The men are still here, they're just not here for you

If average men "don't have the cards," average women are quickly losing them as well

Allow me to vent about this article

The article laments that men have seemingly disappeared from many aspects of society.

This article has nothing to do with men. It's entirely centered around the author’s own struggles to find someone, coupled with a complete lack of self-awareness in the knowledge that many of the modern issues for women in her situation are self-inflicted.

What makes the article infuriating is not the provocative title, or even the subject matter, but the contradictory nature of the rhetoric — specifically, how it borders on the cruel, but is nevertheless couched in the language of compassion.

I'll elaborate on this part a little bit later on…

But first, we need to understand this woman's “journey”

In a previous post, entitled toxic masculinity is here to stay, I vented my frustrations about a particular podcast. On that podcast, the director of relationship science at Hinge – a woman by the name of Logan Ury – lamented the struggles that young men are currently going through, although she conspicuously refused to turn the blame inward. That is to say, she failed to recognize how much people like herself had created many of the problems they currently complain about.

I summarized this lack of self-awareness in the following diagram:

The New York Times article above has much the same problem. The author of that article, one Rachel Drucker, mentions that she spent the earlier part of her career at Playboy and its affiliated “hardcore properties” – where, in her words, she spent over a decade behind the curtain of digital desire. As she writes:

I worked closely with copyright attorneys and marketing teams to understand exactly what it took to get a man to pay for content he could easily find for free.

I came to understand, in exact terms, what cues tempt the average 18-to-36-year-old cis heterosexual man. What drew him in. What kept him coming back. It wasn’t intimacy. It wasn’t mutuality. It was access to stimulation — clean, fast and frictionless.

Nowhere in the article does she attempt to make the very obvious connection between the dating landscape that she herself was complicit in creating, and the ultimate consequences of that very same landscape.

Rather, she centers the whole thing around herself, and paints herself as a victim. Despite making a career giving people quick and easy dopamine hits in the form of artificial stimulation, she refuses to acknowledge there was a trade-off being made. It was being made slowly and steadily, over the course of decades, but it was there nevertheless.

And so, she frames it as though the modern dating landscape has just materialized out of nowhere. As she writes:

We have moved into an era where many men no longer seek women to impress other men or to connect across difference. They perform elsewhere. Alone. They’ve filtered us out.

This is part and parcel with a phenomenon that I call…

Feminism for me, traditionalism for thee

The author mentions that she is a 54 year old divorced mom who continues to be in the dating scene, continually pursuing an assortment of relationships, both long and short-term.

In previous generations, this sort of lifestyle would have made her a pariah. I'm not implying that she should be a pariah, but rather to once more point out the lack of self-awareness; she wants to benefit from the relaxed dating standards of modernity – while she spends the entire article simultaneously lamenting the death of the dating culture of previous generations.

Specifically, she laments the fact that men have also changed their behaviors in adaptation to the modern dating landscape – in many cases, quite rationally. It's just a matter of game theory.

1. On the one hand, real intimacy has become orders of magnitude harder for the average man to find.

2. On the other, simulated intimacy — cheap, safe, frictionless, and predictable, as the author herself says — has become a great deal easier to access. People like her have benefited greatly selling such intimacy, and yet are somehow surprised that so many men indeed choose to consume that over the real thing.

This points to the problem that many men intuitively understand: women, especially progressive women, will advocate for equality and empowerment – right until the moment it is inconvenient for them. In all the areas that disproportionately burden men – such as the obligation of being a pursuer, or the requirement of paying for dates – many women are more than happy to retain the traditional dating standards.

The author herself demonstrates her inability to recognize the shifting dating landscape, especially for people like her. When she was trying to pursue a relationship forward with one of her potential matches, she writes:

I didn’t chase. I invited, leaving the door open. If he ever wanted to cross the threshold — not just to take, but to meet — I was willing. I wanted. I still do.

Imagine if a man wrote this?

Imagine if a man’s strategy for finding love was to “invite” and “leave the door open”? Unless you're Ryan Gosling, everyone knows that any man who views dating like this is going to end up with a whole lot of disappointment and loneliness.

And so, you would be unsurprised to learn that the author was ultimately ghosted by this potential match – the ultimate motivation for her to write this article in the first place.

I previously wrote about how most women would be incels if they were men.

That's because when many of them receive feedback on their dating life, they don't see it as an invitation to update their own behavior or strategy. Rather, much like the author of the article, she assumes that it's all men who are wrong and dysfunctional.

As she writes:

What I won’t entertain is directionless orbiting. That thing so many men now seem to mistake for connection: the perpetual maybe.

Perhaps the truth has nothing to do with “directionless orbiting”. Perhaps the truth for people like her is more painful: for most 54 year old divorced moms, “inviting” and “leaving doors open” is not enough. Indeed, people like her might have to break their rules and do a little bit of chasing if they want things to work out.

Look, the message is no different to men.

A lot of the manosphere podcast guys complain that women are all gold digging whores, somehow failing to realize that the reason they attract these sorts of women is because that's the message they themselves put out into the world. They constantly brag about their Bugattis and trips to Dubai, and then they act all shocked when the women who reach out to them don't have traditional modesty.

If these manosphere people want more fulfilling relationships, then they need to change their strategy, it's as simple as that. And it's the exact same thing for the woman in this article.

There's a podcast on this website called “Smoke them if you got’em”, where they also discuss this article. One of the hosts points out that if women like her are finding that the men are not showing up, then quite frankly it’s because…

The men are there, they're just not there for you

There’s something that I've noticed that seems almost inconceivable to the minds of many women. Let's take this article from cartoons hate her, called average men don't have the cards:

Many women find it truly inconceivable that the reverse could also be true – that average women also don't have the cards anymore either. If women are choosing bubble baths and a good book over going out, men are choosing video games and fighting with sweet ass sticks that look like swords.

I mean look at this thing, it's fucking beautiful:

Many women don’t want to acknowledge that they have priced themselves out of the dating market. If these women do not want to lower their standards, and would prefer to live the rest of their days single, that's absolutely fine. But god forbid, if people like the author of the article insist on being in relationships, instead of asking where the men have gone, and pleading for them to come back – they should consider taking steps to actually find them.

It's only fair, considering how she spent the earlier part of her career contributing to the system that alienated men in the first place.

And this leads to the most infuriating part of the article

Let me make one thing clear: I have no problem with women who dislike men.

On some level I can put myself into the mental state of these sorts of women:

1. They have bad relationships with their fathers, brothers, boyfriends, etc.

2. They recognize that the majority of violence comes at the hands of men

3. After some time, they don't think men are worth their time, so they stay away, or otherwise move on with their lives

I understand that.

What is utterly infuriating about articles like these, however, is the level of patronizing cruelty masquerading as compassion. The entire article has the tone of someone very politely scolding men while engaging in self pity:

“Hey, we know that you've been fucking up for the last 30 years, but when you're ready to do better, we'll be here.”

As she writes in the final line of the article:

As for me, I’ll keep showing up. Not because I’m waiting. Because I know what it feels like when someone finally arrives.

The thing that women like her need to hear is the thing that men already know:

“Showing up” is not enough anymore.

It's not enough to just sit at restaurants and observe all the women who are there, and all the men who aren't. No, if the average man has lost his cards, then the average woman is quickly losing them as well.

If they want to find someone in the modern dating landscape, then they have to take action — or otherwise content themselves with the fact that they will die alone.

And if that sounds harsh, well, welcome to being a man.

Further reading:

Toxic masculinity is here to stay

Most women would be incels if they were men