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.
I think the proposed solution sounds alright, if you don’t, like, actually phrase it as “we all understand that you’re unwanted bottom-of-the-barrel human slime”.
I also think the idea with the stuff about priesthood and monasticism is that if those were more valued, visible options in our society then people would be less inclined to spiral into bitterness etc. as a result of lack of sexual/romantic success as there’d be a high-status escape route visible. Like, you wouldn’t have sad, lonely, bitter men flooding into the priesthood. You’d have men who would otherwise have been sad, lonely and bitter going into the priesthood, but in this counterfactual they would stay psychologically healthy.
If you create a new high-status role, it’s not just going to be an attractor for men who would otherwise be sad and lonely and bitter, it’s also going to be an attractor for much-more-functional people who want that particular form of status. And they will mostly outcompete the problem children, because the problem children are bad at things and lose competitions, which is kind of the thing that got us started here.
(Yeah, those functional people often won’t be thrilled about the celibacy, but…functional people also aren’t thrilled about all the sacrifices you have to make to go into academia or show biz or whatever, and yet they do it anyway, in vast numbers.)
It’s really, really, really hard to ensure that you have a respectable niche for absolutely everyone. People invade each other’s niches all the time. And whatever system you set up, unless you’re way better at social engineering than anyone has ever been in the history of humanity, you are going to end up with a leftover class of people that has failed at everything and is really bitter about it.
SIDEBAR:
I realize, as I write this, that I am conflating two concepts which are related and overlapping but not identical. Success-in-love is not actually the same as success-in-general. There are in fact some people who are extremely smart and functional and hardworking who nonetheless can’t find a willing partner, and maybe those people could do well in a respected celibate priesthood, if being a cleric entailed the right sorts of work.
But in fact all good things are correlated. A great many of the people who can’t find love also can’t hold down a decent job, can’t pass classes, can’t win anyone’s respect, etc. All these problems reinforce each other.
The explicit “we are calling you human slime” thing wasn’t an accident. It’s an attempt to signal something like: This is not just another competition that you’re going to lose because you’re a loser. Here, you will not have to compete against people who are going to crush you; this is not for them, and they will be kept away. Here, you will not have to pretend that you started off as something other than what you are. We will accept you, and make something useful out of you, no matter how worthless and terrible you are.