I love how the article compares the unequal distribution of sex partners with the unequal distribution of wealth, because in my opinion that might be part of the cause.
I would predict that being able to afford a nice apartment in a good area close to date locations will easily 10x your sex chances.
There have been other studies about young men struggling to find jobs that pay well enough for them to become financially independent, and there's been a lot of discussions about Hikkomori and the Japanese Grasseaters movement, which is basically older guys that refuse to move out of their parent's home.
My overall impression is that a bad economy and bad job market makes it difficult for young men to become independent and that makes it extremely difficult for them to become sexually active. Because despite all progress with regards to gender equality, the overwhelming majority of girls prefers to date a guy who can afford a nice shirt and a nice appartment.
I happen to catch part of conversation between two young, very good looking female colleagues of mine back when I still used to go to office (same cubicle, sometimes I heard things even though I didn't mean to). They were disappointed that they couldn't get invites to some party where rich wall street type guys were going to, aka "catches" (their words, not mine).
The funny thing is, the very same office was filled with nice, young, smart, good looking men. Just not rich enough.
This is just an anecdote, I am not saying all women go for rich dudes, neither am I stereotyping. But yeah, being able to afford nice things in life is a significant advantage in dating. I suppose being rich is advantageous in everything
I'm sorry but this comment is missing OP's point, and is instead just feeding into the stereotype of women being gold diggers.
OP's comment was talking about the difference between guys who can afford a nice apartment vs guys who still need to live in their parents' home. It was a practical thing, where anyone would want a private space for dating.
Your comment took it to a different level, where you're talking about people in your office vs wall street rich people. In this scenario, there are people like those two female colleagues of yours (that you described as young and very good looking, which was unnecessary), who will have a preference for rich guys, but there are other women who would prefer your coworkers in the office. It's a preference thing rather than a practical thing, like OP's observation in their comment.
Not all stereotypes are untrue. People may engage in the stereotype that men are more likely to commit violent crime - does that invalidate crime stats?
I think social signaling has more to do with ... society. Wall street rich guys are more popular/more talked about/famous than the rich guys at the office and people want validation, always and everywhere. The vast majority of women are not golddiggers and will be happy with some (good) amount of money (many men will, too), not necessarily the highest. Many women are charmed by influential but poor people
I dont know if you can solve this popularity contest, because 'geek chic' has been tried and failed. But maybe if the guys who are lower in the sexual pecking order stopped worshipping and making the guys at the top even more famous, it would help them.
> I would predict that being able to afford a nice apartment in a good area close to date locations will easily 10x your sex chances.
This matches my experience. But overall, location is extremely important. I used to date quite a lot, and depending on the place, I could find dates extremely easily, or it could be virtually impossible.
But one thing I understood after I turned 40. The number one criteria is age! It gets exponentially harder as years pass.
What is your gender? I'm 46 and male, and more and more women (my preferred gender!) seem to be attracted to me over time, though surely at some point that trend will go into reverse.
I've heard a lot of women around my age suffering from the opposite trend.
Seconded. Part of it is projecting confidence and communication skills. I knew in the back of my mind this was true, but it took me well over a decade (arguably two) to actually learn. Part of it is how you talk to people, part of it is how well you can pick up on body language, hints, subtle social contexts.
This is very very very important to women. It's a big red flag when a guy is as they might put it, "clueless." Meanwhile it's a frustrating experience not understanding what's going on for the guy.
Dating aside, an empathetic listener who reads body language will usually be someone more engaging and engaged to interact with.
Mostly 25–60? I mostly only notice the attraction state of the ones I see as desirable partners, though I've dated a few that turned out to be a very poor fit.
There are lots and lots of vast differences among the different women who have been attracted to me over the years; age is just one of them, while others include national origin, educational attainment, socio-economic class, country of residence, pluriparity, conscientiousness, openness to experience, agreeability, extraversion, agreeableness, neuroticism, autism, height, weight, sexual orientation, political party alignment, favorite operating system, hair color, skin color, and religion.
What's so special about their age to you?
I don't think I have a sample size large enough to confidently discriminate among particular age groups' attraction to me. I'm not, like, a celebrity or something. Even if I did, I don't see how such a sample could avoid being far too biased to draw any useful conclusions from.
A weird thing about this is that I think I've had more sex, and met more new partners, in periods when I was unemployed or underemployed. When I've been really poor I've been depressed, which cuts my chances of meeting a new partner to about zero. But when I've been extremely employed I think I haven't had the time or emotional bandwidth for intimate relationships. Or travel: travelers get an automatic +4 bonus to sexiness, but it's really hard to travel when you have a job.
Even when my apartment has looked like something out of Hoarders I think it's cost me, at most, one nascent sexual relationship, and I think that was actually because she didn't enjoy our sex, not because of the apartment. (I'll probably never know.) By the time a new lover has decided to come home with me, they generally already have a strong interest in making love with me. So I think worrying about whether your apartment is nice enough might be analogous to worrying about whether your penis is big enough: it's a factor, but it usually comes into play too late to make a big difference, and in only a small minority of cases is it so bad as to actually matter.
As for financial independence, here in Buenos Aires you can always go to a telo. If you do that twice a month you are spending, say, $10000 a month (US$26) which is not an insignificant expenditure but is tiny compared to renting your own apartment. Other Latin American countries call them "motels", and in Japan they're "rabu hoteru".
Nice shirt? You can get an all-cotton button-down dress shirt for like US$40 if women won't look twice at you because you're wearing a T-shirt. This is not a significant issue for Japanese hikikomori. Also, though, the vast majority of women aren't that picky, if you're attractive in other ways.
Bad economy? Japan and Switzerland have much better economies than Brazil, Nigeria, and Haiti, but the better economies aren't the ones where people are more easily finding sex partners.
I do agree that location is important, though. Burning Man is not the same as Cairo at all.
I'm male, for what it's worth; 46 years old; and so far all my partners have been women. I think I'm way out on the right tail of the distribution when it comes to a variety of traits, including ⓐ height, ⓑ tendency to initiate conversations with strangers, ⓒ willingness to touch and be touched by new people, and ⓓ interest in and enjoyment of sex. So my experience is probably not typical.
> So I think worrying about whether your apartment is nice enough might be analogous to worrying about whether your penis is big enough
I think the point of an "expensive" place (really just a big one that isn't disgusting) is that you can host people, throw parties, etc.
Being able to host is a massive boost to people being willing to go out of their way to spend time of you, and (good) hosts get a +4 bonus to sexiness also
Yeah, throwing parties and hosting people is pretty great as a way to meet people. My current apartment is an efficiency, so it's not well suited to hosting people unless we're already comfortable being naked around each other. This doesn't totally exclude meeting a new intimate partner that way (my friends from the dance world are generally totally comfortable being naked around each other, and most of them have never been my lovers) but it does diminish the opportunity a lot.
But you don't really need a big place to host someone from CouchSurfing or WarmShowers or Hospitality Club or whatever the current one is. Just having two bedrooms with doors that close is enough. Or one bedroom, if you yourself sleep in the living room in pajamas, or something.
Here in Buenos Aires the apartments are mostly small, so the usual way for people here to throw parties is to either rent an event space for the night, propose an event to a cultural center, or just arrange to all meet up in a bar.
In Asia (very vaguely speaking…) it's comparatively more common to meet people exclusively outside the home whether you're friends, dates, or even early into a committed relationship. It's entirely possible you'll never see inside someone's house, though "home dates"/"home parties" are a thing.
That's probably an effect of small apartments and lots of restaurants.
Thanks! Karaoke can work here (in Koreantown). Arcades (you mean video arcades, right?) have kind of disappeared, though there are a couple left. In past years "ciberes" were potentially feasible; those are businesses where you pay by the hour to use an internet-connected PC, similar to a "PC bang". I've done meetups in the park, with or without picnics, but not barbecue. Bars do exist. Any other ideas?
Yeah, gaming arcades. They still exist in Japan and are coming back in the US by attaching things like karaoke and bowling alleys to them. But I think that's more for young people and I suspect all the adult activities involve drinking.
It's pretty culturally specific though, so I'd just check what everyone else is doing with whatever the local versions of Meetup/Foursquare/Google Maps are.
The unequal distribution is more related to the power law (80/20 rule) than each other. Money definitely helps, but if it had high correlation, Software Engineers would be viewed as rock stars, instead of the nerds we are lol
I graduated right around the 2008 GFC. I can confirm - dating was non-existent when I was unemployed and living at home with parents, and then changed dramatically when I got a job and an apartment.
Obviously, it also hit my self-esteem, so I sort of shelled up and did not even want to socialize with friends. I also had a high-achieving family, where i was one of the youngest children, and I was constantly gas-lit by my parents, older sibling, aunts, uncles, etc. That was the worst.
I would say my early 20s were the worst time of my life.
IMO a lot get lost in the stats. I can think of plenty of guys in my hometown who have no problem attracting female acquaintances, despite low or no prospects.
Alot of people in these situations have let the broader zeitgeist tell them they are entitled to something. If you’re a 40-year old divorcee, the market for supermodels or professional athletes is limited.
> how the article compares the unequal distribution of sex partners with the unequal distribution of wealth
I think Houellebecq's quote from 1994 is what popularized the sexual marketplace
> “It's a fact...that in societies like ours sex truly represents a second system of differentiation, completely independent of money; and as a system of differentiation it functions just as mercilessly. The effects of these two systems are, furthermore, strictly equivalent. Just like unrestrained economic liberalism, and for similar reasons, sexual liberalism produces phenomena of absolute pauperization . Some men make love every day; others five or six times in their life, or never. Some make love with dozens of women; others with none. It's what's known as 'the law of the market'...Economic liberalism is an extension of the domain of the struggle, its extension to all ages and all classes of society. Sexual liberalism is likewise an extension of the domain of the struggle, its extension to all ages and all classes of society.”
I wish he wrote another future-looking book about the next decade
> a bad economy and bad job market makes it difficult for young men to become independent and that makes it extremely difficult for them to become sexually active
I m not sure about that because a lot of the frustrated guys are nerds with lucrative jobs (hence why they hang out in reddit). They make great uncles but are not considered boyfriend material.
I would predict that being able to afford a nice apartment in a good area close to date locations will easily 10x your sex chances.
There have been other studies about young men struggling to find jobs that pay well enough for them to become financially independent, and there's been a lot of discussions about Hikkomori and the Japanese Grasseaters movement, which is basically older guys that refuse to move out of their parent's home.
My overall impression is that a bad economy and bad job market makes it difficult for young men to become independent and that makes it extremely difficult for them to become sexually active. Because despite all progress with regards to gender equality, the overwhelming majority of girls prefers to date a guy who can afford a nice shirt and a nice appartment.