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Comment by newacct583 | Hacker News Reader

> Now that you have to compete for a dwindling supply of the opposite sex just to have more responsibilities without any traditional patriarchal privileges

That sounds distressingly redpilled to me...

I don't have demographics for China, but in the west there's no particular shortage of hardworking <demographic-other-than-socially-dominant-male>'s doing reasonably well in the market. And their representation in the "hardworking professional successful person" pool is growing over time. That's good, right?

Isn't maybe a better hypothesis that there's an identifiable population of MEN unwilling to work hard if they don't get essentially unfair access to success, and complaining about it? Seems like maybe that's where the solution needs to be addressed?

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There's 34 million more men than women in China.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2018/world/too-many-...

Seems totally reasonable to think that not have the potential to be a husband/father would affect how men view the payoff of gaining higher social status. You can't write that off as "Der der redpill!"

But there are more than a billion chinese citizens...

In fact the gender ratio among 15-24 year old chinese (the peak of the one child gender curve) is 1.17. That's not low, but it's hardly a strong effect either. In particular those 17% of citizens having trouble finding a mate seems like a rather smaller effect than the significantly larger increase in workforce participation among their more numerous female coworkers.

So China loses a few men who check out because they can't get a date, and gains women by the truckload (no, I don't have demographics) who are entering the workforce. I still don't see why this is a social problem.

So I look to other people trying to claim this is a social problem, and I'm sorry, I see a lot of "der der redpill" and not much else. If this is a serious economic argument, then please make it.

It’s not “a few men”. It’s tens of millions of men.

They solve that by legalizing polyandry, but I don't know if Chinese social dynamics would support such an arrangement. Actual red pillers won't like that solution, for sure.

Wow, legalizing polyandry? I'm genuinely amused by how you guys demonize China.

Your point about the horrors of sexism is well-meant, well-taken, and morally correct in every single possible way.

Do you think it might be useful information to consider that years of China's one-child policy and strong cultural preferences might have combined to create a serious skew in the gender ratio? India has a related issue. https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2018/world/too-many-...

Again, you're absolutely correct that this sounds like an utterly repellent expression of privilege and sexism. It's just worth perhaps considering that demographic context might be considered by some to be relevant.

The point above invoked "We are seeing a sociological experiment in action across the globe.", which didn't sound like a pointed critique of the one child policy or of Chinese gender politics to me.

Now, I think there's a real discussion to be had there, sure. But the post above sounded a lot more like MRA whining.

You are once again completely correct! It definitely sounds an awful lot like MRA whining.

It just might be worth considering that what is in one context baseless sexist whining might in another be an accurate observation of the effects of decades of policy and the suggestion of a control group. Some readers might take this as an opportunity to check their assumptions and refer to relevant data.

I recognize that this is a matter of opinion, and thus reasonable people might differ. Again, you are inconvertibly correct in every single moral and ethical dimension!

Sorry, not sure how to make a constructive conversation in the face of semi-ad-hominem attacks or attempts of labelling with some fringe movements.

I don't blame you. It's often next to impossible to engage constructively with someone who has chosen to believe that you are engaging in bad faith. Doubly so when they start by choosing to ignore potentially relevant facts.

For my own part, I don't think you were guilty of what the other commenter accused you of. I think they over-aggressively pattern-matched some rhetoric you used and responded with something canned.

This is sounding extraordinarily abstract, and more like an evasion than a defense. If your point is NOT that "women in China should stay home and let men have jobs", then maybe you could explain it better?

His point was that in a country where there are, say, two extra men per ten women, then a large number of those men, no matter how hard they work or try, are destined to be alone for life.

If we are talking a country of a billion people, we are talking a multi-hundred-million-person imbalance developing. When young men with poorly developed decision-making skills get it in their head that nothing they do along traditional paths matters because they will never woo a partner, they begin to take less “traditional” routes to fixing their personal problems, like war and crime.

... "forever destined", really? "no matter how hard they work" ?!

Alternatively, and much less apocalyptically, a median hetero man in China will spend 17% less time in a committed relationship than one in the Germany (or wherever). Stated that way it doesn't really sound that bad.

I repeat AGAIN, that you're invoking what seems to me to be an incel fantasy, that some men are going to "win" and that those that don't will be "forever destined" to being alone. And no, the truth is that most people (everywhere!) spend a bunch of their lives lonely, but sometimes find relationships, and that love is hard work, finding happiness takes effort, and mopey excuse-making helps no one.

And in particular, the brand of mopey excuse-making I'm seeing here gets really toxic really fast.

I feel you too are playing a game of toxic excuse making by dodging the math of a declining female population in a country that should be held accountable to the birthing practices it enforced on the population for many years.

"Hey, Guy from China, suck it up, you are only going to be 17% more lonely than the average German man. We have better things to mope about than your socioeconomic situation in a country that literally invades every aspect of your socioeconomic means of production."

I've not advocated for or suggested any social policy in this discussion, so I fear that you may be addressing the wrong person. I wish you luck in finding the clarification you seek.

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