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Comment by barkingtoad | Hacker News Reader

Enforced monogamy, i.e., marriage

That would just be monogamy. The thing people are calling stupid is the idea that low status men should be assigned wives forcefully to prevent them from being sad, which is what some people have actually proposed.

False. That's how how was (deliberately?) misinterpreted. But "enforced monogamy" is a term used in e.g. evolutionary biology to describe, basically, just a societal norm of monogamy, maybe enforced by law (polygamy is illegal in most places). No-one's suggesting forcing women to marry someone.

> No-one's suggesting forcing women to marry someone.

The "incel" community frequently calls for the state to provide partners to incels. They point to how in the Netherlands, the disabled have access to sex worker services, subsidized by the state. They claim that their inability to find sexual partners is comparable to a disability, and therefore the state should help.

Then, some portion of those incels believe that men should be able to expect that their sexual partners do not have any other partners, so suddenly this turns into believing that the state should provide incels a monogamous, long-term partner, essentially a wife.

By definition sex workers are the opposite of monogamy.

Also what are you objecting to here? Prostitution in general? Having it subsidized by the state?

This argument:

> They point to how in the Netherlands, the disabled have access to sex worker services, subsidized by the state. They claim that their inability to find sexual partners is comparable to a disability, and therefore the state should help.

This is not absurd. In the Netherlands prostitution is legal, anyone can buy the services of a sex worker. I don't know if it's true that the state subsidizes it for disabled people. If they do I imagine the idea is that having sex is an right and if you can't get it on your own (by either for free or by paying it) the state should supply it. Extending it to incels is not a huge leap.

But this is an extreme and absurd postition from a small group. It's not reasonable that people attribute this to Peterson. I would agree that he could've seen this coming, and could have clarified what he means from the start, rather than after the controversy.

He is purposefully obtuse. This way, hard core incels can believe he means the more extreme options, medium believers believe he means wherever positions they fall on the spectrum, and he has plausible deniability for journalists.

> he has plausible deniability for journalists.

Do you have any evidence for this? Or is this just your imagination?

I don't think so. The problem is you have to be aware of other things he's saying to get at the correct, more charitable, interpretation. Namely, he's calling on people not to blame others or society at large for their problems, but to improve their own life and become a desirable potential mate. That's opposite of what he's accused of.

> Namely, he's calling on people not to blame others or society at large for their problems, but to improve their own life and become a desirable potential mate.

When Peterson calls on males to improve themselves, a substantial portion of his audience hears this as an exhortation to stop bitching and moaning, get off their asses... and then learn seduction techniques, push for political changes that would guarantee them a mate, or other steps that might be considered coercive or antisocial. Regardless of Peterson’s own position, never underestimate the ability of his statements to be interpreted in various fashions due to the seething anger of some of his listeners.

> small group

Dunno, seems like what we can label as "incels" (outside tiny violent group that pushed this term to mainstream) could now easily represent 50% of single male population. That's pretty bad for society. Look at Japan what is happening there. Or into China where planned male overpopulation is causing massive problems in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos (stealing women) and they don't do the usual way of curbing excess males by the means of war, like practiced in the Middle East.

I meant the group of those who claim some kind of right to a partner, that seems very rare to me.

The thing that confuses me about this explanation: we already do that. So it doesn't make much sense as a proposed solution to a supposedly new problem.

It seems plausible to me that the new problem (men without partners) is in part due to weakened social as well as legal norms around marriage, but via divorce rather than polygamy. In my opinion that doesn't mean we should go back to the old ways, but it's worth being aware of the connection.

> it's worth being aware of the connection

Reading charitably, I think you mean "being aware of the possible connection". The connection with marriage still seems speculative.

Sure. That's why I said plausible.

Let's be fair here, no one really cares about them being 'sad', the trouble is that having a lot of sexually frustrated young men around isn't going to help the stability of your society.

Which isn't to say that the way we dealt with this in the past, which was keeping women out of the work force and making them dependent on men for survival and status, is something we should go back to, just that there are consequences we'll have to recognize and deal with somehow.

> the idea that low status men should be assigned wives forcefully to prevent them from being sad, which is what some people have actually proposed.

Who proposed that?

Some articles that explain the background:

https://www.macleans.ca/opinion/the-context-of-jordan-peters...

also

http://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/article/incel-meaning-explained

GP may refer to poor sources such as https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=EkMNXGvzdLw

> to prevent them from being sad

Or to make sure they are sad and not intrinsically happy alone?:

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3464902

;-)

That’s not the only way that monogamy can be enforced. For example, in many countries, sex outside of marriage is illegal with severe penalties, and divorce and adultery are either illegal or lead to social ostracism. These countries don’t assign anyone a spouse but they have very high rates of early marriage and low rates of divorce (even in abusive marriages) because of you want to have sex, which most people do, you need to get married.

Isn't that essentially what laws against bigamy are for?

It's pretty clear that TC is alluding to Jordan Peterson. When I read the enforced monogamy headline I thought that's an incredibly stupid thing for him to say, only to find out that (surprise, surprise) it was taken out of context. What he actually said can still be criticized, but isn't even worth a headline.

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