Censorship and Echo Chambers: Below is a post I recently submitted to the Feminism-subreddit. It was taken down in less than 60 seconds. Title: What do feminists think about the power imbalance, in favor of women, in romance, i.e. the complex around love, sex etc., in the context of gender equality?

In quotation marks, below, is the originally submitted text (not a single word altered), which I specifically phrased in a way I thought would be acceptable in the Feminism-subreddit. For the most part, it's simply observations and common sense in the context of the question how feminists justify the exclusion of the arguably most important aspect of life (in the developed world at least) from the omnipresent discourse on gender equality. --> Less than a minute after submission, it was taken down with the note:

"Sorry, this post has been removed by the moderators of r/Feminism."

Obviously, at least one of their six rules can be seen as violated if one aims to look for reasons to censor this post, and that rule is probably (according to their thinking) that "promoting regressive agendas is not permitted". As usual, they'll most likely simply define the post as misogynistic (and thus regressive), just like with any other argument, regardless of whether it's rational, obviously true and facts-based, that opposes the feminist narrative (or in this case simply asks a long-overdue question).

I'd be interested in your opinions on the post itself, and also on the state of a debating culture in feminism (and other related areas) that in my opinion isn't one any more, and since a long time. Here is the post:

"(Disclaimer: The following concerns heterosexual individuals and like in the title, ‘romance’ refers to the complex around love, sex etc.)

Women are the choosers, just like females in general are the choosers in the animal kingdom, and biologically/evolutionarily, romance can be viewed as the purpose of life for both genders (if we’re excluding efforts to stay alive, i.e. procuring water, food, etc). And even though the power, the vast majority of women hold in this regard, declines considerably over a period of time (which points to the evolutionary value of fertility), women, on average, still have much more agency in romance throughout their lifetime than the majority of men have at any point in their lives. Note that there’s a small minority of men, probably somewhere in the range of 5-20%, where the situation is actually flipped, at least regarding relationships/marriage (still not regarding sex). Also noteworthy is that because of several factors, this highly sought-after minority of men is often erroneously equated to the situation of men, on average (e.g. because mostly men from this cohort are highly ‘visible’, both in real life and in fiction, the media etc).

Now, one might suggest that human civilization has long transcended the 'lowly' purposes of evolution, but looking e.g. at the virtual omnipresence of romance in literature, movies, songs etc., that's obviously not the case at all. No topic is as pervasive as romance is, in the lives of human beings (unless food and/or shelter are limiting, but that’s to the largest extent not the case in the developed world), be it overtly addressed or not. And that indicates that in this area, human beings haven’t changed all that much over tens of thousands of years, such that romance is still arguably the most important aspect of life, if not even the meaning of life.

But for several reasons the power imbalance, in favor of women, in romance is entirely excluded from the discourse on gender equality. One of these reasons is that people are too ashamed to talk about love and sex in a political context. But that obviously doesn’t diminish the value and the importance of this matter at all - actually the mentioned shame is, on the contrary, an indicator for the immense importance of romance (e.g. we’re not ashamed of irrelevant issues).

So my question here is how this elephant in the room keeps being unaddressed in discussions on gender equality, while feminism is about the latter. It’s quite obviously more important than even the right to vote. Actually, it would be an intriguing poll to conduct, to assess what fraction of the male population would hypothetically permanently waive their right to vote, in exchange for (hypothetically) getting the agency in romance that women, on average (and also at any age), enjoy."