White Trash Book Smart

[7Wannabe5]

@classical_Liberal:

Feel free to post here. I thought by now it would be pretty obvious that I tend to use this forum as a salon, while only making token gestures towards achieving or journaling anything resembling "progress" on my financial "goals." Also, it is a topic in which I have some personal interest, because (A) I would like to get my own son married off, and (B) the older men that I date often grumble with complaints similar to those of the young Incels. More than once I have had some guy I am dating tell me that online dating sucks, to which I must obviously reply, "Hmmm...but, you met me through online dating." , and their reply is always something like "Well, you are different."

My Crohn's disease is much better now that I am on Inflectra. Nothing else, including another biologic, worked. I still have to use the bathroom around 8X/day, but pain,blood,mucus are pretty much gone, and exhaustion is better (my Iron levels were 7 last blood draw, so I'm eating a lot of liver.) I've been binge watching episodes of "Saving Grace" and that is making me wish I was in good enough shape to reboot my own sex life, but not there yet.

the incels are wishing and resentful while the dropouts are have either given up

And, most unfortunately, vibing "resentment" and "giving up" are not tactics likely to break you into the " more success to the successful" positive feedback loops experienced by the Chads of this world. OTOH, since there are levels upon levels, the Chad tactics, absent further substance, can eventually get kind of boring to those of us who have been around the block a time or three. My youngest sister once made the wise observation that after men get skilled enough to date a lot of very physically attractive females, they start preferring reasonably attractive smart women. The same holds true for women in terms of preference for the superficially attractive presentation skills of the successful player, IF and ONLY IF they are allowed the social freedom to learn this on their own. There's a good deal of what might best be described as "bullying" that goes on across the gender divide in terms of trying to tell the "other" what they should find attractive.

@Ego:

Yup, and that's why some courtesan tricks are based on "letting the man take the lead" or "letting the man get a win." Number one fairly common female behavior most men do not enjoy on first date is "being interrogated." However, testosterone (at lower levels) also effects sex drive in females, so it would be better practice to get your wins in against other men in social setting as you suggested, rather than counting on female to let you take the lead, unless you like having sex with a female who is completely drained of her own drive and initiative.

[chenda]

... but also there are huge amounts of incel (involuntary celibate) men now who want *very much* to have relationships, sex, and love, but are unsuccessful in having them.

I suspect many of these men are on the spectrum.

@Ego, yes and there is good evidence that societies with a higher number of women to men are less violent than the reverse. This historically happened after a war which culled the male population. Unfortunately the widespread practice of female infanticide has resulted in a glut of men in places like China, which is causing no end of social problems. Something like 30 million Chinese men will never be able to marry.

[white belt]

The disparity between young men and young women might have to do with the fact that dating apps make it easier for young women to meet/date older men, while teenage girls across all socioeconomic groups are less likely to be sexually active. IOW, 20 year old female who is still in college dating 29 year old guy who is established in work force is happening more often, but 19 year old guy dating 16 year old girl has become more verboten.

Also, as I remember from my youth, a fairly large percentage of couplings were the result of the social skills of females. IOW, a lot of clueless, shy, or otherwise awkward young men would be rounded up by socially assertive women and basically assigned to be somebody's BF. It very well might be the case that young women are less interested, too busy or otherwise engaged, to bother to do this as much anymore.

OTOH, since there are levels upon levels, the Chad tactics, absent further substance, can eventually get kind of boring to those of us who have been around the block a time or three. My youngest sister once made the wise observation that after men get skilled enough to date a lot of very physically attractive females, they start preferring reasonably attractive smart women. The same holds true for women in terms of preference for the superficially attractive presentation skills of the successful player, IF and ONLY IF they are allowed the social freedom to learn this on their own.

These points largely line up with my experience and I think they are interrelated. The biggest beneficiaries of online dating have been introverted/busy women and the most attractive men ("Chads")*. As has already been pointed out, there are many women who are much more focused on school/career/friend activities with their time and thus their dating life takes a backseat. There are also many women who just don't like the crowded social activities where traditional mingling of the sexes occurs or don't like the type of men that approach them at these sorts of activities. Online dating allows these women to engage in dating at their leisure and around the constraints of their own lifestyle. It's not unrealistic for a reasonably attractive woman to line up several dates in less than 30 minutes on a dating app. Women like being selective and dating apps allow them to seamlessly eliminate the 95%+ of the male population that they have no interest in who might otherwise approach them in a IRL setting.

I'll provide an anecdotal example of why DGF turned to dating apps, which is how we eventually met. It's also useful to point out that in my millennial friend group, a full 50% of couples met on dating apps. DGF gets tired of dating dumb frat boys in college because those were the only prospects that her social circle provided at the time. Being an attractive female in her early to mid-20s and busy with work, she doesn't particularly like going to places like bars to spend the night getting hit on by guys who she has no interest in dating. So she turned to dating apps. For DGF in particular, she is searching for specific physical traits (muscles) combined with intelligence, which is something that is relatively easy to filter for after exchanging a few messages on a dating app. Although this is an anecdote, I think this is the case for many college-educated women in their 20s. They might be looking for different traits, but the point is dating apps give them the ability to be picky without having to navigate tricky IRL social situations or intermingle their personal and professional life.

For guys, things are much harder. Unless they are in the top 10-20% of mate value, they will not have much success on dating apps. Even if they do have lots of attractive traits, if they can't effectively signal them on something as superficial as the common swipe-based apps, then they won't have much success. So now they are left with meeting potential partners at IRL activities, but as my previous example shows, there are just much fewer single women looking to mingle due to the prevalence of dating apps. Not only that, the typical male is out of luck if his particular lifestyle/career/hobbies don't put him in contact with a lot of women. IRL social situations also of course favor extroverts, so we can start to see how a bunch of variables might correlate to make it very hard for certain groups of men to have any dating success. I think this is one reason we are seeing such a rise in incel culture.

* = There was a survey that looked at the number of hours NBA players spend sleeping each night during the season over a multi-year period. What it found is that NBA players were sleeping something like 1-2 hours extra per night after the popularization of Tinder. Why? Because when they play in a different city, Tinder allows the players to pick up women after the game without having to spend hours at a bar/club pursuing them like they used to have to do. Source: https://www.maxim.com/sports/tinder-get ... rs-2017-3/

[chenda]

Excellent post, I think you are right. One of my male acquaintances, still a virgin at 35, was complaining how he had liked about 10000 women all across Europe on tinder (not just the hot ones he assured me) and had only matched with 5, all of which fizzled out after a few messages. Though it's not really surprising as he looks like at 35 year old virgin, I probably shouldn't have encouraged him with hindsight.

[Slevin]

Warning: silly an anectdotal evidence ahead: don’t take my experience to be a complete picture or hard evidence.

My favorite a/b dating app test was back in mid 2020 when I made 2 tinder accounts on the same day. Subject: me in 2020. 27, Average looking guy in clothes, tall, bit of a receding hairline but nothing crazy. Very fit though, I was movement training 20-30 hours a week at this time. Basically a 2nd job.

Experiment, make 2 different tinder accounts, one normal one for me, and one highlighting fitness with minimal clothing. Let’s call them account A and account B.

Account A: pretty normal, me and my buddies outdoors, some action shots or whatever, some closeups. Just hanging out and being a normal guy.

Account B: only shirtless pics with abs and big muscles, jumping off cliffs into water and climbing, etc. Has one random clothed pic (jeans and a tight polo) in there to assert I’m not someone who doesn’t own clothing or something.

I buy the paid version on both to get full stats of likes (the uhh, “measurement” of this testing). 24 hours starting on a Thursday or Friday (I forget which, used some analytics to fine prime time in my area). At the prime prime time, I use the boosts or whatever they are called to boost viewability. It’s a speed run after all. Wait 24 hours, then collect results.

Account A: something like 6 likes.

Account B: something like 115 likes.

Thus my conclusion, women on dating apps like guys who show off their big muscles, I took the hint and set all my profiles accordingly. And luckily I found an avenue that worked for me. If it didn’t, I think I would attend more singles events and social events IRL that are dating focused and try to make something happen there. Though overall, Tinder is a garbage platform, I don’t really know anyone who met their S/O through there. Much more success stories I know from hinge (including me and current s/o) and other way more chill apps.

Overall though, the dating app marketplace is not the dating marketplace. To any struggling guys out there, when I walk through my local grocery stores or go out to dinner or whatever it’s not just “Chads” walking around with girlfriends and wives. Tons of average looking guys with girlfriends and wives, and plenty of under average guys and attractive guys with girlfriends and wives. It’s almost like humans pair up due to many reasons and whatever your weirdness is, there’s probably some people who would be totally into that. Just gotta get out there, and meet people (and also, 100% work on your social skills and then flirting skills). Just gotta get out there and fail your way to success (which may also have a component based in psychology which needs therapy, and whatever). Definitely, kinda a shitty time to be dating as everything gets commodified and everyone is getting more and more isolated and lonely, but like, this is when we got, just gotta work with what you can and let whatever happens happen.

[classical_Liberal]

@7WB5
Glad you are feeling better, keep the Kratom in the back of your mind if needed. It really works, your doctor may tell you otherwise. Risk of trying is minimal as 2-3 days of low dose Kratom will give you results. If it hasn't then stop.

______

I tend to agree that all of these issues contribute to the reduced sex in young people.

I think culture is a large component. For example, 98% of baby boomers identify as cis, whereas only 80% of gen zers identify as cis. This a dramatic change. While I'm sure a large portion of this is simply people becoming more open in their sexual and biological preference (which is very good), I also think there is an element of cultural pressure on younger generations to move away from cis thinking. This confuses sexual desire and preferences for very young people.

Couple the above with the cultural tenancy to move cis male sexual aggressiveness towards a negative quality, and cis female sexual aggressiveness towards positive quality. Also the other aforementioned cultural issues wrt to how people date, access to different dating pools, people less like to desire marriage and children, etc. All together it's a kettle of simmering soup with a bunch of ingredients that is having a big impact on sex. I mostly wonder how this will have system level effects on other issues.

A personal anecdote. I took a part time job as a bartender this summer and was really surprised to see how often and aggressively a balding, slightly over weight, 40's male was given attention from cis females in such an environment. I was in a period of self celibacy from a broken heart at the time, so maybe I just noticed it more? Anyway, I became an observer and noticed that younger women came to my particular establishment to find more introverted, "geeky" guys. It was an arcade/video game place with a more male, introverted crowd. I wonder how this change in whom is aggressively courting between cis sexes is having a rather large impact on the topic? or maybe my anecdote is just wrong on a larger population size?

[7Wannabe5]

There are also many women who just don't like the crowded social activities where traditional mingling of the sexes occurs or don't like the type of men that approach them at these sorts of activities. Online dating allows these women to engage in dating at their leisure and around the constraints of their own lifestyle. It's not unrealistic for a reasonably attractive woman to line up several dates in less than 30 minutes on a dating app.

Yeah, back in the days before I lapsed into Old Pumpkin Lady AKA Somewhat Slovenly Mrs. Santa Claus* mode, when I would open or re-open my availability on a dating site/app, I would purposefully not look at it again for a couple days, so that I wouldn't have to deal with the guys who immediately contact/like any new woman who shows up. I would also usually close my profile back down again after around 3 weeks, because by then I would either already have too many dates lined up OR (due to my weak filtering abilities) I would have already been nailed down by somebody who wanted to be my new boyfriend.

I much preferred the early days of online dating, when everybody wrote detailed profiles and exchanged e-mails rather than text/chat. Sometimes men would write me just because they liked my writing rather than my photo. I would also try to err on the side of reasonably flattering, but realistic photos, because I much preferred somebody being pleasantly surprised vs. dismayed when he met me IRL.

@Slevin:

I had similar results based on statistics/suggestions released by OKCupid and my own experience with mixing up my photos. OKCupid stats indicated that older females received many fewer hits on average than younger females UNLESS they showed some cleavage, so out of curiosity one day I made crackhead decision to upload bikini top photo-> instant overwhelming barrage of lewd come-ons. My softly-smiling-up-at-you-with-my-hair-floating-around-me head-shot-as-recommended-by-OKC brought on too many hopeless romantic types sending me barf-inducing messages starting with "Hello Angel," and making immediate use of "we" as pronoun. So, cute-enough-for-a-nerd photos proved to be my best filter.

I wonder how this change in whom is aggressively courting between cis sexes is having a rather large impact on the topic? or maybe my anecdote is just wrong on a larger population size?

I think you may be right, but based on my recent reading of quite a bit of critically acclaimed, extremely raunchy, literary fiction by new young writers, I think the trend can swing both ways in terms of influencing level of sexual activity. IOW, it seems like the youngsters are having less sex overall, but more sex that might still be classified as kinky. I always think of the Updike quote along the lines of "You know the relationship is dead when you start f*cking each other with vegetables." Maybe part of the problem is that the prevalence of online porn is causing more kids to go right to the vegetable bin rather than spending a year or two dry-humping in parked cars?

Since I had a 19 year marriage gap in my dating experience from 1987 to 2006, it was super noticeable to me that men of all ages were no longer likely to make physical moves without clear prior consent, but in my very limited experience with younger men, they were also more likely to kind of want to spell it all out like a very detailed contract beforehand which is more than a little bit off putting, but maybe younger women are more accustomed to tone deaf interactions along the lines of "Here's a link to one of my favorite pieces of porn. Will you exclude me from any/all liability if I exhibit the behaviors shown herein while in your company?" Umm, can we maybe play it a little bit by ear ?


*Another reason for male/female disparity on dating apps might be that most women I know (myself included) won't even put themselves out there if/when they are feeling unattractive whereas most men would at least give it a shot, but maybe that has changed with younger generation.

[AnalyticalEngine]

I don't know if my opinion is of any value here, as I am not straight, but I hang out in a bunch of LGBT spaces, both online and offline, and the tendency of gen z (and millennials to a lesser extent) to identify as "not-cis" is really more a youth culture-qua-politics thing than it is anything about sexual orientation or even sexual practices. Most of the people who identify as "not-cis" are actually still just heterosexual, and most of them end up in monogamous, heterosexual relationships still. In fact, that identity has more to do with the same thing that caused being goth or punk from the 80s or 90s than it does gender or sexual orientation.

I'd say most people who adopt that identity would have been merely known as introverted or geeky back in the 90s. I expect that, as a trend, it will die when gen alpha gets into high school and decides the 30-year-olds aren't cool any more.

I do find younger people have an overwhelming exposure to porn (both visual and written) while lacking actual IRL sexual experience. This is, imo, the main cause of people adopting "not-cis" labels. They will have a long list of kinks they are into that they learned from erotica but don't actually ever practice IRL, and then when they do get into IRL sex, it's almost always just "boring, straight sex."

Think about it another way: a generation raised on the internet doesn't develop as much IRL social skills, and because your identity really only exists in relationship to other people, they can pick up any label that sounds cool and isn't like their parents, whom they view as boring and problematic. However, when they stop existing in simulated space and enter "reality," they either fail to launch (all the lonely people not having sex) or they just fall into similar patterns of behavior they were only really able to identify out of by never confronting it physically.

[chenda]

I had to Google the term 'cis' and I'm still not entirely sure what the purpose of the term is.

[classical_Liberal]

@7WB5 and @AE
Both of you brought up the abundance and availability of a wide variety of porn as another huge cultural issue changing sex habits. I completely agree with this and actually thought about it after my post. I know it has an impact on me and I often have to purposely avoid it to help create more motivation to seek sex.

@AE
Thanks for the insight wrt non-cis gender labeling in young adults. I can't say I'm surprised given the massive statistical change. I was once in a long term relationship with a woman who had, in the past, been in a several month long monogamous same sex relationship. She considered herself straight, but had an experimental phase. This was 20 years ago, I can only imagine all the possible self labels a young person in the same circumstance today may choose.

[AnalyticalEngine]

@chenda - The essence here is something called "social identity theory." It basically states that the way we understand our own identity is to categorize other people then see which category of groups of others we fit into. The implication of this is that you can't understand yourself without understanding others. When you combine this with a youth culture wanting to distance itself from its normie parents, lack of IRL socialization, and people who struggle to fit in because they aren't "normal" (gay, neurodivergent, introverted, express gender atypical behaviors, traumatized, whatever), it manifests in not relating to the "assigned" social identity (you can't relate to that category because they don't understand you or you don't understand them.) Cis vis non-cis is thus better understood as "normative or older or less trendy" vs "non-normative or younger or trendy." Culture vs counterculture.

Of course, because the issue here is a lack of communication rather than anything innate (you can't understand yourself without other people and identity is not real), identity is always a moving target. I think people outside of the community struggle to grok that because it's never explained in these terms.

[7Wannabe5]

@AnalyticalEngine:

Good insight! I am also curious if you have any thoughts on the growing popularity of MMF and whether it relates in any way to the above trend? It seems to me that quite a few men are opening themselves up to identify/behave as bisexual theses days due to easier access to male partners on the internet. The prevalence of internet porn is likely also, for obvious reasons, increasing the popularity of being a voyeur vs. active participant at many levels.

[AnalyticalEngine]

@7W5 - That's a good question. I don't have any direct experience with MMF couples, but I can offer some conjectures. Keep in mind that people may often engage in either heterosexual or homosexual acts for reasons outside of their innate sexuality. See the many gay people in straight relationships for the social privilege or the concept of heterosexuals and "prison gay." So I think it's hard to say without taking a closer look at a given MMF triad.

Here are my thoughts:
1. An MMF triad may include legitimately bisexual men who are able to explore that more easily than in the past due to today's more permissive social climate. (Bisexuals are around 2x-4x more common than monosexual homosexuals, but have an easier time passing as straight)
2. The men involved may be signaling bisexuality while actually being straight in hopes it allows them easier access to the woman in the triad.
3. There is a lot of overlap between the poly and LGBT community because both communities are locked out of "normal" status and thus band together politically. Due to aforementioned social identity theory, identities spread between these communities via social contagion. (I think this is actually the most likely and could elaborate on this if anyone is interested.)
4. Men are a lot more reluctant to identify as bisexual than women are, so they may be in the closet to themselves and using this as a way to "not actually be gay/bisexual."
5. Lack of female partners leads to "doubling up."

[7Wannabe5]

@AnalyticalEngine:

I do have some limited experience with MMF "couples" or "couplings", and I think all of your scenarios are valid and existing. Some others would be:

6. Both men identify as straight, but at least one of them very much or only "likes to watch."
7. Bi-sexuality may overlap with fantasy set of men who are primarily straight but also identify as sexually submissive and/or cuckold.
8. Older or less invigorated straight man might "borrow" sexual energy from younger or more invigorated straight man in triad- kind of like using jealousy/competition as Viagra.
9. It's more about personality type (open, easy-going, novelty seeking) or level of sex-drive (high) of some or all participants than orientation or sexual identity.
10. In further conjunction with your (#3- Please do elaborate on theme), it may also be related to overlap with the S&M community of nerds.
11. It might even be that the female (shockers! ) is the most motivated partner.

Believe it or not, I am somehow going to bring this back around to the topic of ERE by way of permaculture, by noting that it occured to me that an MMF household might be ideal for a permaculture project when I read Peter Banes' (who identifies as homosexual) note in "The Permaculture Handbook" that a 3 adult household would be ideal, because one could primarily bring in outside income, one could primarily be a "doer", and one could primarily be a "designer", but with a good deal of overlap. Obviously, I kind of tried to do the same thing by trying to get all 3 of my poly-partners who were not in any way partners (or even friends) with each other to help me with my first attempted urban project, but that didn't work so well.

Anyways, in terms of general systems design or engineering (legs on a stool), a triad is usually more resilient or stable, but the human tendency towards pair bonding is pretty strong, so...

[chenda]

I wonder if this sort of thing happened/s in hunter gatherer societies ?

[AnalyticalEngine]

@chenda - Yes, the mechanism at play is no different than thinking the Lion River Spirit has inhabited your body and is giving you guidance. Human identity has always existed primarily as a form of intersubjective social organization. It's always been dependent on culture and has never really made any sense. What's happened today is we've taken this template for identity development and put it inside an environment like the internet, which has removed a lot of physical constraints and transformed it more into pure psychology. But the mechanism is fundamentally the same (social identity theory), and it's this mechanism you need to understand in order to make sense of how identity is likely to change in the future. It seems weirder to us because the internet allows more niche groups come together, but it's not like hunter gatherer societies were a bastion of rationality either. They were just as prone to magical thinking; it's just that their environment was different and we're more used to their brand of it.

[AnalyticalEngine]

10. In further conjunction with your (#3- Please do elaborate on theme), it may also be related to overlap with the S&M community of nerds.

The biggest thing you have to understand about the contemporary queer subculture is that it's less about sexual orientation and more about getting locked out of "normal." This is why the umbrella is so large currently and why so many things are included under it that really aren't that related to sexual orientation but appear to be at first glance. The reason this is happening is that people can get locked out of "normal" for a lot of reasons, and once you are locked out of normal, you go and try to find a new normal in your new adoptive group. This is why "non-cis" is such a big deal because while only 1% of the population is legitimately homosexual, and maybe another 2% are bisexual, anyone locked out of normal can identify as "non-cis" while actually having nothing to do with same sex attraction.

Here's an example: let's say you happen to be a woman with autism. You will likely not identify with many feminine things you are supposed to do as a woman because of the autism. The normal social group you are supposed to a member of, "woman," doesn't really make you feel welcome there. You are therefore locked out of normal and your only real social prospects are other people locked out of normal.

So you end up making friends with other people locked out of normal, such as people inside the poly community or people inside the LGBT community. Social identity theory states that you form your own identity by categorizing other people into groups and seeing which group you are most like. Well the "normal" group has already kicked you out, and the "social weirdo" group has let you in, so you start to identify as a member of that group. And this is where Kegan3/groupthink kicks in because as soon as you start to identify as "queer," you will start to pick up the other traits of people inside of that group. Now you're probably not going to change your sexual orientation over this, as that's impossible, but you can identify as non-cis because that just means membership inside of this group without having to change anything as innate as sexual orientation. Likewise, it may now be easier to pick up polyamory because you're already inside of the "non-standard relationship" category of people.

This is why the "non-cis" group tends to be made up from:
1. MBTI Idealists
2. Geeks
3. Neurodivergent people
4. People with trauma
5. Poly people
6. Kink community
7. Gays, lesbians, and bisexuals (actual somewhat of a minority in this group!)

And then the traits that can spread via social contagion (sexual preferences like poly or kink, geek hobbies, political opinions, etc) now will spread inside of this group.

Due to the fact members of this group feel, accurately, that they aren't normal and that people outside of this group don't respect their identities or preferences, the tribalism and groupthink here can get pretty severe. This explains why so many people identify as "non-cis" despite being effectively heterosexual and why the discourse around it can get very heated very quickly.

(I have so many bizarre personal stories I could share here, like significantly bizarre stuff, but I don't want to derail this any more)

ETA: This short video on the topic of social identity theory is a useful watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBDULN6Jtn0

[7Wannabe5]

the mechanism at play is no different than thinking the Lion River Spirit has inhabited your body and is giving you guidance

Right, and humans are extremely impressionable, so if you behave as though FITB Spirit is inhabiting your body, many other humans will respond as though true. I think the problem that might be contributing to low sexual activity is that humans don't always signal the "spirit" most likely to generate the kind of sexual response/behavior from others that they would actually like. For instance, I recently read the dating memoir of a young woman who was projecting the spirit of "egalitarianism and assertiveness" with high failure rate for achieving her goal which was just something like "getting a decent enough BF."

The biggest thing you have to understand about the contemporary queer subculture is that it's less about sexual orientation and more about getting locked out of "normal."

I think it can also sometimes be a choice to "opt out" of 'normal. For instance, I don't really strongly identify or hang out with the poly community (such as it exists), but I choose to practice polyamory because it suits my own druthers. Also, I tend to think of it as an option at a certain juncture of development or phase of life/culture rather than an orientation/identity. Just like everyone is likely to get cancer if they live long enough, everyone is likely to become polyamorous if they live long enough, because life histories grow in complexity, and time starts going by faster. So, I kind of roll my eyes if/when my 22 year old niece tells me that she's polyamorous when her longest relationship thus far has been maybe 9 months. Whereas, I'm like how did it even happen that I've known all the guys who are still attempting to have a sexual relationship with me* for at least 7 years?!

* Unforeseen by me upside of practicing polyamory is that if/when you are totally sexually out of commission yourself, you don't have to feel guilty about dooming your partner(s)to celibacy.

[AnalyticalEngine]

I think the problem that might be contributing to low sexual activity is that humans don't always signal the "spirit" most likely to generate the kind of sexual response/behavior from others that they would actually like.
...
I think it can also sometimes be a choice to "opt out" of 'normal. For instance, I don't really strongly identify or hang out with the poly community (such as it exists), but I choose to practice polyamory because it suits my own druthers.

I see this as essentially a Kegan3 vs Kegan4 distinction. Being forced out of normal is failing at Kegan3 while failing to signal for the type of mate you want is a failure at Kegan4. Since the essence of Kegan4 is choosing your social group rather than conforming to the default group, it requires a different skill set.

For example, in a strictly Kegan3 world, there are strict gendered expectations of LifeScript where you have to get married to someone of the opposite sex by a certain age, have kids by a certain age, work in the steel factory, etc. When everything is all set out and prescribed for you, the only way to fail at it is to fail to meet those expectations (be gay, be unattractive, have bad social skills, etc).

At Kegan4, you can now reject Kegan3 normal if it doesn't suit you, but to succeed at Kegan4 requires different skills. If you're looking for mates of a specific identity outside of LifeScript, you have to get good at finding that type of person and signaling your interest. So you might have to actively seek out poly groups or actively signal your interest in polyamory to mates instead of just going to high school and marrying someone you meet in math class.

But as more and more people opt out of LifeScript, in some ways, fulfilling LifeScript becomes a Kegan4 skill where it used to be a Kegan3 skill. If half the math class now identifies as non-cis or prefers to play World of Warfare rather than date or is so focused on academics as to be effective asexual, finding an acceptable mate of the opposite sex who desires children and makes enough money now requires active seeking and signaling in a Kegan4 manner rather than a default, falls into your lap, Kegan3 outcome that you can get just by following the rules.

Kegan4 is harder than Kegan3, and I think a lot of people are failing to self-author. Heck, a lot of people may not even be capable of self-authorship depending on how learnable Kegan skills are.

Which is a lot of words to say that the social world is more complicated now than it used to be.

[Jean]

@AE
Thank you for your insight, they allow me to see those community behavior in a much nicer light.
As i'm probably not very normal, I am in socials circles with a lot of those people. They expect me to hate the patriarchy like everyone else, and i have troubles relating to them.

Fortunately i operate at kegan 2, so life is easy.