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."
When I was 13 I read this philosophy book (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/282758.The_Pig_That_Wants_to_Be_Eaten) which pointed out that romantic relationships are a kind of prisoner's dilemma: the relationship has the best chance of success if both partners invest everything they have into it. But there's a risk that Alice will have doubts about Bob's commitment to the relationship: fearful of being the one left "holding the bag", the one who gets hurt because she "caught feelings", she retreats emotionally and becomes reluctant to share her innermost thoughts with Bob or be overly affectionate towards him. Bob, meanwhile, is making the same cost-benefit analysis. Before long the relationship has collapsed because neither can fully trust the other's commitment.
When I first read this, I didn't understand this and thought it was a bit of a reach (compared to the classical prisoner's dilemma which is easier to grasp). I understand it now. I also wonder if the author was going through some shit at the time of writing.
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…
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!
I was amused until your gratuitous remark about political correctness. That’s hardly an issue anymore with the existential threat posed by the crazy so called conservatives. I was on board with Camille even when I disagree with her. I’m happy that you enjoy the company of men though.
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?
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.
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
It’s being expressed negatively, but it seems to me it would be a good thing if young men stopped and asked themselves if they are interested in women for anything other than sex, and chose not to pursue sex/relationships with women that they don’t really like. And then figured out what women they do like as people and pursue those women instead. I suspect that they would be less resentful of their romantic struggles if they were pursuing women they actually like, because presumably they would actually want to see things from the women’s point of view.
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!
- Feminists advocate for women “decentering men” from their lives
- Women have steadily expressed the desire for men to leave them alone and stop approaching them in public places.
- The author herself admits that men approach her and are attracted to her.
Yet somehow, it’s men who need to be targeted for supposedly not liking women anymore? When every data point we have shows the opposite, in fact, that men desire women more?
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.
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.
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.
I'm super late to reading this but the other cultural figure it made me think of was Tucker Max, who is probably the closest we have to a 2000s-era Andrew Tate analogue — very similar there as well; Max was horribly misogynistic in how he wrote but his whole schtick was around partying and getting laid, his resentment was never so strong that he gave up on women altogether and he wouldn't ever say that there was something to be ashamed about for being horny. The cultural rise in this fake sort of stoicism really does feel like it's part of a new purity movement rising as a backlash both to 2000s-era raunch and 2010s "free the nipple" type feminism and in a lot of ways this feels like it might be the worst sexual climate of the century.
In overly simple terms women should not rely primarily on sex appeal and men should not rely primarily on financial means/success to attract partners. Assuming there is a basic physical attraction, both need to develop in other ways, no short cuts if one wants a deep and authentic relationship. Women are more financially independent and self sufficient now, and men seem to want to experience a similar liberation. Both want to be free from that leverage. Makes sense. Doesn't preclude good relationships, just different reasons to be together. It demands something different of both women and men in terms of just having... a good personality...for lack of a better term. IE-Do I enjoy spending time with you or not?
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.
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."
When I was 13 I read this philosophy book (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/282758.The_Pig_That_Wants_to_Be_Eaten) which pointed out that romantic relationships are a kind of prisoner's dilemma: the relationship has the best chance of success if both partners invest everything they have into it. But there's a risk that Alice will have doubts about Bob's commitment to the relationship: fearful of being the one left "holding the bag", the one who gets hurt because she "caught feelings", she retreats emotionally and becomes reluctant to share her innermost thoughts with Bob or be overly affectionate towards him. Bob, meanwhile, is making the same cost-benefit analysis. Before long the relationship has collapsed because neither can fully trust the other's commitment.
When I first read this, I didn't understand this and thought it was a bit of a reach (compared to the classical prisoner's dilemma which is easier to grasp). I understand it now. I also wonder if the author was going through some shit at the time of writing.
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…
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!
I was amused until your gratuitous remark about political correctness. That’s hardly an issue anymore with the existential threat posed by the crazy so called conservatives. I was on board with Camille even when I disagree with her. I’m happy that you enjoy the company of men though.
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?
I guess you’ve never heard of NoFap? Probably not as talked about in the Huffington Post but it’s definitely a real movement.
Nofap is about not masterbating, and is mostly an anti-porn movement. It's not an anti-have romantic relationships with women in real life movement.
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.
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
It’s being expressed negatively, but it seems to me it would be a good thing if young men stopped and asked themselves if they are interested in women for anything other than sex, and chose not to pursue sex/relationships with women that they don’t really like. And then figured out what women they do like as people and pursue those women instead. I suspect that they would be less resentful of their romantic struggles if they were pursuing women they actually like, because presumably they would actually want to see things from the women’s point of view.
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…
🌾🌾🌾
I can't take the complaints of this article seriously when:
- Women rate most men as below average in attractiveness both in real-life peer-reviewed studies (https://tinyurl.com/36xrsx2h) and in online dating (https://tinyurl.com/3sh28fyp)
- Women are dramatically more pickier than men in online dating (Tinder - https://tinyurl.com/3nnamnfn) (Hinge -
- The most attractive men receive only a little more attention than the women considered least attractive (https://tinyurl.com/yjmyyxhn)
- When asked, women will almost universally pick a wild animal over a man (https://tinyurl.com/6e787wxw)
- Being unattractive reduces the probability of mating for men but not for women (https://tinyurl.com/3a9wz7b3)
- Humans have twice as many female ancestors as male (https://tinyurl.com/nuxduwj3)
- Women will say things like "Women are so beautiful and you men collectively ugly" (https://tinyurl.com/5n7rxzj8) and “Men really don't realize how ugly they are” (https://tinyurl.com/53rvh3bh) and “dick is abundant and low value” (https://tinyurl.com/2s4a5wpb) and even comedy routines about how ugly men are (https://tinyurl.com/5bczux9u).
- Feminists advocate for women “decentering men” from their lives
- Women have steadily expressed the desire for men to leave them alone and stop approaching them in public places.
- The author herself admits that men approach her and are attracted to her.
Yet somehow, it’s men who need to be targeted for supposedly not liking women anymore? When every data point we have shows the opposite, in fact, that men desire women more?
Honestly if anything men like women too much lol. Anyway great to see a fellow traveler in the wild, you obviously know ball.
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
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.
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.
I'm super late to reading this but the other cultural figure it made me think of was Tucker Max, who is probably the closest we have to a 2000s-era Andrew Tate analogue — very similar there as well; Max was horribly misogynistic in how he wrote but his whole schtick was around partying and getting laid, his resentment was never so strong that he gave up on women altogether and he wouldn't ever say that there was something to be ashamed about for being horny. The cultural rise in this fake sort of stoicism really does feel like it's part of a new purity movement rising as a backlash both to 2000s-era raunch and 2010s "free the nipple" type feminism and in a lot of ways this feels like it might be the worst sexual climate of the century.
In overly simple terms women should not rely primarily on sex appeal and men should not rely primarily on financial means/success to attract partners. Assuming there is a basic physical attraction, both need to develop in other ways, no short cuts if one wants a deep and authentic relationship. Women are more financially independent and self sufficient now, and men seem to want to experience a similar liberation. Both want to be free from that leverage. Makes sense. Doesn't preclude good relationships, just different reasons to be together. It demands something different of both women and men in terms of just having... a good personality...for lack of a better term. IE-Do I enjoy spending time with you or not?
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.