This article is inspired by a Youtuber Caitlyn V who is a sex coach. I’ve watched some of her videos and I find them to be very informative, especially about sex. I’ll link it here below
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agscWsru7Gk&ab_channel=CaitlinV
She actually goes onto explain how not having sex for a long time can contribute to problems on mental health, emotional health, etc.
The second half of her video has the solutions to these problems and the last point is one I want to expand on. The first 2 solutions was to 1. Create feel good chemicals by exercising, eating healthy, leaning on trusted friends, etc and the 2. one is fuck yourself (not regular masturbation where you race to ejaculation, but slowly taking your time with it.). The third suggestion is where I take issue with and it’s getting a sex worker.
Note I have nothing against sex work. I believe sex work is work and there’s nothing wrong with getting it. My issue with this point is the way I believe society is set up to profit off of lonely and sexually frustrated men.
Paying for sex work is very expensive, like you have to be making the kind of money where the cost to even get these services are casual at best. Even if there are cheap option, I don’t believe many men out there feel they should have to pay for experiences just to feel wanted.
Think about it this way. When you go outside to try to make friends, or to try and talk to a woman you find attractive, you notice how cold and distant people treat you in social places. In the first initial meeting, you’re treated as a potential predator that has to prove himself to be a good person first, and even after you passed the test, you need to be mindful of not making her feel uncomfortable, and make having sex with them feel completely natural. It’s also on you to make the sure interactions you lead the interactions in a way to keep her around, and basically really sell yourself. Couple that with the expectation society has for the man to be the pursuer, all of these things make a very daunting experience for men.
Men don’t have a lot of options when it comes to dating and when they to have the opportunity, are expected to make sure it goes well. This setup creates a very convincing need for sex work, with a high demand of it coming from men because their basic needs aren’t being met consistently.
I believe there needs to be a better solution rather than spending money on experiencing intimacy via sexual services. The most obvious way would be to stop demonizing men at a very ridiculous level, especially at the first meet, but most people on the left space don’t like that idea cuz ‘safety’ and ‘patriarchy’ so obviously getting to a point where we don’t do that is gonna take a long time, we need better short term solutions that doesn’t cost money for that. Sexual services are fine when you get them here and there, not when it becomes a potentially long-term thing (I’ve known men who consistently get sex through prostitutes)
One of the solutions offered by Aba and Preach would be a solution I would offer in helping with this situation as well, mostly short-term.
https://youtu.be/P22ZpncT8B4?t=738
Now they’re saying not to approach women and I don’t think most women put men that approach them on blast that regular, but that’s perfectly valid given the society we’re living in. Me personally, I’ve done a lot of approaching and have been very experienced in it and I haven’t been blasted on media, but this is because I gauge most situations I have going in. The process of learning it today is fucking hard so one slip up in an unlucky situation can turn your life upside down if you get blasted on social media.
Other solutions?
Read books and websites on people skills so you can work on talking to people. Don’t get me wrong, we’ve all had natural experiences with talking to people, so I’m not implying you’re all very socially inept that can’t hold a conversation. I think a lot of the guys here actually have no problem with conversation, especially when talking to women. But maybe you don’t have the kind of friends you do like having around, or maybe you don’t have any afab friends or maybe you do, but again not the ideal person you want in your life. I’m mostly recommending this because if you want to have control over your own life and build better relationships, people skills are crucial. So the next time you’re in a situation where you want to make friends with certain people or talk to a woman you find attractive, you know have the experience backed up to do it
Read books on dating material so you can make up for a lack of experience. However, this bit is very tricky as there’s a lot of toxic dating advice out there. I got proper sources of healthy dating advice if you want my suggestion message me.
Next step is practicality. For social skills, go to a hobby-based group or club and put what you learned to the test. Preferably a new one, as if you’re in an old group, they probably have a set image of you and depending on that, maybe harder to break out of. Finding a new social setting will give you a fresh start if this is the case. For practicing dating skills, I would highly recommend speed dating. Now don’t expect to actually get dates from speed dating. In fact, as a man if you wanna find a date via speed dating, you’re gonna be spending money for a long time. Instead, use them to practice your skills. Each date you have last up to 5 minutes so you have a very short timeframe to work with, but this is perfect as you get to work on initiating conversations and internalizing body language signals being sent out, and you’ll be ‘dating’ multiple people in one setting so you have a lot of volume to work with for one night. This is to help improve your skills quickly, arming you with enough knowledge and experience to navigate life with a prepared lens.
Now the article is written from the perspective of someone that hasn’t gone to any sexual services and don’t really plan to. Has anyone gone to get sexual services? What was it like going there? Do you agree it to be a solution for guys problem with a lack of sex?
So I went back and reread all the stuff that you wrote, and I guess maybe combative isn’t the right word, maybe a little callous? It just feels like you’re being very dismissive of very real potential trauma. I’ve seen how it just kind of destroys any hope for any normal future relationship in a person. So I personally don’t think it’s wild for women to want to protect themselves even if that means it is harder to date.
I don’t know if this whole situation is something someone can individually solve, more of a societal push for things like reducing rape kit backlogs, improving statistics for women killed by an intimate partners and pregnant women killed by partners, and as you say the smaller percentage of rapists and murderers, serial or otherwise. I think if we could take a lot of the fear out of the interactions things would go better, but there’s not a lot of trust that if something goes bad, police will help in really any way, you’re kind of on your own you know? So it’s safer to be cautious, especially on the first meet.
I think a lot of your original post has some decent dating advice, if a little patronizing, I would point a teenager at it as decent advice, and would definitely emphasize shared hobbies. Hobbies are great for meeting new friends.
It occurs to me that a lot of my argument is America centric. And assuming you are also America centric and that might not be the case so I think it’s fair to call his whole thing a side discussion.
As to the your original question, I have zero problem with sex work even though it’s not currently legal where I am. I believe it is better to legalize and regulate sex work. And I don’t think it’s wrong for people to employ some sexual services, even regularly. There are people who can’t or won’t date or marry and they should still have the opportunity to have sex. I’m pretty sure it’s in Denmark they actually give handicap people a stipend for it because just because you’re in a wheelchair doesn’t mean you don’t want to have sex.
It does feel like it sometimes. But that too is also something that men deal with as well, especially when feminist have dismissed our fears of false allegations using the 2% conviction, even though that too causes very serious trauma. I’ve even seen counter articles saying they got nothing to worry about, but 2% only represent cases that have been resolved, not the reported yet unresolved cases nor does is count the unreported incidents. By this logic, should men start treating women the way women have been treating men? Should men start viewing every woman as a potential liar who’s out to accuse him of rape and SA? There’s a reason men are going mgtow and avoiding interaction with women altogether. This is also something I don’t agree with as it’s just going to heighten the fear of a demographic.
Having statistics of victims killed in IPV would certainly be very valuable information (tho I think that would be classified under severe abuse, maybe that category needs to be broken down).
A societal push we need to establish is to actively send a message to society not to conform men to the male gender role. We’ve done a lot for women not to be confined in their own gender role, but then we just think “well if women aren’t confined to their gender role then obviously men aren’t as well” but there’s a larger focus on the former than the latter, causing male stereotype to be strong even in the modern age. This is very important as because men trying to fulfill their gender role are likely the ones to go out approaching women on the street and trying their luck. I remember watching a street harassment video where a man explains why he does it, which was along the lines of showing her he’s the man, that you gotta show her persistence, etc. This kind of thinking is not inate to any man. They’re being taught by PUA/TRP that they need to do these things to reach the pinaccle of masculinity. But keep in mind PUA/TRP is rising cuz we as a society have never actively fought for men to step away from their gender roles, we just left them on their own to “they should figure out that also applies to them”. This premise doesn’t cover the more serious crimes such as murder, rape or SA I think in those cases serious mental issues are involved. But if we’re talking about a woman’s day to day experience with dealing with men coming up to her, then this is caused by society still telling men they gotta fulfill their gender role, thus creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.
And a note about police. I think everyone has to remember is that police are a 3rd party. They need to collect all information first before they could do anything. Unfortunately, we humans have a natural tendency to get spooked during very stressful events that we can forget to document it and ensure the perpetrator gets bought to the police. Add in the fact that criminals are smart enough to cover their tracks to not get caught, and you can see why bringing perps to the police is hard. A lack of concrete information usually makes their job harder. Sure we can go to the police and report the incident, but for them to actually pursue the case further, you’d have to be able to capture not only the perpetrator appearance and information, but also where they escaped to and if they dropped a trail.
What about my advice bit is patronizing?
I don’t mean it’s morally correct, but practically, I don’t think it’s bad advice to tell people to be worried about false accusations, and that they should probably only sleep with people that they trust. I am a big “only date friends” person, but I acknowledge that that’s a minority view, and that strangers date all the time and it works out.
I’m saying those statistics already exist and they’re pretty grim. At least in the US those statistics are put out by the DOJ, I just wasn’t able to find one recently enough that I’d want to cite it(I don’t think it doesn’t exist, I think it’s user error lol)
I agree with everything you said about not conforming to gender roles. I think we really should start approaching interactions, thinking “this is a human, this is a person” and moving away from the binaries. Ya know, egalitarianism.
As for the police (at least in America I honestly think that if we fired all police unions and completely rehired new people, it would help a lot of things but that’s probably a different discussion), they probably need to employ more psychologist and specialists, because police already don’t do a great job with existing sexual assault cases so having someone who is able to suss out whether someone’s lying, without being an insensitive jerk to a victim would be good. The way I see it there is a bit of a cycle where police do a bad job or worse, are dismissive. Therefore, the perpetrator isn’t caught and punished. Therefore, there are more bad apples out there, repeat offenders, etc., and statistics go up and trust goes down.
So I as for my charge of mild condescension; the impression I got was “you need advice, so here’s advice” and not “do you need advice? If so, here’s advice”. You acknowledge later in the OP that not everyone reading it will need the advice, and I just think with some changes you wouldn’t’ve had to make that clarification, and it would’ve come off less strong. Maybe if the advice stuff was its own thread instead of mixed in here, I would feel different I think? Also, putting feminism in scare quotes isn’t great because the people who usually do that are the people who are mostly in it for hating women so people sort of will just lump you together with them because the human brain is lazy and it likes simple categories so it doesn’t have to think hard.
Overall, you seem like a solid dude who genuinely wants to have a discussion on this. I think I’m used to much more toxic spaces on this and so I probably pushed back too hard, so you shouldn’t let me get you down
The DOJ also puts out BJS when it comes to crime statistics. I did find a 2022 study that’s female victim specific showing they were more likely to be killed by an intimate partner in 2021, but the incidents are very small when you compare the number of female victims reported on an ncvs study of that same year. The number of female victims in NCVS is approx 4 mil, intimate partner violence incidents were 400k (this number includes both male and female victims), but the female specific study had 4k female victims of ipv related homicide. So they exist.
I think using a psychologist and specialist would be a great idea in this case. Though how credible do you think it is? Cuz we’re mostly going based off of a psychologist and specialist evaluation rather than concrete evidence. Or maybe psychology has an evaluation process of its own for it to be as credible as concrete evidence idk much about that bit honestly. But it is a good idea considering most SA incidents are usually done by someone known to the victim.
Can you point out where I put scare quotes on feminism? There’s a lot of conflation with criticizing feminism with criticizing women which isn’t the case. Feminism is an ideology which you can criticize, doesn’t conflate with criticizing women. People already lump anyone who criticizes feminism as misogynist cus they buy into the idea that feminism is about equality, but it also promotes female empowerment which touches on the female identity, of course most people especially women are gonna identify with it (the same way men identify with the redpill movement as it promotes male empowerment). Redpill is already being criticized as a misogynistic hate group as it should be, but nobody questions the feminist ideology cuz most of them will push back hard against anyone who questions it, which is why this sub exists. The OG feminists came up with the patriarchy theory, modified the definition of toxic masculinty to make it correlate with general male behaviour. When you put those together, questioning that is almost always gonna make people think you’re a misogynist. Once I actually questioned the patriarchy theory and did my own research, I found out it largely never even existed yet people believe we live in it. Same thing with the feminist ideology. The feminist ideology when it started wasn’t egalitarian at all, it was actually very misandrist in the way it talked about men.
I think ideally, you would have some sort of psychologist on staff to lead interviews and then probably either a specific department who only deal with SA cases or maybe if it’s very spread out in rural you could do like a shared scheme state wide, or some thing? They were only deal with SA cases and would be subject to a higher levels of, like, civilian review to make sure they aren’t just ignoring people or sandbagging it, and then I think the civilian review should probably employ their own psychologist to maybe review the interview or maybe conduct a separate interview that way no one just gets dismissed out of hand? And in cases where police are the apparent perpetrators, the case should be kicked up to the FBI(or equivalent, some state/federal police), and still be subject to the civilian review process. Though honestly at this point, I fell like my answer is “simply improve society” and I’m not sure how helpful it is.
As for the feminism thing, I’m gonna be honest, I Rhode Island, a really solid first draft of a reply, and then I noticed a dripping sound in my apartment (it’s been really stormy where I have been lately) so I went to investigate and I found my living room window is leaking water from the top(?!?) of the window so I tabbed out to take a picture to submit for maintenance request (because this is only the second month that I’ve been here and I am not gonna be responsible for water damage, ya know?) and when I came back I had lost my comment because I guess I didn’t post it like I thought I had, so I had to re-write everything down mostly from memory. So I probably meant when you put it around patriarchy up in your original post but I could’ve honestly misremembered and thought you put it around feminism at some point. I’m not sure if the etiquette would be to go back and edit my comment to remove that or to leave it for posterity because you are correct when you called me out on it? So I guess I’ll just leave it?
I agree that it’s hard to talk about these things without being lumped together with the worst of your respective sides degenerates, there are rabid misogynists and misandrists both. I think the best thing we can do is to make sure our feedback is constructive instead of destructive, and to be careful and considerate when having discourse on the subject (something I have apparently failed to do, considering my many mistakes in this discussion(and isn’t that super interesting, I actually kind of feel less embarrassed by my mistakes because I feel this is a discussion rather than an argument)). And as for extremism, I think it’s a very human reaction for society to, like, swing back-and-forth a few times before finding a happy medium and so I think society just hasn’t caught up with stuff like this. In my opinion, there are good indicators that we’re moving towards that, like the statistics on how Men are changing diapers at greater rates as opposed to in the 60s and 70s, and all those memes about how dads can’t repair stuff but at least can hug their kids, etc., but I’m not sure how one would really help it along. Maybe get groups together to write big bills on men’s and women’s issues, call them human rights reform bills, and lobby for them collectively? Otherwise I think all we can do is 1: our best, and 2:wait for society to catch up
Your argument would make more sense if men weren’t dealing with all that defensive bullshit and being shit on for being single and not in some way giving their resources to a woman
Oh and if it wasn’t illegal for them to pay for sex
Oh and if they didn’t hear “where are all the good men” on every dating site
Oh and if men weren’t statistically provably in more danger at all times women complain to be (you didn’t provide sources either, when you gave them a pass for treating all men like shit out of their own delusional fears)
So, if it weren’t for a little thing called reality, you’d have an excellent point!