2026-04-02

# Withholding sex might not be an effective persuasion strategy

Disclaimer
 - Thinking aloud. Might not endorse this after a lot of thought.
 - **Contains politically sensitive info**

Main
 - One of the ways both socially far-left and far-right ideology spread is by withholding sex and relationships from those not belonging to the same ideology. People only want to date within their own ideological cluster.
 - This creates suffering and subsequent polarisation, as people who are unable to get relationships can become resentful of the other gender or the other political position. Atleast in US for example, there is clear data that men on average lean more socially right as compared to women.
 - Usually this is not strategic. Average leftist woman is not thinking "I will withhold sex from socially right-leaning men in order to cause them to suffer, and thus spread my ideology". Instead they are thinking "I dont like hanging out with right-leaning men, they are morally not good people." There's definitely some people who strategically create ideology like this though.
 - I'm not very convinced that this is an effective persuasion strategy.
   - On one hand, you do have examples like 1960s counterculture in US or Serbian protest movements where movements only took off after they were able to provide sex (and associated high status) to the people leading the protests.
   - On the other hand, I can't make the math work in my head. If there is a surplus of men who are against the prevailing orthodoxy (whether that is socially left leaning or socially right leaning), they have two choices - they can either hide or be less aggressively upfront about their political position and get into relationships, or they can stay single and hold on to their current political position.
   - Average person is not that radical that they're simply unwilling to have relationship across the political divide. There will be plenty of relationships where one side is just less upfront (but not necessarily actively lying) about their political position and the relationship would still last.
   - Actually polarising the entire population to do Anything is extremely hard. Having a few radicals on both sides doesn't change the math for the majority population.
 - Actual mass violence on the other hand is quite effective. You can simply suppress the truth about a political position and most of the public can end up unaware of it at all. See also: 1984. But I am not convinced withholding sex is that effective.