I can’t believe that I’m the one who has to be saying this to Christian tradcons, but…

Yes, it’s true. Once upon a time, especially in certain heavily-Catholic premodern societies, there were various high-prestige social roles for men that were associated with celibacy and virginity. Maybe that was a good thing, maybe not; that’s an argument for another time.



But even if that social technology were in widespread use, and even if in fact it proved to be immensely beneficial overall, it would not do anything to help most of the current crop of sad lonely men who are bemoaning their lack of romantic/sexual success.



Western culture has never particularly celebrated celibacy or virginity in men, on their own merits. Quite the reverse, mostly. It has, in some times and places, celebrated priesthood and monasticism, which incorporate celibacy as part of the package. But being lonely and sad and bitter is not a qualification for holy orders. If you claim to take this seriously, then you should understand that a priest is supposed to have a calling – and even if you don’t really take it seriously, even if you’re treating it as culture-engineering mumbo jumbo, you should understand that ordination is only going to be helpful for someone who actually wants the role and the duties of a priest. It’s not a functional consolation prize.



That said, “come up with a viable consolation prize for lonely sad sexually-unsuccessful men that can be implemented at scale” is certainly an interesting culture-engineering challenge.

The best I can come up with, on very short notice, is something like George R.R. Martin’s Night’s Watch. “We all understand that you’re unwanted bottom-of-the-barrel human slime. We’re going to send you off to live in a mostly-isolated community with similarly-situated guys, so that you can form your own social structures without being constantly reminded of your failures, like Australia or something…but instead of just cutting you loose, we’ll have you doing something useful that can engender pride, and we’ll provide you with enough small luxuries and prostitutes to make the social privation seem a bit less awful.”

I’m pretty sure we could actually do a lot better than that, though.

