I'm doing research on college sex imbalance, and came across this New York Times article.

The overall tone of this article is profoundly biased and one-sided. It is wholly based on the implicit presumption that women fundamentally lack agency and are not responsible for their dating problems. Instead, either circumstances or (more insidiously) men are blamed for those problems.

A glaring example is in this key quote early in the article, presenting the main arguments that will unfold:

Jayne Dallas, a senior studying advertising who was seated across the table, grumbled that the population of male undergraduates was even smaller when you looked at it as a dating pool. “Out of that 40 percent, there are maybe 20 percent that we would consider, and out of those 20, 10 have girlfriends, so all the girls are fighting over that other 10 percent,” she said.

Needless to say, this puts guys in a position to play the field, and tends to mean that even the ones willing to make a commitment come with storied romantic histories.

The jawdropping fact is that nobody ever refers to the glaring fact that the speaker casually rules out 50% of the men on campus as being unworthy of any consideration:

Out of that 40 percent, there are maybe 20 percent that we would consider

Just like that, 50% of the men are ruled unfit for mating. Yet in all the extensive discussion that ensues, nobody brings up that crucial, overwhelming factor. Not even once. Instead the article goes in great detail into how bad those ratios are and (especially) how evil are those men who "play the field" - that is, have different sexual goals than the women.

The obvious fact is that by ruling out half the men, women create those dating problems. The ratio doesn't help, but ruling out 50% of their male students is in fact a much greater problem. Consider the objective statistics: the 60-40 ratio means a third of the women won't be able to pair with classmates. Now consider the ratio was exactly equal: 50-50. However, women would still refuse to even "consider" half the men. That means those 50% women would be chasing the top 25% men, resulting in half the women unable to pair up. A far worse problem.

Of course, the women are ruling out the bottom 50% men in a situation that is already stacked against them. Which means their standards are considerably lowered. If the ratio to begin with was about equal, feminine standards would be closer to the familiar level of ruling out the bottom 80% as "unworthy", and these women would all end up chasing the top 20% of men.

Interesting to note how in both cases, women end up chasing a group of men who have 5-6 the number of women chasing them. Seems like regardless of sex ratio, women end up "considering" about the same relative proportion of men: top 20% or so.

Of course, these lucky few men are heavily criticized for pursuing their own dating goals that are incompatible with women's. This different choice is presented as objective bad, disruptive, the root of all evil, and certainly the root of all problems.

Nobody ever mentions how women who ostensibly want a relationship casually rule out half the available partners who aren't attractive enough.

This glaring omission is incredibly manipulative, and typical of this article, and many others I've read. Women's actions and decisions are never, ever, questioned or judged. Even when they are dramatic and profoundly relevant, like tossing out half the dating pool, in an article complaining about their lack of dating options.

Instead, men's behavior is endlessly picked apart, analyzed, criticized, and vilified. Even when all the do is respond to female behavior. The article repeatedly hammers on the top 10% of college men "taking advantage" of the fact they are being chased by x5-6 times the number of women. There is zero discussion of feminine hypergamy, despite it being obviously the decisive factor in this situation.

There are similar omissions in other articles I'm reading, too numerous to list. One recent example: through the middle part of the last century, more men attended college than women. Feminist activist took it up as a major cause. They generated volumes of salient discussion, until the issue was taken very seriously at a national level, and was championed as a major social and cultural problem by both men and women. Many social, economic, and legal instruments were created to address the issue, which benefited women. Female college enrollment swelled steadily. During the 1980s, it matched and surpassed male enrollment.

Nowadays, we have the exact opposite situation: female enrollment rapidly approaches 140% of male enrollment. This is the exact inverse of the ratio during the 1970s, when feminists launched their successful campaign to see and address this imbalance as a major social problem.

Yet somehow, not a single major social institution considers the current imbalance as a problem at all!

The 1970s weren't that long ago, so experts are asked occasionally if the current imbalance - heavily favoring women - is a problem at all. They all reply in the negative. This is especially shocking when the "experts" happen to be feminist political leaders who launched and championed the huge successful campaign to correct the imbalance when it favored men. They are all emphatic that men are the "strong, privileged majority" and therefore it is wrong to even consider assisting them in any way.

The fact that the current ratio is about 62-38 in favor of women apparently does not change the fact that men are the "majority" according to some counterfactual agenda.

In blatant terms: imbalance that favors men is evil, a fundamental social problem that must be, and has been, attacked by all available tools - financial, cultural, and legislative. Imbalance that favors women is benign, desirable, at most a partial compensation for their inherent status as eternally victimized minority. The empiric facts that they are no longer a minority, but instead a large majority of college attendees, does not disrupt this agenda.

Despite the obvious fact that the situation today is mirror image of what it was in 1970s, with the sexes reversed, all "experts" questioned vehemently rejected any notion of equivalence. In fact, the very question of whether men should be helped, when they suffer from the exact same imbalance that plagued women, is treated as toxic and illegitimate. Quite similar to the way discussion and even blatant propaganda that favors and promotes women is expressly encouraged on this website, but any discussion that favors men is all but shunned and quarantined.