Incel Theory has Breached the Cathedral

'Dact's post about sexuality during the Cultural Revolution sent me down a rabbit hole and I found this

https://psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/2024-78558-001.html

One of the authors is a professor

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leif_Edward_Ottesen_Kennair

Other is this

Selected Excerpts

In the partly autobiographical novel, Half of Malmö Consists of Guys Who Dumped Me (2021), Amanda Romare dramatizes how urban dating and technologies like Tinder exploit women's evolved mate preferences in a manner that drives addiction and dysfunction. Many women have practically unlimited access to serial dating and short-term s*x with highly attractive men, but such experiences can leave women less able to calibrate their mating strategies, thus making it harder to acquire a long-term partner.

The fact that most Western women no longer are materially or morally dependent on being in a long-term relationship motivates them to exclude the least compelling men from their pool of potential pair-bonding candidates. Gender equality and economic inequality drive women to focus their mate attraction efforts on a shrinking proportion of men. S*x differences in mate preferences empower women in short-term markets, giving them practically unlimited access to casual s*x with higher-value men. Less restrained by monogamous mating morality—and given access to larger, more accessible short-term markets through technologies like Tinder—many women can serially date the small percentage of men whom they perceive to be the most attractive. These men generally find promiscuous mating to be rewarding, but many of their female partners are often left sexually unsatisfied and with negative emotions and regret.

From 2002 to 2011–2013, the top 5% of men increased their number of s*x partners by 32%. An equivalent reduction in s*x partners occurred among the lower-value men. Norwegian studies attest to a similar stratification. A 2015 study suggested that there could be a 20:80 distribution among men on Tinder, but this might no longer be the case. In 2014, men swiped right three times as often as women did, 46% and 14%, respectively . In 2021, this discrepancy had increased to an order of magnitude: 53% versus 5% Neyt et al. found similar numbers: 62% and 4.5%. Even the dating app Hinge, designed to be more equitable, channels 41% of women's likes to the top 5% of men, while the bottom 50% receive 4%. Jonason and Thomas confirmed the highly iniquitous dynamics of online mating markets.

After Sigurd has become more socially capable and confident, he gets to pair bond with Josefin. She is an attractive woman with whom he envisions a future. But because Sigurd feels that women have deprived him of s*x until now, he does not consider it immoral to cheat on his first-ever girlfriend. He views himself as a victim of systemic discrimination and thus entitled to a form of affirmative action. To his friend Mats, Sigurd explains that men have always offered Josefin s*x, while "only now people have become interested in having s*x with me … It is so incredibly unfair that I have to stop because she is satisfied. I have to grab the opportunities I have". Sigurd is unable to convince Josefin that he deserves to have s*x with others while in a relationship with her. He reminds her that she has "had 15 boyfriends [and also] slept around" (3-4-18). Having had only three s*x partners, Sigurd feels he "cannot grow old and have had s*x with [so few]".

The post-1968 mating ideology of confluent love contributes to how Sigurd feels that an important part of self-realization is not only to be found in committed relationships but also through casual s*x. This ideology of convenience and individualistic reward promotes serial monogamy interspersed with opportunistic, short-term mating. A belief in confluent love has taken hold of Western populations during the same period as individual choice empowered women to exclude the lowest-value men from mating. Not only does this societal evolution impose existential pain on men unable to live up to cultural ideals, but also some of them respond maladaptively. Yong et al found that men with low mate value, instead of accepting that an assortative, long-term strategy is their best bet, approach mating markets with unrealistic expectations. Those men who do get into pair bond may also suffer increased psychological pressures. Strong s*x partner stratification between men makes it so that many relationships will be like that of Sigurd and Josefin, in that the woman will be the most sexually experienced. Considering men's sexual jealousy, their greater desire for partner variety, and the promiscuous ideals of confluent love, our era's mating stratification could contribute to greater friction within a relationship.

The series' creators make a case for how poor intersexual communication—as a result of men and women not understanding how the sexes face different mating challenges—contributes to breakups and singledom. Josefin becomes furious when Sigurd admits to having cheated. She refuses to sympathize with his sexual marginalization, and he doesn't care that she has suffered similar victimization as Amanda in Half of Malmö. Josefin had admitted with regard to her former boyfriends: "I find an butthole, then we break up, and then I find a new butthole. Are you an butthole?". She agreed to pair bond with Sigurd because he is not. By "butthole," she seems to mean an attractive man who mates long- and short-term at the same time. Josefin exemplifies the burden that can befall women who get to pair bond with the most sought-after mates. Men with sexual opportunity typically become more short-term oriented, which can motivate them to cheat even after having agreed to be in a closed relationship.

Josefin had not been an insing. Attractive men pair-bonded with her, but their cheating caused her to adjust the value she assigns different traits in potential partners, further upvaluing men who convincingly signal long-term commitment. She makes this point when she throws Sigurd out of her life: "The whole point of you is that you don't do things like that! If I am to have a boyfriend who fricks others, he might as well be good-looking." She seems to have accepted Sigurd as a boyfriend whom she considers to have lower mate value, as a compromise that he should understand excludes him from pursuing short-term opportunities.

With this happy, prosocial ending, the series' creators reject the validity of incel demands regarding compensation for systemic discrimination. Our evolved psychologies make it so that, in the modern West, women have far easier access to casual s*x, an advantage they use to channel a disproportionate amount of sexual opportunity to the most attractive men. Sigurd may view himself as a victim who is entitled to affirmative action, but the series creators are unwilling to entertain what it would require to achieve a more sexually egalitarian social order in the 21st century. Their ending tells marginalized men to work hard to increase their mate value so that they have a better chance of earning a monogamous relationship in the future.

Half of Malmö begins by introducing readers to Amanda's group of female friends.5 They all have the same experience of having unlimited sexual access, but mostly being involuntarily single. Her sister insists that Amanda "is a ten and that tens date in all leagues". The sister's high assessment could be meant as sympathetic encouragement, or she could be falling prey to the 'mate competition overestimation bias,' that is, how men and women tend to overestimate how attractive members of the same s*x are perceived to be. Amanda considers her mate value to be 7 on a 10-point scale, an assessment that seems more precise considering how not a single one of her dates finds her attractive enough as a long-term partner to invite her on a second date. Through the narration, Amanda expresses how she is cognizant of her copulation partners having higher mate value. She admits, "The guy in front of me with the flowing golden-brown hair and the big dark-green irises was definitely two or three leagues above mine". At no point, however, does Amanda consider that there is a difference between people's short- and long-term values. She assigns value to herself and potential partners based on how sexy they appear in the context of a first date. Given her stated goal of finding a long-term partner, Amanda assesses value, selects men, and chooses dating strategies in a dysfunctional manner.

Through giving a short-term impression, Amanda avoids the stronger competition that women face in long-term markets, as men lower their mate requirements for one-night stands. She thus gets to interact erotically with the men whom she desires the most, hoping that s*x will motivate them to meet her again so that, over time, they can realize her long-term value. What happens instead is that her high-value dates, after having had s*x with her, move on to the next woman. Research supports that Amanda's strategy is effective for short-term mating, but works counter to her long-term ambitions

Amanda's first s*x partner in the novel is a management consultant. He is the best-looking man she has seen in a long time, a Jake Gyllenhaal-lookalike with a large, pleasure-inducing peepee and a large, central apartment. Having exceptional looks and finances, he fulfills important female preferences for both short- and long-term mating. The consultant and his friend are by far the superior males in the bar. An hour after meeting them, Amanda and her friend are on their way to have s*x. None of the women are later invited for a second date.

A trope in evolutionary research used to be that women were coy and uninterested in promiscuity. We now have a more complex understanding. Bendixen et al found that the very sexiest men arouse in women an equally strong sense of attraction as sexy women arouse in men. In such instances, at least in gender-equal and sexually liberal Scandinavia, women signal their attraction even more strongly than men, suggesting that when women finally encounter a man who is able to arouse them, they are driven to seize the opportunity. However, when women encounter average men, they are less attracted than men are to average women.

After a long period of intense feelings of regret, Amanda comes to suspect that early s*x is not the best way to sell herself as a long-term partner. When she experiments with holding back s*x, she finds herself unable to compete for the most attractive men, who become less interested in giving her attention. Amanda bemoans, "Do I have to agree to immediate s*x to be allowed to have s*x?!"

Amanda continues to do what feels best in the moment. Proceptively, she approaches whom she finds to be the most attractive man in the bar, or swipes right on the small proportion of Tinder men who give the impression of fulfilling her short-term mate preferences. She thinks about lowering her standards, but the affective rewards that the most compelling men offer when they charm her on first dates, habituate Amanda to high-arousal encounters. A few of her s*x partners agree to additional dates, but only after she has taken the initiative. Romare offers a convincing portrayal of how having abundant access to sexy men shapes female expectations. One date was

too good looking … had a really big peepee, and was crazy fit. So tight muscles that you almost could not feel anything soft when you touched your fingers against his skin. I have only met one such man before, whose skin felt like cement. (pp. 48–49)

Before they have s*x, Amanda cannot help but ask if he is "a player," similar to how Josefin asked Sigurd if he was "an butthole." The date smoothly brushes aside her accusation. Amanda suspects what awaits postcoitus, but gives in to desire. The experienced high-value man is able to provide her with gratifying s*x, but has no interest in spending the full night with her; he detaches emotionally. Amanda has grown accustomed to being told to leave once the copulation is over. She reflects on how dysfunctional this is but lays the blame on men for being exploitative.

By "douches," she seems to refer to short-term oriented, attractive men who are high in Dark Triad traits. Such men are often drawn to sexual conquering, capable of making a strong first impression, and able to get their way at the expense of others. Realizing that such men are the only ones capable of eliciting her arousal and infatuation—at least on first dates—Amanda feels like she wants to die. This is an emotional low point of the book, the scene in which she understands that her psychology is to blame—not primarily the men whom she has allowed to fulfill their mate preferences. Her emotions—against which she feels powerless—draw her to men with whom exploitation is a likelier outcome than pair bonding. More average men with a long-term orientation generally do not have those traits and skills that arouse in her an immediate desire to mate. In bars, they do not show up on her radar. On Tinder, she swipes them away. As Buss wrote, female choosiness seems to make most men "invisible as viable options in women's mating minds."

Midway through the book, she decides to delete Tinder and stop dating. She has no alternative strategy, but wants the pain to stop—she just has one more man to meet, and after him, another, and so forth. She feels that her serial dating has changed her psychological makeup. Two weeks before her decision to quit, Amanda was surprised to feel similar to involuntarily celibate men:

I have never understood the incel movement. Seriously, they are so fricked up in the head. Today, though, I got this thought when a few cuties passed me in the city. Crap. Why isn't anyone fricking me? I'm walking here in the city, with a fully loaded vagina, and no one takes the chance. That's not fair. It's your fricking duty to satisfy me. Somewhere around there I understood the similarity.

Women having evolved to be the sexual selectors incentivizes men to be deceptive. For instance, 71% of men admit to having exaggerated how they feel in order to get laid. A ruthless example is how Amanda's friend was told by her date that he "had never meet anyone as wonderful as you". After s*x, he gave her half an hour to leave—and never replied to her texts. Amanda repeatedly suffers similar postcoital behaviors but never understands or adapts to the short-term strategies of the highly experienced men she dates.

The modern environment seems to trigger short-term ambitions even in lower-value men—as they witness the mating success of the most attractive men—which was the case with Sigurd.

Amanda's possible salvation comes in the form of Emil, a man whose looks make him appear to be a player, but whose insecurities seem to have contributed to him adopting a long-term orientation. Confident men can also be long-term oriented, but Romare portrays Emil in a way that suggests that his shy nervousness has hindered him from engaging in the mating behavior to which most characters in her book seem drawn. He expresses a strong interest in pair bonding with Amanda, but she is not sure whether she is capable of settling for someone who only has the exterior to which she has grown accustomed, but not the confident personality.

It is unclear whether Emil is debilitatingly insecure, or just lacks the social bravado that characterizes many promiscuous men. Amanda and her friends are so accustomed to the winners in short-term markets that they interpret other men to be anomalies. As Amanda tries to get used to Emil's low-key personality, her friend suffers a date with someone in "the worst Tinder category", meaning that he is shy and quiet.

Romare elaborates on how the demands of the modern dating format incentivize women to disregard men who are unable to trigger immediate arousal. Amanda has second thoughts after Emil declines her offer of having s*x in a public park. In bed, when he awkwardly tries to shoot his sperm in her face, she concludes that he commits "the gravest 'c*m-in-face' fail ever". He cannot give her the sexual and social peak experiences that promiscuously successful men could provide already on the first date. Instead, he offers postcoital cuddling, long-term commitment, and monogamy.

Amanda fears that she has grown addicted to "bad-boy energy," or that she is "incapable of taking care of love once she has found it," or that she and Emil are only together "because no one else wants them"

Men and women are at an alarming rate opting out of dating: 57% of single Americans report not being interested in short- or long-term mating. Over the past two decades, past-year sexual inactivity among young men rose from 19% to 31%. Another survey indicated that from 2008 to 2018, virginity among men under age 30 rose from around 8% to 27%.

Similarly, we should sympathize with the struggles of insings. Men should not evaluate the experiences of women from the perspective of male mate preferences. Understandably, average men could find it hard to sympathize when Romare accounted for the panic her mother suffered when joining Facebook Dating. In a few hours, the 58-year-old received requests from 400 to 500 men. Every minute, a new man expressed interest. For men who mostly face rejection and silence, such attention could appear utopian. The fact that Romare was unable to stop dating attractive men who only wanted s*x, without her understanding why, could be made fun of, which some have done. A Norwegian influencer expressed similar views with regard to the men she found most compelling on Tinder: "Those I find interesting are not interested in anything serious or want 'something simple' that does not challenge them in any way". She is not the only disgruntled dater who has complained publicly about today's "men," as a consequence of her inability to distinguish between "men" and "short-term-oriented, high-value men." Leigland deleted Tinder after having had to "kiss many frogs disguised as princes," by which she meant men who have s*x with more than one woman. These experiences made her "a worse, sadder, and more cynical person." Hilde Nordlund became tired of "frickboys in their forties". Bille concluded, after years of postcoital rejections, that men lack depth.

Villainizing men who suffer involuntary celibacy is not a constructive way forward. Neither is diminishing the pain felt by women who remain single because they are unable to resist the temptation of serially dating higher-value men. Both incels and insings fall victim to our evolved mate preferences. Communities that gain a deeper understanding of what these preferences are could experience better intersexual communication, which might aid men and women in finding more functional ways to mate.