While writing Can You Spell Anomie Without AI, I came across a recent opinion piece in The Atlantic, Sex Without Women by Caitlin Flanagan. Most of this post was ripped from that post. I figure it is better off on its own.
Having re-read Flanagan’s piece, I remain unimpressed by it. It is yet more fearmongering about straight men choosing pornography (or AI companions like Replika, or sex bots) over doing the hard thing and making the effort to court women. Yes, there are men like that. However, there are also women who are content with their vibrators.
Even if I did not already hold Ms. Flanagan in contempt because she is yet another conservative who seems to think that her being a woman gives her standing to tell boys or men who aren’t her sons how to perform masculinity, I think fearmongering by woman about pornography is as ridiculous as men’s fearmongering about sex toys for women.
I can at least understand and sympathize with the arguments against pornography by feminists like Andrea Dworkin, who argue that it is inherently exploitative of women. I don’t necessarily agree with it, but I won’t dismiss it out of hand. But most straight men coming to prefer pornography (or AI companion apps) over real, live women?
Bullshit. Arrant bullshit.
I might not have had access to what conservatives typically think of as hardcore pornography when I was fourteen, but I had no lack of inspiration for those late nights when sleep won’t come. Let’s just say that I thought Harold Lauder in Stephen King’s The Stand had it made, even if he didn’t get to do that one particular thing with Nadine Cross. Nor did I stop enjoying lewd fiction once I got my own apartment in 2000, with my own TV and DVD player, and could buy pornography while visiting New York City. After all, Literotica had been online since the 1990s, and worked just fine on 56K dialup.
However, at no point did I see pornography as a substitute for a relationship. Nor was I content to be my own lover. I certainly wouldn’t choose pornography over my wife of twenty years. Not today as we are. Not if we were both eighteen again.
I prefer my wife over pornography or an AI “companion” because I enjoy her company. What does that mean? I honestly enjoy hearing her voice, especially the lingering lilt of her Australian accent. I love it when she grabs my ass in public, and then acts the innocent when I turn to her — as if the groping was entirely my imagination. I enjoy waking up beside her and having her melt into my arms as I turn to her and draw her into my arms. I enjoy having her snuggle up against me, making me the little spoon, when she joins me in bed at night. I enjoy her cooking. I enjoy talking to her about media we consume together. I am proud when I can do things for her.
Though we can’t have the sort of sex life we used to have before she had her ovaries removed, what remains to us is still better than just watching a porno while I jerk off. I crave her kiss. I love her hands on me. I love the scent of her hair as I bury my face in it. The soft warmth of her body against mine makes me feel warm and safe. The way she’ll gently bite me between kisses is spice to go with the sugar. When she grabs hold of me as she falls apart beside me and finds her release, I am glad to be there for her. It always feels better when she encourages me to come undone while she watches.
I can’t get any of that from pornography. No man can. There’s no substitute for loving touch in a mutually supportive and respectful relationship. It’s the same reason I’m not afraid that my wife will discard me in favor of her vibrator. I am confident that she enjoys my company in and out of bed. Besides, her vibrator isn’t going to work full-time and then do most of the housework.
And if young men aren’t willing to do the work necessarily to enter such relationships, we can’t just blame pornography or AI. That’s a case of asking the wrong questions. For one thing, a lot of young women choose to remain single and celibate because they value their solitude, their freedom, and their peace over the companionship of available men.
How do we know that young men aren’t making similar decisions. One thing I learned the hard way was that having a woman in my life doesn’t automatically make my life better. If she’s the wrong woman, she just makes my life more complicated.
Admittedly, having Catherine in my life has also made my life more complicated. The difference is that she’s worth it to me.
However, if young men have no reason to believe that they can find a woman whose presence can improve their lives — let alone believe that their presence in a woman’s life can improve it — is it any wonder that young men might make do with pornography or Replika?
An AI ‘girlfriend’ might never say “no”, but you can’t hurt her, either. Such an artificial companion might pretend to have feelings, but pretense is all it is given the current state of the art. Despite my general cynicism and misanthropy, I refuse to believe that most young men who haven’t been irredeemably brainwashed by the likes of Andrew Tate actually hate women or want to hurt them. They may simply think that the best way to avoid hurting women is to leave them alone, and self-soothe when their sexual urges become a distraction they can no longer ignore.
I don’t have a solution for this, of course. I’m not qualified to formulate one, let alone pretend to have done so. I’m not a god, let alone a god in a hoodie. I will nonetheless venture some opinions.
I think the fundamental problem is that a lot of boys and young men grow up thinking they have nothing of value to offer girls and young women their age, let alone their community or society. No, this is not where I suggest that a “national service” program is the answer. If such a thing existed when I was eighteen, I’d like to think that I would have chosen a jail term over compliance with such fascist bullshit because I am not state property and neither are any of you.
However, I have some idea of what school has become since I graduated from high school. The school system in which I grew up gave all kids about a year of shop classes or home economics in seventh grade. Otherwise, if you were on the “college track” you got fuck-all in the way of practical education. I at least had access to foreign language classes, art classes, and music classes — in addition, I participated in the school’s orchestra, choir, and even played bass guitar (poorly) in the jazz band.
But did kids born after 2000 have the sort of schooling I did? I was taught to read using phonics. (Actually, I taught myself to read before kindergarten, but the teachers used phonics when I was doing time in K-12 schooling.) But phonics went out of fashion for a while, as told in the “Sold a Story” podcast. As a result, Johnny never learned to read well, if he learned to read at all. If Johnny can’t read, Johnny sure as hell can’t write. So how is he going to find the words to charm a woman his age and earn her interest, let alone her love?
It gets worse, though, as I understand it. Arts and music education are nowadays seen as frivoloties by the politicians and bureaucrats who presume to dictate to teachers. I doubt kids these days are taking many shop or home economics classes. Gym class is probably worse than useless, just as it had been in my childhood. Schooling nowadays seems to be about nothing if not preparation for standarized tests. As if that matters once you leave school!
I would say that somebody ought to teach kids to dance, but nobody taught me to dance as a young man. Nor was there anywhere for me to go dancing. The closest thing I knew of was the mosh pit at a heavy metal concert, but that’s not somewhere you’d want to bring a date — and I didn’t trust myself not to lash out and deck somebody for reasons beyond the scope of this ramble.
Why dancing? I see it as an opportunity for men and women to be physically close without any expectation of sex. It’s a chance to look into somebody’s eyes and talk to them. It’s a chance to touch and be touched, but within safe boundaries.
It’s also an opportunity for men to learn and practice restraint. Even if it’s a slow dance, and no matter how aroused you might be around a particular partner, humping her like a dog isn’t part of the dance.
Of course, I don’t see that happening in my lifetime. Nowadays, young people are dancing with themselves, alone in the room as they record their moves for TikTok. And, as I said: I don’t have workable solutions. Just opinions.
What I do know is that there is no standard protocol for courtship or dating in the US. It seemed that there no such thing when I was a young man in the 1990s — at least none that I could discern — but the situation does not appear to have improved. What is the answer? Going back to old protocols and old gender roles won’t work. We are not the same sort of people we were in the 1950s, and that so-called ‘golden age’ was only such for a privileged few.
The only way out of this mess is forward, until we come out the other side and find a new way. Know this, however: The new way that young people find for themselves will eventually become a stodgy and stifling tradition in its turn. Every generation needs its own revolution, an opportunity to clear out the deadwood of dead people’s social mores so that the living can create their own.
Even if it seems to be driven by the AI bubble this time around, the anomie of which I previously wrote is a periodic necessity. When the gods die and the old religions become empty rituals, there must be an interregnum before people can remake their society in their own image. The young must wrest their world from the grasp of the old and remake it to suit them. That this has not already happened — because the post-WWII Baby Boom generation as a group refuses to let go of their wealth and power — has created a profound imbalance that must soon be rectified.