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Vladimir_M comments on Unknown knowns: Why did you choose to be monogamous? - Less Wrong
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Konkvistador:
That's a good way of putting it -- and it leads us to the fascinating question of why people who express great concern about inequalities in material wealth under economic laissez-faire almost invariably don't show any concern for the even more extreme inequalities in matters of love and sex that inevitably arise under sexual laissez-faire. I think a correct answer to this question would open the way for a tremendous amount of insight about the modern society, and human nature in general.
Michel Houellebecq has an interesting paragraph about this issue in his novel Whatever:
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I have a notion that political ideologies are apt to include ideas which are inconsistent with each other, but got bundled together for historical reasons.
That's certainly true. However, in such cases, one can typically find people who have a greater inclination towards systematization and consistency, and whose overall positions will have clear origins in a particular ideology, but differ from the orthodox positions of that ideology insofar as they'll have these inconsistencies straightened out somehow. (This will usually not be accepted favorably by their co-ideologists, of course, and will result in their marginalization.)
To take one example, in the historical development of today's mainstream ideologies, environmentalism got bundled up with leftism pretty much by sheer historical accident. (If you doubt it, consider that an example of a prominent environmentalist from a century ago was Madison Grant.) Thus, there are important points of friction between environmentalism and various leftist ideas that are highly correlated with it today -- and although the inconsistencies are usually passed over in silence or answered with implausible rationalizations, one can find people who have pointed them out and ultimately ditched one or the other. (See e.g. this story for one glaring example.)
The issue of economic vs. sexual inequality, however, is one of those cases where the seeming inconsistency is, to the best of my knowledge, without any significant exceptions. This suggests that rather than being bundled up due to historical accident, these positions both stem from some shared underlying motivation. Robin Hanson has written some preliminary speculations on this question, but I think he has only scratched the surface.
This is a poor comparison. Individual units of money are interchangeable and useful only as means to acquire some desirable end, whereas individual sexual encounters are unique, have many different kinds of value, and are desirable ends in and of themselves. (As a side note, excluding love from any discussion of monogamy and its alternatives is already a substantial deviation from reality; a cursory mention is not sufficient.)
Inequalities of material wealth have killed many millions of people and will kill many millions more. Inequalities in matters of love and sex have not.
Governments can redistribute wealth (via taxation) without causing great suffering to any one person. Redistributing sex would require institutional rape on a massive scale.
Modern society is generally opposed to rape. This should not be a striking or insightful conclusion.
This is just a failure of imagination! There are all sorts of ways a government could redistribute sex, should it so choose:
Economic incentives: pay or give tax breaks to people who have sex with the sex-poor. (If you're worried about economic coercion, you can limit the payment to those above the poverty level, or create more welfare programs so no one has to depend on sex to meet a certain living condition.) Penalize or charge extra for the sex-rich.
Social and moral incentives: create a publicity campaign through advertisements and mass media to try to change people's views on sex and attraction.
Leveling out attraction levels: teaching social and flirting skills to the sex-poor and providing them with plastic surgery, personal trainers, or other cosmetic resources. Alternatively, lower everyone to the same level, as in the Kurt Vonnegut story Harrison Bergeron.
Changing men and women's sex drives and sexual selectivity with neurosurgery, hormonal treatment, or childhood conditioning.
Any or all of these might work, though your last suggestion seems to me to be even worse than wide-scale institutionalized rape. And the Handicapper-General, well, I think that's the worst of all possible worlds; extinction would be better.
But criticism is easy and having ideas is hard, and I don't think that you're taking a bad approach.
Oh, I'm not suggesting that these are good options or that a government should do them: some of them would require a near-totalitarian state to enforce. The easiest and least controversial is probably to teach more social skills and flirting in schools.
But I'm not seeing why the last suggestion is worse than wide-scale institutionalized rape: if we gave young children hormone treatment along with childhood vaccines, and the end result was to balance out levels of sexual selectivity, why is that bad? (I'm not sure this is possible exactly, but there is some evidence that stimulant drugs and changing testosterone levels, for instance, can affect sex drive and selectivity.)
On the other hand most governments go to some lengths to prevent your first option from arising naturally by criminalizing prostitution. Society doesn't merely not engage in redistribution of sex, it actively campaigns against it. It is interesting to consider why this might be.
Deliberately and permanently altering someone else's mind to achieve your own ends without their informed consent may not necessarily be evil, but I would never want any human being to be able to do such a thing (as we currently are as a species).
Just in case I was unclear on this matter, I am not arguing in favor of any particular view on these issues at the present moment -- I merely wish to point out that there seems to be a discrepancy here that calls for explanation, and that my hunch is that a correct explanation would open a whole gold mine of insight.
That said, I don't think your replies to these points are at all satisfactory. In particular:
That is all true, however, there is still the undeniable fact that people differ greatly in their attractiveness, that these differences are to a large degree involuntary, and that those blessed with higher attractiveness are offered a great deal of choice and opportunity to achieve these desirable ends in their lives. Whereas those on the bottom are denied virtually any such opportunity, and a large class of not very attractive folks are outcompeted by those in the upper echelons and are thus left with only meager choice and opportunity.
Therefore, even considering all the differences relative to inequalities in material wealth, I don't think a serious case could be made that harsh inequalities don't exist in this regard too.
However, tremendous amounts of concern about inequalities in material wealth are voiced even in rich societies where even the very poorest people haven't been in danger of starvation for several generations. It is clear that those concerned about material inequality in modern developed countries object to it as something that is unjust as a matter of principle, or perhaps because they fear that it might cause social instability. (But even in the latter case, surely it not outright absurd to ask similar questions about the possible social consequences of vast inequalities on the sexual market?)
Nobody was mentioning any such idea. What was mentioned was merely the plausible-sounding hypothesis that in a society with strong monogamous norms, outcomes will be more egalitarian in comparison with a society of sexual laissez-faire, where the immense differences in people's attractiveness give them vastly unequal opportunities, and those less attractive arguably get a worse deal than under stronger monogamous norms.
Moreover, for an even more extreme test of our intuitions, we can also take an even broader cross-cultural view of things and observe cultures that practice arranged marriage. I have no close familiarity with any such societies, so fairly speaking, I can only suspend judgment, but I certainly don't see any reason to condemn them harshly outright. (David Friedman relates an interesting anecdote here -- I definitely recommend it as an interesting debiasing story.)
As regards Friedman's anecdote, I have no (ethical) objection to arranged marriage, provided both of the people involved are freely choosing to enter into it and are old enough to understand the consequences of doing so. But this is often not the case with arranged marriages, and so I do object to those specific instances, of which there are many. Happiness is important, but so is choice, even when that choice is to deliberately relinquish some other choice.
Of course harsh inequalities exist, and I have not claimed otherwise. Some people have much more sexual and romantic success than others, and this does seem quite unjust. But the reason that inequalities of romantic and sexual opportunity go unquestioned is not due to a failure to perceive those inequalities. Rather, it's because there is no (ethical) way to systematically reduce them.
Whether or not monogamous societies are more egalitarian than sexually laissez-faire ones, coercing one into the other would require a reduction of basic freedoms that I find unacceptable.
Furthermore, I think that the idea of "sexual laissez-faire" that you are discussing here is something of a non-sequitur. No one has suggested that we adopt anything of the sort as a cultural norm; I should note that polyamorous standards include levels of honesty, communication, and egalitarianism that are not at all compatible with any kind of "free market." You also seem to be operating under the assumption (and I apologize if I'm reading too much into your comments) that such a free market would necessarily involve successful (or possibly "high-status") men attracting the vast majority of the pool of available women, leaving few options for less successful/attractive men, which ignores the ability of women to form multiple attachments themselves, as well as relationships in which all partners have multiple attachments, which more closely resembles the polyamorous ideal.
WrongBot:
What about reductions of freedom that don't stem from any legal compulsion or violent threats, but merely from social norms enforced via status and reputation (and, obviously, their consequences on people's future willingness to maintain and establish various sorts of private relations with you)? Do you believe that these are also unacceptable?
If the answer is yes, then you must perceive any realistic human society, including the one you live in, as a hell of intolerable suffocating constraints. (Honestly, I would lie if I said that I don't feel a certain sympathy with this perspective -- but people are often biased in that they make a big deal only out of certain constraints that bother them, while completely overlooking other even more severe ones that they're OK with.)
That assumption is, in my opinion, indeed correct, and consistent with what we observe in reality. But I don't see why you think that I was talking exclusively about men. Less attractive women also get a bad deal in a society where attractiveness is an important status marker, which I see as inevitable under sexual laissez-faire. Moreover, those women who would like to form permanent monogamous relationships, especially if they're less than stunningly attractive, are faced with much worse prospects in a situation where any man they attach themselves to could be at any moment tempted to defect and try his luck playing the field a bit more before settling down. (Again, note that I'm not contrasting this with a situation where the man would be somehow coerced into attachment, but with a different state of social norms where this would simply be a less attractive option.)
Now, you write:
But this seems to me like fallacious reasoning. You apparently assume that if women are to form multiple attachments, there will be more attachment opportunities for all men, not just those in the upper tiers of attractiveness. Yet in reality, we see some contrary evidence, in that when women become more promiscuous, the additional amount of sex taking place is not at all distributed randomly or equally across all categories of men; instead, those in the upper tiers of attractiveness get the overwhelming part of it. (I know that this is not equivalent to what you have in mind, but I do think that there is enough similarity to provide at least some relevant evidence.)
You seem to imply that under your most favorable social arrangements, there would be some constraints relative to a complete sexual laissez-faire (even one with the usual caveats about consenting adults etc.). But how would these be enforced? Or do you believe that people would spontaneously follow them under some favorable circumstances?
This does seem to be the case. F. Roger Devlin makes a rather bold statement of this argument in this essay (though I dislike his conservative political slant and certain biased terms; also, ignore his criticism of feminist discourse on sexual violence, because it is massively lower quality that everything else he writes and riddled with errors):
Casanova may have had 132 lovers, but most or all of them weren't long-term relationships. There's an upper-limit to the number of serious romantic relationships one person can maintain at one time, and it's certainly less than ten and probably closer to five (the highest I've heard of is four). Furthermore, I've pointed out elsewhere that historically, harems are not devised by women.
If women and men maintain approximately equal numbers of relationships (which they seem to, in the poly community), then the most attractive partners available to you will be at least as attractive as they would have been if everyone were monogamous. It's a matter of math.
I think you're a little too confident of the argument you've been making throughout the comments on this post. There are no economically well-developed modern societies with a social norm other than monogamy, and there are some indications that ubiquitous birth control is a game-changer, so historical evidence may not apply. We're all arguing without large-scale evidence. We can (and should) speculate about what alternative social norms would entail, and we can justify those speculations to lesser or greater degrees. But there is no certainty in this debate.
WrongBot:
That's not really true. In large parts of many rich contemporary societies, monogamous norms have been weakened to the point where a great many people engage in non-monogamous sexual behaviors. Yes, even among those people, the majority seem to consider stable monogamy as a goal to be achieved at some point in the future, but they nevertheless spend significant parts of their lives engaged in casual serial monogamy and promiscuous sex. (And in some lower class environments, even the pretense of monogamous norms has nearly disappeared.)
There is definitely significant large-scale evidence here about what happens (in at least some cases) when monogamous norms break down in a wealthy society. This evidence points quite unambiguously towards female hypergamy, where a minority of exceptionally attractive men account for the overwhelming part of non-monogamous sexual pairings that take place, and women at all levels of attractiveness strive towards men with higher relative status. You can of course dispute the relevance of this evidence, but you definitely can't deny its existence.
Some men want to help raise children, including children who aren't genetically their own. I'm not talking about cuckoldry, but adoption or choosing women who already have children. What proportion of men do you think that is?
I realize you're talking about sex, not children, but how children are raised is part of the effect of sexual norms.
More generally, what you describe just doesn't seem like the world I'm living in. Admittedly, the world I'm living in is mostly science fiction fandom, but I just don't seem to see women turning down almost every man in the search for high status men.
What proportion of men are you seeing as excluded from mating if the default is non-monogamy?
I would imagine that the proportion of men who prefer to raise children who are not genetically their own is very low. The proportion of men who are willing to raise children that are not their own because circumstances make it difficult or impossible to have their own biological children or because they desire a relationship with a partner who already has children is probably quite a bit higher.
The stereotype is that the sex ratio in science fiction fandom is heavily skewed in the male direction. Is this stereotype not accurate?
NancyLebovitz:
Mind you, I wasn't referring to the whole spectrum of male-female relationships that take place nowadays. Lots of folks still live old-fashioned lives centered around monogamous relationships with the goal of marriage, avoiding promiscuity and (as best they can) serial monogamy. Clearly, under a monogamous regime, people typically end up paired with someone who is roughly in the same league, so the above considerations don't apply.
However, if we talk specifically about promiscuous behaviors, then the above described hypergamous patterns definitely occur. From the perspective of typical men, or for people unfamiliar with the situation, the options enjoyed here by top-tier men really are nothing like the world they're living in. After all, there are men whose notch counts are in the four-, perhaps even five-digit territory -- whereas on the other side of the spectrum, for very large numbers of men, the increase in promiscuity hasn't expanded their sexual options at all relative to an absolutely prudish regime. It has possibly even lowered them by reducing their monogamous opportunities.
It's hard to give any definite numbers, and it obviously depends on the concrete arrangements in practice. It also depends on men's criteria (some men will be reduced to a choice of women who are in a much lower percentile of attractiveness, so they might find all the available choices unacceptable). But in any case, I would say that under a complete breakdown of all monogamous norms, the percentage of men reduced to virtually zero mating opportunities would be in the double digits.
I think that we're defining norms in slightly different ways. I have been meaning norms to mean "what people should do" and not just "what people do." I've also been stretching monogamy a little to mean the ideal of having only one partner at a time, whether or not that's in the context of marriage. It's a fairly common usage, but still easy to be unclear about.
So I would say that serial monogamy is still monogamy, and that promiscuous sex outside the context of any relationship has little to do with relationship styles at all. Your examples point to a failure to enforce monogamous norms while the norms remain unchanged, I would say.
Or perhaps monogamous norms are weakening, and these examples are the result of particular groups not having any strong relationship norms at all; various kinds of polyamory and swinging offer social norms that can be as strong as monogamous ones, but they're largely unknown.
Again, it's hard to say. What evidence there is can be plausibly interpreted in quite a few ways, some of which I'm sure neither of us have thought of.
I'm not sure that's fair. Couldn't you say that having multiple friends with benefits is a type of " relationship style," in a sense?
Again, "take some time between serious relationships to have multiple casual partners" can be a relationship norm, one that appears very common.
You may be assigning too much credence to that news report. It's really just summarizing an argument between two partisan political parties about marriage's declining popularity among the poor. The only quantitative data cited is the number of UK marriages in 1972 and the number of UK marriages in 2009, which are not really enough to settle the claims made in the article or your parenthetical.
Which significant large-scale evidence do you have in mind? The lack of citations suggests that you think it's very obvious, but I can't think of it. I may well be missing something obvious, but without a cite I don't know.
cupholder:
You're right, this wasn't a good choice of reference, if anything since the claims were made in an explicitly politicized context. However, whichever statistics you look at, there is no doubt that the decline in monogamous norms in many Western countries (and the Anglosphere nations in particular) has been far more pronounced among the lower classes, and that among significant parts of the underclass, the traditional monogamous norms have weakened to the point of collapse. See e.g. some U.K. data here, or the U.S. data here (which conveniently control for race, so that the trends are strikingly obvious as a class phenomenon).
If you just google for the relevant terms, you'll get tons of statistics corroborating these basic points from various angles.
Regarding citations, one problem here is that when it comes to people's sexual behavior, social science data based on surveys are of dubious value. As a rule, men report having sex with significantly more women on average than vice versa -- a logical impossibility assuming the samples are representative. So, either people lie big time about their sexual behavior even in anonymous surveys (which sounds quite plausible to me), or the samples always turn out to be critically unrepresentative. (Here is one attempt at the latter sort of explanation.)
Nevertheless, the existing data suggest pretty convincingly that when it comes to the distribution of the total number of sex partners, men's distribution has a much wider variance than women's. See this article (unfortunately not available ungated) for references. This observation is consistent with the scenario where women at all levels of attractiveness strive towards men at higher levels, so that men near the bottom get nothing, while those in the upper tiers are making out like bandits.
However, even regardless of any research data, things should be obvious from common knowledge and everyday observations. There are clearly lots of men around for whom getting into any relationship with a woman would be a Herculean accomplishment, even more of those who struggle with positive but still meager results, and a minority for whom getting laid with attractive women is almost trivial, who easily rack up many dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of notches. (Of course, this is a continuum, not a sharp division.) This is the situation to which the weakening of monogamous norms in recent decades has led, and it surely constitutes evidence of the sort whose existence WrongBot denied in his above comment.
HughRistik:
Yes, I read that essay a while ago. Trouble is, Devlin's writing is of the sort I find most frustrating: it delivers some excellent insight wrapped up in an awful presentation, both because of Devlin's own exaggerations and the disreputable publication venue. Unfortunately, not many people will be willing to look past these negative signals and make the effort to understand his very solid main arguments. A better presentation of his thesis could have reached a much broader audience, and made for a much better reference in discussions of this sort.
Yeah, I agree. I'm currently looking for some better references on hypergamy. I already have a bunch of refs on greater female selectivity, but I'm finding mixed results on hypergamy because of so many different operationalizations of status.
One question answers the other. I don't imagine, by the way, that polyamory will ever be the norm, nor do I think it should. The social arrangement I favor most involves each individual freely choosing whichever option they prefer; I imagine that under such circumstances no one style of relationship would predominate.
I disagree. Polyamory is as has often been said something we do anyway. Just less honestly.
Female hypergamy and male vanity (everyone likes to think of themselves as high value) most likley ensure that this [poliamory] will at least for some time be the dominant arrangement in Western society.
I know the Roissyisphere isn't very popular here but the spirit of this particular saying of his rings true: "To the average woman five minutes of alpha is worth five years of beta."
Polyamory requires honesty, by definition. Ethical non-monogamy is different from non-consensual non-monogamy. This discussion can't go anywhere if you're redefining words to mean what you want them to mean. If you want to talk about the category of practices that includes everything but monogamy, use "non-monogamy". If you want to talk about dishonest non-monogamy, use "non-consensual non-monogamy" or "cheating."
How do you classify a relationship between >2 people, where the people involved have an agreement not to date other people, and where one of the members does so anyway?
Cheating. Possibly lying. But also polyamory.
The appropriate label to use is the one that best describes what the people in the relationship have agreed to, implicitly or explicitly. Cheating doesn't turn a monogamous relationship into something else, it's just a violation of the relationship's rules. Ditto with a polyamorous one.
And this does happen, by the way, and when it does, it's usually really awful. Monogamous cheating is bad enough, but when you're in a triad (or a quad, or...) you do at least as much damage to several people. More, probably, considering that there's usually more trust and clear negotiation involved.
A multi-way relationship where one of the people is cheating. I guess you could call it a non-consensual open multi-way relationship.
I like the point and love the expression thereof.
WrongBot said:
To the extent that sexual and romantic success is related to non-innate qualities, those qualities could be distributed more equally. Based on my experience with the seduction community, many components of sexual and romantic attractiveness are based on behaviors that can be learned, particularly in the case of male sexual attractiveness to women. Currently, these skills are not distributed equitably, leading to vast disparities in social skills related to romantic success that are not required by biologically-based differences in aptitude. Once someone gets set on the wrong "track," then they end up greatly lacking in procedural knowledge. As I argued here, these disparities are unjust.
I saw that post earlier and I think I largely agree with it. Consider that quoted assertion retracted: education in social skills may be an ethical way to systematically reduce inequalities of romantic and sexual opportunity. I'm not without my criticisms of the seduction community, but discovering and documenting processes that allow people to become genuinely more attractive is praiseworthy.
Tangentially, while women seem to be better at acquiring social skills on average, I think most people underestimate how many of them would be interested in a PUA-like program, if it were presented in the right way. (Which is to say, not how the PUA community represents itself to men. Different social norms and all.)
Why? Women already have their PUA act together. They understand very clearly that physical beauty is the key factor in attracting men, and have a huge industry for creating fake physical beauty.
In general, I think it's a gross mistake for men to think women "have it easier". I would guesstimate that the typical woman spends a way bigger share of her time and money on being attractive to the opposite sex than the typical man. They're more aware of the game, they start playing it earlier, they coach each other all the time... no wonder they win! As a male, I was able to increase my attractiveness hugely as soon as I realized this was worth making a serious effort: say, the equivalent of one workday (8 hours) per week in total. From what I've seen, most men can't be bothered to spend even that much, while most women are conditioned to spend more than that.
For many men their actual work days are to some degree part of a serious effort to be attractive to women. The 'traditional' advice to become attractive to women is to develop a good, stable career, achieve a degree of material success and maintain reasonable health, fitness and appearance. The fact that it is not terribly effective advice on its own doesn't mean that lots of men don't put a good deal of effort into following it.
Your proposed theory implies a nice testable prediction and a nice policy recommendation: men should make better worker bees on average, and we should pay them more. Haha, oh wait.
The difference between "women" and "most women" is vast. Some men benefit much more from PUA than others, and those men have some characteristics in common. There are women with those characteristics who I suspect would benefit from a PUA-like program in the same way that men do. But perhaps not; I'm not much of an expert on the seduction community.
You're committing the typical mistake that I will call symmetrism: thinking that men and women have mostly equivalent roles in mating, may benefit from similar advice, etc. This is an easy mistake to make because men aren't all that different from women in many other areas. But mating is special: it is the whole goddamn reason why we have these concepts of "males" and "females", so by default you should expect huge differences instead of equality!
From this perspective it's pretty easy to dissect your comment. PUA is an attempt to honestly formulate what attracts women. If you wanna have the female equivalent of PUA, you need to formulate what attracts men. Honestly, is that hard? Men are attracted to youth and physical beauty. Gee, I wish women had some kind of industry that supplied that to them... Oh wait.
However, you seem to be confusing tactics with strategy. For women, maximizing physical attractiveness will clearly result in an immediate tactical advantage, but it won't magically make their strategy sound, especially in the long term. And in this regard, there is certainly lots of deluded and clueless behavior by women going on, and good advice is hard to find and drowned in a sea of nonsense.
That's far from all we're attracted to... there's also what some folks refer to as "feminine radiance" - the female counterpart of male confidence or presence, though it's quite different in form. (For example, it involves a lot more smiling.)
I've seen women with this quality draw crowds, even if they're not that young or beautiful-looking (when they're not smiling).
And I would imagine this is a quality that can be taught, just as men can be taught to have increased confidence and presence.
One of the reasons that I'm not interested in PUA is that (most of) the community sees trends and thinks they are laws. The women who I imagine could benefit from a PUA-style program are the ones who want to attract men that are interested in more than youth and physical beauty, but don't know how to present themselves as interesting because most of the dating advice they get completely ignores that factor. I know that these women exist because I am dating one and friends with others.
Generalization can be a useful tool, but not when you're specifically looking at a subset of the group.
ETA: I would also agree with Vladimir's objection.
Where are you spending your 8 hours? Are we talking about haircuts, shoes, tans, skin care, and cosmetic muscles -- or about verbal and psychological PUA-Game?
What do you mean by fake? I personally find most forms of female makeup, cosmetic surgery, high heels, etc. unattractive, but I find it difficult to understand how appearance-modification can be fake. Isn't all appearance an inherently unreliable signal as to core content? I mean, if for some absurd reason I were thinking of marrying someone who I didn't trust, and I wanted to know if she were (say) in good long-term health, I wouldn't just check to see if she had nice long hair and clear skin -- I would ask to see her medical records and her parents' medical records.
When a woman does take steps to make her skin appear clearer, I don't take this as a way of fooling or faking me into thinking that she has an unusually good immune system -- I see it as a way of satisfying her superficial urge to look pretty and my superficial urge to date someone who looks pretty. And, basically, I'm OK with that. I don't see it as fake, because, assuming it's done right she actually does look prettier. There's nothing going on here that's both fake and relevant. Obviously she might look different when she wakes up in the morning than when she goes out clubbing, but it takes an unusually naive person not to quickly figure that sort of thing out and adjust for it.
I mostly spend my time experimenting with body language and face expressions to make a higher percentage of random women feel instant attraction. Think "smiling across the room". No haircuts or tans, but also almost no verbal game and no "inner game". YMMV.
You seem to have assumed that I used "fake" as a synonym for "bad" and immediately rushed to defend... uh... something you thought you should defend. I see this reaction often, and it troubles me.
Could I get more details on how you do this? Are you talking about a Marlon Brando-esque smile/smirk? 8 hours a week just for body language and facial expressions without accompanying conversation seems like a lot. Do you also practice conversation with them? What happens when they do feel attraction?
I tend to mostly focus on conversation, but this is probably something I should work on.
I hope not! I'm genuinely curious what you mean by fake. Even in a context devoid of moral judgments, "fake" seems like a natural antonym of "natural" or "real," and both of those words seem unreasonably vague to me for effective communication. The only coherent, tight definition of "fake" that I can imagine right now is "a false signal," as in, "that rattlesnake's bright yellow patterning is fake; it's not really poisonous." I find that most people don't mean "false signal" when they say fake, though, so I'm trying to find out what you mean by it. Maybe you know another tight definition and you can teach me about it.
As for being defensive, well, yes, that's a character flaw of mine. Please let me know if you have any specific advice for overcoming it beyond "be more inclined to assume the best of people," and I will carefully consider it.
WrongBot:
While inequalities of love and sex don't usually kill, I would claim that those inequalities can be significantly harmful. For people who want to have partners, not being able to tends to trash their mental health. Look into involuntary celibacy, and love-shyness. Gilmartin's work on men with "love-shyness" who experienced significant heterosexual anxiety and impairment found them to be depressed and have violent fantasies. They had suicidal thoughts, but he concluded that they were too depressed to even attempt suicide. His book can be downloaded for free here (despite the caveats on that page, it is a must-read for anyone who finds that these difficulties ring a bell).
Note that inequalities in matters of love and sex have quite certainly led to countless murders and suicides both. They have probably not killed as many people as inequalities of material wealth, true, but in absolute terms the death toll is still large.
This is a good point, but I think there's still a distinction. If you're broke and starve to death, that isn't (usually) the result of someone's deliberate choice. But when love or sex drive someone to doing something terrible, it is still ultimately their decision.
I suppose this distinction is complicated somewhat when you take reductionism into account, but in practice it still seems to be a worthwhile one.
If there's a decent solution to this problem, by the way, I'm listening. It's certainly an awful state of affairs.