One important aspect that needs to be brought into account is class. High-status men almost have a monopoly on the dating market, especially from its liberalization. What you talked about is mainly the experience of this part of men. Most men on dating apps barely get any dates and don't get to choose. Of course if we just look at this part of potential male dating partners, then the relationship is still pretty much patriarchal. This might not be true for lower status men.
I think it's probably really hard for people to control themselves sexually since the advent of dating apps. In modern times you don't have to be famous to screw a lot of people. Never before has self control been more important.
exactly. I would consider myself a feminist (and a Marxist at that, so not the shallow "go girlboss" kind of feminist), and I am certain that women experience abuse and/or stalking on dating websites far more than men, so I am in no way saying the experience is worse for men, but being ignored hundreds of times can also be depressing af, especially if you are also struggling with other issues at the time. It can even send you down a self-deprecating suicidal spiral... I tend to blame capitalism for this rather than women though, as there is no reason why, with our current technology, we couldn't have a massive AI assisted database where you could find a partner based on the most niche of interests, curiousities, even flaws you are willing to tolerate and find endearing (or flaws you share so they'd understand you better), and a plethora of other things that you could cross-reference, across the whole planet (no region locks) and with free messaging, leading to a lot more people finding more compatible matches that they'd love to get to know, except capitalism! Cause why not make messaging a paywalled feature? Same for advanced searches. In fact, why should a dating app even optimise its search engine in such a way that you could easily find compatible people based on very specific interests or preferences, or allow non-location based searches, when it's in their direct interest for people to fail to find a partner and just keep paying their subscription fee for as long as possible? Being a lower middle or working class man on most dating websites, no matter how intelligent, sensible or considerate, if you don't have status or great looks, can be a harrowing and soulcrushing experience, and it should be talked about more, but not in the toxic MRA fashion that always attempts to cast blame on women and belittle their valid negative experiences, but sadly that might be the only lens through which this issue is even brought up and discussed online... We could have far better online dating if we didn't all live in dystopian late stage capitalism, but alas we do...
Thank you Dr. Ellie Anderson for this topic as it should be more discussed. The evidence of patriarchy being a species draw down and not a partnership model is in evidence on a larger scale beyond mere gender interaction.
Happy international women's day, Dr. Anderson. I share many of your frustrations with contemporary dating. Perhaps dating is very different for millennials vs. zoomers/zillennials such as myself, but my impression is that men, women, and non-binary folks are similarly dissatisfied by online dating. Hookup culture favors the emotionally detached, regardless of gender. In a culture where caring is creepy, commitment requires tremendous vulnerability, again regardless of gender.
Agree with OP. As a 58 yo male, I’ve always felt alienated towards the masculine constructs in general. The irony is that “strong men” shape the world also for all other men - as they do for women or any individual. I read some (very little) of Beauvoir’s thoughts in the early 80’s - dated already, but the pattern remains - and have related to it since, through changing societal contexts. No answers, but many questions…! 👍
That was amazing, Dr Ellie! Such a thorough and clearly laid out video. You've managed to give shape to so many concepts individually, and link them all together in an overarching framework that not only makes intuitive sense, but are also observable and measurable. Answers a lot of the questions that I wish I could, but never had the right words to. And as someone who is yet to muster the courage to read such an influential writer as de Beauvoir, you've made it seem less like a purely intellectual exercise. Thank you! I'm not only subscribing to your channel, but I'll be adding your podcast to my subscription list.
Sexuality known in pop and R&B music as a ‘Mystery Dance’ will not be rounded up by language into a binary ideal. Its depth of perception may be another ‘mystery wrapped in an enigma’. Some of the comments of denial being made show how well she had succeeded in making her explanation and view clear. Good work Dr. Anderson 👍
Ugh. Looks like there's some truth to the idea that modern dating sucks for everybody...the contemporary culture of masculinity you describe isn't healthy for anybody, including men! Folks, life is short: Be vulnerable, don't waste time playing games.
4:07 Not sure where or how this was derived but the key word here is “perceived”. The seeming claim of men worrying their female partners would become emotionally attached is exactly the same fear as the reported fears of the women. It is just perceived and expressed in a deflected way. One wouldn’t be afraid of “clingyness”, others wanting more relational closeness and emotional connection if they were not themselves afraid of becoming desirous of an emotional connection. Human sex is by its nature is pleasure through proximity seeking. Its physical aspect requires touch, its psycho-spiritual requires psychological contact.
How greater discrepancy of women experience than men between ideal and actual hookups suggests "retrenchment of patriarchal power"? If anything it tells us more about women's expectations.
Eh, well I can't be the first in the comments to say "Not all men..." It is certainly true that the methodological individualist anthropology of Capitalist-Modernity has shifted the basis of societal roles from status to contract, and thereby has enormously freed up the dating market for "consumer choice." The invention of the pill was a force-multiplier for this "deregulation" of bi-lateral contract in heterosexual relationships. But "late capitalism," let's say, has had a few different pronounced effects on sexual selection: 1) increasing wealth inequality means that competition for social rank depends increasingly on multi-generational wealth (which is hardly just financial, but includes intellectual capital as well as social capital of various kinds) 2) Modern individualism and autonomy encourage women (in addition to men) who benefit from this capital to further increase it 3) the economy of sexual selection is still governed by the "like seeks like" principle that operated in the fixed social hierarchy of pre-Modern times, but now it is configured in terms of the "meritocracy" 4) this new meritocratic sorting-mechanism is significantly complicated by differentially inherited female beauty which 5) can be leveraged by women - including higher-capitalized women, even today - to ally themselves with those men who remain the differentially advantaged legatees of multigenerational capital-accumulation (capital here in all its variety). And there is another, very important factor at work here: the establishment of the next generation. Probably the imbalance in desire for commitment between the sexes is not something specially culturally created, but instead comes down to the fact that hetero women have a greater baseline interest in having children than men do, just as a psychological feature of the kind of primate we are. Children needless to say are very energy-intensive, beginning with carrying a baby to term in the first place. Hetero women are naturally disposed to seek commitment in their male partners, for fundamentally economic reasons. But there is the rub. Not all men are equal - and in a market where everyone has, in principle, the opportunity to enter into contract with anyone else, all women will preferentially partner with the men in, let's say, the top quintile of inherited "capital assets" (including everything from good grooming to competitive drive). But in a universal market, there are not enough of these men available - and men know this. Women have a poor man's version of this same variety-drive, on the dating apps. Women have a differentially greater preference for commitment, but they don't want "commitment" from just _anybody._ Pretty much every woman with above-average physical attractiveness has a 2nd job when they open the dating app, as they sift through the abundance of offers from the men (who already outnumber the women as a population on the app), seeking not just someone who is suitable but who is the _best possible_ candidate. Rest assured, there are lots of men there who go for a long time without even the opportunity to get ghosted. Of course, it is also true that late capitalism has also made these men less suitable as partners, in absolute terms. Anyway, the bottom line here is that it is Not All Men who are actually the subject of the discussion, when women are busied about their hermeneutic-labor.
I don't really see how men not valuing highly educated women whereas women value highly educated men gives men more options. For highly educated men, yes. But for men with little education it creates an asymmetry where men value all women while women only value some men. This is also consistent with many men's experience on dating apps where women have a lot of options and can choose the best while men who don't know how to "market" themselves barely get any matches.
Hello Ellie. I started reading Judith Butler's literature; specifically her book Senses of the Subject. I like how she takes on Merleau-Ponty's perspective of perception. I am trying to indulge myself in learning more of the Feminist Phenomenology, so would you have any recommendations for what I should start out reading? I am a straint man who wants to get a better and objective view on Feminist ideologies.💯
@artemisXsidecross That's great! I'm writing a book on dexterity, so as a reference, I use their (philosophers) ideologies as a representation of what I am describing. My book is about my work, but in cases that require a specific vocabulary, I incorporate some of the philosophers vernacular to better relay my message. Merleau-Pony is the most relevant for me, with what I'm doing.
@@EmperorOfTheDamned Your work sounds very interesting. I have read both books by David Abram who is an American ecologist and philosopher best known for his work bridging the philosophical tradition of phenomenology with environmental and ecological issues. You might enjoy his work and excellent prose in his writing.
If you view relationships as a competitive interaction where it’s ok to try to instigate fights then maybe you have deeper problems that feminism can’t fix for you
I don’t know if you have a video on this already, but I’m very curious as to what she thought about same-sex relationships. Especially since you mentioned she had a chapter about it.
I don’t agree with the generalizations here at all. Even the hook up culture applies to a relatively small fraction of the western population. The men who take advantage of that culture don’t constitute a good representation of the rest of the men either. That probably goes for the women as well.
Definitely. In fact I would say this is both a very American-brained take on the issue and also pretty vanilla. As a hetero submissive European male who has quite a few unorthodox kinks and fetishes, "hook-up" culture never appealed to me, and neither do low commitment relationships in general. I think most of her points almost entirely apply only to an extremely small subset of western high status men, who even in America (which has a very socially engineered materialiatic society and a pretty active hook-up and one night stands culture) would make up 2-3% of the male population at most...
Interesting release. Thank you very much! Dating is truly built on heteronormativity, which is toxic in all its forms. But when we talk about the confrontation between a man and a woman, isn’t this also heteronormativity? Isn’t this conflict also heteronormativity?
I like how you’re so out of touch, the average male experience doesn’t even occur to you. The average male is getting no matches on the apps, never gets approached, etc. Men are STRUGGLING. But of course that is so far out of your vision, you don’t care to mention it.
Hook-up culture benefits a very small percentage of men, as actual sociological analyses have proven, alongside the data from dating sites When you say men disproportionally benefit from hook-up culture compared to women this BIG caveat needs to be tantamount to any discussion of imbalances. Tinder's own studies have revealed the incontestable fact that a small group of highly prized men are living like one-night-stans (pun intended). And when a man is highly sought after he likely feels no obligation to reciprocate.
@3:16 What is, qualitatively, the actual ideal hookup scenario described by these cishet women in contrast to the scenario of cishet men? Is there any congruity in desired outcomes? I ask because we would also need to evaluate the feasibility for either scenario, and it usually also helps to explicitly state the question the respondents were asked as opposed to just presenting the author’s interpretation. @3:30 the example of imbalance of oral sex given in hookups is a great example because the action can easily be compared. The other example you couple with this, achieving orgasm, is a bit too difficult because we aren’t aware of the huge variation for women in these hookup conditions and how that might affect their pleasure with the hookup sex. Here i’m assuming that if the man ejaculates, he has reached orgasm, and i am also assuming there may be many cases that the-hopefully consensual-participants are drunk thus being an secondary barrier to women’s orgasms. I think you may be better suited using papers which looked into how often cishet men actually paid attention to help get their partner to orgasm versus cishet women. @5:43 Your previous studies don’t prove Beauvoir’s statement as being relevant to our contemporary-this is quite the reach, and essentially conservative skew on reality. (1) Your stated studies has not proven that the impact of dynamic attractiveness (the rise and fall of the date’s perceived attractiveness as the date ensues) as it relates to desires fulfilled in a date. (2) More to that point, neither those papers nor Beauvoir has properly explained the term “desire” and just relies on a reader to surmise the meaning based on their own cultural biases. (3) a critical element the papers (and book) you described and Beauvoir does not really delve into is the socioeconomic conditions of the participants; we can hope that those papers randomly sampled respondents to account for the various layers contemporary dating but Beauvoir is really just talking about moderately well off cishet people. @7:01 this quote, “changes have had little effect on traditional dating” should rise eyebrows from readers. The notion of “changes” affecting something “traditional” inherently carries a contrast because “traditional” implies something unchanged or adhering to long-established patterns. Is it possible that people who welcome modern gender roles (or abolish ideas of gender altogether) are not engaged in “traditional” dating. @8:11 How can Beauvoir’s conception then account for lower amounts of people dating just in general and also a higher amount of people being completely fine being single, in contrast to the preceding decades? Now, it is undeniable that people who hold on to traditional values when it comes to dating will have higher levels of intimate partner violence but that is precisely because traditional values were constructed specifically for cishet men’s desires and these cultural norms allow them more freedom and autonomy, while women, through the lens of male desire, are constrained. @8:11 second point on this loaded section: the gamification - set by corporations, using cishet women’s bodies for male gaze to get cishet men to buy access to women they find attractive. In this set up there is large discrepancy between the control a woman who is considered attractive by many versus a woman who is not. How can you infer that women on these gamified platforms can’t use their access to cishet men to meet gratification, and how can you infer that sexual gratification is the only aim here? Again, Beauvoir is not accounting for this and is generally talking about moderately well off white people, excluding variables such as attractiveness. @9:39 once again you are flattening the experiences of all cishet women and also using cherry-picked stats when you say “women have gained access to education and jobs across all class”, it does not account the variance for race & linguistic capacity which could alter your dating narrative. So saying men have more women to choose assumes that these men and women are all the same. Perhaps it is the same wealthy men who believe in traditional values and are thus looking to-essentially-purchase a “wife” through these gamified platforms and conceptualize this modern means through their antiquated notion as “dating”. What is the % breakdown of people who are actually going on these dates? Are these dates “traditional”? What is the breakdown of people who went on these dates and had their desired outcome? What are the categories of “desired outcome” and how is it distributed across the daters? Beauvoir once again is talking about the same group of, predominantly, financially well off white people. @11:11 “soft boy” and “woke feminist man” are not real distinguishable categories. They are just memes on the internet made by people who generalize based on nonsense-things that are not grounded in facts. For example, “woke” is a term first started by black north American discourse on twitter to talk to other black Americans who were not politically active (and harming overall black emancipation and human rights in USA). It was later picked up by conservatives as a catch-all term to attach to any flavour-of-the-month boogeyman that successfully diluted the term altogether. These memes are created and distributed by kids who, unknowingly, practice the same type of baseless prejudice as most bigots do. You really should remove this part of your video. @11:29 lol evolutionary psychology is a pseudoscience-their journal h-index is based on fiction, are you also meme-ing at this point? @11:55 you have to reconcile with some foundational aspects: are you talking about contemporary dating or traditional dating? Whichever you pick, YOU the author of this video essay need to explain that there is a difference. Illouz is talking about patriarchal structures in the household and then by extension, the patriarchal structure of traditional dating. Are you saying that contemporary dating is just the same as traditional dating and as such Beauvoir is still relevant? If that’s the case then you need to address all interaction by strangers from dating apps (you brought it up) that result in meetups that aren’t considered “dates” by either party. You can’t be jumping from hookups, to marriage-driven dating that has patriarchal impositions, to whatever else you will be talking about, as if they all fall under both traditional and contemporary structures. @14:21 how successful were these feminist movements in converting the home life (by which i mean, safety and respect for the wife) for women? Was it only successful for households that rejected tradition anyway? Is there correlation between political affiliation, and other categories? Because as mentioned above, domestic abuse is still a supremely prevalent issue in traditional values as a priority when dating. I’ll listen to the rest of your video because you *seem* sincere but I won’t be surprised if this channel is just conservative propaganda shrouded in the veneer of scientific thought. Hope i am wrong.
@@bekaam1695i am definitely not doing any of that and have sincerely engaged with the video. She conflates a lot of terms and experiences as I mentioned above. And i also provided specifics for those concerns (comparing incongruities, flattening all experiences of women to align it just to moderately [financially] well off women and men, etc). The only parts where i was curt was when she mentioned evolutionary psychology (a joke of a field within academia) and “soft boy” & “woke feminist men” which are baseless terms that have no concrete descriptions of who does or doesn’t qualify.
Also i am not requesting her to clarify anything at all. I am saying it is a giant reach to say Beauvoir is not outdated based on the reasoning the professor gave here-i’ve also highlighted good examples she used (reciprocity of physical actions).
16:20 What do you mean with a "wider dating pool" or "sense of overabundance" for hetero men? I presume you mean women that a man is taking a shot with, not women he actually has a shot with. Because for most hetero men, that pool is a puddle at best. This scarcity is a contributing factor to why men usually "cast" such a "wide net" (i. e., lower their standards).
I think you hit upon an interesting way to explore these power relationships. You say it seems almost invisible the practices men use. What’s happening that way? I’ve no doubt you are right, but if we say this is ‘seeable’ what is the almost invisible structure? I think to start with is words, meaning language does not provide ways to express the difficulty ‘seeing’ what’s there. A notorious cultural trope is the word, love, is hard to define. Freeing a prisoner of love, especially of ending abusers grip upon someone seems difficult because patterns of feelings are hard to identify because denial is so effective. I think your conjecture around seeing what’s there in sexual relationships needs to be followed up with more exploration and study.
I think it's important to note that in this broken dating "market", only very few "elite" men are deemed eligible by most women, which further amplifies the perceived scarcity of potential partners for women while taking away any sort of control from most men.
Illiouz's book probably has the same limit as Beauvoir's position : it tends to insist on the high-end middle class. For Illiouz, this serves as a sociological prism which she mostly finds much in 19th century litterature (Austen's characters). This seems like a rather limited perspective to denounce structural problems, but then, perhaps a structural perspective isn't all that pertinent to elaborate a discourse on emotional or relationship issues. It has more to do with justice, I would assume, which isn't exactly the same thing as sexual satisfaction, which in turn is probably always unjust in some manner ; I suppose I'm being pessimistic here. Maybe the problem is this : is an equal distribution of power compatible with universal jouissance (equal orgasms and so on)? Or to put it otherwise, is the ideal of capitalism equal orgasms for all, all the time? I read somewhere that a satisfying sex life was worth 70k a year. Onotological security isn't for the poor, I guess.
Illouz's work (including Why Love Hurts, which is the reference in this video) actually discusses class quite a lot, and isn't limited to the upper-middle class
I always find it odd that people generally associate the terms "conspiracy theory" and "weird". This convention is extremely useful for securing hidden elements of hegemony by accusations of improper behavior, thought, low intellect and neurodivergence against anyone calling out alleged or obvious conspiracies.
The same argument has kept ‘rape culture’ viable. Rape is a crime whether against nature or another human being and an extreme manifestation of pervasive societal misogyny and sexism and where the dominator model is dis -at -eased.
your perspective is very limited the near past (1900s) in the far past (ancient Egypt or Greece) and Renaissance/Victorian times sex used to be way more free and open do not anker yourself to the close past as a point of comparison it is and was not the norm our current times therefore are not a deviation from that norm but rather a return of the ancient norms that are closer to true and actually human relation to sex and love women used to have equal say in those matters the patriarchy is a new and stupid thing Contrapoints did an excellent piece on relationships and repressed female freedom (by prudes like Simone de bouvoir) its simply titled "Twilight" and uses the piece as a vehicle to deliver her perspective as a transitioned woman highlighting both the male and female pov
I have no quarrel with any of this, but feel a bit uncomfortable about the absence of any distinctions between social groups or even countries. A French book published in 1949 is compared with "how things are now". Where? In the United States, I assume. If we include Europe, that's a patchwork, for sure. German society is different from Italy, and itself wildly disparate, depending upon socio-economic class, regional background, amongst other factors. For example, the lower that one goes in the "working class", the more traditional the gendered norms become.
This is exceedingly more relevant today. Dudes might feel chided, but it's important for us to be aware of these practices and societal influences, that quite frankly, are detrimental to our development as humans. I'm not certain it was always so. But it begins with women being perceived as property. What I wonder is the influence, if any, of our cave people ancestry...hunters and gatherers mentality where women sought protection (just as mothers' instincts to any child). We also need not to discount the psychological effect on being 'manly'. We (men) are built to have aspects considered feminine eg men are clingy, emotional, and the worst :vulnerable. But we emote negatively to counter (repress) those 'weaknesses' Thank you for yet another very fascinating and illuminating video. Oh btw to all the women, I adore you with all my male faults: Happy International Women's Day!
what do you mean by "a feminist philosopher" (2:32)? (this is not a sarcastic or rhetoric question). Does that mean "a feminist AND a philosopher" or does being a feminist changes in some way the way you are a philosopher?
it's a philosopher who examines and critiques typical philosophical issues through the lens of feminism. issues typically like gender quality, gender based oppression, political and economic issues, ethics, etc.
I think humans are learning,adapting and evolving to be Asocial. We are all burned out on each other as humans. Also, that includes all of our pleasures such as, art,music,performance, and entertainment. All of our social activities mental and physical are becoming boring and over played. Sounds crazy. Though all the signs are there. AI and machine learning are gonna play a huge role in helping us cope with lost interest.
Interesting video! A question though: how do men have the larger selection of partners? If men want to date women who are younger and less socio-economically successful than they are, and women want to date men who are older and more socio-economically successful, don’t both genders have have equal amounts of selection, the difference being that men start with fewer options than women when young but that flips with increasing age? This analysis only applies to higher class people. There ofc men will have more selection bc they don’t mind dating “down” but women would (more so than men). Wouldn’t the solution be here to encourage women to be open to dating down? And men to dating up?
Shulamith Firestone is the final step in this seemingly colossal problem: throw the entire game, and world, out, and create androgynous infrastructure and entities 🙂🗽.
One important aspect that needs to be brought into account is class. High-status men almost have a monopoly on the dating market, especially from its liberalization. What you talked about is mainly the experience of this part of men. Most men on dating apps barely get any dates and don't get to choose.
Of course if we just look at this part of potential male dating partners, then the relationship is still pretty much patriarchal. This might not be true for lower status men.
I think it's probably really hard for people to control themselves sexually since the advent of dating apps. In modern times you don't have to be famous to screw a lot of people. Never before has self control been more important.
Good point.
exactly. I would consider myself a feminist (and a Marxist at that, so not the shallow "go girlboss" kind of feminist), and I am certain that women experience abuse and/or stalking on dating websites far more than men, so I am in no way saying the experience is worse for men, but being ignored hundreds of times can also be depressing af, especially if you are also struggling with other issues at the time. It can even send you down a self-deprecating suicidal spiral...
I tend to blame capitalism for this rather than women though, as there is no reason why, with our current technology, we couldn't have a massive AI assisted database where you could find a partner based on the most niche of interests, curiousities, even flaws you are willing to tolerate and find endearing (or flaws you share so they'd understand you better), and a plethora of other things that you could cross-reference, across the whole planet (no region locks) and with free messaging, leading to a lot more people finding more compatible matches that they'd love to get to know, except capitalism! Cause why not make messaging a paywalled feature? Same for advanced searches. In fact, why should a dating app even optimise its search engine in such a way that you could easily find compatible people based on very specific interests or preferences, or allow non-location based searches, when it's in their direct interest for people to fail to find a partner and just keep paying their subscription fee for as long as possible?
Being a lower middle or working class man on most dating websites, no matter how intelligent, sensible or considerate, if you don't have status or great looks, can be a harrowing and soulcrushing experience, and it should be talked about more, but not in the toxic MRA fashion that always attempts to cast blame on women and belittle their valid negative experiences, but sadly that might be the only lens through which this issue is even brought up and discussed online...
We could have far better online dating if we didn't all live in dystopian late stage capitalism, but alas we do...
I love your work Ellie. You break down these readings in a very easy to grasp manner. Love you. I hope you continue posting more material. ❤
Thank you Dr. Ellie Anderson for this topic as it should be more discussed. The evidence of patriarchy being a species draw down and not a partnership model is in evidence on a larger scale beyond mere gender interaction.
Happy international women's day, Dr. Anderson. I share many of your frustrations with contemporary dating. Perhaps dating is very different for millennials vs. zoomers/zillennials such as myself, but my impression is that men, women, and non-binary folks are similarly dissatisfied by online dating. Hookup culture favors the emotionally detached, regardless of gender. In a culture where caring is creepy, commitment requires tremendous vulnerability, again regardless of gender.
bro wished her a happy womens day💀
Agree with OP. As a 58 yo male, I’ve always felt alienated towards the masculine constructs in general.
The irony is that “strong men” shape the world also for all other men - as they do for women or any individual.
I read some (very little) of Beauvoir’s thoughts in the early 80’s - dated already, but the pattern remains - and have related to it since, through changing societal contexts.
No answers, but many questions…! 👍
@@musiqtee get a testosterone injection
That was amazing, Dr Ellie! Such a thorough and clearly laid out video. You've managed to give shape to so many concepts individually, and link them all together in an overarching framework that not only makes intuitive sense, but are also observable and measurable. Answers a lot of the questions that I wish I could, but never had the right words to.
And as someone who is yet to muster the courage to read such an influential writer as de Beauvoir, you've made it seem less like a purely intellectual exercise. Thank you! I'm not only subscribing to your channel, but I'll be adding your podcast to my subscription list.
This is an absolutely incredible video and has helped me connect & organise so many different observations I've had for the first time, thank you!
Sexuality known in pop and R&B music as a ‘Mystery Dance’ will not be rounded up by language into a binary ideal. Its depth of perception may be another ‘mystery wrapped in an enigma’.
Some of the comments of denial being made show how well she had succeeded in making her explanation and view clear.
Good work Dr. Anderson 👍
Came here after I read your twitter reply about modern dating. So glad I found this podcast/channel!
Ugh. Looks like there's some truth to the idea that modern dating sucks for everybody...the contemporary culture of masculinity you describe isn't healthy for anybody, including men!
Folks, life is short: Be vulnerable, don't waste time playing games.
4:07 Not sure where or how this was derived but the key word here is “perceived”.
The seeming claim of men worrying their female partners would become emotionally attached is exactly the same fear as the reported fears of the women. It is just perceived and expressed in a deflected way. One wouldn’t be afraid of “clingyness”, others wanting more relational closeness and emotional connection if they were not themselves afraid of becoming desirous of an emotional connection.
Human sex is by its nature is pleasure through proximity seeking. Its physical aspect requires touch, its psycho-spiritual requires psychological contact.
How greater discrepancy of women experience than men between ideal and actual hookups suggests "retrenchment of patriarchal power"? If anything it tells us more about women's expectations.
I wish I had seen this a few months ago... very illuminating.
Eh, well I can't be the first in the comments to say "Not all men..." It is certainly true that the methodological individualist anthropology of Capitalist-Modernity has shifted the basis of societal roles from status to contract, and thereby has enormously freed up the dating market for "consumer choice." The invention of the pill was a force-multiplier for this "deregulation" of bi-lateral contract in heterosexual relationships. But "late capitalism," let's say, has had a few different pronounced effects on sexual selection: 1) increasing wealth inequality means that competition for social rank depends increasingly on multi-generational wealth (which is hardly just financial, but includes intellectual capital as well as social capital of various kinds) 2) Modern individualism and autonomy encourage women (in addition to men) who benefit from this capital to further increase it 3) the economy of sexual selection is still governed by the "like seeks like" principle that operated in the fixed social hierarchy of pre-Modern times, but now it is configured in terms of the "meritocracy" 4) this new meritocratic sorting-mechanism is significantly complicated by differentially inherited female beauty which 5) can be leveraged by women - including higher-capitalized women, even today - to ally themselves with those men who remain the differentially advantaged legatees of multigenerational capital-accumulation (capital here in all its variety).
And there is another, very important factor at work here: the establishment of the next generation. Probably the imbalance in desire for commitment between the sexes is not something specially culturally created, but instead comes down to the fact that hetero women have a greater baseline interest in having children than men do, just as a psychological feature of the kind of primate we are. Children needless to say are very energy-intensive, beginning with carrying a baby to term in the first place. Hetero women are naturally disposed to seek commitment in their male partners, for fundamentally economic reasons.
But there is the rub. Not all men are equal - and in a market where everyone has, in principle, the opportunity to enter into contract with anyone else, all women will preferentially partner with the men in, let's say, the top quintile of inherited "capital assets" (including everything from good grooming to competitive drive). But in a universal market, there are not enough of these men available - and men know this.
Women have a poor man's version of this same variety-drive, on the dating apps. Women have a differentially greater preference for commitment, but they don't want "commitment" from just _anybody._ Pretty much every woman with above-average physical attractiveness has a 2nd job when they open the dating app, as they sift through the abundance of offers from the men (who already outnumber the women as a population on the app), seeking not just someone who is suitable but who is the _best possible_ candidate. Rest assured, there are lots of men there who go for a long time without even the opportunity to get ghosted. Of course, it is also true that late capitalism has also made these men less suitable as partners, in absolute terms.
Anyway, the bottom line here is that it is Not All Men who are actually the subject of the discussion, when women are busied about their hermeneutic-labor.
Actually, it's not just"not all men" it's literally a few percentage of some men!
The irony too is more hierarchial relationships have more kids.
I don't really see how men not valuing highly educated women whereas women value highly educated men gives men more options. For highly educated men, yes. But for men with little education it creates an asymmetry where men value all women while women only value some men. This is also consistent with many men's experience on dating apps where women have a lot of options and can choose the best while men who don't know how to "market" themselves barely get any matches.
Its not dated at all for most women worldwide
Hello Ellie. I started reading Judith Butler's literature; specifically her book Senses of the Subject. I like how she takes on Merleau-Ponty's perspective of perception.
I am trying to indulge myself in learning more of the Feminist Phenomenology, so would you have any recommendations for what I should start out reading? I am a straint man who wants to get a better and objective view on Feminist ideologies.💯
I am reading Judith Butler and she has a new book out next week. I also read Merleau-Ponty and phenomenology
@artemisXsidecross That's great! I'm writing a book on dexterity, so as a reference, I use their (philosophers) ideologies as a representation of what I am describing. My book is about my work, but in cases that require a specific vocabulary, I incorporate some of the philosophers vernacular to better relay my message. Merleau-Pony is the most relevant for me, with what I'm doing.
@@EmperorOfTheDamned
Your work sounds very interesting. I have read both books by David Abram who is an American ecologist and philosopher best known for his work bridging the philosophical tradition of phenomenology with environmental and ecological issues. You might enjoy his work and excellent prose in his writing.
About to send this to my bf and start a fight - thank you! 😅
If you view relationships as a competitive interaction where it’s ok to try to instigate fights then maybe you have deeper problems that feminism can’t fix for you
At least you have a bf 😂
Yeah but I think this is one of those things people call a joke
i don't know who you are but there another win for you. Thanks again and i love you forever
I don’t know if you have a video on this already, but I’m very curious as to what she thought about same-sex relationships. Especially since you mentioned she had a chapter about it.
Hello professor. Wanna listen to your lecture on Environmental Humanities ....looking forward
Yes pls!!
I don’t agree with the generalizations here at all. Even the hook up culture applies to a relatively small fraction of the western population. The men who take advantage of that culture don’t constitute a good representation of the rest of the men either. That probably goes for the women as well.
Definitely. In fact I would say this is both a very American-brained take on the issue and also pretty vanilla.
As a hetero submissive European male who has quite a few unorthodox kinks and fetishes, "hook-up" culture never appealed to me, and neither do low commitment relationships in general.
I think most of her points almost entirely apply only to an extremely small subset of western high status men, who even in America (which has a very socially engineered materialiatic society and a pretty active hook-up and one night stands culture) would make up 2-3% of the male population at most...
Interesting release. Thank you very much! Dating is truly built on heteronormativity, which is toxic in all its forms. But when we talk about the confrontation between a man and a woman, isn’t this also heteronormativity? Isn’t this conflict also heteronormativity?
I like how you’re so out of touch, the average male experience doesn’t even occur to you.
The average male is getting no matches on the apps, never gets approached, etc. Men are STRUGGLING. But of course that is so far out of your vision, you don’t care to mention it.
Seems like your bread and butter. Ty for sharing.
Hook-up culture benefits a very small percentage of men, as actual sociological analyses have proven, alongside the data from dating sites When you say men disproportionally benefit from hook-up culture compared to women this BIG caveat needs to be tantamount to any discussion of imbalances. Tinder's own studies have revealed the incontestable fact that a small group of highly prized men are living like one-night-stans (pun intended). And when a man is highly sought after he likely feels no obligation to reciprocate.
@3:16 What is, qualitatively, the actual ideal hookup scenario described by these cishet women in contrast to the scenario of cishet men? Is there any congruity in desired outcomes? I ask because we would also need to evaluate the feasibility for either scenario, and it usually also helps to explicitly state the question the respondents were asked as opposed to just presenting the author’s interpretation.
@3:30 the example of imbalance of oral sex given in hookups is a great example because the action can easily be compared. The other example you couple with this, achieving orgasm, is a bit too difficult because we aren’t aware of the huge variation for women in these hookup conditions and how that might affect their pleasure with the hookup sex. Here i’m assuming that if the man ejaculates, he has reached orgasm, and i am also assuming there may be many cases that the-hopefully consensual-participants are drunk thus being an secondary barrier to women’s orgasms. I think you may be better suited using papers which looked into how often cishet men actually paid attention to help get their partner to orgasm versus cishet women.
@5:43 Your previous studies don’t prove Beauvoir’s statement as being relevant to our contemporary-this is quite the reach, and essentially conservative skew on reality. (1) Your stated studies has not proven that the impact of dynamic attractiveness (the rise and fall of the date’s perceived attractiveness as the date ensues) as it relates to desires fulfilled in a date. (2) More to that point, neither those papers nor Beauvoir has properly explained the term “desire” and just relies on a reader to surmise the meaning based on their own cultural biases. (3) a critical element the papers (and book) you described and Beauvoir does not really delve into is the socioeconomic conditions of the participants; we can hope that those papers randomly sampled respondents to account for the various layers contemporary dating but Beauvoir is really just talking about moderately well off cishet people.
@7:01 this quote, “changes have had little effect on traditional dating” should rise eyebrows from readers. The notion of “changes” affecting something “traditional” inherently carries a contrast because “traditional” implies something unchanged or adhering to long-established patterns. Is it possible that people who welcome modern gender roles (or abolish ideas of gender altogether) are not engaged in “traditional” dating.
@8:11 How can Beauvoir’s conception then account for lower amounts of people dating just in general and also a higher amount of people being completely fine being single, in contrast to the preceding decades? Now, it is undeniable that people who hold on to traditional values when it comes to dating will have higher levels of intimate partner violence but that is precisely because traditional values were constructed specifically for cishet men’s desires and these cultural norms allow them more freedom and autonomy, while women, through the lens of male desire, are constrained.
@8:11 second point on this loaded section: the gamification - set by corporations, using cishet women’s bodies for male gaze to get cishet men to buy access to women they find attractive. In this set up there is large discrepancy between the control a woman who is considered attractive by many versus a woman who is not. How can you infer that women on these gamified platforms can’t use their access to cishet men to meet gratification, and how can you infer that sexual gratification is the only aim here? Again, Beauvoir is not accounting for this and is generally talking about moderately well off white people, excluding variables such as attractiveness.
@9:39 once again you are flattening the experiences of all cishet women and also using cherry-picked stats when you say “women have gained access to education and jobs across all class”, it does not account the variance for race & linguistic capacity which could alter your dating narrative. So saying men have more women to choose assumes that these men and women are all the same. Perhaps it is the same wealthy men who believe in traditional values and are thus looking to-essentially-purchase a “wife” through these gamified platforms and conceptualize this modern means through their antiquated notion as “dating”. What is the % breakdown of people who are actually going on these dates? Are these dates “traditional”? What is the breakdown of people who went on these dates and had their desired outcome? What are the categories of “desired outcome” and how is it distributed across the daters? Beauvoir once again is talking about the same group of, predominantly, financially well off white people.
@11:11 “soft boy” and “woke feminist man” are not real distinguishable categories. They are just memes on the internet made by people who generalize based on nonsense-things that are not grounded in facts. For example, “woke” is a term first started by black north American discourse on twitter to talk to other black Americans who were not politically active (and harming overall black emancipation and human rights in USA). It was later picked up by conservatives as a catch-all term to attach to any flavour-of-the-month boogeyman that successfully diluted the term altogether. These memes are created and distributed by kids who, unknowingly, practice the same type of baseless prejudice as most bigots do. You really should remove this part of your video.
@11:29 lol evolutionary psychology is a pseudoscience-their journal h-index is based on fiction, are you also meme-ing at this point?
@11:55 you have to reconcile with some foundational aspects: are you talking about contemporary dating or traditional dating? Whichever you pick, YOU the author of this video essay need to explain that there is a difference. Illouz is talking about patriarchal structures in the household and then by extension, the patriarchal structure of traditional dating. Are you saying that contemporary dating is just the same as traditional dating and as such Beauvoir is still relevant? If that’s the case then you need to address all interaction by strangers from dating apps (you brought it up) that result in meetups that aren’t considered “dates” by either party. You can’t be jumping from hookups, to marriage-driven dating that has patriarchal impositions, to whatever else you will be talking about, as if they all fall under both traditional and contemporary structures.
@14:21 how successful were these feminist movements in converting the home life (by which i mean, safety and respect for the wife) for women? Was it only successful for households that rejected tradition anyway? Is there correlation between political affiliation, and other categories? Because as mentioned above, domestic abuse is still a supremely prevalent issue in traditional values as a priority when dating.
I’ll listen to the rest of your video because you *seem* sincere but I won’t be surprised if this channel is just conservative propaganda shrouded in the veneer of scientific thought. Hope i am wrong.
wow🙄
Stop sealioning and actually engage with the content of the essay instead of being contrarian.
@@bekaam1695i am definitely not doing any of that and have sincerely engaged with the video. She conflates a lot of terms and experiences as I mentioned above. And i also provided specifics for those concerns (comparing incongruities, flattening all experiences of women to align it just to moderately [financially] well off women and men, etc).
The only parts where i was curt was when she mentioned evolutionary psychology (a joke of a field within academia) and “soft boy” & “woke feminist men” which are baseless terms that have no concrete descriptions of who does or doesn’t qualify.
Also i am not requesting her to clarify anything at all.
I am saying it is a giant reach to say Beauvoir is not outdated based on the reasoning the professor gave here-i’ve also highlighted good examples she used (reciprocity of physical actions).
16:20 What do you mean with a "wider dating pool" or "sense of overabundance" for hetero men? I presume you mean women that a man is taking a shot with, not women he actually has a shot with. Because for most hetero men, that pool is a puddle at best. This scarcity is a contributing factor to why men usually "cast" such a "wide net" (i. e., lower their standards).
Any advice for learning about philosophy without getting bummed out
@@chuckles9767 Thank you. I appreciate your answer.
I think you hit upon an interesting way to explore these power relationships. You say it seems almost invisible the practices men use. What’s happening that way? I’ve no doubt you are right, but if we say this is ‘seeable’ what is the almost invisible structure? I think to start with is words, meaning language does not provide ways to express the difficulty ‘seeing’ what’s there. A notorious cultural trope is the word, love, is hard to define. Freeing a prisoner of love, especially of ending abusers grip upon someone seems difficult because patterns of feelings are hard to identify because denial is so effective. I think your conjecture around seeing what’s there in sexual relationships needs to be followed up with more exploration and study.
so awesome
I think it's important to note that in this broken dating "market", only very few "elite" men are deemed eligible by most women, which further amplifies the perceived scarcity of potential partners for women while taking away any sort of control from most men.
Very interesting video!
Ah ok, this video is more recent but still has the high hissing "s" sounds too.
Please work on this 🤧
I'm glad the teach format is back.
Illiouz's book probably has the same limit as Beauvoir's position : it tends to insist on the high-end middle class. For Illiouz, this serves as a sociological prism which she mostly finds much in 19th century litterature (Austen's characters). This seems like a rather limited perspective to denounce structural problems, but then, perhaps a structural perspective isn't all that pertinent to elaborate a discourse on emotional or relationship issues. It has more to do with justice, I would assume, which isn't exactly the same thing as sexual satisfaction, which in turn is probably always unjust in some manner ; I suppose I'm being pessimistic here. Maybe the problem is this : is an equal distribution of power compatible with universal jouissance (equal orgasms and so on)? Or to put it otherwise, is the ideal of capitalism equal orgasms for all, all the time? I read somewhere that a satisfying sex life was worth 70k a year. Onotological security isn't for the poor, I guess.
Illouz's work (including Why Love Hurts, which is the reference in this video) actually discusses class quite a lot, and isn't limited to the upper-middle class
how sweet
4:35:
Men function better in Dating Apps based hook up culture?
Really? I guess this is just a biased view.
I always find it odd that people generally associate the terms "conspiracy theory" and "weird". This convention is extremely useful for securing hidden elements of hegemony by accusations of improper behavior, thought, low intellect and neurodivergence against anyone calling out alleged or obvious conspiracies.
🙏
Love hurts because oxytocin functions in love and hate
Sub/Dom relationships no matter the gender are traditional because they are GREAT for BOTH PARTIES. So if it ain´t broken, don´t fix it. hehe
The same argument has kept ‘rape culture’ viable.
Rape is a crime whether against nature or another human being and an extreme manifestation of pervasive societal misogyny and sexism and where the dominator model is dis -at -eased.
dr. ellie is of course interested in this topic purely because its simone de beauvoir and a philosophical topic and no other reason people.
I can't relate to any of this.
why do you think that is?
Amy Dunne was right.
your perspective is very limited the near past (1900s)
in the far past (ancient Egypt or Greece) and Renaissance/Victorian times sex used to be way more free and open
do not anker yourself to the close past as a point of comparison
it is and was not the norm
our current times therefore are not a deviation from that norm
but rather a return of the ancient norms that are closer to true and actually human relation to sex and love
women used to have equal say in those matters
the patriarchy is a new and stupid thing
Contrapoints did an excellent piece on relationships and repressed female freedom (by prudes like Simone de bouvoir)
its simply titled "Twilight" and uses the piece as a vehicle to deliver her perspective as a transitioned woman
highlighting both the male and female pov
I have no quarrel with any of this, but feel a bit uncomfortable about the absence of any distinctions between social groups or even countries. A French book published in 1949 is compared with "how things are now". Where? In the United States, I assume. If we include Europe, that's a patchwork, for sure. German society is different from Italy, and itself wildly disparate, depending upon socio-economic class, regional background, amongst other factors. For example, the lower that one goes in the "working class", the more traditional the gendered norms become.
This is exceedingly more relevant today. Dudes might feel chided, but it's important for us to be aware of these practices and societal influences, that quite frankly, are detrimental to our development as humans. I'm not certain it was always so. But it begins with women being perceived as property. What I wonder is the influence, if any, of our cave people ancestry...hunters and gatherers mentality where women sought protection (just as mothers' instincts to any child). We also need not to discount the psychological effect on being 'manly'. We (men) are built to have aspects considered feminine eg men are clingy, emotional, and the worst :vulnerable. But we emote negatively to counter (repress) those 'weaknesses' Thank you for yet another very fascinating and illuminating video. Oh btw to all the women, I adore you with all my male faults: Happy International Women's Day!
If hookups are so bad for women in their experience, why do they keep doing it? 🤔
what do you mean by "a feminist philosopher" (2:32)? (this is not a sarcastic or rhetoric question). Does that mean "a feminist AND a philosopher" or does being a feminist changes in some way the way you are a philosopher?
it's a philosopher who examines and critiques typical philosophical issues through the lens of feminism. issues typically like gender quality, gender based oppression, political and economic issues, ethics, etc.
It means being a feminist changes how you do philosophy.
I think humans are learning,adapting and evolving to be Asocial. We are all burned out on each other as humans. Also, that includes all of our pleasures such as, art,music,performance, and entertainment. All of our social activities mental and physical are becoming boring and over played. Sounds crazy. Though all the signs are there. AI and machine learning are gonna play a huge role in helping us cope with lost interest.
That might be the opposite view of people who read Henry David Thoreau and Neil Postman’s book ‘Amusing Ourselves to Death’.
21:50
Idk man, i need statistics
Interesting video! A question though: how do men have the larger selection of partners? If men want to date women who are younger and less socio-economically successful than they are, and women want to date men who are older and more socio-economically successful, don’t both genders have have equal amounts of selection, the difference being that men start with fewer options than women when young but that flips with increasing age?
This analysis only applies to higher class people. There ofc men will have more selection bc they don’t mind dating “down” but women would (more so than men). Wouldn’t the solution be here to encourage women to be open to dating down? And men to dating up?
Shulamith Firestone is the final step in this seemingly colossal problem: throw the entire game, and world, out, and create androgynous infrastructure and entities 🙂🗽.
Hooking up does not happen in England 😂😂.