So Gen-Z incel infuencer brought the male loneliness epidemic concept, I understand that for many people loneliness isn’t a blessing, and know that it feel better to sleep in the arm of someone loving you than alone.

However, if I remember my English class, single women were mostly banned from immigrating to the US, and men were the one travelling to the far-west, so I expect a pretty bad gender-ratio, with many single men How was it managed at the time ? Did it led to societal scale problem ?

  • mitram@lemmy.pt
    47·
    1 month ago

    The male loneliness epidemic isn’t only about the lack of romantic relationships.

    It’s about a generalized lack of connection between men and other people, a lack of community where they can find support when times get tough and where they can find meaning by helping others.

    I’m not too savy on the social context in the far west, but I’d wager that although there was a lack of women the relationships between men would be very strong. Since the environment is hostile to human presence (lack of water, infrastructure, no large settlement or very far apart at least in the beginning) men would need to rely on others for help very often.

    • Nasan@sopuli.xyz
      3·
      1 month ago

      The stories of early New Orleans are a good example of this. Men were lonely and wanted wives. They wrote letters to the church back home. The church provided prostitutes and other women of ill repute by the boat load.

        • Nasan@sopuli.xyz
          2·
          1 month ago

          I may have mixed up the church and the French government. Or the local tour guides’ accounts may conflict with what I’m finding online.

  • dustyData@lemmy.worldEnglish
    18·
    1 month ago

    Never conflate loneliness with not getting laid. Thereby lies the first in a long streak of mistakes.

  • IWW4@lemmy.zip
    18·
    1 month ago

    So i had to look up what Far-West era was. It is 1800-1910. Basicallly when the Us was conquering the continent from the east coast to the west coast.

    Since the Male Lonliness epidemic is nothing but a construct of incel social media, the incels of that era did the same thing that incels do now. They tweeted about it.

  • ryathal@sh.itjust.works
    13·
    1 month ago

    The men doing the actual expedition had bigger problems than getting their dick wet, many of them simply died for various reasons. Civilization also wasn’t that far behind them, once you had a claim secured it was about getting a family.

  • loppy@fedia.io
    11·
    1 month ago

    I understand that for many people loneliness isn’t a blessing

    I think there is a misunderstanding about the word “loneliness” here (which I used to share). I was skimming an academic article about this some time ago, and was very surprised when they gave a definition of loneliness that is apparently standard in academia: something like “your emotional needs are not met by the people around you/in your life”. It has nothing at all to do with whether or not or how many people are present in your life, and whether or not you like the company of other people. By this definition, you are not lonely, and furthermore loneliness is definitionally bad and cannot be a “blessing”.

    Maybe I just personally never had a proper definition of “loneliness” in my head to begin with, but I think this rather technical usage of the word “lonely” is an extreme disconnect between researchers/academic writing and how the general populace interprets the word.

    • dustyData@lemmy.worldEnglish
      4·
      1 month ago

      extreme disconnect between researchers/academic writing and how the general populace interprets the word

      This is the bane of sciences communication. No, the way I’m using the word is not the same you use and therefore your interpretation of my research is wrong. Prescriptive arguments about semantics are irrelevant and don’t fix the situation in the slightest, if anything they muddy the waters and worsen the quality of the discussion.