Why have young men fallen out of love with romantic relationships?
Why are so many young men single?
Sex, numerous studies show, is going out of fashion. Young people aren’t shagging much any more, a phenomenon that has been widely blamed on technology and online porn. And it’s not just sexual activity that’s declining – young men in the US appear to have fallen out of love with romantic relationships. A recent Pew Research study has found that 63% of men under 30 describe themselves as single, compared with 34% of women in the same age bracket. Cue a lot of dramatic headlines about, as the Hill put it, the “larger breakdown in the social, romantic and sexual life of the American male”. I imagine the Hill is referring to the heterosexual American male here, but Pew also looked at people who identify as LGB and found 62% of LGB men report being single compared to 37% of LGB women.
Before we delve deeper into the sexual life of the American male, I’d just like to point out that the Pew Research study was actually conducted last summer but they republished the findings in a Valentine’s Day listicle. This caught the attention of someone at the Hill, who wrote an article headlined: “Most young men are single. Most young women are not.” A screenshot of that article then went viral because, well, those numbers don’t really make much sense, do they? Unlike China and India, where men outnumber women by 70 million, there are about the same number of young men as women in the US. Who are all the young women dating? Pete Davidson? West Elm Caleb?
Nobody seems entirely sure what the reason for the giant relationship gap is but the most popular theory is that young women are more likely to be dating older men. Another, rather overblown, theory is that the Gay Agenda is working and, considering one-fifth of Gen Z identifies as queer, all the young women are dating each other. Another issue potentially feeding into the data discrepancy is the fact that that there could be gendered differences in how people define a “committed relationship”. (The Pew definition of single is “those who are not married, living with a partner, or in a committed relationship”.)
While we may never solve the mystery behind the relationship gap, there’s been a lot of handwringing about these numbers, mainly from conservative circles who take it as evidence that feminism and the modern world (particularly porn) has emasculated young men. Seth Dillon, for example, the founder of the conservative satire site the Babylon Bee, tweeted: “Young women are dating each other or older men in record numbers. As a result, 60% of young men are single and lonely. It’s probably hard to overstate how serious this problem is.”
Is that really true though? I’m not denying that there’s a serious and worrying epidemic of loneliness among young American men, but you don’t need to be in a relationship to be happy. I think that rather than focusing on young men being single, the real problem is the fact that men don’t have friends. Only 21% of men, for example, said they received emotional support from a friend within the past week, compared to 41% of women, according to a 2021 survey. Why is that? Well, the Hill quotes Richard Reeves, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and the author of the book Of Boys and Men, who explains that “men are less naturally relational than women”.
That bizarre quote pretty much sums the whole issue up, doesn’t it? Men aren’t naturally stoic: they’re just taught from a young age that feel
ings and emotions are for girls. They’re taught to lock up their feelings. They’re taught not to put as much value in relationships as women. They’re taught that they’re “less naturally relational”. And then people sit around wondering why young men aren’t in relationships and are so lonely. It’s not porn that’s the problem, it’s patriarchy.
Is the word ‘placenta’ pornographic?
The popular AI image generator Midjourney seems to think so. MIT Technology Review has discovered that it bans a lot of words relating to the human reproductive system as prompts. Naughty words include: “urethra”, “cervix”, “hymen” and “sperm”. While some terms relate to the male reproductive system, the bans “skew predominantly female … demonstrat[ing] how the tendency for AI systems to sexualize women extends all the way to their internal organs.
A woman died every two minutes because of preventable pregnancy or childbirth-related issues in 2020
From 2016 to 2020, maternal mortality rates stagnated in a majority of countries according to a new World Health Organization report. However, they rose in 17 countries including much of Europe and Northern America.
Gen Z women expect to make $6,200 less than men after graduating
A new survey has found that there isn’t just a gender pay gap, there’s an expectation gap. Women expect to make less after graduating than men do, meaning they’re not as likely to ask for more money.
Good news for female founders in the UK
The number of UK companies started by women has more than doubled since 2018.
Lawyer argues fetus of jailed pregnant woman in Florida is being illegally detained
“The fetal personhood movement has certainly gained traction, moving from a fringe idea to codified laws across the country,” a spokesperson for Pregnancy Justice said in a statement. “And while their goal is to stop abortion and control people’s bodily autonomy, they’ve given little thought to how this impacts all facets of the law beyond abortion … There’s no telling where this will end: HOV lanes, taxes, worker’s comp, child custody/kidnapping cases, criminal law and on and on.”
Only 14% of Republican-voters think abortion should be totally illegal
A new report from the non-partisan Public Religion Research Institute has found that Americans have become more supportive of abortion rights. Notably, only 14% of Republicans want abortion completely banned, compared with 22% in 2010. That number is largely due to Republican women moderating their views on abortion. The study is a reminder that the people driving abortion bans in the US are an extremist minority and don’t represent popular opinion
An Alabama lawmaker wants to make having an abortion a homicide under state law
Ernie Yarbrough, a Republican who ran on a “medical freedom” platform has introduced a bill proposing murder charges for having an abortion. Bills like this have been proposed before and haven’t passed. It’s unlikely this will pass either but it’s a reminder of what the endgame for abortion extremists is: punishing and controlling women.
The week in potato-archy
Dawn Sagar, an Englishwoman, was happily munching crisps (or potato chips, if you’re American) at work when she discovered a heart-shaped crisp in the packet. Ooh, she thought, that’s nice! She sent a photo to her friends and then ate the crisp. As it turns out that was a very expensive (albeit tasty) mistake. Walkers, the crisp company, was running a competition that awarded £100,000 to anyone who finds the best crisp in the shape of a heart. At first I felt sorry for Sagar, whose saga was covered by the likes of the BBC, but having done extensive research into this very important issue I have discovered that heart-shaped crisps are actually pretty common and she may not have won anyway. Hopefully she can take heart from that.
the books “can continue to be enjoyed by all today”. How refreshingly candid. Substitute the word “enjoyed” with “purchased” (a process they’re presumably comfortable with) and we have the truth. There is nothing soft about making these changes at all – it is commercially ruthless. The recent announcement that the publishers will now keep the original versions in print as well is equally so: they’re frightened of the anger in the marketplace and are trying to placate all possible buyers.
Dahl’s publications are extremely lucrative. In 2021, his literary estate was bought by Netflix for £500m. So, despite the writer himself being more than three decades dead, his market share must not be allowed to diminish. Hence the major disadvantage that dead authors’ work previously suffered from – the fact that it dates – has been removed. It can all be rewritten. The huge plus of brand recognition that famous dead authors’ estates enjoy now has no compensatory downside. On the contrary, they can morph to suit the mores of any era – so much more accommodating to market forces than those pesky living authors with their obstructive artistic concerns.
It’s so empty and grasping. Ideas must be earnestly exploited to the full: remade, have sequels and prequels spun out of them, moulded to changing tastes. If you haven’t made all audiences absolutely sick of any intellectual property you control, you’re wasting money.
The saving grace here is that the current round of Dahl rewrites are tineared and dreadful. This attempted future-proofing may have ruined those books, like solar panels on a listed building. Perhaps some new stories will accidentally get a chance.
If you haven’t made all audiences absolutely sick of any intellectual property you control, you’re wasting money