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Chris Jesu Lee's avatar

"Regarding personal beliefs, there is an interesting paradox here for men and women. Most women today are liberal, yet women are also more likely than men to desire committed relationships. Men who are liberal are, on average, far less interested in committed relationships than conservative men, who are more likely to be interested in marriage."

A lot of contemporary women's unhappiness must be because of the facts that liberal social progress and technological progress actually seem to be undermining their sexual/dating/relationship happiness. These 2 things are the pillars of liberalism's belief in a better tomorrow (e.g. "Diversity is our strength" and "I fucking love science") and they're very good at improving a lot of things. Liberal social progress means less homophobia and technological progress means more medical cures, for obvious examples.

But on the flip side, they appear to distinctly harm women's romantic happiness. Men's romantic happiness suffers as well, and most of the online gender wars is about which gender has it worse these days in this regard. But assuming the stats about greater male satisfaction with dating apps is true, then it has to be very discouraging for women to see that your personal romantic hopes are actually going to have to be sacrificed in the pursuit of your own political and societal ideals. And it's not as if you're going to become a Luddite or conservative because you do genuinely believe in the merits of liberal social and technological progress.

That's why we'll see more re-definitions of "social progress" to account for straight women's romantic preferences, in order to reconcile traditionally clashing notions of what was socially progressive and what women wanted in their dating lives. The stereotypical dichotomy of the Fundamentalist Christian prude vs. a free-love hippie will make way for the hippie prude. The empowered and liberated woman will prefer traditional dating norms not because she is oppressed, but because she is empowered and liberated, because what makes women happier (and more powerful) is by definition empowering and liberating for women. Some examples of this already happening are progressive aversion to straight sex scenes in movies, policing of age gap relationships involving two obvious adults (in which even women well into their 20s are infantilized by progressives), and progressive intolerance of racism in all areas of life except in women's dating lives.

The problem is that happiness is sometimes a zero-sum game, and orienting your ideology on a zero-sum premise is going to start a ton of fights.

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Arnold Kling's avatar

"Today, relationships among young people commonly begin with sex, then turn into. . ."

Oy. If you can't keep sexual tension in the background while getting to know a person, then good luck to you finding a really satisfying relationship.

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