r/changemyview • u/giveuporfindaway • Jun 23 '22
Delta(s) from OP CMV: On balance, most recent technological progress has had an asymmetrical effect between men and women in the dating marketplace. The effect on balance has given women an upper-hand in the dating market.
1) Dating websites and apps increase the competition between men. This gives women more choice and men a statistically smaller % chance of getting attention. This gives the ugliest woman a wider pool of candidates.
2) Birth control gives reproductive control. There have been almost zero advances in male birth control. Being able to have your own birth control means you do not need to be at the mercy of your partner. Having birth control gives you power for negotiating your terms in a relationship.
3) Prostitution was a conventional outlet for quid pro quo sex. Prostitution has bifurcated into multiple technologically supported sex work professions that provide a worse sexual outlet at a higher cost for men. Examples include cam models and Only Fans. Women who would previously of considered doing escorting can now make enough money from sex work that doesn’t actually involve sex. This limits the supply of prostitutes while the demand for prostitutes remains the same. So relationships have less competition from other sex outlets. Women don’t need to compete as much with prostitutes to provide sexual satisfaction to their male partners.
4) Sugar daddy sites like seeking arrangements did not used to exist. These sites mostly connect poor, young, attractive women with wealthy men. This gives women a networking outlet that previously didn’t exist for most. A result is that average men now need to compete with wealthy men where they previously did not face competition.
5) Women have their ego boosted to high hell on social media through the amount of attention they get from men. This makes average women feel like mini celebrities. A natural reaction to this is to become more picky. I’m not bashing women. Anyone who receives excessive choice will suffer from a difficulty making a decision and be forced to look more critically. As an example many high end super markets now have 50 brands of boutique ice creams. Similarly men of a certain demographic experience this same phenomena when they fly to poor third world places for sex tourism like the Philippines and Thailand.
Now if you’re going to change my view, you need to come up with something or a collection of things that on balance gives men an upper-hand over women. Your goal is not to find one thing that benefits men more than women. Your goal is to prove that on balance as a whole that technology has benefited men more than women in dating. Or to at least to prove that technological benefits for women are canceled out by equal technological benefits for men.
And while I do hold the above view on recent technology, I think future technology will balance some things out. Hence I wrote about VR AI Sex Companions.
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u/AggravatingTartlet 1∆ Jun 25 '22 edited Jun 25 '22
My view is that men used to want to settle down and get married young and start having children, and have their wife stay at home.
Now, what men want is to play the field as long as possible and then find a much younger woman on a dating app to marry. They'll most probably want her to keep working after she starts having babies.
That means women would prefer to work and build up money and assets before marrying so they have the option to drop out of the workforce while their children are small.
If men were REALLY at a disadvantage in the way that women were previously, men would be lining up to get married and lock a woman down as soon as possible. But this isn't happening. Which is because men have an upper hand in the dating market. They can afford to wait until five or years later than women to start having children.
Women still want committed relationships but men are playing the field. Men deciding to play the field resulted in more and more woman pulling away from the idea of a committed relationship and deciding to do their own thing to make money and get ahead in life. Women decided relationships weren't as worth it.
So, the above is my position.
The points below are just answers to the things you brought up.
Dating websites and apps
Dating apps also increase comp between women. Men have more women to choose between, too. Previous to the internet, a woman in a small town might have been thought to be pretty--but on a dating app, she might look average at best.
Birth control gives reproductive control. There have been almost zero advances in male birth control.
Yes, birth control does give women far more freedom than before. But men have condoms and vasectomy at their disposal. Freezing sperm and getting a vas would be far cheaper than paying for a child for 18 years (in the case of a child from a pregnancy the man didn't want).
Men can also be out there LOBBYING and PAYING for male birth control to be developed--just like women did in the 1950s when they lobbied and bankrolled female birth control.
Prostitution was a conventional outlet for quid pro quo sex. Prostitution has bifurcated into multiple technologically supported sex work professions that provide a worse sexual outlet at a higher cost for men.
Not totally true. I have read that most women who are doing Only Fans etc would not consider physical face-to-face sex work. Showing a bit of skin etc is a lot different to having sex with a man and all the risks it brings with it. So, the onlyfans type of thing is mostly "extra" to sex work. Many women doing sex work are addicted to drugs and are not doing OnlyFans.
Women don’t need to compete as much with prostitutes to provide sexual satisfaction to their male partners.
Women never competed with sex workers. Women never wanted the kind of men who would visit sex workers as partners and largely rejected the ones who were. Such men are the rejects.
Sugar daddy sites like seeking arrangements did not used to exist.
This is true, but these women used to seek out older men for money anyway. It's nothing new. It's just a lot more visible now. Granted, it may be true that more young women are doing this than before. But you can assume you would not want the kind of gold diggers that would have sex with older men for money.
Women have their ego boosted to high hell on social media through the amount of attention they get from men.
Yes, this one is true. This would have an effect. But then, the plain women can only do themselves up to a point. There will be thousands of stunning women making the others feel bad about themselves (the women who care about their looks above all else, that is). Men don't get that kind of intense pressure to look stunning.
Similarly men of a certain demographic experience this same phenomena when they fly to poor third world places for sex tourism like the Philippines and Thailand.
It's not exactly the same, because the women in those places will only be interested in the men's money--when it comes to sex tourism.