I am not entirely sure, but I believe that what further complicate things is that the concept of “right signals of interest” varies quite a bit between women.
Actually, maybe we could start a poll on boingboing about “what is an acceptable way of communicating that a man is interested in a sexual relationship?”. Even in the relatively homogenous attendance that we have here, I would not be surprised to find huge differences.
Being able to sustain a household doesn’t necessitate buying a house. But if you are able to afford it, you definitely have a leg up.
As a rule, women don’t find men attractive unless: They look exceptionally good (or at least click with their particular taste), are economically/socially successful or possess some other extraordinary quality (sporting prowess, musical abilities etc.) Male preferences in women generally aren’t symmetrical.
I can empathize.
One can simultaneously flirt with someone and treat her like a human being. Think of the flirting as an add-on rather than a substitute.
Hence why I emphasized the second part of the sentence.
I hear you. Making alienated, desperate people more alienated and more desperate probably does not lead to the best outcomes for anyone. “Sinner, REPENT!” is not exactly a great strategy for winning converts. Unfortunately, I don’t think this message is going to get much traction here (for basically the same reasons that the prevailing sentiments here won’t get much traction with incels).
Sorry, but it is quite easy to find women who are in a relationship with a man who is poor and not particularly attractive either. Granted: often these women have a problem with low self esteem and the men are more assertive than average, but even that only explains a fraction of the cases. Human relationships are quite messy.
In any case, women don’t have it much better than men in average.
Lots of us are sympathetic to people who feel alienated, because many of us feel alienated. I dare say that many of the people here (men and women) grew up weird or awkward, and had a hard time making connections for whatever reason. Sometimes maybe we still do. I doubt that most of us turn to hating an entire group of people to make ourselves feel better.
So-called incels made a choice to weaponized that alienation, in some cases leading to violence and murder. Are you just as sympathetic to members of ISIS who were alienated by modern society and decided to join a terror death cult? They made a choice to kill others or at the very least facilitate the murder of others in order to alleviate their sense of alienation. Why should incels be coddled when most of us will never get that privilege. We’ll continue to feel alienated from society, because society is alienating by it’s very nature, designed to push us to consume to keep off that discomfort. What makes incels so special that they merit special consideration in the broad based common condition of humanity?
Fuckin A; the idea that being one’s self and treating the opposite sex with basic respect leads to “a dry spell” is ridiculous.
As noted earlier, the issue for many folks (men and women alike) isn’t that they are just not able to have sex at all, it’s that they find it difficult to find sex partners who meet their personal standards…
And that’s another problematic issue in and of itself; our society has long since conditioned us to have unrealistic and often unattainable standards of beauty and physical appeal. (All the better to sell us overpriced “self-improvement” products, dontcha know!)
Long story short, anyone who has a long-ass ‘laundry list’ of desirable or ideal traits that they want in a partner is likely setting themselves up for disappointment.
I don’t know why on earth anybody would want to skip the flirting part. It’s a huge part of the fun! What the heck?
From the ranks will rise the artisan closers; the ones who lovingly handcraft every word for maximum enjoyment and effectiveness. Like a fine wine, succulent cheese, or nifty chair.
That, plus in the case of the self-professed incel you also have a toxic mix of impoverished social skills, poor self-awareness, insecure attachment, in-fucking-sane notions of both femininity and masculinity, and an external, global attribution style to account for all of the above.
I have never encountered one in the wild but what I’ve seen on Reddit has made my hairs stand on end.
Flirting fun? Maybe for some people. I find it a nightmare with consistently horrifying results.
Did you never meet a person with more than one toof who could crack wise?
That is certainly true for some people who have unrealistic standards, but I am not so sure it is true for most people in a dry spell. I think that it is more common that people in a dry spell simply have almost no opportunities. For example, I knew some men who had few social contacts, none of whom were women. I also know people whose social circles mainly consist of married people, etc…
I am not a sociologist, so I cannot draw conclusions from my limited observations, but I think that this situation is more common than one would believe.
What I often see amongst people dissatisfied with their romantic or sex lives (not to mention other aspects of their lives) is a willful lack of self-awareness and a refusal to engage in introspection. Instead, they fall back on conformist societal narratives of entitlement and quick-fix nostrums that only help dig themselves deeper into their malaise.
To be fair to all those unhappy folks, the slow AIs that run late-stage capitalist society depend on this unhealthy situation to thrive.
Which leads to the question of why so many people have gotten themselves into and remain stuck in situations that don’t deliver their stated goals. Some have tried to answer it. For example:
I did not say it was true of all people, or even “most.”
There are many reasons a person could be lacking physical intimacy in his or her life… but being civil and treating others with basic respect generally isn’t one of them, which was the implication I was responding to.
To paraphrase Rupaul; if you don’t love yourself, then how in the hell are you gonna love somebody else?
Real talk.
How do you know that?
Simple: there are as many men and women alive.
That is a very good question, but the answer is probably that they simply have no idea why they are in that situation and how to change it. And Your answer, as interesting as it is, does not answer the whole question. There were people unable to find romantic interractions in the past centuries and there are people who find more than they can handle today.
Except you have twice as many female as male ancestors.
Historically, most women managed to find a partner and reproduce; only half as many men did.
