Dating and Mating

In response to my latest posting on the travails of Lonelyguys15million (here's my original item), a reader writes:

A further comment on the dating problem for modern men. The fundamental difficulty has been created by the over-zealous harassment laws adopted by most American companies, forbidding employees from dating one another.

Women need to see men in action, being competent, reliable, and in charge. The only place where they will see them this way is at work. Thus Americans spend a very large amount of their time at work only to have it ruled moot for dating purposes. Without these cues to effectiveness and strength men are forced to compete where none of their better qualities will come through, and women are thrown back on picking up the most striking looking men in bars. When these then turn into one-night stands it should come as a surprise to no-one, but apparently it does, time and time again.

It is true that feminists (along with lawyers) have created this barren nightmare, because they have tried to pretend that when women find men in authority attractive (i.e. in positions that reveal their marriageable strengths) this means that the men are somehow abusing their position. But they aren’t necessarily: they are simply demonstrating those qualities that women most look for in a mate. Women will gravitate to them—but the men are forced to ignore them if they want to keep their jobs.

Another reader writes about the decline of dances attended by all generations, which were a big part of finding a spouse in, say, Pride and Prejudice and Gone With the Wind. Nowadays, wedding receptions are just about the only surviving examples.

Another reader notes:

It wasn't the electric guitar that killed off multigenerational socializing; it was the explicit sexuality of the music. If you're getting the generations together for the purposes of making a new one, you have to have plausible deniability that that's what you're doing and you can't enflame the passions of the young men. Otherwise lots of people are going to be too embarrassed to show and the ones that do are going to end up jumping the gun out back.

I have been involved with some social groups centered around electronic dance music, and while there are babies and young children present, there is a general consensus to exclude the nubile and marriageable, because the adults don't want to deal with the drama.

Making marriages happen used to be a huge part of what leisured women did; preparing young women for the season in London, for example, was an enormous undertaking and something that was generally understood as worth doing. Young people at risk for heartbreak are a burden, and only a group that wants to perpetuate itself will take on that burden.

I started my children playing traditional Irish music because it's inherently valuable, but also I expect them to meet their wives in this context. Very few people think like this. It's a pity.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer