"Men aren't entitled to getting laid!" is a lazy, intellectually dishonest red herring intended to derail discussion. The root of the difficulties young men face in dating is finding fulfilling romantic companionship, not getting laid.

If you've been on reddit or the internet in general for longer than 2 minutes, you've probably noticed that any time the topic of male loneliness, difficulty in dating, mental health and navigating modern day society come up, a lot of people immediately twist the discussion and say things like "Men aren't entitled to getting laid!" or "Oh, your problem is you can't get laid by hot stacies?"

This is textbook non-sequitur. Obviously men aren't entitled to that. Who out there, outside of a small group of people on obscure parts of the internet, is actually arguing that these struggling young men are entitled to getting laid when they talk about issues young men are facing? Most of the time that phrase is used, it is a lazy mischaracterization of someone's argument intended to shut down any discussion. Demonizing men for the violent actions of an astronomically small number of lunatics is another common way people derail these sorts of discussions. Ditto for women more or less arguing that all of this is due to average men bringing far less to the table than the average women (spoiler alert: neither is bringing much to the table, only difference is that women rate 80% of men as below average attractiveness)

Saying "men aren't entitled to getting laid" anytime a guy talks about these topics is like me telling a woman who is expressing frustration that men want sex with her but she's having trouble finding someone who is looking for a serious relationship, that "women aren't entitled to commitment!" That's a pedantic, irrelevant response that has absolutely nothing to do with she said, and was obviously not what she was implying.

If you think about the issue with any nuance, it's not even about getting sex. Escorts exist. If it was just about getting sex, why wouldn't all these men just go see an escort? The stigma might be a deterrent for some, but the answer is simple: people generally want to be desired, and to have a genuine connection with someone. The root of male loneliness is lack of romantic companionship. Being genuinely desired by someone, sharing an emotional connection, intimacy (which includes non-sexual things like cuddling) ect... It stands to reason, that if nearly a third of men aren't having sex (and that's sex at least once within the year of the survey, undoubtedly a lesser percentage of men are having it regularly) then virtually all of those men aren't experiencing any of that. And the impact of that permeates into things like mental health, education/career and becoming a well-adjusted, productive member of society. That is the root of the issue. There is a strong societal pressure to not be a guy that doesn't get laid because men are judged based on their success with women, but I think that often when men start to get casual sex consistently, they realize that intimacy with someone you have an emotional connection with is infinitely better. Some men will disagree, but the point I'm trying to get across is that the crux of challenges young men are facing center around lack of romantic companionship and the impact that lack of fulfillment in that regard has on other aspects of their life, not sex. Although they are obviously intertwined to an extent.

As an aside, on the topic of sex, men inherently have significantly higher libido on average because androgens are the primary (but not only) driving force behind libido (this is why any FTM trans man or a woman on PEDs experiences their libido sky rocketing). This disparity is basically the driving force behind the entire existence of any sort of nsfw content. So it's a bit bizarre for women to diminish how important sex should be to men when they generally can't relate to male libido. Here's a post with a link to a meta analysis with 150 studies assessing male and female libido.

There seems to be this debate as to how integral love and romance actually are to a person's experience; it's perfectly normal for the pursuit of love and romance to be a significant component to a person's happiness. It's true that women tend to have better social support structures than men, but I don't subscribe to the notion that most people are built to grow old alone. The vast majority of people want romantic love and companionship. Romance, friendships, and family all play different roles. A common saying i've heard is that dating for men is like trying to find water in the desert, which illustrates exactly why you seldom hear men downplay the importance of intimacy and companionship, while women do so with regularity.

The go-to, worst insult women use against men, is a term that implies that a man doesn't have sex. The same women who deem not having sex for a man to be the single worst insult they can come up with, will simultaneously diminish how important sex, romance, and companionship should be to men. Think about that for a second.

And even among the men who do get laid, more and more of them are starting to feel like dating still isn't worth the effort. Think about it this way: dating for most guys is like sifting through jobs with an entry level hourly wage that require a master's degree, to find a job that you're genuinely interested in. That is why I specified with the term fulfilling in my title. Men are expected to initiate interactions, plan dates, pay for dates, decide when to escalate things physically appropriately, take on all the burden of rejection ect... contrary to popular belief there is more to attracting girls than taking showers. The emergence of OLD and social media have caused a lot of women to conflate the interest they get from men who want to have sex as their relationship value, and subsequently feel that they don't need to improve to attract someone that meets their standards. Disagree if you want, but this is precisely what Kevin Samuels made a career out of. And yeah, a lot of men are wasting time on porn, video games, weed ect... as distractions instead of striving to be the best version of themselves. Complacency and laziness are becoming normalized, and the dating pool is collectively getting worse for everyone. And no, the overweight boomer you saw at walmart with his wife does not mean dating is perfectly fine and dandy.

My intention with this post is not to garner empathy, as empathy accomplishes very little and it's well established that society doesn't really care about men's issues, which is precisely why people spread the kind of dishonest rhetoric I described. They don't want anyone talking about it, even though it's very obvious that it's a topic that a lot of people resonate with. My intention is to point out that the arguments I described in the first paragraph are lazy, intellectually dishonest, and have very little to do with what men are actually talking about. Unfortunately, discussion about issues young men are facing often virtually always devolves into ad hominem attacks and bad faith misrepresentation of arguments.

Edit: To put it concisely, my argument is a) men are not arguing they are entitled to sex b) though men may want sex, it's not the driving force behind their loneliness and (casual sex) wont necessarily fix it.

Edit: This post generated a lot of great discussion, have some irl obligations atm but if you posted and I haven't replied i'll get back to you in a bit.