The appeal of online Incel communities to autistic men

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kitesandtrainsandcats
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25 May 2022, 9:17 am

techstepgenr8tion wrote:
Sexual Economics: Sex as Female Resource for Social Exchange
in Heterosexual Interactions
Roy F. Baumeister
Kathleen D. Vohs
https://assets.csom.umn.edu/assets/71503.pdf


Hmm, interesting.

That last statement in the quoted bit :arrow: I have seen it go the other direction too.
But on in society overall, the stated direction does seem to be the predominate one.

"
Although applying economic principles to sex may
seem novel, psychology has invoked economic theo-
ries in other contexts. Social exchange theory has been
used to analyze a broad range of social interactions
(e.g., Blau, 1964; Homans, 1950, 1961; Sprecher,
1998), based on the assumption that each party in an
interaction gives something and gets something in re-
turn. Analyzing the costs and benefits of various inter-
personal behavior furnishes a useful basis for making
predictions about how people will think, feel, and
choose to act.

In our view, previous attempts to apply social ex-
change theory to sex have neglected one crucial aspect,
which will be featured in this article. Specifically, sex
is a female resource. Put another way, cultural systems
will tend to endow female sexuality with value, where-
as male sexuality is treated by society as relatively
worthless. As a result, sexual intercourse by itself is not
an equal exchange, but rather an instance of the man
getting something of value from the woman. To make
the exchange equal, the man must give her something
else in return and his own sexual participation does not
have enough value to constitute this. How much he
gives her in terms of nonsexual resources will depend
on the price (so to speak) set by the local culture and on
her relative standing on valued sexual characteristics
(see Table 1). When sex happens, therefore, it will of-
ten be in a context in which the man gives the woman
material gifts, consideration and respect, commitment
to a relationship as desired by her, or other goods.

There are two main parts to this article. The first
will consist of an extended exposition of the theory. We
attempt to develop and elaborate the economic analysis
of sex from an exchange perspective as thoroughly as
we can, even extending to aspects and predictions that
are not fully testable against extant data. The second
section will then review published empirical findings
about many patterns of sexual behavior, as a way of
evaluating the exchange theory’s capacity to account
for what is known.

Social Exchange
and Female Resource Theory

Social exchange theory analyzes interactions be-
tween two parties by examining the costs and benefits
to each. Interactions are only likely to continue if each
party gains more than it loses. Crucially, the exchange
analysis assumes that in each social interaction, each
person gives something to the other and gains some-
thing from the other (hence the exchange). The value
of what is gained and exchanged depends in part on the
preferences of the individuals and in part on the
broader market. By applying economic principles to
social rewards, one can make predictions about how
social behavior will proceed.

...

The central point to our social exchange analysis of
sex is that sex is essentially a female resource. When a
man and a woman have sex, therefore, the woman is
giving something of value to the man. In that sense, the
interaction is one-sided—unless the man gives the
woman something else of comparable value.

Although the social exchange analysis will invoke a
social system to explain sex and is therefore essentially
a cultural theory, ironically its most famous advocate
came from evolutionary theory (although Cott, 1979,
developed a similar line of analysis in a feminist histor-
ical context). Symons (1979) observed that “Every-
where sex is understood to be something females have
that males want” (p. 253). By “everywhere” he meant
in all cultures and historical eras, although to be sure he
only presented observations from a handful of these.
Indeed, he offered relatively little in the way of empiri-
cal evidence for his theory, a deficiency that this article
seeks to remedy (aided by the substantial amount of
empirical data on sex that have been produced in the
decades since Symons’ book was published). Symons
also did not find it useful to consider how economic
theory might elaborate his basic observation. Nonethe-
less, his work deserves recognition for having put forth
the observation that sex is essentially something that
women provide and men desire.
"


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Fnord
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25 May 2022, 9:21 am

techstepgenr8tion wrote:
I abstained from posting more articles but Diana Fleischman has links to twenty-five papers which she's solo authored or co-authored. In case anyone wants to get a broader sense of what they're looking at:
https://www.dianafleischman.com/publications
Wow.  I have saved the link.  It may take most of the summer to read everything, but I will give it a try.  Thanks!



techstepgenr8tion
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25 May 2022, 9:25 am

Fnord wrote:
And it is to this very nature of the human species that the "Incel / I-Can't-Get-A-Date" crowd objects, instead of trying to improve their appearances and behaviors to become more attractive to others.

There seem to be people in this thread asserting that this entire topic is whole-cloth fiction from warped minds, if they're going to insist on that they need to wear some egg on their faces in the process. I don't like it when social justice warriors do this, I don't like it when fundamentalist Christians or Muslims do it, hammer-headed moral self-righteousness makes the world a worse place.

For incels/femcels, particularly those who really just didn't luck out, the really isn't much in the way of looks-maxing or achievement-maxing they can do (unless they want to do the South Korean thing and visit the plastic surgeon a dozen times). This selection process is *meant* to specifically cull people from the gene pool not for choices but for immutable characteristics (at least stopping short of the modern miracle of plastic surgery just mentioned).

You can both disagree with bad behavior or bitterness and be compassionate that they're reacting to something that's real rather than gaslighting them into the ground. When people take the later road it's the path to rounding up and 'getting rid of' the undesirables. Any animal can do that.


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magz
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25 May 2022, 9:35 am

Guys whose natural looks would cross them out are actually very rare. Most people in the world are average-looking and they make most of the families in the world. Relationships are totally for average-looking people.
Guys whose behaviors cross them out are way more common.


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25 May 2022, 9:39 am

↑↑ I agree, for the most part.  It is those people who can, but refuse to make changes in themselves that I address.



kraftiekortie
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25 May 2022, 9:40 am

You have to offset the theories, not allow them to rule how you live. And how you react to adversity.

I’m sorry to upset you, Mr Tech.

But immersion in these theories pushes people deeper into the dungeon.



techstepgenr8tion
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25 May 2022, 9:47 am

magz wrote:
Guys whose natural looks would cross them out are actually very rare. Most people in the world are average-looking and they make most of the families in the world. Relationships are totally for average-looking people.
Guys whose behaviors cross them out are way more common.

So on one hand you do have other factors such as income, ownership, and social status. On the other hand you have all sorts of people who fall through the cracks for really unnamable reasons - ie. not having fowl attitudes but, for all anyone knows, there's some neurological hum to some aspect of how they move in the world that sets them out of phase with the rest of society and no one really gets how that works but if it's odd or off-putting it gets taken as a sign of disease.

I mentioned as well earlier that people who are deemed lower status or undesirable - lets say they don't adhere to luxury beliefs, don't do the hippest-trendiest thing or lick their finger and stick it in the air to figure out who they'll be that day, are showing signs that they're outsiders. Anyone in any of these categories is less likely to get hired, less likely to be promoted, less likely to do well, which then reinforces problems in the areas above where people would say 'Well, just be more successful and work on your social skills' - right they should but this also means they'd just about need to become solo entrepreneurs and hope that their customers don't then pull the exact same crap and mug them because they don't appear to be in a position of social strength (to which the business world is quite Machiavellian, it almost seems like that's one of it's most defining traits).

Rampant complaining and outright misogynist statements can be put down to foul attitude and misogyny, the rest doesn't necessarily fit in that category. Some of these guys/girls are openly toxic and bitter, plenty aren't. The popular notion that they are where they are because they're angry and bitter is often a clever rearrangement of cause and effect to put them back out of sight and out of mind.


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techstepgenr8tion
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25 May 2022, 9:51 am

kraftiekortie wrote:
You have to offset the theories, not allow them to rule how you live. And how you react to adversity.

I’m sorry to upset you, Mr Tech.

But immersion in these theories pushes people deeper into the dungeon.

The reason I get animated, the mentality on this topic is almost as bad as the mentality on the post-1970's war on drugs (ie. war on people of color and various 'nonconforms' who didn't agree with the war in Vietnam which then stretched out into the crack epidemic of the 1980's and so on).

One can tell people to focus on the positive, one doesn't have the right to tell people that their repeated observations are invalid without putting those observations to evidentiary tests to see if they are just personal anecdote or whether they're actually on to something that's pervasive at the lower levels of what it is to be human (and plenty of people are stuck eating the instincts of lower levels of the human species from their peers for their whole lives).

The worst words you could use to paper over that are 'critical thinking'.


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“Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within. I use the word "love" here not merely in the personal sense but as a state of being, or a state of grace - not in the infantile American sense of being made happy but in the tough and universal sense of quest and daring and growth.” - James Baldwin


kraftiekortie
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25 May 2022, 9:55 am

I’ve had similar experiences to many of these folks. The difference is that it wasn’t so bad after high school.

I believe the problem lies in being drowned by the ideology, with no ability to hear other input. One thing leads to another, like sinking in quicksand.



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25 May 2022, 9:56 am

^^^ Ugh, the American obsession with status. AFAIK, most people in the world are also average status.

Anyway - it's okay to complain about struggle.
It's crossing the border when one starts to spew offensive generalizations on others. Ironpony asked why these ideologies are frowned upon - the answer is: because their followers really often cross this border.
Complaining about one's own struggle is okay.


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25 May 2022, 9:56 am

kraftiekortie wrote:
. . . immersion in these theories pushes people deeper into the dungeon.
More like the inescapability of the facts that drives them to despair.

My experience and observations have shown me that men who are taller, healthier, and wealthier than the women around them are generally perceived by those women as more attractive than the more "average" men nearby.  Such "attractive" men seem to be in the minority.  Thus, a large fraction of single women seem to be competing for a small fraction of single men.  That is just human nature; and, instead of adapting, some people either settle for what they can get, or they pre-emptively reject everyone and despair of ever finding the "perfect" mate.



Last edited by Fnord on 25 May 2022, 10:04 am, edited 1 time in total.

kraftiekortie
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25 May 2022, 10:04 am

Let me emphasize:

Some of the ideology is garbage. Some of it has basis in truth.

The vast majority of the people who adhere to this stuff are not garbage. They are merely misguided.



Last edited by kraftiekortie on 25 May 2022, 10:05 am, edited 1 time in total.

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25 May 2022, 10:05 am

kraftiekortie wrote:
Let me emphasize: Some of the ideology is garbage.  Some of it has basis in truth.  The vast majority of the people who adhere to this stuff are not garbage. They are merely misguided.
And some people refuse to accept the truth of human nature.  Once they do (as I did), their chances may get better.



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25 May 2022, 10:13 am

There's one more thing that can be easily used:
Status is something relative. Look for small communities where securing local status is easier for you - especially communities that value something you can do. It will boost your chances and your mental health (which also makes people more attractive).


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25 May 2022, 10:24 am

That's actually pretty much what I did.

I avoided hanging out in "mainstream" situations. I picked and chose who to hang out with, and where to hang out.

I knew that I would probably become "persona non grata" in a bar rather quickly, so I avoided hanging out in bars.

What I usually did was to cultivate friendships on my job. And these friends usually had other friends, etc.

Or....I might go to a movie where there was a presentation after the movie. Or to lectures, where there are some people who are receptive to talking to other people.

Even in small towns, they have things like lectures and such at, say, the local community college.



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25 May 2022, 10:41 am

magz wrote:
There's one more thing that can be easily used: Status is something relative. Look for small communities where securing local status is easier for you - especially communities that value something you can do. It will boost your chances and your mental health (which also makes people more attractive).
LOL!

Dungeons & Dragons, anyone?

It worked for me!


:lol: