Self-improvement is a gender-neutral ambition, writes editor Rob Harvilla, “but it’s possible to calmly and reasonably note that the practical, real-life adequacy gap is widening, that in the 21st century, for some reason … young men (and yeah, this is mostly men) are just less competent at life than preceding generations. It’s easy to observe the way popular thinking about romantic relationships is gendered: on there’s a tab marked “LOVE,” while ’s analogue is labeled “WOMEN.” The New Yorker, writing about Binder, the dumping app developed by two Scottish men in their late-20s, as a hoax intended to complement a marketing initiative for beer, opined that “an app for breakups still seems callous, beyond even the imaginations of notorious tech bros.”Įarlier this year Deadspin, the sports culture arm of Gawker Media, launched The Adequate Man, a vertical aimed squarely at re-conditioning its male readership. Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus, the popular 1993 book written by John Gray, reveled in stereotypes about the psychology of men and women, perhaps solidifying the myth that each gender thinks about relationships in different ways. Men, by contrast, are conditioned to loll about in a state of perma-bachelorhood.

Historically, the dating advice industry has directed much of its energy toward marriage or companionship-oriented women. Article contentīecause it’s authored by a prominent male celebrity, Modern Romance isn’t positioned as much more than some shouty, gendered rhetoric about love and relationships, but that might be where its subversive power lies. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.

(Modern Romance comes with the disclaimer that it is a heterospecific, middle-class investigation.) Well the book is not written in the lingua franca of social justice, Ansari’s politics have led him to develop what could quite possibly be the most progressive mass-market dating guide yet. Some of those studies Ansari and Klinenberg set up themselves, for the purpose of this book: There are anecdotes from daters in big US cities, small Midwest towns, as well as Doha, Tokyo, Paris and Buenos Aires, that give some insight into how the culture of dating (and attitudes toward technology) has evolved globally. Our romantic lives increasingly play out across two worlds, Ansari writes, “the real world and our phone world.” As far as dating guides go it’s rather peculiar, driven largely by data gleaned from matchmaking sites like OKCupid, as well as smartphone and dating studies from around the world. Mercifully, Ansari’s new book Modern Romance, co-written with sociologist Eric Klinenberg, is not pitched as some kind of feminist tract - which would, perhaps, be the ultimate mansplaining move - but an exploration of dating culture in a our newly digital world.

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