The Sexual Underclass and Romantic Illusions

Written in May, 2018.

The van attack of Alek Minassian in Toronto has suddenly pushed the concept of “incels” into mainstream consciousness. Most of the jabbering class are responding in a predictable way. They are defending status quo assumptions by portraying incels as dangerous misogynists. In this narrative, incels are sexual losers who blame their failure on society, when it is their own fault. Incels are portrayed as disgusting, evil, ugly monsters who are fully responsible for their plight.

Despite this predictable spin, the discussion of incels is raising awareness about the sexual problems of the modern world. A large number of men have no access to love and sex. This was not supposed to happen. Sexual liberation was supposed to create a sexual utopia. Instead, it has created a sexual dystopia in which many people are denied love and sex.

The existence of a large sexual underclass poses problems for the left and the establishment. Supposedly, the left is about helping the disadvantaged, but they have no sympathy for incels. The problems of incels (and men in general) are viewed as personal, not social or political. Incels are solely responsible for their situation. They should pull themselves up by their bootstraps. They should make themselves into better people.

This attitude is an almost exact parallel to the ultra-libertarian attitude toward the economically disadvantaged. To the ultra-libertarian, the poor are responsible for their fate, and they should pull themselves up by their bootstraps. The left has exactly the same attitude toward incels. This is yet another hypocrisy in leftism. The left is socialist about wealth, but libertarian about love and sex. The unequal distribution of wealth is viewed as a huge moral problem that must be solved by society. The unequal distribution of love and sex is viewed as a natural and acceptable outcome. Getting love and sex is viewed as a personal problem that the individual must solve for himself.

The left is supposedly all about “love, not hate”, and yet it is willing to see a huge number of men shut out of love. If those men complain about their situation, the left responds with hatred.

Our culture hides the reality of love and sex behind a veil of ignorance. We pretend that love is magical and inexplicable. In popular entertainment, sexual love is portrayed as a mysterious union of souls brought together by fate. There is a taboo on biological explanations of love and sexual behavior. This blind spot prevents us from understanding and solving sexual problems, especially those caused by social conditions. If love is a magical union of souls, it shouldn’t be affected by social conditions.

The modern sexual dystopia is a big problem for the humanist worldview, which is the basis of both leftism and liberalism. Humanism idolizes both human nature and love. Humanists believe that human nature is essentially rational and good, and that love is altruistic. We are loving by nature, and we need love to flourish. Problems are caused by oppression and deprivation. Freedom and abundance should produce human flourishing.

Given those assumptions, modern civilization should have created a sexual utopia: a flourishing of love and sex. But the sexual utopia didn’t emerge. Instead, there is a sexual dystopia: a breakdown of sexual relationships and an epidemic of loneliness. This wasn’t supposed to happen.

Love isn’t magic. Sexual relationships are cooperative, not altruistic. Men and women evolved to play different and complementary roles in relationships. The woman bears and raises the man’s children. The man protects and supports the woman and her children. Each side contributes, in a different way, to the shared goal of reproduction. Human emotions evolved to create this arrangement, which I call “the sexual contract”. When it is mediated by emotions alone, we call it “the pair bond” or simply “love”. When it is explicitly defined and enforced by society, we call it “marriage”. Either way, it is not magic.

See The Sexual Revolution, Modern Romance and The Sexual Contract.

The sexual contract is an exchange of different types of labor. It is not a mystical union of souls brought together by fate. It has a biological function, which is to produce children, not to make people happy. This truth is almost an unspeakable heresy in our culture, but without understanding it, you cannot understand human behavior. In particular, you cannot understand the effects of modern civilization on sexual relationships.

In modern civilization, we subsidize survival for everyone, and especially for women and children. The state protects everyone from danger, and it guarantees that everyone will have enough resources to survive. We have collectivized survival, but not reproduction. Sex and love have been fully liberalized, while survival has been fully collectivized. That, in a nutshell, describes the social conditions of modern civilization.

The collectivization of survival has unintended negative consequences. One is dysgenics, due to free-rider reproduction. Another is the breakdown of the sexual contract.

Women can get what they need from the state and the market. They don’t need individual men as providers and protectors. The justice system protects women from violence, and they can either live on welfare or sell their labor for wages. Modern jobs are comfortable, safe, and require little physical strength. Thus, the protective and productive services of individual men are devalued, while the sexual value of women hasn’t changed. The result is a dysfunctional sexual market.

Women still find men attractive to some degree. Female sexual emotions evolved to respond to signals of male power, such as height, strength and social dominance, and those signals are still present. However, female-to-male sexual attraction is weaker than male-to-female sexual attraction. In the past, men and women were brought together mostly by male desire, not female desire. To the extent that female desire was involved, sexual attraction wasn’t the main factor. Women wanted men as protectors and providers, not primarily as sexual partners. If women are well fed and secure, they start to view most men as useless appendages. They only find the most handsome or successful men attractive.

Men, on the other hand, still want women for the same reasons as before. Men find signals of fertility attractive in women, such as a youthful appearance, full breasts, wider hips, a narrow waist (indicating the woman is not pregnant), etc. Those physical signals are still present, exactly as before, even if a majority of women have made themselves infertile by using birth control. Men still desire women, while women are largely indifferent to men.

The result is the modern sexual dystopia. Sexual relationships are breaking down. Fertility is low, not just because of birth control, but also because men and women aren’t forming stable relationships. Many men drop out of the market for sex and love. Many women also effectively drop out of the market, by ignoring the majority of men. The imbalance starts to correct later in life, when women become less attractive, and men acquire more resources. But then it is often too late to start a family, or have more than one child.

Another problem for the left, and for feminism in particular, is that the modern sexual market is driven by female preferences and choices. Women have the majority of sexual power. Women choose men, not vice versa. Feminism assumes that women have less power than men. This requires ignoring or denying the sexual power of women. The ability to get sex and love is a very important type of power. In the modern world, women are more powerful than men.

Sex and love are not egalitarian. Some people are beautiful or handsome, while others are ugly or bland. Feminists rage against beauty standards, which they portray as a social construct and an unfair imposition on women. But feminists are silent about female standards for men, and the highly unequal distribution of sex and love among men. When women have sexual freedom, comfort and security, the distribution of sex and love is determined by female sexual preferences. That leaves many men out in the cold.

In The Redistribution of Sex, Russ Douthat admitted (to his credit) that many men have dropped out of the market for sex and love, and that this is a problem. He was responding to Two Types of Envy, an article by the edgy economist Robin Hanson. Douthat suggested that we will solve the problem, not by fixing the sexual market, but instead by creating new and better illusions, such as sexbots and virtual reality porn, to satisfy the desires of men who can’t get sex and love from real women.

Douthat’s response was predictable. Our culture has the assumption that more technology is always the solution, even if the problem is social, psychological or philosophical, and even if the problem is partly caused by technology.

More technology is not the solution. Sex and love are ultimately about reproduction. Lonely male nerds might be able to engineer better masturbation aids, and Japanese animators might be able to create waifus for lonely men to adore, but sexbots and waifus won’t replace the female side of the sexual contract. They might simulate sex and love, but they won’t give birth to children and take care of them. And if male nerds don’t reproduce, there won’t be anyone to create technological solutions in the future.

Modern civilization has created a sexual dystopia. It has undermined the sexual contract. It has created a sexual underclass of men who can’t get sex and love. We can’t solve this problem with illusions. We need to make our civilization compatible with human nature.