On another note, I'm late to it, but @douthatnyt's "The Redistribution of Sex" column has more ideas in it than most liberal or center-left writers manage in a month (or longer). This is exactly what a column should do: nytimes.com/2018/05/02/opi…
The hate around @douthatnyt's piece is baffling, but it suggests a divide over the entire purpose of writing. And it's why claims that conservative writers gain from ideological affirmative action is odd: The right, today, is where some of the most important debates are happening
Houellebecq was probably the first modern writer to really write perceptively about sex from a perspective of a neoliberal market creating winners—and a lot of losers
On the "liberal humanist" option for incels. From 'The Elementary Particles'
On the "liberal humanist" option for incels. From 'The Elementary Particles'
Modern societies have made sex into something some people have a lot more of, and most have a lot less of—an "inequality" that doesn't get much attention. In pre-modern societies, the expectation was usually that most people would have sex with one person, and that that was okay
Even people who weren't "desirable" could count on social institutions—families, mosques, etc—to find someone for them to marry. It wasn't something you had to seek out on your own, so your sense of worth was not as closely tied to your "merit"
This is part of a bigger argument that modern liberal societies are "designed" for, well, liberals, as I wrote here: theatlantic.com/international/…. Liberals generally have more political, but particularly cultural, power, so they have strong incentives to resist alternatives
