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Yeah. I thought about mentioning that I was limiting examples to avoid too many combinations but that seemed a bit wordy. In general I think going further wouldnât be that useful because either theyâre special cases of hetero relationships (so have the same concerns) or itâs still flexible (like two bi men have the same constraints as gay men) or more flexible (poly, I guess, but IDK Iâd guess thereâs every sub-combination under the sun to deal with for an exhaustive list).
I am not sure what âqueer relationship dynamicsâ means for cis-het relationships regarding fertility constraints, though. How is a queer cis-het relationship different from a non-queer cis-het relationship?
(I realize you said âheteroâ not âcis-hetâ, but Iâm more interested in this sub type and itâs more obvious to me how queer relationship dynamics would apply to non-cis hetero relationships.)
You seem focused mostly on physical/biological traits for parenting instead of good ideas and mental/emotional/personality type traits.
As in there might be a queer heterosexual couple who can have children âthe old fashioned wayâ but have an atypical queer relationship dynamic. I donât really understand whatâs confusing about that. The specifics of the dynamic are irrelevant.
Your position as I understood it was that hetero relationships have more to worry about re: having kids due to âsuitable matesâ. My point was a queer relationship comprised of two bisexual people might have the same concerns. So heteronormative people donât have a monopoly on those concerns.
I would say it came about via trans issues, originally. Many of the threads of discussion on the trans topic remain unresolved. Hypergamy was just one of many related tangential discussions weâve had from there.
I did not really have any broad point. Each post was its own point, objecting to limited specific claims you made. I guess if I had to distill them down to a broad point, it is the same for both the trans discussion as well as redpill/dating discussion:
I think you are part of the problem, not part of the solution. I think that if more men adopted your positions on trans people, the world would be worse for trans people and not meaningfully better for cis people. I think that if more men adopted your positions on women and dating, the world would be worse for women and not meaningfully better for men.
Thatâs kind of a mean thing to tell you, though. Re: trans discussion I think you invited that level of honesty by e.g. admitting to being a transphobe. But you havenât admitted to being a misogynist so I think this could be uninvited there.
Iâm not really sure where to go from here, though. I donât really know how to solve this problem. Iâve been talking to you across a wide range of subtopics to try to see if any particular place turned out to be fruitful and lead to some shared understanding. I donât think I had a lot of success.
I donât have any one subtopic that I am excited to discuss in a formalized manner. I think it will inevitably balloon back out into multiple subtopics. If you have one you want to try, Iâll consider it, but no promises.
The confusing thing to me is that I donât know what such a dynamic is or would be or how that would differ from non-queer dynamics. Like I can see some cis-het dynamics that wouldnât be queer, e.g., SAHM + breadwinner father type relationships donât sound queer, but there are lots of non-queer cis-het dynamics out there, and if none of them are queer I donât know whatâs left besides superficial things like fashion subculture or other stuff that doesnât really matter.
Kind of but with the boundary. So like averaged over all queer relationships, yes itâs on average easier, but individually and with the constraint of genetic children, theyâre rarely (if ever?) more constrained than normative cis-het relationships. (Infertility complications aside for both queer and non-queer relationships.)
One assumption here is that cis-het parents want their children to be both their children, which obviously isnât so practical for gay and lesbian couples.
Yeah, I guess in part because I assume that there isnât any useful difference between the other traits split around queerness. Like, there might be differences, but Iâm not sure that theyâre enduring enough, non-cultural enough, etc to be useful. I also probably have some bias because itâs easier to quantify traits around fertility than ideas/emotions/personality.
Yeah, weâre disagreeing here without you realizing it. I think some cishet relationships can have queer dynamics. A gentle, emotional caregiving father and an assertive, argumentative breadwinning mother could easily be a queer relationship dynamic in a cishet marriage, maybe depending on some specifics.
Queer generally means non-heteronormative. Heteronormativity is a big topic but includes a lot of prescriptive roles. The fewer those roles apply, the less heteronormative your relationship, the more you could choose to describe your relationship as queer.
Again, this kind of sidesteps that technically heterosexual parents have 100% of the same options gay parents do, plus extra options.
But I will concede insofar as caring about your kids being your genetic offspring could be an example of heteronormativity, actually. So maybe hetero parents who donât care and happily avail themselves of alternative methods actually are being a bit queer.
Are you including things Iâve changed my mind about in this thread?
Like one thing with m2f trans people in sports, for example, is that I now think people who think m2f shouldnât compete in female divisions should be welcoming to m2f trans ppl in male divisions.
This isnât necessarily what TRAs want, but would that be worse than what we have now? I donât think so. Part of the problem is that people with that opinion are not welcoming to m2f trans ppl in general (male division or not).
I think thereâs enough men out there with anti-trans views that if you randomly chose men and replaced their views with mine (now), on average things might improve.
What do you think my position is on women and dating?
Maybe I can help you empathize a bit with my position by way of analogy. This has to do with my criticism of you giving one-sided criticism.
Hereâs a recent video â Chronic disease in children after vaccines â that covers a study which shows increased risk of chronic illness based on childhood vaccination. Vaccinated kids were ~2.5x more likely.
Okay, say Iâm an anti-vaxxer and youâre arguing for the medical establishment. I come to you and say âlook, this is a problem! we should be investigating this!â. You reply defending mainstream medicine and pointing out that the paper isnât peer reviewed. I bring up that vaccines have lots of problems recently, like COVID vaccines having poor trial quality, DNA contamination, and greatly increased adverse reactions. You reply saying theyâre safe and effective and that I should trust the science. I complain that youâre biased and ask âwhy do you think the medical establishment is perfect? why wonât you acknowledge there are serious problems?!â You reply like âI never said that there arenât problems, in fact I think there are problems, but I will not acknowledge any problems because I donât think thatâs what you need to hear right now.â
Do you see how I might think â even if youâre right â that you are biased, evasive, and not truth-seeking? Do you see how offering me more of the same wonât do anything to address my actual concerns?
Thatâs what it feels like. Thatâs not a perfect analogy, but I hope it illustrates my point well enough.
More generally, I think this criticism also applies to TRAs and that they have a lot of bad-faith arguments and anti-science ideas. They donât mind suppressing research that could damage their cause. This, IMO, does them a lot of harm and only hypes up the violent ones. This hurts everyone, and the refusal of people on the left generally to acknowledge this kind of thing is sanctioning the neglect of thinking.
From my perspective, those kinds of actions are also part of the problem, not part of the solution. And I think they might ultimately directly lead to more intense backlashes (politically) as a direct result which could have been avoided if the left actually valued stuff like objective truth. (But doing that goes against postmodernism, and intersectionality, and a whole bunch of pet epistemologies about âmy truthâ and all that nonsense.)
I also think youâre vastly overestimating how bad my views are. Iâd guess Iâm a lot more progressive (on these issues) than the average person in 2010, which is only 15 years ago.
This just sounds like youâre classifying any healthy dynamic outside of like a 1950s dynamic as queer. Which I donât like, because I donât think people would generally consider that queer and claiming people are queer is like claiming their an ally which has political connotations.
What I dislike aside, can you explain how youâre not just classifying all emotionally healthy relationships that donât fall into some strict gendered stereotypes as queer?
Right but itâs not compatible with child-related goals of most normative relationships, which is the important part.
If hypergamy is a real phenomenon, do you think it would be misogynistic to believe it is real?
I can see how, if it is not a real phenomenon, it would be misogynistic to believe it is real.
I donât think modern heteronormativity is bound to 1950s era dynamics. Lots of modern heteronormative stuff would seem weird to people of the 50s, e.g. manchildren that need a woman partner to mommy them. Also many forms of emotional manipulation used today were less common then (and they had other options people today use less).
I think you could intentionally and thoughtfully choose to be heteronormative. Most people just do it by default, but some people think about it and still choose it. And presumably some subset of those people do so in an emotionally sound way.
But in general, yeah, I donât see it as an all sides are equal scenario. Outside of highly niche subcultures like CF, queer culture basically is the primary place to explore sexuality and romance in a non-heteronormative way with any sort of alternative-cultureâs guardrails helping you out. Many books about ways to have relationships outside of heteronormative roles come from the queer community. Most online spaces that explore non-heteronormative relationships are heavily entwined with queerness, e.g. most feminist spaces have a ton of overlap with queer spaces.
It isnât exclusive though. I already explicitly called out CF as a plausible exception. There are probably others. The line between these exceptions might be blurry some, but also maybe not. For example, CF community emphasizes different stuff than most queer communities do. But still rejects many heteronormative standards.
I donât think this question is well formulated. I could make some assumptions to answer it. Or I could ask a bunch of questions.
First example question: If hypergamy is a real phenomenon practiced by 5% of women, does that count as âhypergamy is a real phenomenonâ for this question? Because to the redpill community, thatâs not what they mean by hypergamy. But it could be a good way to implement a (maybe unintentional) motte and bailey.
Example rephrasing: If hypergamy is a real phenomenon practiced by 5% of women, yes it would be misogynistic to believe it is something to care a lot about and factor into your feelings about dating, women, and relationships.
Example charitable rephrasing: If hypergamy is a real phenomenon practiced by 95% or more of women, do you think it would be misogynistic to believe it is real? Answer: No, thatâs probably okay.
Thereâs a lot of space in between those examples to explore. Much of that space involves misogynistic feelings.
Okay, Itâs unclear to me what you mean by heteronormative, then. Could you explain or link me to an explanation?
By one of your earlier examples, it seems like my parents did not have a heteronormative relationship and thus fall into the queer category. My mother brought in most of the income and my dad did a lot of cooking and child-rearing. There were certainly other heteronormative qualities, but plenty of variance too.
Do you agree thatâd be in the queer category?
I appreciate that you are trying to engage in difficult discussions, and trying to be open to changing your mind. I do want to give you credit for that.
From my perspective thereâs a long way to go still.
I like this example. I donât think you need to concede that the medical establishment is bad to argue against an anti-vax position. In your example the pro-vax person isnât making too many arguments (ânot peer reviewedâ is only one I see at glance?), and more platitudes (âtrust the scienceâ)⌠so thatâs bad. I donât think Iâm doing that, though. Maybe you do.
But to the extent they did make a pro-vax argument, I do not think they need to care if the anti-vaxxer is bothered by their disinterest in spending time shitting on the medical establishment. They are arguing the topics they want to argue about. That seems fine to me.
A common way of deflecting from criticism is to try to get concessions about unrelated or tangentially related issues. Then one can just shrug and say everything is a bit flawed, oh well. I donât particularly want to provide opportunities for that, and I donât really see the upside. Sorry.
Yeah, at least a little. Though again, gender roles do shift over time. Childcare is probably the most noteworthy part of your anecdote, I think.
But thereâs lots of other aspects to queer dynamics⌠what their sex life is like, how they discuss and resolve big life issues, and more. Although to be clear: Iâm not expecting you to know (or speculate on) much about their sex life.
Based on your examples, here is what I think is the likely case with hypergamy. If anything is still unclear, clarifying questions would be good.
I think hypergamy as a subconscious behavior is present but not necessarily expressed in the vast majority of women. Something like 80%+ minimum (Iâd say more but Iâm leaving some wiggle room for non cis-het women and genetic variance). It can be expressed to a degree, too. And it can be expressed inconsistently (e.g., 1 day out of 30000). The reasons for expression are cultural and contextual. I think any woman can consciously override any expression of hypergamy if she is conscious of her actions and takes care to avoid acting automatically in certain contexts. Cultural elements like extreme materialism, reductive ideas about men, and secondhandedness as expressed through peer comparison and validation seeking (I think all these are fairly common today). Contextual elements like the mechanisms of dating apps. Some other cultural things like anti-natalism and career-oriented feminist ideas might also encourage expression (but Iâm speculating more there).
I do not think the majority of women are currently expressing hypergamy (many women are happily married and arenât leaving their partners for âbetterâ ones, for example).
I think there is substantial expression among women actively dating, or who have not settled down, or are part of certain subcultures. I donât have an estimate for what percentage of women are expressing hypergamous behaviors, except that itâs significant enough to be significant (particularly among women who are actively dating).
I think differently designed dating apps could mitigate hypergamous expression which would be better for both men and women and lead to more long term and higher quality relationships.
I think dating apps are one of the main reasons for hypergamous behavior, though there are other reasons too.
I think the same women in different situations (e.g., more community based things, âhow things used to beâ wrt meeting spouses) would not express hypergamous behavior anywhere near the same degree.
I think there are evolutionary pressures that make hypergamy a decent strategy.
Since it is subconscious, I donât think itâs obvious to women whether or not it is real. Sheâd need to do some introspection and observation and think about it to figure out whether it is or not.
I think, applying your evaluation here, my stance is not necessarily misogynistic. (It might be if hypergamy is wrong and I donât change my mind, but it is not by its own nature misogynistic.)
Okay yeah, my impression is that these apps are much more useful to their users. And yeah that seems most relevant.
Well, somewhat humorously, I still donât need to after learning more about your experience.
But yeah there will always be a middle ground, but itâs hard to tell how thick that will be. Iâd guess that it moves as well, so probably not stable long term unless someoneâs bang in the middle and itâs wide enough.
I donât think it will be as stark a discontinuity as that (and as Iâve said, 5% is an example number, it could be 10% or maybe even 20%, at some point itâs questionable, though).
There also could be multiple 5% groups that add up to 15% or whatever, split up as clusters of commonly selected profiles.
If you measured the relevant stats, I suspect youâd find something like this (the right hand side for men). Itâs attractiveness (x) vs probability of receiving a like (y). Hopefully itâs obvious how that kind of distribution can produce a breakpoint around a 95/5 or 90/10 split. (This is from the Why Men Get So Few Matches on Dating Apps video I linked earlier)
I think thereâs a small middle ground, but I donât know how wide it is or if thereâs any available data on that kind of thing (I havenât seen any if there is).
A good way to avoid dog pile problems is by using debate trees. That way, people can talk a lot and you can mostly just reply to whatâs in the tree. So it doesnât matter much if several people write their thoughts out at length since that generally wonât result in a lot more tree nodes than debating one person would, and the tree nodes will often be manageable even if there are more.
No. But since you implicitly asked: I have considered age gaps and whatâs practical because if I partnered up with someone my age then I would have to make some compromises to parts of my ideal plan (e.g., I have a 3 year buffer between meeting and having kids which feels reasonable, that could be compressed but it wouldnât be ideal).
But I think youâre trying to push me into a corner that doesnât really fit.
I do think promiscuity matters because of how it interacts with other traits and my relationship/family goals.
I donât, however, think there is a âcorrectâ number of sexual partners for a woman to have. I have a rough preference mostly because of the interactions with other things. I donât think anything is off limits with regards to being a potentially relevant factor from oneâs life history (which includes my history and mistakes, too). In that light, body count is contextual, too. Thereâs a difference between X bodies 3-5 years ago and X bodies 3-5 days ago.
Because it would conflict with what I wrote above. (Itâs an explanation thing not a number thing.)
I do think thereâs some value to > 0 fwiw, which I guess isnât the normal redpill take. (I also guess that thereâs an implicit preference for virgins among some of the redpill community at least, but they know it would be controversial to say and so they donât.)
I should maybe add: the reason I had a rule of thumb about body count was because I have thought about it before and what is actually reasonable and why. I am kind of mixing some ideas together and the result happens to coincide around my own. Maybe I should have been more specific since about that when mentioning it.
Heuristics that are 95% accurate are often good enough, especially if youâre playing a numbers game. It depends on the tradeoff and where throughput suffers (assuming time efficiency is a goal).
Yes but people lie (sometimes unintentionally) or are unreliable for other reasons. Moreover, a lot changes in the first few years of a relationship. What someone might want on day 20 is not necessarily what they want in month 20, or year 20. Consistency is important if weâre considering the long term. (Explanations can make up for this a bit, but realistically consistency is hard to beat.)
No, but for many people they interact.
FWIW, in my case, I do have a preference for no-to-low alcohol consumption but thatâs mostly because I donât drink and donât want alcohol to play a role in a relationship.
Sure. Iâm going to refer to the fact women have an easier time finding someone in the common informal way: women control access to sex â wherein there is an asymmetry. I think thatâs why itâs usually put like that too: it makes the asymmetry obvious. (And yeah I was talking about consensual sex.)
Assuming women have an easier time, do you dispute my reasoning behind why body count matters more for women than men? It doesnât sound like it.
No, I donât think itâs similar. I do, however, think both are potentially significant indicators when considering someone as a romantic partner. (And a history of cheating or assault are significant for women, too.)
But only for a woman. A man who has a history of many sexual partners is less concerning.
And also no, I think all these things go both ways, but the interpretation of data is often asymmetric. The same data points might have different implications or significance, even if theyâre numerically the same. (Some things will be symmetric, some things not.)
You can only have a healthy good relationship if both people choose each other, and the ability to be selective and have arbitrary preferences needs to go both ways.