
Flat White
Sean Masters
31 August 2022
4:00 AM
31 August 2022
4:00 AM
A recent article has fired up the mainstream misandry* machine. Titled, The Rise of Lonely Single Men, its thesis is that men are entirely responsible for being single due to their general uselessness and toxicity.
But what of women – is it possible they are responsible for their own singledom? Is it feasible that women are ever at fault in 2022, or are men always to blame? Perhaps it’s worth dissecting the last few years to discover how we got here.
So let’s go way back.
It’s a tough truth, but from Jesus and his disciples to golf trips, men have preferred the company of men. It’s the reason barbecues were invented.
For generations, women were forced to take a back seat to male relationships. Mates always came first. This was the unspoken tenet by which men lived their lives and it forced women to put up with the un-put-up-able.
A little over two decades ago this started to change. Women began looking around and realised they didn’t have to tolerate being the insignificant other.
No better was this shifting current crystallised than in Sex and the City; where four independent professional women would run their own lives. More significantly, whereas in the past they would rely on their unreliable man, now they would find their emotional backbone in each other.
In a commentary on the alleged rise of said single men, journalist Jana Hocking wrote, ‘You see, while they were bed-hopping, ghosting, breadcrumbing, and doing all sort of mind f**kery to us women folk, we were quietly and subtly embracing this ‘self love’ culture that started to emerge.’
Women were forming pacts. It would be chicks before dicks.
They had paved a new road. It was feminism at its best. For years women wanted genuine independence. Yes, their financial independence. But the real breakthrough was a newfound emotional independence. And they had discovered it in each other.
In many ways this was preferable: women now had a strong support network, and if required, dildos.
And that’s exactly what men became. ‘F#ck buddies’ to use. Women know, and had learned, that men are sexually exploitable.
Well now they found themselves in a world where they could unleash this ‘pussy power’ without consequence. It was liberating.
Women became hunters. They would discard, treating men with the same contempt men had. They’d play emotional games. Girls became the new guys. Amy Schumer’s character in Trainwreck provides good reference.
It had been driven into women via a feminist mainstream media that women could not rely on the intrinsic goodness of men. Now they could concentrate on their careers, focus on their friendships and if they needed a shag, they could get one whenever they liked. But if there was no such thing as a ‘good man’ then how were men to be assessed? Superficially. Brutally. As they had been.
So was founded the ‘Single Use Male’, or ‘Fuckboi’, a useful term and justified twist on the deeply unfair derogatory ‘slut’ women had been disgracefully called forever.
The message to men seemed clear, women are independent and don’t need men other than for sex. They responded in kind. This explains the rise of the dick pic, pun 100 per cent intended.
But which men are actually benefiting from this? The answer is a tiny percentage.
A 2019 experiment with Tinder found that the top 78 per cent of women are competing for the top 20 per cent of men. But an engineer for the dating website Hinge, analysed the share of ‘likes’ that went to the most-liked people of each gender. He found that inequality on dating apps is stark, and that it was significantly worse for men. The top 1 per cent of men get 16.4 per cent of likes, the top 5 per cent get 41.1 per cent, the top 10 per cent get 58 per cent, the bottom 50 per cent get 4.3 per cent. The conclusion was that when women initiate contact it ‘is only going to be for a really attractive guy’.
William Costello is a Ph.D. studying Evolutionary Psychology at the University of Texas who, along with a few others, has spent years conducting world-first research into the shifting modern dating economy.
He states: ‘From 2013 the top 20 percent of men had a 25 per cent increase in the number of mates, the top five percent of men had a massive 38 per cent increase.’
As a consequence, we’re effectively moving toward a polygamous society where women have access to a high-quality mate that they will have to share, but ‘women tend to not want that’.
‘We’re more likely to see a rise of singlehood and kind of this atomised sexual culture with less long-term commitment.’
He goes on to suggest that realistically this is not great for men ‘but for women that is just awful’.
And the impact on children is even worse, because children benefit from a two-parent household.
‘In the long run, there’s going to be a lot of miserable people.’
For a highly evolved species we haven’t gone far: so it is in Attenborough docos that the Alpha males win as they do in modern dating.
If women were allegedly happier with this arrangement then these elite men were ecstatic thanks to obligation-free casual sex with multiple partners.
But regardless of who women chose to sleep with, deep down this man-mimicry grated against a woman’s self-esteem, and arguably, instinct.
Now every modern sexual misadventure carries the real possibility of a court appearance. This is in part due to defensive blame avoidance, but also the retaliatory element of the latter stages of the initially necessary #metoo movement.
Young men are very, very aware of these forces, so unease between the sexes ferments.
All this of course runs parallel with the vengeful nature of identity politics which has thoroughly captured all academic institutions.
The American Psychological Association (APA) has now issued guidelines to help clinicians improve the health of boys and men, declaring aspects of ‘traditional masculinity’ harmful, with traits such as competitiveness labelled as ‘toxic’.
So plenty of these young men opted out of society, and relationships altogether.
A study in 2020 found that sexual activity among young American men has declined sharply since 2000, with nearly a third reporting no sex with a partner in the prior year.
So came the rise of the ‘Incels’, short for ‘Involuntary Celebate’ – men who define themselves as unable to get a romantic or sexual partner despite desiring one.
These ‘lonely, single undateable’ men, are full of resentment at being considered undesirable whilst wishing to be and have been the focus of the narrative that was swallowed whole by the mainstream. The aforementioned piece written by couples psychologist Dr Greg Matos argued that dating opportunities for heterosexual men are diminishing as relationship standards rise.
Because men were yet to ‘step up’ there was a supposed deficit that ‘men need to address’ if they wanted a healthy relationship. And when women eventually want the same, who are they setting their sights on?
After bedding down their careers, women look for not just a loving stable partner, but perfection.
Young girls are taught to believe they’re princesses in their own fairytale and should wait for their ‘prince’.
Adult women are taught not to fully commit until they find their ‘Mr Big’ as SATC put it.
Modern career women discriminate on looks, career, wealth, status, height and age and that’s fair enough, but they must realise that with each discriminator the pool gets incrementally smaller until it is infinitesimally shallow.
But here’s the bigger problem: the guys being pursued are too busy with every other girl who is pursuing him.
Costello states: ‘There’s now a mismatch of highly educated and selective women versus economically unattractive men,’ because the female mate preference for a high-earning partner remains.
As such a minority of men are monopolising the attention.
‘We see a lot of facts and figures that illustrate that point, and when you have a minority in any sex ratio they call the shots in terms of sexual behaviour.’
So if there’ s a minority of women in a society men are more keen to commit long-term. Whereas if you have only a minority of eligible men then they call the shots and they’re reluctant to commit.
These highly sought after ‘respectful studs’ as Hocking puts it, whose phones are burning in their pockets with dating app dings think ‘Why the hell would I settle down?’
So now women have become more disposable than ever by the only men they ironically consider ‘worthy’. It’s the same princesses who are actively sabotaging their own ‘they lived happily ever after’ fairytale ending.
Perhaps it is worth pausing to understand this current dynamic is not exclusively the fault of either sex. But more importantly, the greater issue is that no one is happy.
The reality is that we’re all hardwired to be in love. But we’ve found ourselves in a place where we are all denying ourselves the chance to form a loving, monogamous relationship.
A core tenet of the article was a 2020 study that found loneliness is greater in men than in women. But the sample sizes were small and the differences between sexes were almost negligible and in contrast to a 2018 study cited in the paper.
So the whole basis of the conclusion that exclusively men are lonely is false.
In fact, those part of Incel culture are single yes, but lonely no. What’s alarming is the sense of brotherhood and community this incel subculture has generated, raising the possibility of lifelong membership.
The four questions asked in the study were: Do you feel a lack of companionship?, Do you feel left out?, Do you feel isolated from others?, and Do you feel in tune with people around you?
It’s fair to say that in each case modern women could confidently answer ‘no’ because they have a strong network of friends, and good luck to them.
But is this what women, or anyone really wants? Deep down we all want the same thing. To be loved. The healthiest manifestation of this is a loving, committed relationship.
Certainly, most men want a family of their own. He wants to kick a footy with his son and shake his daughter’s first boyfriend’s hand just a little too hard.
And as much as men love male company we’re rubbish without women. Our lives rapidly descend into chaos without them. Men need women. They make us better people. They help point our moral compass and they smell nice.
And the reality is that women secretly enjoy male company. Partly because there’s always a level of tension in groups of women that does not exist amongst men. But now with a taste of power can women admit that they might actually be fond of men and have gone too far?
Previously it could have been said that men were too stubborn to admit that they’ve disrespected women in the past, but in recent years there’s been a clear genuflection on the part of men.
Perhaps it’s time for women to do the same and publications Mamamia and her ilk to turn down the heat and stop teaching young women that man equals bad.
Because as much as we’re told that we’re currently witnessing the ‘Rise of Lonely, Single Men’, the opposite is true.
Investment bankers Morgan Stanley recently released a forecast saying that by the year 2030 they predict that 44 per cent of working-age women will be single and childless.
In many ways, women have always been better workers. They’re more diligent, professional, better with detail. Morgan Stanley have clued into this.
Costello states that, ‘It’s great for them having the access to a lot of worker drones. But it’s not clear that working a 60-hour work week at Morgan Stanley is that liberating compared to starting a family.’
Western cities are currently filled with women in their late thirties and early forties still looking for their soulmate and wanting to start a family.
I know several who have left it too late and it’s heartbreaking.
Tragically, biology trumps hubris. The worst and most irresponsible thing is to allow the cycle to repeat in the next generation of women.
Because feminism has sold women two disgraceful lies:
1. That they are all princesses and deserve nothing less than their perfect prince.
And far worse:
2. That concentrating on their careers would make them happy and that having a family would not.
The former point is understandable if not naïve. The latter is an appalling lie.
Something needs to be done, because young women are being told men are the enemy and young men are being taught they’re toxic. Both rightly sense this isn’t true and they’re confused.
It seems if the earth’s population is roughly 50 per cent made up of men and women we might at some point want to get along and perhaps meet halfway?
*If you had to google ‘misandry’ you’re not alone.
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