good Rom Com for couples to project their romantic fantasies onto.
I'm the absence of fantasy all that is left is alienation. Andrew Tate sees women as prostitutes that he can exploit in his web cam studio, and by proxy so do all his fans.
Men don't hate women. Culture is collapsing which means they now view women as commodities.
While I agree with your sentiment the situation is much worse. Great article.
“ Culture is collapsing which means they now view women as commodities.” Men have viewed women as commodities for *centuries* if not millennia. There is nothing new here.
Gender relations exist just fine outside Neoliberal Capitalism. What you wrote just now is Capitalist Realism.
The advent of the internet created a new kind of male hatred of women. The added bonus of anonymity has also taken it to another level. While yes, it has always been there, social media has only exacerbated it sadly. That's why I think it's so important to create physical communities where people can all be together in one space and learn to just be themselves and not create a false persona of who they are or want to be like can so easily be done online. Not to mention any guy who doesn't love and appreciate and value women is probably a loser!
Speaking of simping…
Do men even like women anymore? The better question is do women like men. Have you been on Reddit and gazed at any of the marriage, relationship, dating or women related subreddits? Oh heavens. Men get brutally slammed on nearly every posting there and by a wide margin. According the them, men are lazy, entitled, good for nothing, scheming, cheating assholes. Everything that men do or do not do is deconstructed with the utmost of hate. You can feel it as you read their descriptions of what men do and who they are. Thousands and thousands of hateful comments
On the other hand, men are much more charitable towards women. Sure there are some misogynists there. But nowhere near the kind of vitriol that is thrown men's way.
I would also note that men are not the creators of "kill all men", "the future is female" and of course "I'd rather date the bear". Women are the creators of this
No man likes all women some men like most of the women, most men like some women, a few men like none of the women. It was always like this it will always be like that.
Remember the Calhoun experiment? The colony declined and eventually became extinct because the males sequestered themselves, avoided the females, and spent all their time grooming themselves.
I suspect that the human race, at least in the civilized nations, has become the rats in that experiment.
Cringe cope. Given that you're getting hit on in the street all the time, I can't see why you're moaning. You surely don't want to get hit on by men who don't like you, or do you?
I think part of the unspoken workplace training seminars that take place is learning the difference between appropriate and inappropriate compliments.
If a well-dressed and wolfishly handsome young alpha male compliments a female co-worker, she is supposed to feel flattered.
If some dorky middle-aged office drone gives her the same compliment, she is supposed to feel uncomfortable and call Human Resources.
I think we should be open to people becoming disinterested in relationships or sex so long as they’re doing it for the right reasons. If anyone (including straight guys) just finds life more fulfilling or right for them in way that deprioritizes sexual desire or romantic relationships (& it actually is more fulfilling, they don’t just think that) I think it’s bit evil for a society to shame them away from that.
*Including, not insulting lol
I think you’re being too harsh on yourself when you say “ Do I really even have much of a newsletter or a writing career at all if I can’t vaguely employ my own desirability upon the page? Where would I be without my parasocially-connected male readers? I’m not shy about the fact that my work hinges upon my own position in our sexual culture, even if only from an observational perspective.”. I think even if every man were to magically become asexual tomorrow there would still be people interested in what you have to say on things. I think that’s true for everyone because everyone has unique perspectives and ways of thinking about things that can become of interest if they learn to refine and articulate them well enough.
SIMPing isn’t flirting though. Simping is men, bending over backwards (sometimes financially), in order to get positive attention from mediocre women.
It rarely works and it’s always pathetic.