This may be the dumbest topic I’ve ever written about. “Body count” discourse has been trending on Twitter, and sadly, it’s not about serial killer competitions because that reality show would get killer ratings. “Jason has been falling behind in the standings, but this weekend in a bravura performance that had audiances across America cheering in disbelief, he took out an entire family, four generations in one go, to rocket into second place! So how are you feeling about your chances now Jason?” “Well, pretty good, Sally, the Hendersons really helped me even the score, but I still need two more to pass Butcher Bob. Speaking of which, where will you be Friday night?” [They both laugh.]
I think some of this is part of millennial culture becoming more apparent in the public sphere, and not necessarily a right-wing/political thing (even if where we're seeing it is in right-wing X).
First I ever heard about "body counts" was in college circa 2006 where I was told that the appropriate number before marriage was 5. Any more, and you're a whore who no one will want to marry.
And, it was a young woman telling me this.*
*Reader, I do see how this could be construed a certain way... but it wasn't.
Either way, the emergence of this perspective in the early 2000s might be a reaction against the sexual revolution and the rise of internet pornography. It also reminds me that there was a brief moment in college when a friend tried to normalize calling women "sluts" because, as the logic went, if they self-identify as a "slut" it's more likely that they'll have sex with us. That didn't turn out too well for him.
In response to an Aella poll about "body count", I made this joke (https://twitter.com/james_jehiel/status/1651967656050737155): "I would want to know why the body count is that high. It would make a difference if they had been a soldier in an active combat theater vs them being a professional assassin."
I think the core problem is that men and women simply aren't forming relationships anymore, and the prevailing narrative doesn't help. I believe we're on track for a full *half* of child-bearing-age women being single and childless by 2030. Historically unprecedented. Also there's that graph that made the rounds recently, in which it was reported that male virginity 18-30 sat at 8% at 2008 and went all the way up to 27% in 2018. And this figure is likely a low estimate due to self-report. Extrapolate that out to today, and into the future, and things aren't looking good. Into this relationship void steps *the narrative*. The narrative focuses on the grrrlboss, maneater, corporate climber, who fools around with whoever she feels like and racks up bodies like it's going out of style... maybe she's an onlyfans ewhore on the side too... so even though you're right to point out that most women have <5 bodies, or 5-10, casual "empowering" sex is in the zeitgeist, leading to what I think are skewed perceptions. I also saw a breakdown recently that went into survey numbers, and while they pointed out that the ~0-5 and ~5-10 categories are where most people fall, the women with 50+ bodies category has been steadily rising consistently for awhile now. So that's playing into things.
My barometer when it comes to all this is... does she take sex seriously? A high body count is an indication of "no." Pearl, even though she's said some... uh, questionable stuff, has rightly pointed out that men are still expected to adhere to traditional roles, like protector and provider, while women are not (virgin, submissive, homemaker, family-over-career etc). I'm not saying we should go back to that per se, and re-enforce traditional roles for everyone, I'm saying it's an obvious and frustrating double standard.
So, that's my read as a young, single guy. Would be interested to hear your thoughts.
"the women with 50+ bodies category has been steadily rising consistently for awhile now"
If you click the link, you can see the numbers for men, and their numbers are much higher than for women. Whatever is going on, it's not a women are have lots of sex and men aren't. I think there IS a problem with less connection in general than in the past, but this is a problem for both men and women.
Speaking on taking sex seriously, the vast majority of women I know take sex seriously. Young people, including women, can be foolish about a lot of things, but on the not taking sex seriously front, I think men are worse than women.
It sounds to me like you're thinking about people too much as categories "women this, men that" and not as individuals. Don't' worry about giant trends (you can't solve them) and focus on finding something that works for you. Listening to people like Pearl can only lead you astray.
> "If you click the link, you can see the numbers for men, and their numbers are much higher than for women."
I suspect there's two things going on here: One, gay men, which drive the average much higher. The other thing I'd suspect is that the Pareto distribution is getting much steeper. With ~30-40% of young men being virgins nowadays, a higher average on the men's side of things would mean the top 5-10% of men are living like kings.
> "Speaking on taking sex seriously, the vast majority of women I know take sex seriously."
I agree, and this is where my point about he narrative becomes relevant. Say you're a guy in the bottom half of the distribution, getting little-to-no action, a culture that's saturated with promiscuity can skew your perceptions if you're not careful. To paraphrase another substacker (from memory, not exact)... "The narrative is that everyone else is having passionate, fulfilling sex. Except you."
> "Young people, including women, can be foolish about a lot of things, but on the not taking sex seriously front, I think men are worse than women."
A lot of, perhaps even the majority of, men have little to no options. So, sure, the men who have options probably don't take it all that seriously. But that's far and away from the majority, especially these days.
> "It sounds to me like you're thinking about people too much as categories "women this, men that" and not as individuals. Don't worry about giant trends (you can't solve them) and focus on finding something that works for you."
Well, yeah, I'm a single man seeking a single woman. With not a whole lot of options, finding something that works for me is much, much easier said than done.
> "Listening to people like Pearl can only lead you astray."
The thing about Pearl and her show, or the whatever podcast, or fresh & fit, and those sorts of spaces, is for all the (sometimes valid) criticism that's thrown their way, they're the only ones openly and candidly discussing the very real issues that face young people trying to date today.
My husband has had a much lengthier and more extensive sex life than I. Does it bother me? No. What makes me sad is that I was too scared to jump in the pool and never lived the true single life myself. But it was my choice and I love my husband and I’m in a happy marriage.
You won’t get to experience everything in life and whining that you didn’t get to experience something is really a you problem. Not a partner problem.
Nice work, Carl. I think the online body count discourse seems kind of like an enormous, markedly psychologically unhealthy group therapy session for men with sexual inadequacy issues. I know incels are a group whose online interactions are regarded as toxic, but I still pity them because of the disabling and miserable nature of their condition.
A lot of these critiques of the red pill/manosphere space (and there are many valid ones) seem to miss the bottom essential point: people in our society, in our time, are in relative terms unhappy in their long-term romantic relationships, they're not getting laid, they're not getting married, they're not having kids, and they perceive those facts as losses. The "incels" are just one particularly uncouth subset of the overall problem, but there are plenty of others. If you don't accept that this is true, then there's really no basis on which to engage the red pill/manosphere.
If you do accept that something is amiss in how as a society we're going about forming and maintaining long-term romantic relationships, then the next question is: why? The red pill/manosphere offers a set of answers, basically that feminism has ruined everything. I think that's the wrong answer, or at least an incomplete one, but then what's the right answer? Why are young people "failing to launch" in romance, and what if anything could be done to help them find love? I think it's a legitimate question that posts like these don't help answer.
Wow, am I ever getting old (truth) or maybe it's just that now-a-days, I'm old enough to self-shelter so that I'm not exposed to the daily fire hose of crap. I'm a boomer, that grew up through the sexual revolution, women's lib, Vietnam war, and hippie era. Since I was also raised in VERY fundamental protestant churches, I missed most of those events and only knew about them from the sidelines and the headlines. But then I grew up (turned 18) and left home and had me a time.
Thankfully without any help from social media!
But I do feel sorry that so many young people see sex as so transactional and unromantic and just plain not fun. That hurts my heart. Don't get me wrong, I'm completely in the camp of lust is a biological drive, not a basis for everlasting love, but I do believe in love and in the spontaneity of a little flirting and fun. But the way people approach sex now is horrifying and a huge turn off to me. Maybe it's me being old, but I don't think so. I think that when you strip all the joy out of it there's no point. If young people are feeling like they've being left out, maybe they should take your dating advice and try just being a fun person to be around.
If a woman is dating from 20-35 and only has sex within monogamous relationships, it still would be easy to accrue a “body count” over 30. One guy every six months is nothing.
I think some of this is part of millennial culture becoming more apparent in the public sphere, and not necessarily a right-wing/political thing (even if where we're seeing it is in right-wing X).
First I ever heard about "body counts" was in college circa 2006 where I was told that the appropriate number before marriage was 5. Any more, and you're a whore who no one will want to marry.
And, it was a young woman telling me this.*
*Reader, I do see how this could be construed a certain way... but it wasn't.
Either way, the emergence of this perspective in the early 2000s might be a reaction against the sexual revolution and the rise of internet pornography. It also reminds me that there was a brief moment in college when a friend tried to normalize calling women "sluts" because, as the logic went, if they self-identify as a "slut" it's more likely that they'll have sex with us. That didn't turn out too well for him.
Thank you for this article. I now know what bodycount means in a modern context, which has forestalled the following:
Them: what’s your bodycount
Me: umm...0 *checks exits nervously* but I’m prepared to take it to 1 if necessary *hard stare*
This scenario goes nowhere good from here.
I’m following nonsense so you don’t have to!
In response to an Aella poll about "body count", I made this joke (https://twitter.com/james_jehiel/status/1651967656050737155): "I would want to know why the body count is that high. It would make a difference if they had been a soldier in an active combat theater vs them being a professional assassin."
I think the core problem is that men and women simply aren't forming relationships anymore, and the prevailing narrative doesn't help. I believe we're on track for a full *half* of child-bearing-age women being single and childless by 2030. Historically unprecedented. Also there's that graph that made the rounds recently, in which it was reported that male virginity 18-30 sat at 8% at 2008 and went all the way up to 27% in 2018. And this figure is likely a low estimate due to self-report. Extrapolate that out to today, and into the future, and things aren't looking good. Into this relationship void steps *the narrative*. The narrative focuses on the grrrlboss, maneater, corporate climber, who fools around with whoever she feels like and racks up bodies like it's going out of style... maybe she's an onlyfans ewhore on the side too... so even though you're right to point out that most women have <5 bodies, or 5-10, casual "empowering" sex is in the zeitgeist, leading to what I think are skewed perceptions. I also saw a breakdown recently that went into survey numbers, and while they pointed out that the ~0-5 and ~5-10 categories are where most people fall, the women with 50+ bodies category has been steadily rising consistently for awhile now. So that's playing into things.
My barometer when it comes to all this is... does she take sex seriously? A high body count is an indication of "no." Pearl, even though she's said some... uh, questionable stuff, has rightly pointed out that men are still expected to adhere to traditional roles, like protector and provider, while women are not (virgin, submissive, homemaker, family-over-career etc). I'm not saying we should go back to that per se, and re-enforce traditional roles for everyone, I'm saying it's an obvious and frustrating double standard.
So, that's my read as a young, single guy. Would be interested to hear your thoughts.
"the women with 50+ bodies category has been steadily rising consistently for awhile now"
If you click the link, you can see the numbers for men, and their numbers are much higher than for women. Whatever is going on, it's not a women are have lots of sex and men aren't. I think there IS a problem with less connection in general than in the past, but this is a problem for both men and women.
Speaking on taking sex seriously, the vast majority of women I know take sex seriously. Young people, including women, can be foolish about a lot of things, but on the not taking sex seriously front, I think men are worse than women.
It sounds to me like you're thinking about people too much as categories "women this, men that" and not as individuals. Don't' worry about giant trends (you can't solve them) and focus on finding something that works for you. Listening to people like Pearl can only lead you astray.
> "If you click the link, you can see the numbers for men, and their numbers are much higher than for women."
I suspect there's two things going on here: One, gay men, which drive the average much higher. The other thing I'd suspect is that the Pareto distribution is getting much steeper. With ~30-40% of young men being virgins nowadays, a higher average on the men's side of things would mean the top 5-10% of men are living like kings.
> "Speaking on taking sex seriously, the vast majority of women I know take sex seriously."
I agree, and this is where my point about he narrative becomes relevant. Say you're a guy in the bottom half of the distribution, getting little-to-no action, a culture that's saturated with promiscuity can skew your perceptions if you're not careful. To paraphrase another substacker (from memory, not exact)... "The narrative is that everyone else is having passionate, fulfilling sex. Except you."
> "Young people, including women, can be foolish about a lot of things, but on the not taking sex seriously front, I think men are worse than women."
A lot of, perhaps even the majority of, men have little to no options. So, sure, the men who have options probably don't take it all that seriously. But that's far and away from the majority, especially these days.
> "It sounds to me like you're thinking about people too much as categories "women this, men that" and not as individuals. Don't worry about giant trends (you can't solve them) and focus on finding something that works for you."
Well, yeah, I'm a single man seeking a single woman. With not a whole lot of options, finding something that works for me is much, much easier said than done.
> "Listening to people like Pearl can only lead you astray."
The thing about Pearl and her show, or the whatever podcast, or fresh & fit, and those sorts of spaces, is for all the (sometimes valid) criticism that's thrown their way, they're the only ones openly and candidly discussing the very real issues that face young people trying to date today.
My husband has had a much lengthier and more extensive sex life than I. Does it bother me? No. What makes me sad is that I was too scared to jump in the pool and never lived the true single life myself. But it was my choice and I love my husband and I’m in a happy marriage.
You won’t get to experience everything in life and whining that you didn’t get to experience something is really a you problem. Not a partner problem.
Nice work, Carl. I think the online body count discourse seems kind of like an enormous, markedly psychologically unhealthy group therapy session for men with sexual inadequacy issues. I know incels are a group whose online interactions are regarded as toxic, but I still pity them because of the disabling and miserable nature of their condition.
A lot of these critiques of the red pill/manosphere space (and there are many valid ones) seem to miss the bottom essential point: people in our society, in our time, are in relative terms unhappy in their long-term romantic relationships, they're not getting laid, they're not getting married, they're not having kids, and they perceive those facts as losses. The "incels" are just one particularly uncouth subset of the overall problem, but there are plenty of others. If you don't accept that this is true, then there's really no basis on which to engage the red pill/manosphere.
If you do accept that something is amiss in how as a society we're going about forming and maintaining long-term romantic relationships, then the next question is: why? The red pill/manosphere offers a set of answers, basically that feminism has ruined everything. I think that's the wrong answer, or at least an incomplete one, but then what's the right answer? Why are young people "failing to launch" in romance, and what if anything could be done to help them find love? I think it's a legitimate question that posts like these don't help answer.
Wow, am I ever getting old (truth) or maybe it's just that now-a-days, I'm old enough to self-shelter so that I'm not exposed to the daily fire hose of crap. I'm a boomer, that grew up through the sexual revolution, women's lib, Vietnam war, and hippie era. Since I was also raised in VERY fundamental protestant churches, I missed most of those events and only knew about them from the sidelines and the headlines. But then I grew up (turned 18) and left home and had me a time.
Thankfully without any help from social media!
But I do feel sorry that so many young people see sex as so transactional and unromantic and just plain not fun. That hurts my heart. Don't get me wrong, I'm completely in the camp of lust is a biological drive, not a basis for everlasting love, but I do believe in love and in the spontaneity of a little flirting and fun. But the way people approach sex now is horrifying and a huge turn off to me. Maybe it's me being old, but I don't think so. I think that when you strip all the joy out of it there's no point. If young people are feeling like they've being left out, maybe they should take your dating advice and try just being a fun person to be around.
If a woman is dating from 20-35 and only has sex within monogamous relationships, it still would be easy to accrue a “body count” over 30. One guy every six months is nothing.