Recently I read Chastened: The Unexpected Story of My Year Without Sex by Hephzibah Anderson. It’s been reviewed thoroughly by the media, with an array of predictable responses. The feminist media was worried that Hephzibah was engaging in a bit of self-slut-shaming, but took comfort from the fact that nowhere does she explicitly state that she regrets the choices she made in her 20s. (Personally, I consider the book an explicit statement of her regret and unhappiness, but whatevs.) The snarky British media accused her of cynically cooking up this stunt to get a book deal, with no real desire to explore being chaste. And the manosphere predictably says, “Ha! Too late. You already rode the cock carousel, and now you’ll have to settle for cats.”
Hephzibah is a successful London journalist in her early thirties. A couple of years ago she was on 5th Ave. in NY waiting for the light to change at a crosswalk. Suddenly she spied her college boyfriend with his arms around a petite blonde, laughing and ushering her into DeBeers, presumably to buy an engagement ring. For some reason, this was a wake-up call, though she couldn’t have been jealous – she had dumped the guy after waking up one day eight years earlier, after realizing she was no longer in love. She graduated and found a job in publishing.
“Those were fun, giddy times, and if ever anyone had taken me aside and questioned whether I wasn’t having too much fun, I would have smiled away their doubts.”
It wasn’t long before Hephzibah had nagging doubts, yet she seemed oddly paralyzed, unable to heed her own internal warnings:
“I told myself I was looking for something more meaningful, more lasting, yet I consistently chose entanglements with men who weren’t really available or keen enough to commit, men who were emotionally or geographically unreachable. Often, even their years made them remote to me. What they had in common was that they were unlikely to impinge too much on a life that seemed to be the one I wanted. By comparison with the relationships I witnessed around me—couples bickering in the tinned-goods aisle at the supermarket, the love that seemed more like an insecure habit clung on to from university—there was even a certain mascara-smudged glamour to the unpredictability of it all. And if nothing else, these liaisons made for some good stories.”
When she reflected on her sexual past, she concluded that her being single and loveless was a direct result of the choices that she had made. For this alone, she deserves credit. For all the recent entries in the spinster lit genre, most of the women are poking a little gentle fun at themselves, telling some good stories – that’s it.
Haha, it was pretty hilarious that I dated Hobo Boyfriend, a homeless dude! Even my mother wondered about that funny smell!
Hephzibah’s is the first account I’ve read that includes real introspection, and a subsequent willingness to take responsiblity and make a change. She asked herself the tough questions.
“Sometimes my decision to have sex seemed to be based more on what was appropriate to the moment than on what was right for me. At a certain point in certain scenarios, a part of me abdicated and gave in to the inevitable. Tipsily noticing that it was after midnight and I was far from home, say, in a dwindling group that happened to include a man I’d found myself in bed with sometime before. If anything connected my twentysomething dating experiences, it was a profound disconnectedness. Unfortunately, the moment I fell into bed with a man, I’d fall at least a little in love. Was it biological? As soon as I went to bed with a man, I’d lose any clear sense of perspective. I had consistently mistaken casual hookups for rose-tinted beginnings.
I did badly want sex to be legitimately momentous again, rather than an inexorable conclusion given the right cocktail of time and place, as had begun to seem the case. I wanted to revel in the intensity of it all, to believe in the meaning that my body gave the experience, without worrying about when or even whether he’d call, and without feeling like a failure for letting the thought cloud the moment.”
As Hephzibah embarks on an examination of her dysfunctional relationships, the most significant of which was with a man who had a girlfriend the entire time, she has a moment of clarity in observing how women’s expectations have shifted dramatically in two generations:
“My favorite great-aunt, a woman of elegantly bluff wisdom, has been married to my favorite great-uncle for more than sixty years. Go round for tea, and he will still ask you to move your chair if it’s obstructing his view of her. Their account of their courtship is a wonderful tale of pursuit that might today be seen as stalking. It begins when he glimpsed her in the cinema. When the credits rolled, he followed her home on the bus.
He was a young man made plucky by passion, and she was a shy girl who exactly what she was doing. What makes it comical is the bit where my great-aunt adds: “I said to myself, he’ll do.” There it is, this sweet love story, underpinned by pragmatism.”
It is this underpinning of pragmatism that is missing today. The Sexual Revolution made it possible for women to be impractical, chasing the Big Man on Campus, falsely secure that their charms were unique. In fact, what they offered was a vagina, which, it turns out, is a commodity.
Hephzibah gets it, for the most part, and it leads her to get onto the celibacy wagon. She sees herself, at least temporarily, in sympathy with celibates throughout history, but her goal is more worldly:
“Rather than continuing to go along with what others seemed to want from sex, I had to rediscover what it meant to me. Most urgently, I had to find my way back to the place where love and sex intersected for real…I was looking for a fresh way of pursuing love into that new decade – a way that was a little less ungainly, permitted a little more self-respect and might even yield a little more success.”
The best part of the book has to do with her reawakening to the joys of the mating dance, including anticipation, a sensual awareness, and gradual arousal. For example, she understands from the start that she needs to alter the way she presents herself to the world, and so she goes shopping for clothes that suggest the female form rather than define it.
“If it seems strange that having made such a personal, private decision, I’m seeking to solidify it by altering my outward appearance—by trading a lace-trimmed camisole for a turtleneck jumper—consider this: clothing is our way of signaling to the world who we are, or who we’d like to be. As such, it has its own language, and if we let it, it’ll do the talking for us.”
If Hephzibah is to date during this chaste year, and she very much wants to, she knows that it is important not to engage in false advertising. What’s more interesting, though, is how wearing less sexy clothing makes her feel more relaxed, more herself, sending out very different signals to the men she encounters. She begins to attract men who are less flashy, less bold and aggressive.
“Those Quiet Guy traits that I’m finding so entrancing right now—that hint of reticence, the thoughtfulness that offsets his swift smile—would before have been too subtle to register with me. They are of a different frequency. I’d have been carried along on that other current of deafeningly obvious sex appeal.
Pinning down my own type is tricky—that’s his first characteristic. I seem to pick the ones who really do not want to be pinned. The fly-by-nights, the cads, the all-round rotters. They’ve come in a baffling array of shapes and sizes, though they’ve all been older than me—some older than others; others much, much older than some. But perhaps all this profiling is simply paving the way for someone to come along and astonish us. For someone who is so resolutely not our type that we’re defenseless against their charms.”
So far, so good. It isn’t long before Hephzibah understands and values what has come into her life since she removed sex from it:
“Physical celibacy has intense emotional rewards. My own newfound clarity is enabling me to see that in my headlong pursuit of sex as a route to intimacy, I’ve neglected gentler refrains like friendship. Into the space that sex filled, a quietness is flowing—a quietness that hasn’t shut out entirely those flirty overtures of lust and longing, but which is enabling me to pick up on subtler notes.”
Hearkening back to the bygone Hollywood era of romantic comedies that put today’s rom coms to shame, she observes:
“Watching Hays-era films for the first time…I’m surprised by how smoldering they are. Because physical gratification risked blue-penciling, it was delayed and delayed and delayed. Men and women circle the unmentionable together through charged badinage that draws them ever closer, sparring with lines so nimble that they seem not merely scripted but choreographed.”
This is why male-female conflict and competition can often be sexy, and may even suddenly generate an attraction for someone you’ve barely noticed before. The friction puts us on high alert as we struggle for dominance. The male welcomes the challenge of “breaking in” the filly, and the woman enjoys the parry enough to make her crave the thrust. Today, such a feisty female is generally regarded as a huge pain in the ass, and is often passed over for a “lower threshold” model. The sport has gone out of seduction, and with it much of the fun, not to mention anticipation.
Coincidentally, Hephzibah channels Stendahl’s On Love, which seems to be popping up everywhere since I wrote about him recently:
A wise woman never yields by appointment. It should always be an unforeseen happiness.
And she shares my own predilection for viewing relationships and sex through the lens of economics:
“While we oversell sex, we don’t seem to value it. It is too readily available, just another disposable commodity—a simple case of supply and demand. Devalue the word no and the market is flooded, causing yes to depreciate simultaneously.”
It would be terrific if twelve months of chastity could erase the consequences of so much casual sex. Of course, it’s never that simple, and it turns out that the casual sex was an expression of some deeper, unfulfilled need. Ten years of throwing sex at low self-esteem does not address the real problem.
“Sex has been disguising something, and it’s only in the middle of the night, that I’m finally forced to acknowledge it. Despite making the final base off limits, I’ve nevertheless spent two-thirds of my chaste year in pursuit of the emotional turbulence that went with it. Perhaps it’s not my relationship with sex that is the problem, but my relationship with male attention. There is something insatiable about my appetite for male indulgence. I get giddy on it, losing sight of whatever it was I might have wanted, and losing, too, my ability to judge the genuine from the tactical on their part. To really give chastity a go, I need to wean myself off a certain kind of male attention.”
It’s an important insight into her own psyche, and one she must spend time exploring. It was perhaps unrealistic to expect that she would turn her life around in twelve short months, just by giving up sex.
As I read her month-by-month account of that year, I found myself wishing that Hephzibah had rid herself of all her old relationships when she rid herself of her sexual habit. She proceeds successfully through the months refraining from sexual intercourse (other forms of hooking up are OK), but she continues to be involved with Jake, a rake with a girlfriend, who now finds her refusal to put out tantalizing, and seems content to fool around and spoon. There’s also a man she calls the Pasha, who dated her while harboring deep love for a woman whose photograph continued to adorn his dresser. There’s the Beau, a man twenty years older, never married, who enjoys having multiple female friendships around the world.
There are a couple of new men. She spends time with N, an American rock guitarist who she’d met years before at a music festival. She gets set up with The Boy Next Door, and enjoys his company thoroughly, but bemoans the lack of a “spark.” The Quiet Guy is an object of intermittent interest, but he lives in the U.S., and he ultimately decides to marry someone else. In NYC she meets the seemingly perfect man, an investment banker who turns into a total asshole when he gets to the Hamptons.
Refusing to have sex with these men didn’t make them fall in love with her. The best we can hope for is that she learned to love herself a bit more. My biggest disappointment is that Hephzibah has not learned to apply her great-aunt’s pragmatism after all.
In the Epilogue, she feels compelled to offer a sex scene, her first in more than a year. It’s with the asshole banker in the Hamptons, and she has sex because she is there as his guest for the weekend, and hadn’t told him about her year without sex. She decides that not having sex would be too awkward, which surely is the equivalent of going on a bender after being sober for a year.
“All those months, all those lessons supposedly learned, and here I was, going to bed with a man who by that point felt like a stranger. The sex, predictably, was awful. “You need to be more intentful,” he huffed.”
Still, she had the sense to be horrified by the experience, and she does seem to have learned something. Two years after her project ended, she is still single, now 33, but says that she prefers the frustration of less sex to the frustration of emotional turbulence. She helpfully sums up the benefits of her experience:
- If you hold back physically, I learned, it makes it easier to open up emotionally. There are some conversations that you feel too vulnerable to have naked; slow the pace, and you’ll find you can risk a little more candor—with yourself as well as with your partner. It takes the pressure off those bewitching early stages of a relationship, and yes, it helps sort the cads from the keepers. When it comes to courtship, the fly-by-nights lack the staying power.
- It taught me about emotional self-sufficiency. In a consumerist society, our desire is constantly being manipulated. In tuning out these come-ons, I’ve found within myself some of what I’d formerly looked to sex to provide.
- There were physical rewards as well. Heightened sensuality, for one—less really does become more.
- During my chaste year, it sometimes felt that the lessons I was learning went directly against feminist rhetoric, pointing the way to a distinctly unevolved way of snaring a mate. That wasn’t what my quest was about, of course, but I found it curious that the approach sometimes drew a sharp intake of breath from other women. Why is it so much more shocking to withhold sex in order to make a man love you than it is to go to bed with him, hoping against hope for the same outcome?
{ 268 comments… read them below or add one }
1 2 »
.
Any woman having a lot of casual sex will be better off stopping, no matter her age. It may not lead to her suddenly becoming a great LTR prospect, but her life will improve. For that reason alone, books like this are useful, even in the present day.
.
Vincent, your world view, at least where women are concerned, is very black and white. I don’t understand how it’s possible to generalize that all the women in the world are spoiled, damaged goods. It’s quite remarkable.
.
I find the word “disgust” quite interesting here. Not bored, disappointed, even repelled. Such a strong negative reaction to the sin of being transparent.
You haven’t met your match yet. You’ve got some pretty big buttons, and the woman who figures out how to push them will have you doing a 180.
Great review. This book is on my reading list, for obvious reasons. It does bother me too, that she doesn’t try and find new guys to fit her new clothes and world-view. In fact, keeping them around seems to add more stress and drama to the whole mess.
Books like this may slowly contribute to an improved sexual marketplace, but I think it’s too late for this generation of teenagers and twenty-somethings. There’s too much knowledge out there now. Even if I found a girl from a traditional culture, I know that deep down she’s no better than an American Carrie Bradshaw wannabe. Same goes for women. The things you read in the Manosphere are really what we think about you, at least those of us you find most desirable.
I recently cut loose an American girl (I’ve blogged about her) who I liked a lot more than any girl I’ve dated in the past 2 years. Compared to most American women, she was great, but knowing what I do about female psychology, I could figure out what she was thinking most of the time, and it disgusted me.
“Ha! Too late. You already rode the cock carousel, and now you’ll have to settle for cats.”
HAHA. I knew you would know I thought this.
This woman is damaged goods and will probably always be so. By having sex with that investment banker at the end of the year even though she didn’t really want to do so, she proved that she learned nothing during her year of no sex.
A quote from this book on one of your linked pages read, “while we’re no longer supposed to be judged for our sexual conduct, we all know that the double standard lingers on.” Men have always been concerned about a woman’s sexual history and probably always will be because men have a hard time believing that a promiscuous woman is capable of long-term monogamy.
Also, it seems as though she gave herself freely to the alpha-type guys when she was at the height of her attractiveness. Now that she is aging she wants to hold out on sex so that she can secure a beta chump possibly for marriage. Any man who signs up for a marriage with her should have his head examined! She is probably so emotionally damaged by having casual sex that she hates having sex even if it were with a man she loves.
Online I interact mostly with men who have taken the red pill. IRL I interact mostly with men who have taken the blue pill. Unquestionably, the latter group is far happier in life.
I really do think that problem was compounded by the fact that she needed to keep things interesting and hopping over the course of the year. I imagine she came under some pressure from her publisher to report juicy stories. As it is, there is a lot of rather boring filler in the book re the history of celibacy and sex, as well as the treatment of sex in our culture.
If you take away the jerks, there are only two guys worth dating. That’s not surprising – good men who want relationships can be difficult to identify. One she wrote off for failing to ignite the spark. She found the other one more intriguing, but he lived in another country. If she wanted to include the cads, she would ideally have stood up to them and kicked them to the curb. That’s the depressing part. It really only serves to drive her message home that spending time with these men is a waste of time, something a woman in her 30s should consider precious.
I don’t believe all women are spoiled damaged goods, just that they have the capacity to be as bad as average American women. I want to raise my family in the Anglosphere, so it doesn’t matter how unspoiled she is when I meet her, I’m going to have to let this culture take its toll on her. For all the crap that I talk about Anglo women, I’m still very chauvinistic about Anglo culture and want to raise my children in it.
It wasn’t Chrissy’s transparency that disgusted me, it was her way of thinking. The way women think disgusts me. I’m not sure why exactly but I think it has to do with the fact that their thought patterns are familiar, yet so alien at the same time. Sometimes I wish I had taken the blue pill.
She says that after that failure of will with the banker, she righted herself and has been selective since. We don’t have those specifics, but I share your skepticism that she’s learned to choose the right men. I’ve seen her interviewed on TV a couple of times, and I haven’t come away feeling confident that she will find love. Perhaps she is damaged, or maybe just exhibiting the low self-esteem that drove this behavior in the first place. Either way, she is not appealing.
I don’t think she sees it in those terms, but you may be right. However, the two guys she dated during the year that most closely resembled betas were men she didn’t find exciting enough. She may hold out on sex longer, but I think she’ll still wind up chasing alphas.
I’ve never heard this. I suppose if one got to the point of associating sex with unhappiness or emotional distress, this could happen. But I am not aware that this has ever been studied.
Ms. Walsh,
There’s been a flurry of books from feminist women that–basically–seem intent on rediscovering in a bizarre fashion the lessons their great-great grandmothers would have regarded as trite. It’s very strange, but I think we’re fast approaching a consensus among thinking women that tends toward a pragmatic behavioral “conservatism”–vague word. This is, to me, a trend that I think is fascinating. I often wonder how it will play out. Either way, the lesson is a good one–albeit one that should be commonsense: if you don’t value yourself, why would you expect anyone to value you? If you don’t value sex, why should you expect sex to be valuable?
—
And it’s this lesson that the author didn’t learn, did she? To think that people used to think of sex as something between two people signifying love. It would, in the past, at least have been embarrassing for a woman to admit to having sex, because it was the going price of a weekend away. There’s the tension in our culture between the older version of seeing sex as something essentially spiritual–seen in the conservative (read: actual) Jewish and Christian religious traditions–and seeing sex as something essentially biological. To see sex as biological is somewhat disconcerting if you think about it, because–after all–it makes sex indistinguishable from masturbation, and whatever you think of masturbation, most people don’t think it’s sex. Of course the tension was always there, but the decline of religious sentiment has brought it from the shadows. What’s odd is that our Hollywood ideals about love are all reminiscent of the spiritual vision but our actions and accepted mores–even as portrayed IN Hollywood–reflect the biological story. Very strange cultural dissonance.
—
Anyway, a fun post to file away in my cultural memory box.
Man, that spark…ever since it was an excuse against me, I brindle at that word. I really waffle on believing if you can create a spark….I know I wanted the guy who said there wasn’t one, to dig deep and find one, yet at the same time, i’m none too eager to try and find a spark with guys who have asked me out that I havent been interested in.
its a messy thing, to be sure.
Online I interact mostly with men who have taken the red pill. IRL I interact mostly with men who have taken the blue pill. Unquestionably, the latter group is far happier in life.
Alot here to run with, but I’m short on time right now. I would argue knowing the truth of something is always better then living in ignorance. We eventually tell our children Santa Claus does not exist. And the problem is that for those who spend a large part of their life in ignorance are susceptible to the bubble popping and having a much larger negative effect.
The catch here is to understand the truth without becoming an ultra-cynical nihilist, and to realize even within that overall framework of truth that it still isn’t binary 0 and 1.
Saw a movie on Lifetime yesterday with the GF, flipping through channels, and saw Jennifer Love Hewitt, and I always thought she was smoking hot (her and Sarah Michelle Gellar would have been my dream threesome in the 90s). Anyways, she became a prostitute, and for the longest time her dope husband had no clue. A red pill taker is much more attuned to female behavior, communication, and what one might be capable of. This allows you to maybe head things off at the pass before you drive off the cliff. The blue piller has no clue until maybe his life is completely devastated.
Could really get philosophical here, but short on time, but a happiness rooted in ignorance is inferior to a happiness rooted in truth and coming to terms with reality.
And for a story of a different sort:
http://www.newsoftheworld.co.uk/news/881539/Sex-and-the-City-fan-beds-1000-men.html
The university-educated brunette longed to be as confident in bed as Sex And The City maneater Samantha.
So she set herself a 10-year challenge – to get a thousand notches on her bedpost.
She said: “Sam went from one man to the next and was proud of it. I wanted to be confident like her. I got hooked on the buzz of one-night-stands.”
She slept with at least one stranger a week, travelled the world hunting for men to bed, and took part in threesomes.
*****But now Christina, 30, admits: “All I want is a man to love me – not one who just wants me for sex.”
She’s fucked a random assortment of 1000 guys, and now “all she wants is a man to love her”. ROTFLMAO. The sheer absurdity of it borders on surreal. Why would any self-respecting man with options not basically view her as nothing more then a c*mbucket/sperm receptacle.
By the time she left uni with a 2:2 degree in English and sociology in 2003 she’d slept with nearly 300 men. “I didn’t feel dirty, just empowered,” said Christina.
Empowered! You go girl. I think the pinnacle of empowerment would have occurred with another 1000 random d*cks.
Last month she bedded her Mr 1,000th at a friend’s party. “He was gorgeous, blond and fantastic in bed.”
Now the challenge is over Christina does have regrets. “Good friends stuck by me but others accused me of being a slut. I took things too far. Now all I want to do is settle down. I just hope I haven’t put men off.”
Haven’t put men off? What do you say to that? Is she delusional? An attention whore for publicizing it? Just unreal.
Not bad looking though. At least a 7.
I agree, except to point out that so many of the red pill takers seem to have lost all respect or even liking for women as a result. If you see the “true nature” of women, and you’ve seen a monster, how helpful is that? Of course, it depends on what one believes to be true. You feel that you understand women, yet you love one and are generally positive about the potential of game to improve men’s lives. Vincent understands women, and feels disgusted by the way we think. Perhaps the red pill comes in different strengths.
Thanks, PJL, and an interesting point about the spiritual vs. the biological. I’ve said before that hooking up is a form of masturbation. By definition, one goes into it for personal gratification only. If one works hard to please one’s partner during a hookup, it’s more likely to be an ego issue around being perceived as good in bed than any real desire to be generous with another person. It’s not even as kind a gesture as letting someone go ahead of you in traffic.
I tend to compare the emotional vs. the biological, and that generally tends to break according to gender, though there’s obviously a wide spectrum. In my view, the best sex between two people balances both. The animal hunger and need, the emotional transcendence of union with the beloved.
I agree, except to point out that so many of the red pill takers seem to have lost all respect or even liking for women as a result.
I think that is because many take an element of “truth” and run with it until it becomes an absurd caricature. Additionally, many of these guys meet 95% of their women in bar/club culture which is not going to be an accurate sample of the population. I bounced for awhile and there were alot of really trashy girls you saw day after day. Good, quality girls who would make good relationship material aren’t going to bars/clubs 3-5 times a week.
The problem is generally speaking women are not yet self-aware enough of their own weaknesses in this realm. Look, you put a hot, young, nubile 22-year old in front of stark naked begging me to f*ck her, and I’m going to want to bang her brains out. I’m going to remove myself from that temptation as fast as humanly possible so I don’t put myself in a position to hurt my relationship. Yet many women will happily engage that smooth talking, confident, guy who says all the right things and before she knows it she feels “chemistry” and “it was just meant to be” and then it leads to poor choices. See Michelle Langley’s work/analysis on wives who cheat.
If you see the “true nature” of women, and you’ve seen a monster, how helpful is that?
Not at all, because you won’t be open if a really quality girl comes down your path. Hard to judge from just comments on a blog, but there are a couple of regular commenters who strike me as really quality women. You can’t just throw everyone in the same pot.
Wow. 100 men a year, including one week where she screwed 15 men. You know what’s really outrageous? She’s a hooker who never charged anything! I can’t even imagine what cultures would grow from her vagina.
I have to say, as a mother, I find this story painful. She describes her parents as average, middle class folks, and says they would be devastated if they found out. Um, they just did.
I’ve always hated Samantha from SATC. So pathetic that a woman would emulate this fictional character with an attachment disorder.
BTW, did you see that one guy she screwed was wearing a pink bikini in the photo? Couldn’t she have been a bit more selective?
Oh, there are definitely quality women reading and commenting here. Quite a few virgins, many women with a low number. And obviously, a self-selected group of women who want a real relationship. Some of them have been pumped and dumped and are hurting – they’re the smart ones who seek support after the first time, instead of repeating their mistakes so many times they wind up like Hephzibah.
Stick a fork in her, she’s done. She’s 33 and she’s just *starting* to learn her lesson… kinda sorta maybe a little bit but maybe not? To have a chance, she should have been at this point by 25 at the latest. How old will she be when she really learns? 35? 40?
The fact that she passed over two decent guys because there wasn’t enough “spark” just shows how little she’s learned. An at-first-glance strong spark always diminishes with familiarity and time, and if a woman builds up a guy’s confidence, she can make him generate one where it wasn’t before. When guys aren’t good at generating it at first sight it usually just means that they haven’t learned how yet and aren’t naturally manipulative. So she still hasn’t learned to stop going after cads. At that point none of the men who she finds even potentially attractive will want anything to do with her long-term (if she’s not there already).
In a way though, this is good. It’s poetic justice. If women could reliably pivot and repent at 30+ and become happily married to attractive men after whoring around, then there wouldn’t be any consequences to them for rewarding cads and ignoring the good guys when they still possessed sexual value, and little hope of breaking the 80/20 trend. Only the decent guys would be punished for womens’ behavior. One of the best disincentives to screwing the cads and screwing over the dads in their youth is when reality makes a harsh and public example of women who do so. The harsher the better. Another bonus is that it weeds their cad-chasing DNA out of the gene pool.
Optimally, for the good of the human race, every bad boy chasing slut in her youth would spend the last 2/3 of her life morosely petting her cats while ceaselessly reflecting on her foolishness, so that every girl was faced with the terrible knowledge that doing so meant throwing any hope of a future happiness away. So don’t feel to bad for fools like Ms. Hephzibah. She must be sacrificed so the betas may rise again!
In the meantime, dad types can help make this dream a reality by taking Russian and Asian wives over panicked 30-something sluts frantically trying to douche off the cad residue like Hamlet and that damn spot, or if really hard-up, making a weekend trip to Nevada (or practice Game to help the natural cads usher the next generation of sluts to their doom as well).
These change-your-life-drastically-for-a-year books seem to be really popular right now. I actually liked The Year of Living Biblically and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. Not Buying It was less enjoyable. Having read your summary, I think I’ll skip Chastened. She may have learned something, but how likely is it that she will make long-term changes based on her new knowledge? Maybe I am too pessimistic.
I find it interesting that she says she is addicted to a certain kind of male attention. I wonder if this is her need specifically or if this is a female need that has morphed because of the changes in the sexual economy. That is, perhaps the old time chivalry met a female need for attention and deference? If that need is still there and not being satisfied in the old way, what are women willing to do for that attention? Just throwing stuff out here; I haven’t formulated any theories.
@ VI:
By, “I recently cut loose an American girl who I liked a lot…” you actually mean, “I liked her a lot until she found my blog and found out what a tool I am, and so now I have to do the name-calling so as not to seem hurt.”
I saw a picture of the author and noticed some similarities between her and Lori Gottleib. First, both of these women are in my opinion very average-looking. Second, I get the impression that both of those women are self-absorbed and had inflated views of their own sexual desirability during their most attractive years and probably spent an inordinate amount of time chasing or focusing on men who were essentially out of their league. Third, both of those women are emotionally damaged and probably harbor resentment against all men for their own poor relationship choices they made in the past.
I read that story the other day. I am convinced it is a hoax/fabrication.
I take a different approach….
.
I’m so disgusted by all the disgusting girls out there that I really appreciate the opportunity when I meet a quality girl. Unfortunately, I can’t say I’ve met one since I graduated college about a year ago… guess it’s bound to happen eventually.
I have to agree with Kurt that this woman is permanently damaged goods. Even as a sexless complete and total virgin of everything having to do with women who is well over the age of 30, I would have nothing to do with her no matter how much she “repents” her past behavior. What’s done is done.
All that’s going to happen in the future is that more and more men will discover the truth themselves or learn it because of the internet. More and more women will have to get used to cats.
You know, you’re really right about women tempting themselves with alpha males as men tempt themselves with gorgeous hot young girls. I think this field of psychology & game and most of these concepts are so new that it’s never really been presented this way. But you’re totally right about this analogy. Unfortunately, most women don’t even know the terms “alpha” and “beta” male — they just know what makes them tingle and don’t think much further than that.
It’s nice to hear a more moderate male voice, quite honestly, after the likes of Roissy & Roosh.
“In the meantime, dad types can help make this dream a reality by taking Russian and Asian wives over panicked 30-something sluts”
I see you’ve missed the expat convo between Athlone McGinnis & I over at the PUA vs. the Lover. Read the material we wrote & see if you still feel the same way. I recommend the Rawness “myth of the middle class alpha male” for starters, although it goes much much deeper than that & we didn’t cover half the issues in that article & short exchange.
I don’t necessarily disagree or agree with the males who have posted here about the “sluts” being unable to reform. I don’t have experience with it so I can’t really say whether it is possible or not.
However, I’ve been thinking about it and isn’t saying that women who have slept around are unable to reform the same as saying that guys who haven’t slept around (ie, betas who didn’t have the social status to do so) should also be unable to reform? In other words, doesn’t having this world view about women’s inability to improve themselves with a better mindset also chain you to not be able to use game to improve yourself & change for the better with a better mindset? It seems to me both are about maintaining the status quo — based on where you are in the social strata of desirability, you have to stay there.
“In the meantime, dad types can help make this dream a reality by taking Russian and Asian wives over panicked 30-something sluts”
I see you’ve missed the expat convo between Athlone McGinnis & I over at the PUA vs. the Lover. Read the material we wrote & see if you still feel the same way. I recommend the Rawness “myth of the middle class alpha male” for starters, although it goes much much deeper than that & we didn’t cover half the issues in that article & short exchange.
“What’s past is prologue”.
There may an occasional “Saul on the way to Damascus” moment for a few such women, but for most cases, past behavior is a pretty damn good indicator of future behavior. Sounds like in this woman’s case, it’s fitting that pattern…
There are two prongs, biologically speaking, as to why men don’t want to become romantically involved (aka in biological terms, ‘paternally invested’).
The first one: Promiscuous behaviour/following a short-term mating strategy, in the past, indicates a likelihood to continue the behaviour/strategy in the future. i.e we can tell what the whether will be like today(in the future) from what the weather was like yesterday(in the past). Its called extrapolation. This applies equally to men and women.
The second prong however only applies to women. That relates to paternal certainty and cuckoldry. An already ‘mated’ women,(aka a women thats already fucked a bunch of dudes before wanting to seek a romantic relationship with you), could already be impregnated with some other mans child, hence the reason why men have evolved an emotional aversion to already ‘mated’ women as there is a very real chance that doing so could leave you cuckolded.
An already ‘mated’ man however can’t be pregnant with another womens child, and there is no ‘natural’ constraint forcing him to divert his resources to any other women that he might have had sex with and their children. And, biologically speaking, a man’s resources is what a women wants from a man to give to her children in a long-term relationship. Hence women don’t have an aversion to already ‘mated’ men in this particular ‘prong’ as men do. As such their only biological aversion would be, just like men’s, the first prong I mentioned. Namely, the chance that their partners past promiscuous behaviour might indicate that they will not be faithful to them in the future.
So past sexual behaviour gives a double hit to women as it does to men. Don’t fret though, men get hit in other ways. For instance when men are judging/determining women for a long-term relationship, they don’t really care about how educated (aka certified, intelligence is still a plus) or how much money she makes/has, but women on the other hand do care about these things and do judge men harshly on this fact. i.e. no woman would want to marry a ‘hot’ male bum (not sure if this will get lost in translation or not, but by bum I mean a poor, or lazy, or dumb man with no real economic prospects) but plenty of men would be prepared to marry a ‘hot’ female bum. How many women do we see obsessing over marrying a doctor, or a lawyer, or a banker, or even just your run of the mill millionaire, yet interestingly we don’t see men obsessing about marrying such types.
Some intersting articles that might answer some of you questions reagrding what I have stated.
http://www.anthro.utah.edu/PDFs/ec_evolanth.pdf
http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/comm/haselton/webdocs/pillsworth_haseltonARSR.pdf
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6T6H-3VXY2Y8-3&_user=10&_origUdi=B6T6H-4S4S5T5-1&_fmt=high&_coverDate=05%2F31%2F1998&_rdoc=1&_orig=article&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=2237a2ab605c641c6b643657f779b656
http://economics.huji.ac.il/facultye/gould/Gould_JHC%202009.pdf
http://www.uleth.ca/dspace/bitstream/10133/323/1/EP05358362.pdf
http://www.putslab.psu.edu/pdfs/puts_10_beautybeast.pdf
(not directly related but nontheless interesting)
So following on from what I stated above…
to answer your question:
‘this world view about women’s inability to improve themselves with a better mindset also chain you to not be able to use game to improve yourself & change for the better with a better mindset? It seems to me both are about maintaining the status quo — based on where you are in the social strata of desirability, you have to stay there.’
The answer is no. The reason why men hold a womens sexual past against, while part of it has to do with mindset or future intetntions (as with women), the other part has nothing to do with such mindset or intentions and instead has to do with the possibility of cuckoldry occuring, aka an already mated women being already pregnant with another man’s child.
So while a women can change her mindset and hence her chances of being unfaithful in the future, she can’t change the fact that she has been ‘used’ and that is the extra factor that men judge women on but that women don’t. (I’m talking about in a natural context of course. I’m sure there are women out there who would try to judge men on par with women in this regard due to idealogical reasons, however such reasons have no biological reason behind them and would be a maladaptive strategy and could lead to them failing evolutionarily. i.e. just look at those artciles mentioned above of women trying to sleep with 900 and 1000 or so men purely for idealogical reasons, “It made me feel empowered!!!!”. Chances are no man will want to form a long-term relationship with such women and they most likely won’t reproduce as a result, which is what is called evolutionary failure.)
Once again I’ve read thru all the comments, and once again it’s yet another half hour I’ll never see the likes of again! So I need to do this in bullet points, and I’m not going to cut & paste the original ’cause it’s all so Stupid!
1.) No Hezzy dear has not learned anything much beyond good PR for her book.
2.) She still lusts after the wrong sort of ‘male attention’ by the ‘wrong sorts’ (her description, not ours), and hence has not really learned anything.
3.) The minute she sees a chance with a ‘big fish’ Hedge fund manager she’s like giving it up, as swiftly as her purple prose will allow. Can you say Hypergamy kids? Sure you can! She’s certainly not cured of that too, right? And no Great Aunt Willma would be so deeply ashamed. ‘He’ll do?’ But only if he’s pulling down 500K with a 250K+ bonus every year, right?
4.) Yes, more accurate self evaluation here dearie! A decade of chasing the big penis pile, and you think you’ve not ‘met your match yet’? You likely blew by it honey in all your rush! And yes, things only go ‘better for beta’ on the downside slope of fertility perhaps, but now you’ve got to be really cognizant of who you are, where you’re at & ‘what you can pull’.
5.) How many times can we read the same damn dreadful story? 100? 200? How can these idiots keep on getting book contracts? Are we gluttons for punishment? SSDD, like to the 10th power!
6.) I care not if she’ll be able to ‘reform’! There’s little indication of this, as she’s certainly not learned much from the experience other than ‘follow the tingle wherever it goes, but especially to & for money’! This is a uniquely worthy literary topic of modern interest? It might have been written 50-100 years ago by the ‘racy women’ of the flapper era! And Was!
Geesh it’s just all too stupid. I’m tired of it all, really. Cheers, ‘VJ’
I deleted your number on a Tuesday. I last banged you the next Friday. The decision was already made. Your post-creampie stalking was coincidental.
If you bring her to the US, then this country will ruin her anyway. Better to expat if you really want to keep her quality.
However, I’ve been thinking about it and isn’t saying that women who have slept around are unable to reform the same as saying that guys who haven’t slept around (ie, betas who didn’t have the social status to do so) should also be unable to reform?
Lack of sleeping around won’t damage a man the way sleeping around will damage a woman. Falling in love many times and being heartbroken is the male equivalent of being pumped and dumped repeatedly, though just like women can have other sources of emotional trauma in their lives, so can men e.g. abuse and neglect during childhood. For me, I haven’t been in love many times (three times), but I’m honest enough with myself to admit that my relationship with my mother drives most of my actions with women today.
I hope it’s books like these that finally drive home the message to younger women, one that a wise older girlfriend of mine says she keeps repeating to single women she knows: “If it’s a marketplace out there, then you’d better put a good price on yourself. And make sure you have something of value to offer for the price.”
Susan – I have to agree with your point that just not having sex isn’t enough of a change to really learn anything about why our relationships are the way they are.
If I were going to write a book and I was a girl who had slept around, wouldn’t it be better to not date at all. To really take a year off relationships. Sexually ones, sexually charged ones, ones that could lead to sex. Wouldn’t that really teach you about you?
I feel like this is one of the only comments I ever write on your blog – but I feel like there is such a strong pressure to be in a relationship from a young age that we jump from just barely getting to know who were are as teenagers to trying to find ourselves in a “we” … Whether it’s real “we”s or simple hook ups.
Jimmy, I’m interested to know more about this. What are the things that signal quality to you? What disgusts you? And where do you meet girls? Just to be clear, I am not being snide here. I am curious about the experience of a recent male college grad, and you clearly have experience with women.
I’m really torn about the spark. It’s understandable that people make sexual attraction a prerequisite. But honestly, I feel that sexual attraction is a very complicated thing. Research shows that attraction occurs among people in close proximity, and that means it’s not an instantaneous event. Guys may say it’s a simple switch that’s either on or off within 5 seconds of meeting a girl. But I know for a fact it’s not that simple, because in my life I have known men for a while, and then something in the dynamic changes and the sexual attraction is sparked. Perhaps it’s not just a question of looks after all for the male. Similarly, women know that the spark can occur at any time. If we think back on high school, it’s obvious that we know guys, don’t think of them that way, then bam, we’ve got a crush. Why? Maybe it was the way he spoke up in chemistry. Maybe it’s his soccer uniform. Maybe he’s a good guy friend and our feelings grow.
When a woman reaches her 30s, and she’s dating in hopes of finding a life partner, I think she can easily make the mistake of ruling out a guy too quickly. It’s not just the woman’s fault – there’s a clear timeline that people adhere to, including sex by the third date. I can certainly understand why women who aren’t feeling it don’t want to proceed. This is why I recommend that young people pursue their interests, join groups, network actively to meet friends of friends, etc.
I agree with this analysis. I figured someone would find a picture of Hephzibah. She is not very attractive, though in all honesty, I don’t know what any of the guys looked like. Perhaps the guys were in her league, but not good prospects for a relationship. Certainly the guy the fell hard for, Jake, wasn’t, because he had a long-distance relationship that he never even considered breaking off. He told her point blank, “I am not in love with you.” A woman who hears those words needs to quit that guy cold turkey, especially if she is in love with him. It’s just crazy self-destructive behavior. FWIW, she does write a bit about her father, a cold and distant man who did not participate in family life at all. So I think she reached adulthood emotionally damaged and then repeated old destructive patterns.
grerp, that’s an interesting thought. I think you’re definitely onto something re women going to extremes for male attention/validation in the current SMP. In the old system, a woman got to advertise her desirability by going on dates, being seen in the company of a suitor, etc. In the hookup culture, there’s no public validation. In fact, it’s the opposite – the walk of shame. Even if a woman feels temporarily validated by the individual attention she receives prior to hooking up, it’s fleeting and unlikely that much of anyone noticed. If it’s a booty call it’s entirely below the radar (until the next day when he gets his high fives).
The question of chivalry is complicated, at least in my mind. Game tells us that women do not want to be deferred to. Chivalry is often considered supplication. In eradicating chivalry, did feminism change the way women experience it?
That’s why she remains a cautionary tale rather than a tale of real Saul-style redemption. Also, I don’t really see how “everything but penetration” constitutes chaste behavior. She did hold off with many of the men, even delaying the first kiss, which I think was instructive for her. But simultaneously messing around with her bad boys had to have muddied the waters, to say the least. Not sure what kind of personal revelation is possible in that case.
If it is, then the woman who posed in all the photos is out of her mind. How will she ever convince the people who recognize her that it’s all a big joke?
I share your pessimism. She did learn some valuable things about herself, and about sex, i.e. it’s never casual. But whether she will continue to reflect or slip into old behavior patterns is a big question. Personally, I think she could benefit from about five years with a good therapist. That won’t solve her love life issues, but it may solve her need for male attention issue, which would make her life easier, and better.
Hi Deuce, first-time commenter, welcome.
I’ll cosign this. In fact, I write posts like this to bring women like H. to the attention of young women who are just coming of age, or are in college and trying to navigate the social scene. I also have said before that the cads and promiscuous women deserve each other. That leaves the dads and the chaste women to pair up. Any suggestions?
Great explanation, Chris, thanks for leaving that comment.
I think Chris hit the nail on the head. It’s the double standard, and it’s rooted in biology, so it will never change. That’s why your remaining a virgin is the ultimate premium calling card
One thing I will say: there is no absolute detector for a woman’s past. A woman like Hephzibah will telegraph that she’s emotionally weighed down by her past in many ways, but even she can rewrite history to some extent if she chooses to. Well, obviously the book makes that impossible, but you know what I mean.
A woman with, say, a dozen partners, can easily keep that information private, particularly in a large, urban setting after college. Some of the game bloggers write about “slut tells” but I think this is vastly overstated. Not all women exhibit emotional damage as a result of casual sex. Especially a woman who makes a decision to go chaste. After a period of months or a year, she will be able to intelligently speak about denying herself sex as if she’s barely experienced it, IMO.
Haha, you wasted a half hour, but you should be thankful that I wasted at least 7. Well, maybe not, it’s not as if you need to be admonished.
I would like a book contract. Maybe they’re not all that hard to get.
This level of introspection is rare and admirable. It’s why I have a soft spot for you, even though I’d shoot you if you came within 100 yards of my daughter.
Ah, it’s good to have you back with your special brand of ATS wisdom. What’s really important here is the second part of your statement. Women should not sell themselves short, but they also need to offer a product that is worth a man’s investment. That may be harder to do than ever before, and just having lady parts is not going to cut it. Women should be constantly trying to better themselves so that they can outcompete other women. It’s every woman for herself in a marketplace with few buyers.
Yes! I think this is exactly right! I would have rather read a book about Hephzibah’s going off men for a whole year, and what that was like. What she thought about, what she learned. How people responded to that. Maybe she could have made friendships with men and delayed any physical contact. I’m sure the publisher thought no one would read it, and that’s probably true for the most part. But the way it’s written one wonders what really was accomplished.
One of the best books I ever read was The Cloister Walk by Kathleen Norris. She goes to live in a monastery for nine months. I’m not a very religious person, but I found her experience fascinating. She started thinking in a completely different way, and kept the monks’ schedule, rising at midnight, again at dawn, etc. She started thinking about the Psalms. That was a really good memoir.
I’m torn. It’s a car wreck, for sure. I can’t decide whether it’s illuminating or not. I’ll leave it for now. Yikes. How she found you here I don’t know.
ROFL! Didn’t you once state that she’s a “10+” who despises alpha cads? Why the need to worry then?
Because VI describes himself as very good looking, and many cads are good, very very good, at pretending to be nice guys. A very high value young woman hopes for a good looking guy with good character. As does her mother.
P.S. She does have a solid track record of kicking cads to the curb when they reveal their true colors, but honestly, she winds up wasting a lot of time. Plus, the experience of constantly finding out a guy is not who you thought takes its toll. It’s not as emotionally damaging as being pumped and dumped, but it still makes young women wary.
.
Most of the men who approach her feel zero risk of rejection. That equals cad 99.9% of the time.
Actually, you didn’t say it. A toddler did. She said in a foreign language to her mother that you were beautiful. I’d trust the word of a three year old girl in a heartbeat.
.
Mandy? OK, I’m intrigued. Will Google.
Susan, in all seriousness, I nominate you to write a book! Obviously not about a year without sex, but this blog countines to be the best source I’ve seen for dating advice/theory for college and twenty somethings who don’t just want to be the next girl in a long line of hookups.
I mean, when there’s a really good article, a bunch of us girls gather around my laptop and discuss it. One even has that list of places to meet a quality man pinned on her door.
You should get paid for all this work
In other words, you’re basically saying that a young woman’s sexual choices should be limited by her parents? You’re one step away from supporting the dreaded patriarchy.
The thing is, if I knew she was your daughter, I’d be nice and respectful. I’m always respectful with girls my friends are related to or care about. And you’re kind of a friend in a weird internet blogosphere sort of way. I’m very loyal to my friends. I’d still game her, but out of principle I couldn’t treat her poorly .
When did I say that I was VERY good lucking? Maybe I did, I just don’t remember. I think I’m just normal good looking, but maybe it depends on how full of myself I feel that day. I’m definitely in good shape. Mandy from brightstormyday could probably give you a more objective rating.
Am I to believe that a woman past the age of 30 is a spinster? What is this, the 60s?
Anyhow, before age 30, I think that a woman with a history of many sexual partners is very desirable. Just like how women tend to go for the bad boys, men like to go for the bad girls. In college, there is more allure in chasing after a woman who spends her time in a bar dressed lasciviously or who is sexually available rather than a shy virgin.
So for young women, it’s a rather ghastly situation. You either join the hooking up culture or get dismissed by men as “unattractive.” It’s a no win situation.
Personally, I think Verie hit the nail on the head:
“I’ve been thinking about it and isn’t saying that women who have slept around are unable to reform the same as saying that guys who haven’t slept around (ie, betas who didn’t have the social status to do so) should also be unable to reform? In other words, doesn’t having this world view about women’s inability to improve themselves with a better mindset also chain you to not be able to use game to improve yourself & change for the better with a better mindset? ”
I also find that a lot of us tend to hide behind science when it’s convenient to the point we’re making. When it works in our favour, we hide behind it, and when it’s doesn’t , we demand the “other team” rise above it. If you give men a pass on not being able to see past a woman’s sexual history because of biology, how can you condemn women for hypergamy or moving up when a better deal comes along?
I believe anyone can change. It’s not easy, It’s not common, but it happens. And I have all the respect in the world for people who make that effort, whether the results come right away or not.
The difference between chivalry and supplication is intent. Is the guy doing things because he wants to do them or is it a way of trying to get something from her?
Problem is, it’s hard to tell the difference, especially at first, and especially since a percentage men try to use buying dinner or other gestures as a sexual bargaining chip. After getting burned a few times, many women learn to mistrust such gestures. At least with the jerk, you know where you stand. At least that’s what women I know tell me:)
I compare it to women telling you how much they love to give blowjobs. They might be telling the truth or they might be saying it because they want something from you.
These sorts of things come with the territory. The only real solution is time. And when we don’t have time, it comes down to doing the best we can, trusting our own judgement and learning from our mistakes.
Roissy & Roosh are funny though in thier own crude way…You gotta admit, they’re like those uncles who get drunk at christmas and say the truth just a little too harshly.”Phil come here. Look at you gettin all fat again. Pretty soon you won’t be able to see your thing when you pee!”. Oh uncle Roissy!
Damn work! How have I been missing this fight?
Awwww, thanks GFN. I especially appreciate the specific feedback – I love it that my post is on someone’s door! What’s especially gratifying is that is can spark discussion among friends. Women supporting each other in keeping their knees together is worth a lot. You can’t change the world, but you can possibly shift the culture in your own small world to a degree.
If I could arrange her marriage I would do it, no question.
Violet, just to clarify I use the term spinster lit not to describe the state of the women writing, but to name the motive behind the writing, and especially marketing, of these books. It’s a fear of not ever finding the guy, of growing old single. Most of the books are not helpful, though they may be funny or a good read. Nearly all of them describe a history of 10-20 years sleeping with dead end men.
.
You are 100% correct about the dilemma facing young women. It is a no win situation, especially in college. One way around it is to find or befriend young men who are not cads, i.e. not engaging in a lot of casual sex. Otherwise, I encourage women to be patient and wait it out. When they graduate, they should avoid most men under 25 or so. It’s not a very fun way to spend four years, but it beats sexing it up too much, because women who have a high number of partners ultimately become unacceptable to both the men with less experience, and the same bad boys they hooked up with years before.
Interesting. When FB stated he is planning to do the same, you called him a psycho.
“Anyhow, before age 30, I think that a woman with a history of many sexual partners is very desirable.”
That’s complete BS. Beautiful and good-natured women are desirable, promiscuous or not, and the more sexual partners she had, the less eligible she is for LTR. Men go after the easy girls when they are only looking for casual sex because these are the only girls who will give it to them.
That sounds like fun for Phil. Unfortunately, for Phil’s sister, Uncle Roissy is pulling her aside in the hallway and asking, “Hey, pretty little girl, can I watch while you pee?”
Why would anyone want to have sex with a girl like that. She is guaranteed to have something. I wonder if she realizes that if any of the men knew she had sex with 100 other guys the other 900 would never had done it.
Wow. Just wow….
Um, that’s a while ago, but I think he may have said he would farm her out to a Mormon boy or send her to live in a cult compound. I think he also said something about expecting her to walk four steps behind a man? In other words, he described the extreme fringe of American society.
In any case, FB and I reconciled long ago. We were both slinging mud around at the beginning, after I attacked Roissy’s brand of Game in a post.
Funny, you started coming here well after that I think. I was wondering how you recalled my earliest statements to him.
Violet, you couldn’t be more wrong. The type of guy who wants an LTR does not want be with a woman who has had sex with lots of men. I get the feeling that women don’t understand how much value men place of a woman’s sexual past until it is too late.
If you have any brothers or are good friends with any men older than 25 or so and who aren’t interested in you sexually, ask them what men really think about promiscuous women. You might be surprised at what you hear.
The only men who are dismissing you are “unattractive” are the men who just want to pump-and-dump you anyway. I’ll never understand why women feel the need to be going out with someone at all times. Many men have long dry spells and they turn out ok. Why don’t more women hold out for a compatible man whom they really like?
P.S. Arranging my daughter’s marriage is an old joke between us. The truth is she is very independent. I believe that I have had considerable influence on her thinking, but trust her to ultimately choose wisely. I just don’t want to see her hurt along the way.
Dan, I wish people did take more time. Both men and women. It’s really the only way to feel good about a person’s character and secure in their affection. And both of those really should be prerequisites to sex, IMO. All the rushing, the pressure to ramp things up quickly is very damaging. I think guys feel pressured to make moves quickly, lest they be considered odd or gay. I’ve had women ask me if I think a guy is gay because he hasn’t been sexually aggressive by the third date. Of course, women feel pressured to either put out or lose the guy’s interest. I say if people flake on you because you’re not in a rush for sex, good riddance. That’s a huge imbalance right up front, and indicates a poor match.
Hahaha Vince, I don’t think she’d like me to meet her daughter either.
I was just wondering how this process of change will continue. First you say that young women should only have sex with men who commit to them. They you essentially say that parents should have a say in their daughters’ sexual choices. Honestly, what’s next? You might as well promote the Patriarchy:).
I’m not sure what you mean by process of change.
I have said from the beginning that women should have sex with men who commit to them.
I have not actually said that parents should have a say in their daughter’s sexual choices. I sort of jokingly said that I’d arrange a marriage if I could. What I meant was that if I were given the opportunity to select a husband for my daughter, I think I could probably do an excellent job. However, it’s a moot point since it’s not the culture we live in, and my daughter is not willing to give me a role in selecting her suitors. She is not rebellious, but she is an independent American woman. The best I can hope for is that we have provided her with the upbringing that will enable her to make good choices.
As for the patriarchy, I think way too much is made of it. Why must one sex dominate? I’d like to see a pure meritocracy.
“I’m not sure what you mean by process of change.”
It seems your views changed considerably in the last 1-1.5 years. You adopted views that feminists would find revolting.
“What I meant was that if I were given the opportunity to select a husband for my daughter, I think I could probably do an excellent job. However, it’s a moot point since it’s not the culture we live in, and my daughter is not willing to give me a role in selecting her suitors.”
In other words, you think it would be nice if you could do all that but in the current culture you can’t. I guess you also believe you should be able to keep cads away from her even if she feels attracted to one of them. That is, Ms. Walsh, patriarchal logic.
“Why must one sex dominate?”
Good question. It is probably unavoidable due to the enduring intrasexual tension and opposing reporductive gender strategies. Throughout history there have always been patriarchies and matriarchies. But I’ve never heard of a single ‘equalarchy’ (is that even a word)?
I can’t decide whether you like my blog and are sincerely curious, or whether you loathe my blog and are trying to catch me out and trip me up. I fear it’s the latter.
1. My views have not changed at all. I was pissing off feminists almost from day one. I started blogging to oppose sex-positive feminist views, and support young women feeling miserable in the SMP. My mission has expanded, but there’s been no real shift in my views.
2. I did initially oppose Game, as you know. After tussling over it with a few different Game bloggers I read The Game and MM. I concluded that Game, if applied morally, gives “dads” a fighting chance against “cads” and I came out clearly and strongly in favor of it. I have not wavered on that point since.
3. You admit to guessing what I believe about parents controlling their children’s sexual choices. Honestly, the concept is so foreign to me that I have never truly considered it carefully. I suppose all parents would like to have the option of making an unacceptable suitor disappear, but I acknowledge that parents are often wrong. I’m certainly capable of being wrong about a person. No, I would much rather trust my daughter’s judgment and have her assume the responsibility. If she chooses a cad, so be it. I don’t see it happening though – she loves and admires her beta dad.
Thank you Vincent. That’s a lovely thought. I’m working on it. I need to get the message out there as a real and viable alternative.
I don’t hate your blog, Ms. Walsh, I just don’t think you will achieve much with it. Obviously you have good intentions, but those alone aren’t useful for anything. You oppose those consequences of feminism that proved to be indirectly harmful to some women and basically expect all young women to re-regulate their sexuality while leaving all their rights intact – which would be a historically unprecedented development and therefore has small chances of success.
“You admit to guessing what I believe about parents controlling their children’s sexual choices. Honestly, the concept is so foreign to me that I have never truly considered it carefully.”
Well, what am I to make of the following statement then?:
“If I could arrange her marriage I would do it, no question.”
I was stunned to read that, Ms. Walsh, even if you weren’t 100% serious. It gives me the impression that you started adopting at least parts of patriarchal thinking in your quest to correct the SMP.
If you wrote a book or had a more recognizable name, I’d try my hardest to get you invited here.
“I have said from the beginning that women should have sex with men who commit to them.”
I think to be fair, the blog started out with the idea that women should try to calibrate their “hook up” behavior to either (i) maximize the likelihood of an ensuing commitment/relationship or (ii) if they genuinely don’t need such a relationship, minimize likelihood of them being hurt in any way and not get their expectations up.
Now, your writing (especially in the comment threads) could be taken to suggest that you think the above is probably impossible and that they should not “hook up” at all. In other words, have you come to believe that “Hooking up Smart” is a contradiction in terms?
What bothers me most about this book is the fact that it’s apparently meaningful and helpful. It’s pretty much saying I was unsuccessful with dating and still am even after changing something. It also bothers me that something like this is around and something more helpful to people like me hasn’t even surfaced.
I’m a 21 year old, fairly attractive, and I’d like to think interesting guy. However my biggest problem is not knowing what to say or how to converse with a girl that I find attractive. It’s been over two years for me since I’ve had sex or even been in a relationship. For this last two years I’ve been trying to do things right. By right I mean trying to meet a nice girl, taking her out for a bit, and then after things are established and happy move on to the sex portion of things. I bring up the sex thing because as this blog denotes sex is an important thing it’ just a matter of how we do it. However in spite of it all I’ve been trying to do it right and it’s gotten me no where other then a couple dead end first dates and a lot of unreturned first phone calls.
I’ve read, looked into, and talked to a lot of people and tried my damnedest to do things right. Not text or call a shit load. Give space and even delete phone numbers if a phone call hasn’t been returned in over a week just so I don’t think about calling someone that isn’t interested. So why is it I can only be friends with girls that have no sexual or romantic attraction to me?
Here is how I see it. Here is a girl that has spent her life making the wrong choices and going after the alpha even when she KNOWS it’s a bad fucking idea. I mean really common? How hard is to figure out a guy thats dating another girl or in love with another girl isn’t going to work out in the end? Even after she decides her compass is being thrown off by some magnetic force and decides to not do what she’s done for as long as she can remember, throwing her vagina and hopeless dreams and fantasies, for an entire year she still ends up sleeping with another prick out of guilt.
Girls complain over and over that they want guys to not just go straight for the shag and get to know them first. I think it’s a two way street if you want the guys that want to take their time then you girls need to take your time. There are good guys out there they just may be a little bashful. They may not know what to talk about because their trying to think of a common ground but are struggling because at the same time don’t want to fuck it up with someone so great. Give the beta’s a break and give them some time. Don’t just brush them off as easy as your mascara is going to run when your crying because of the alpha.
Sometimes I think I’m a rejection or two from just going from girl to girl and asking, “Do you want to hook up,” because that seems easier for a beta. Same rejection just without the bullshit.
Just so there’s no confusion weather I’m a Quasimodo looking guy behind a keyboard here’s a picture of me. http://yfrog.com/1n28544400532629757812024j
Hollenhund, I should think it’s pretty clear from many of my posts that I wish the Sexual Revolution had not happened, or had happened differently. I suppose that means a return to the repression of female sexuality. Yes, I would prefer that. If you want to call that patriarchal thinking, that’s OK with me. Patriarchy is not a word that makes me nervous.
Again, you and I have had a miscommunication due to my sense of humor. I apologize. I do not literally wish to arrange a marriage for my daughter. However, as I said, if we lived in a culture that had them, I am certain I could make a good match for her. As it is, I will just have to dispense advice if she sees fit to ask for it.
I fully understand that you find my intentions useless, and my effort pointless. Fair enough. In that case, please do not feel obligated to continue pointing out the futility of my writings in every comment thread.
@Passerby
First, it’s important to define the term hooking up, which can mean anything from making out to full on sex. I have from the beginning counseled young women not to have sex with men randomly if a relationship is what they want. I have also said that I will not judge a woman for engaging in casual sex, but that I may judge it as poor strategy depending on her goals. I have always said that if casual sex is working for a woman, no problem. Perhaps you’re right – I don’t really believe that any more. Here’s why:
1. As of last week only two women have ever indicated that is their preference. Most women who find my blog have already figured out they don’t want to ride that vaunted carousel.
2. I have learned from the men here, including you, that a lot of sexual experience is a dealbreaker for most men. I knew of that in theory before I started writing, but it’s been stated again and again here. And I’ve come to understand that faithfulness and sexual loyalty is extremely important to men. Past sexual experience is the best proxy men have for predicting that.
.
Hooking Up Smart as a concept still works for me, because it can mean hooking up only when you feel secure in the affection of another. Hooking Up Dumb might be having sex outside a relationship. Or it might be hooking up with someone you don’t really care for.
I will say that when I go back and read my very first posts, I feel sort of embarrassed. They’re overly simplistic and narrow in their focus. I’ve learned a lot from the readers here.
NO WAY!!!!!!!!
Men are also expected to put out early on. As a guy who’s never been the type to kiss on a first date (I thought It was creepy/contrived), the advice from the PUA community to do so came across as counterintuitive and unnatural for me.
It wasn’t until more recently that I realized that women have to come expect/require that sort of escalation in order to facilitate the all-important spark. The second date’s the absolute upper limit. If a post-college aged male fails to deliver by then, she’ll probably think there’s something wrong with him.
It sounds kind of silly because you’d assume that guys are ready to go for sex within minutes (or even seconds) of meeting a girl. That’s mostly true. But that initial jump is a tough one to make when a guy has no idea how interested the girl is. Lately I’ve just been assuming there’s interest while observing the best I can and shutting my neurotic inner-voice up.
Sorry if this is a little off-topic, it’s just something I thought worth mentioning in one of these threads.
You are twisting my words and make it sound like I’m some snarky troll. Trying to change the dismal status quo in the SMP isn’t pointless or useless, but trying to convince all women to collectively shut their legs for the female common good probably won’t do it.
@Hollenhund
In any case, I certainly do not think you are a troll. You can be a bit snarky at times. You are, of course, welcome to comment and ask the tough questions. Speaking of which, I’m knee deep in stats trying to get to the bottom of that 80/20 rule. I can’t find a single source that’s already done the hard work, but I’m trying.
Apologies, I didn’t mean to twist your words. You just hurt my feelings a bit.
Hey, you, it’s good to see you! Coincidentally, I address some of what you’re talking about in my newest post. As for going to a girl and asking to hook up? Might be worth a try. Just know that 19 times out of 20 you’ll get rejected. Couldn’t be any worse than what you’re describing now. Women fall for that more than you’d imagine, because it signals that you expect success. OK, now watch, some guy will come along and say don’t listen to her! So take this with a grain of salt. The guys are better able to advise you.
Sox, I think assuming there’s interest is a good default position. Especially because, as you say, your taking control of the situation can help spark her interest. Looking nervous or afraid to kiss her will take all the air out of that balloon. I know one woman who was really crushing on a guy. They hung out a few times, and when he first went to kiss her she saw that his hands were shaking visibly. She thought it was “adorable” but she did not think it was “sexy.” That’s a problem. Talk yourself out of that uncertainty or shove your hands in your pockets. Just take charge.
Well, I read that stuff, and I don’t see where it affects my point. I especially don’t get the relevance of the Rawness article. Are you trying to say that if you marry a hot girl from a lawless part of the world, you’ll get someone who’s been conditioned to be attracted to local gang big-wigs? That just doesn’t follow from anything in that article, and besides that, there are plenty of places to find a woman that aren’t a criminal cesspool like Costa Rica.
In any event, the stats are pretty clear that marriages with foreign women are generally less likely to end in divorce than marriages with American women. Depending on where the woman is from, possibly much less. That’s to be expected, since America has an unusually high level of divorce. This is even true for mail-order brides ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mail-order_bride#Divorce_rate ), where the guy rarely bothers to learn the language and culture first (to address the conversation you and Athlone had).
My point isn’t that foreign marriage is a magic bullet that guarantees happiness. My point is that if a guy finds himself in such a position that his remaining domestic options come down to desperate husband-hunting 30-somethings doing overtime on the kegels after having recently extracted themselves from the cock carousel (or rather, vice-versa), his chances are much better with a less experienced foreigner. And in any event, this approach has the additional advantage of depriving the sluts of any escape hatch when they get older and belatedly want to reform, thereby increasing the disincentives of slut behavior.
Actually, were I still in the market, I think I’d generally take a reformed woman who had some emotional damage over one that didn’t (of course, it depends on the *type* of emotional damage). As I see it, if a woman lacks any remorse over her previous flings, it means she’s probably not genuinely reformed, but has just gone “chaste” out of pure calculation.
One big reason that men looking for meaningful relationships don’t like women with storied pasts, which nobody has mentioned, is that such women are less likely to be as emotionally devoted to their husbands, because sex with multiple partners will have likely desensitized them to the bonding effects of sex. A woman who is truly sorry about her past, because she sees it as an obstacle in her relationship with her husband, is more likely to overcome that problem.
I’d take a woman who goes chaste so that she can be a better wife over one who goes chaste just so she can be a wife. The latter is dangerous, because her “chastity” is actually a form of manipulation and she’s just looking for some chump to bail her out, but the former is more likely to have some emotional damage.
Yeah, I get all that — women get judged sexually for reproductive reasons (they are less desirable reproductively because they’ve already been “used”), totally can see why. But I’m not asking why men don’t, which is what you’re answering. I’m asking why, if women are deemed biologically “unfit” why men should be able to be deemed biologically “fit” when they don’t actually have the biology to back it up either.
Think about it the way it was viewed back in the day: a woman doesn’t have a lot of choices / can’t get a man to commit to her so she has to sleep around in order to procreate & take her chances on raising offspring alone and is thus deemed biologically “unfit.” Similarly, a man doesn’t have a lot of choices / can’t get a woman because he has no status, money, looks, or strength and so cannot procreate with a woman since he’s deemed biologically “unfit.” How are these any different? AKA why can’t a woman change her low-status behavior nowadays to change that perceived biological lack of fitness like a man can change his low-status behavior using game (to make up for the fact that he has no status, money, looks, or strength)?
That was inspiring.
they just know what makes them tingle and don’t think much further than that.
This is problematic though. How can one make good choices if you can’t even analyze/understand your own motivations?
I’ll repost what I said to Chris above:
Yeah, I get all that — women get judged sexually for reproductive reasons (they are less desirable reproductively because they’ve already been “used”), totally can see why. But I’m not asking why men don’t, which is what you’re answering. I’m asking why, if women are deemed biologically “unfit” why men should be able to be deemed biologically “fit” when they don’t actually have the biology to back it up either.
Think about it the way it was viewed back in the day: a woman doesn’t have a lot of choices / can’t get a man to commit to her so she has to sleep around in order to procreate & take her chances on raising offspring alone and is thus deemed biologically “unfit.” Similarly, a man doesn’t have a lot of choices / can’t get a woman because he has no status, money, looks, or strength and so cannot procreate with a woman since he’s deemed biologically “unfit.” How are these any different? AKA why can’t a woman change her low-status behavior nowadays to change that perceived biological lack of fitness like a man can change his low-status behavior using game (to make up for the fact that he has no status, money, looks, or strength)?
However, I’ve been thinking about it and isn’t saying that women who have slept around are unable to reform the same as saying that guys who haven’t slept around (ie, betas who didn’t have the social status to do so) should also be unable to reform? In other words, doesn’t having this world view about women’s inability to improve themselves with a better mindset also chain you to not be able to use game to improve yourself & change for the better with a better mindset?
Simplistically, it is impossible to undo what you did. There is no time machine to go back and eliminate past actions. But you can do what you haven’t done.
Yeah, I get all that — women get judged sexually for reproductive reasons (they are less desirable reproductively because they’ve already been “used”), totally can see why. But I’m not asking why men don’t, which is what you’re answering. I’m asking why, if women are deemed biologically “unfit” why men should be able to be deemed biologically “fit” when they don’t actually have the biology to back it up either.
The way you’ve phrased this you appear to be approaching this from the perspective of what is “fair” or “just”. Biology/nature has no sense of “fairness”. Is it fair that the lion tears the zebra to shreds. It just is what it is. It is a mistake to try to overlay some moral framework on top of a system where none exists.
That said, who exactly are you referring to that is trying to “deem men biologically fit who don’t have the biology to back it up”. It seems that many/most women are in fact “deeming” the vast majority of men as “unfit”. Most young men are essentially celibate or have sex on an infrequent basis, hence the origination of the term “getting lucky”. No alpha male is going to say he got “lucky”. Now one view would be that men are trying to pass themselves off as “alpha impostors”, but then again many highly promiscuous women are going to lie about their number. In the deregulated sexual marketplace, it is caveat emptor for the buyer.
No because a beta who hasn’t slept around hasn’t done anything. A woman who has slept around can’t undo those experiences even if she stops and “improves”. The damage is done and she has created an experience gap between herself and many men making it so she can’t relate to a large group of men.
You can’t turn a pickle back into a cucumber.
I think it is. It’s complete proof that a dismal, bitter worldview like Vincent’s only ends in drama & much weeping & gnashing of teeth. This is only a tiny part of his karma coming back to bite him, you can bet there will be more if I’ve discerned his character correctly.
We definitely have different versions of “truth” if you think Roissy & Roosh tell it.
To The Deuce: if you’ve seriously read all six parts of that article and don’t understand the implications, I feel there’s a high chance you are going to be a bitter MRA sometime in the next 10 years. I emailed with the author of the blog, T, and he said (quote) “So many people didn’t get the Myth of the Middle Class Alpha series at all or worse just complained that it was long and repetitive that it actually discouraged me for a bit…not about myself but about the state of people out there that they couldn’t really understand something so straightforward (at least in my mind). So it’s heartening to actually see someone totally get what my point was.” So at least feel comforted that it’s not just you.
I’m not even going to bother going into more depth or talk about this anymore on the blog. I am so sick of guys talking about going expat. None of you have a clue.
So I’ll talk about what you did mention. The link to the flimsy quote you’re talking about in the wikipedia article is broken — ie, there is no real data to back up what you’re saying. Provide some and I’ll be more convinced. In any case, the quote in the article says specifically: “The United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) reports that “…marriages arranged through these services would appear to have a lower divorce rate than the nation as a whole, fully 80 percent of these marriages having lasted over the years for which reports are available.” Key words being “for which reports are available” — how many couples are going to volunteer to fill out surveys about how their marriage failed? The US only keeps real divorce stats on people who were citizens before they were married, since you get a green card after you marry. And a 20% divorce rate is exactly what the US has among college-educated citizens (which I assume applies to you), check it out here: http://www.isnare.com/?aid=217950&ca=Marriage.
All your other talk is just that: talk. You’re sadly misinformed, but I’m tired of arguing with people who don’t want to see facts contrary to their own worldview. If you’re invested in believing a foreign woman will save you, I wish you luck with that.
That’s exactly my point — those “poseur alpha” guys are as biologically unfit as the women who have slept around if you take that view. They both can just pretend otherwise — I’m not saying it’s unfair or fair, I’m just saying it’s the same. I view the two as the same.
Who cares about time machines or whatever? I’m talking about the here and now, whether someone is biologically fit or unfit. As I wrote above, I see betas who are pretending to be alpha using game (which is essentially tricks to emulate the confidence that would come genetically or with power, money, or looks) in the same way as I see women who you consider to be “damaged” because of the the sex they’ve had — they both have reduced fitness on the market. They can both pretend to be different (and they do), but that act of pretending is basically the same.
What about women who have slept around without emotional damage? There are no absolutes — I have some friends who have been with quite a few guys and are still loving and nice because they were always treated well & have happy-go-lucky dispositions.
And what about a beta who doesn’t internalize his game (and therefore is the equivalent of the woman who’s pretending to be chaste but hasn’t changed her mindset)? With no inner game, the walls come down pretty quickly it seems. So he doesn’t permanently change — it’s mostly a facade. I’m actually surprised you’re defending game as a way to change men’s behavior and decrying women’s attempts to do so — didn’t you just post about how game is all fake and made up?
Also, to be clear: I don’t really have anything invested either way. In fact, because both Mike’s and your opinions are the ones that prevail within the male population, it’s actually a huge advantage to me to differentiate myself from the other girls in the marketplace who do have a lot of sexual experience but are now “good girls”. So just know, as Susan would say, that I don’t have a dog in the fight. It’s just what makes sense to me.
I also have hope that people can change. The world is a pretty dismal place if it’s not true.
This level of introspection is rare and admirable. It’s why I have a soft spot for you, even though I’d shoot you if you came within 100 yards of my daughter.
IIRC, you have a son as well. Here is my question, and I apologize if it is too personal (just ignore) but I consider you a objective observer of today’s SMP so I’m genuinely curious as to whether you think your son has it “harder” in today’s world or your daughter?
Anyhow, before age 30, I think that a woman with a history of many sexual partners is very desirable. Just like how women tend to go for the bad boys, men like to go for the bad girls.
Desirable for what? No need to answer. As a guy I know what they are desirable for. Do you?
Yeah, I wouldn’t get too excited about this confession. Players often recognize their flaws out loud (and even say they need to fix them) to appeal to women’s need to save them/play nursemaid, but never do anything about it because they don’t want to do the hard work. I would know — you read my emails about S, he did the same thing.
“And I’ve come to understand that faithfulness and sexual loyalty is extremely important to men. Past sexual experience is the best proxy men have for predicting that.”
Disagree. Let’s say I lost my virginity as late as 21 to my boyfriend of 2 years. Then I have a boyfriend for each year after that – each lasting 1 year until I am 31. That means I’ve slept with 10 men in 10 years, but each man I was in an exclusive relationship with (not cheating).
Then at 31 I meet the man who is to become my husband but he has slept with 5 partners, half my amount, therefore 10 to him seems like a big number – it’s double his, however each one was in a committed relationship.
Is he to “assume” I’m going to “cheat” on him just because I slept with twice as many people as he did?
How many women can really do that? There’s always non-emotional damage like STDs, some other man’s kids, and several other things.
I’m not defending game. A “beta” who hasn’t done anything has not done anything. By definition he can not be damaged. A woman who has slept around has had damage whether it’s emotional or other kinds. She can’t do anything to undo this damage since she can not make it so her experiences never happened. She’s permanently stuck.
It’s not about “game”.
The big difference is that the sluts have committed an offense that’s going to be held against them, while the low status guys are simply not good enough. Become good enough, and nobody’s going to care about your previous failures.
.
Instead of comparing low status guys to sluts, I think a better metaphor is unattractive girls. If they suddenly become hot, I don’t think any guy is going to care that she used to be ugly. Likewise, nobody’s going to care that a low status guy used to be unsuccessful as long as he’s successful now.
.
Becoming “good enough” is easier said than done (on both sides). But I think most people would agree that a clean record is going to beat out a mile long rap sheet more often than not.
.
And on the note of “slut tells,” I think they’re definitely there. I don’t think they’re always as easily identifiable like Roissy, Roosh, etc. claim… but they’re there. If you spend enough time with a girl over the course of a month or two, you should be able to have a pretty good idea of what you’re dealing with. Sometimes the dead giveaways happen when they get drunk. I think I’d put my slut predictor accuracy at about 80%.
They can read blogs like this and hopefully learn from it. But it’s not programmed in for selection like the women shouldn’t be promiscuous thing is programmed into men. In fact, it’s quite the opposite: we needed social mores and grandmothers telling girls not to be promiscuous to get them to avoid hypergamy. Now that those voices are absent, girls are reacting with their biology. But just like men learned to adapt to the new hierarchy with game, women will learn to adapt as well. It’s just happening now though.
That’s exactly my point — those “poseur alpha” guys are as biologically unfit as the women who have slept around if you take that view. They both can just pretend otherwise — I’m not saying it’s unfair or fair, ********I’m just saying it’s the same. I view the two as the same.*********
Well…I don’t approach this from the perspective of trying to create an equivalence and don’t even see it as an issue of biological “fitness” or “unfitness”.
That said, fact of the matter is that in today’s highly technological, knowledge economy (as opposed to the hunter-gatherer) society Beta male genes (high intelligence, industriousness, reliability) are probably more “fit” then Alpha male genes (aggression, risk-taking, extroversion, social dominance).
The crux of the issue is suitability for a LTR, and in that sense there is no equivalence. A Beta with good character can make for a good long-term partner but his problem is lack of creating the tingle aka chemistry aka spark. His attempt to be a “poseur alpha” as you put it is just to hopefully have fighting chance at creating that spark. In contrast, the woman who has slept around speaks directly to her character and judgement which affects her suitability for a LTR. And then you’ve got the degraded bonding abiilty as well as the number of partners ramps up.
Again, I think you are trying to force some sort of equivalence here because it fits your worldview of what would be “fair”. Gosh darnit, if we are going to categorize a group of females as “unfit” then we need to find a group of men as well to balance it out. That really is the essence of what you are saying.
“Instead of comparing low status guys to sluts, I think a better metaphor is unattractive girls. If they suddenly become hot, I don’t think any guy is going to care that she used to be ugly. Likewise, nobody’s going to care that a low status guy used to be unsuccessful as long as he’s successful now.”
You’re right, that’s a good metaphor and one I’ve used before — plastic surgery is to girls what game is to guys. Both things are faking their genetic fitness. However, if you’re also judging girls’ fitness to reproduce on their sexual choices, their sexuality also plays against what determines guys’ fitness (ie, game). So girls get a double whammy — they are judged on chastity + attractiveness vs. men who are judged on status/accomplishments (game or money, looks, power).
I argue that the comparison still stands.
“The big difference is that the sluts have committed an offense that’s going to be held against them, while the low status guys are simply not good enough. Become good enough, and nobody’s going to care about your previous failures.”
This directly contradicts your next statement: “But I think most people would agree that a clean record is going to beat out a mile long rap sheet more often than not.” I agree with that. Given a choice, would you not prefer a girl who was born looking like a supermodel and never had to work out a day in her life / is naturally thin or a girl who had plastic surgery on her face & boobs & works out 2 hours a day to maintain her look?
Similarly, don’t you think girls would prefer a college football player who is socially dominant & charismatic who became an investment banker millionaire to a guy who was the class nerd & somewhat awkward but learned game and became a guy with the same net worth? Given that both treated her the same, girls would pick the first over the second because past success most often predicts future success. The first guy has always been a winner. People do care about your past failures, and that is why I think game = a reformed attitude toward sleeping around.
Who cares about time machines or whatever?
You either are not understanding or purposefully disregarding my point. It is about actions versus mindset/personality.
Look, a killer is always a killer. If I murder someone, I could go on to reform and be Mother Teresa, but I still killed somebody. There is no way to erase that.
However, if I am grumpy, I can choose to stop being grumpy and be a pleasant person. If I make that change, I am not a grumpy person pretending to be pleasant, I am a pleasant person.
As I wrote above, I see betas who are pretending to be alpha using game (which is essentially tricks to emulate the confidence that would come genetically or with power, money, or looks) in the same way
Tricks? Pretending? Not sure really how to address this other then your characterization and choice of words here sort of confirms what many Game advocates say about the female opposition to Game. Essentially, it boils down to “Betas, know your role”, and don’t you dare to try and move up the ladder. You are entitled to this view, but know that this view plays directly into supporting what more extreme views like Vincent and Roissy espouse. Because the attitude underlying this view is likely to heighten and amplify the bitterness and resentment many Betas already feel.
Again though Game tactics or “tricks” as you put it are really amoral, it is how they are put to use that matters. I think Susan gets it 110%.
Again, from the perspective of a LTR. If you’ve slept with 50-100 guys because they were all able to generate the tingle, then how can I be sure if i commit to you or marry you, that you won’t fall prey to that tingle some night and cheat. You admitted yourself that women are largely ignorant of what generates the tingle and instead mistakenly attribute it to some magical chemistry. In contrast, a girl who has had maybe 3-6 partners all in longer-term relationships is a better bet for fidelity. She must have experienced the tingle a great number of times as well but was able to refrain from acting on it. Chances are she’ll be able to refrain in the future.
“How many women can really do that? There’s always non-emotional damage like STDs, some other man’s kids, and several other things.”
I don’t know how many in sum total, but I know a couple that have. Their differentiator was that they picked guys who cared about them. There were just a lot of them. There isn’t always STDs or kids. C’mon, you’re better than that — not everyone gets both because they have sex. What are the ‘several other things’?
“I’m not defending game. A “beta” who hasn’t done anything has not done anything. By definition he can not be damaged. A woman who has slept around has had damage whether it’s emotional or other kinds. She can’t do anything to undo this damage since she can not make it so her experiences never happened. She’s permanently stuck. It’s not about “game”.”
Did you understand my original question? It was game vs. a reformed attitude toward sex. I’m not as interested in what your opinion is on whether women can reform or not unless it relates to your opinion on game for men. Again, I’ll post the rephrased question here:
Yeah, I get all that — women get judged sexually for reproductive reasons (they are less desirable reproductively because they’ve already been “used”), totally can see why. But I’m not asking why men don’t, which is what you’re answering. I’m asking why, if women are deemed biologically “unfit” why men should be able to be deemed biologically “fit” when they don’t actually have the biology to back it up either.
Think about it the way it was viewed back in the day: a woman doesn’t have a lot of choices / can’t get a man to commit to her so she has to sleep around in order to procreate & take her chances on raising offspring alone and is thus deemed biologically “unfit.” Similarly, a man doesn’t have a lot of choices / can’t get a woman because he has no status, money, looks, or strength and so cannot procreate with a woman since he’s deemed biologically “unfit.” How are these any different? AKA why can’t a woman change her low-status behavior nowadays to change that perceived biological lack of fitness like a man can change his low-status behavior using game (to make up for the fact that he has no status, money, looks, or strength)?
And what about a beta who doesn’t internalize his game (and therefore is the equivalent of the woman who’s pretending to be chaste but hasn’t changed her mindset)?
Hmmm…you are really intense about pushing this “equivalence” meme. I find that interesting.
I get where you’re coming from, but I think the plastic surgery example is a little extreme…. Just looking at the period from the beginning of HS to the end of college, I can think of plenty of girls who naturally became a lot more attractive during that time. And on the flip side, there’s probably even more girls I know who used to be fairly hot and aren’t looking so good these days. Too much partying can take its toll.
.
I don’t think guys are going to pass up the attractive girls because they used to be ugly. Likewise, the girls who aren’t looking so good anymore aren’t going to be able to get dates based on the way they looked 5-10 years ago.
.
As far as the football player investment banker goes… well of course that dude’s going to have it made. But what if one of his teammates is fat, stupid, and has a lousy job when he’s 25-30? I don’t think his past success is going to be of much help. And if that class nerd became financially successful and charismatic, I don’t really see how his past is going to be held against him.
.
A good resume is always great to have, but I think no resume beats out a bad resume.
You’re right, I do tend to find analogies. It’s just what makes sense to me. I don’t like that guys condemn women who have slept around but feel fine improving themselves when they aren’t the top of the heap either. I feel like both should have a chance to improve — I’m actually not against game at all, but against the mindset that shoves all the women who might be able to change in one box. That’s why I play devil’s advocate with the “tricks” comment — what’s good for the gander should be good for the goose.
I know how it feels to be put in with everyone else when you’re different — I’ve been placed in a box by a guy who thought all women were the same and only found out I was different too late. Like I already mentioned, I have nothing invested either way. In fact, because you have the opinion you do and so many men do as well, it’s actually a huge advantage to me to differentiate myself from the other girls in the marketplace who do have a lot of sexual experience but are now “good girls” since I’ve never had sex with anyone. So really it would be a disadvantage to me for you to start thinking that girls could be reformed.
I just happen to hope & believe that people can change.
I see your point, and it’s a good one. I just addressed some questions you asked below.
The question makes so sense since “game” does not exist but putting that aside to get the answer you’re looking for…
What is making them “unfit” is their past (negative) actions. The woman who slept around has likely accumulated emotional damage and/or other damage such as kids from another man, STDs, and what not. The men who weren’t able to do anything were unable to act. Their lack of action says nothing because they didn’t do anything. They could not have accumulated any damage.
The real comparison is to a woman who slept around is a guy who slept around not a guy who couldn’t get laid.
Me too. The two things are not equivalent.
Verie, I’m with you in the whole analogies/metaphors idea… They make things easier to understand for me too, and I think I’ve come up with a better one:
.
Think of a slut as a girl who goes through her first year and a half of college with a straight 4.0, only to get into hard partying, drinking, drug use, etc. to the point that it eventually kills her studying habits and grades. After a year or two of failing numerous classes, she eventually gets kicked out of her university. She might clean her act up down the road, finish up her degree at the local community college, and still be a very intelligent in the academic sense, but no decent grad school is going to want to take her in with such a terrible record.
.
Once a girl gets ‘kicked out’ of a guy’s LTR consideration, it’s not very likely that she’ll get back in. The ‘slut tells’ aren’t as easy to obtain as grade transcripts, but guys might consult people who have known the girl longer (or known of the girl) as ‘letters of recommendation.’ As I said earlier, given enough time, guys can usually figure it out. There’s definitely a certain small percentage of guys out there who’d like to reform a slut, but we’re talking a very small minority.
.
The awkward nerd is the equivalent of a guy who’s getting a 2.0 his first year and a half. Definitely not attractive, but nothing that’s going to get him kicked out. If he gets his act together, studies his material, and busts his ass over the next couple of years to bring his GPA over a 3.0 by the time he graduates, he’ll probably be able to get into a decent grad school. Probably not an elite one, but a good one. The key is that he has clean record and the end product is acceptable.
.
I disagree with the idea that game can help any guy go from zero to top of the pack. Everybody can’t always be a winner in society, sad as it is. Maybe the guy’s GPA goes from a 2.0 to a 2.5, and that’s all he’s capable of… nothing to be ashamed of, but he shouldn’t feel entitled to get accepted into Harvard’s Law School either.
Ms. Walsh, you’ve set out to accomplish a nearly impossible task – namely to convince women to regulate their own sexuality and slut-shame each other in an environment where they have practically zero economic and social incentives to do so – so I think it’s fair to say you were bound to run into difficulties and thus have your feelings hurt.
With respect to the 80/20 rule, this may be helpful:
http://alvanista.wordpress.com/2009/11/27/another-okcupid-study-preselection-rears-its-ugly-head-again/
Don’t forget this rule merely states that 20% of men are performing 80% of all (hetero)sexual encounters. Nothing more, nothing less.
I interpreted reform as emotional reform, not reform of societal perception. As far as biological fitness goes, I think you’re correct. You can’t change your level of genetic fitness. But you can clearly change how you’re perceived.
What we’re most attracted to is what was biologically fit ~50,000 years ago. Many PUAs are nerdy types who are more biologically fit in a modern context than typical alpha types, but because women didn’t evolve to select for C++ coding ability, those men aren’t attractive to them. However, they’ve figured out a way to flip those biological switches in women and make themselves more attractive.
The same goes for women. With modern medical technology, looks aren’t really as important as they used to be, and stereotypically masculine personality characteristics are more fit in a modern context than you would expect based on how much they turn men off. Women need to figure out something akin to what PUAs have.
Take a division I football or basketball player. That man is drowning in poon, but it’s based mostly on his physical qualities, qualities that aren’t much important in a world where violence is many orders of magnitude lower than it was in the paleolithic, or even a couple hundred years ago.
I’m probably the intellectual equivalent of a Division I football player i.e. if you look at the rarity of division I athletic prowess, it’s about as rare as the rarity of being able to do what I do. I am not drowning in poon, yet in a modern world, I’m definitely more fit than the average division I player.
Karma like religion is a crutch for weak minds.
You make the mistake of assuming my view on women translates to the whole world. Yes, I think women are evil, but a necessary evil in this world. No, I don’t think the world overall is that bad.
If I blogged mostly about travel or economic development, you would assume my worldview was rosy.
Susan, VI has a good body but he has a somewhat inflated opinion of his looks, IMO.
I’m not so sure that women naturally are promiscuous. If they were they wouldn’t feel so bonded to one person after a simple sex act with them. The author of the book says:
‘Unfortunately, the moment I fell into bed with a man, I’d fall at least a little in love. Was it biological? As soon as I went to bed with a man, I’d lose any clear sense of perspective. I had consistently mistaken casual hookups for rose-tinted beginnings.’
.
I think this is the experience of a lot of women. They want something serious and lasting, but make wrong choices, deceiving themselves. In my opinion it is the result of feminism which tells women that they can and should have sex like a man. Women know that sex for them is not casual. But there is so much pressure to have sex, and unless you’re a virgin it can feel like, ‘I’ve done this before and it didn’t work, but I’ll give it another shot, maybe this time it will be different.’ There is a lack of another way. It is difficult to explain to a guy (or even to yourself) why you aren’t having sex on certain terms if this is what you have done in the past. It feels wrong, you know it’s going to lead to a disaster, but you don’t know what else to do. Holding out when you really like someone can seem arbitrary especially if you haven’t been holding out in the past. Lots of times women just don’t realise that a guy may not be as invested as they are. I think the author of ‘He’s just not that into you’ is right about this one: women should get some standards. The solution is not to refrain from sex for a certain period of time, but to decide what conditions need to be fulfilled for sex to happen.
.
And really, who are all these guys gaming women into having sex with them when they well know that for women sex is serious? Where are their morals? In my opinion, if you’re a man who has ever had sex with a woman without having real feelings for her, then you don’t have a rgiht to complain about lack of quality women!
I think this is an excellent analogy! I think it boils down to this: the young woman who is promiscuous is perceived as damaged goods by men, having signaled her propensity for sexual variety. The awkward nerd is perceived as undamaged goods by women, which, unfortunately, is equally problematic. It’s easier to add something than to take it away. The promiscuous woman who stops sleeping around may have damaged her ability to bond and maintain an LTR, and asks a lot if she expects a man to completely disregard her past. The nerd who gets game is probably well suited to an LTR (if he avoids asshole game) and carries only a report that he used to be nerdy, which women will actually find charming if he no longer is. Most of the men I know in their 40s and 50s have attractive wives they could never have dated in high school.
Ah, I see you’ve already covered what I just typed above. Verie, I have to say it’s hard to take you 100% seriously on this, as you have written at length about remaining a virgin to avoid the bonding that occurs in sex with even one person. Therefore, you’re on record as saying that promiscuity is damaging to women. Why is it not sensible, then, that men would be repelled by that damage?
Mike is exactly right when he says that beta traits are more “fit” in contemporary society. The way I see it, these guys just need some practice learning skills that will attract women. Often, to be honest, it’s about shyness. In my view, a beta male who learns how to interact with women successfully is equivalent to a woman who marries still a virgin and then learns great sex skills. Both increase long-term mating value. It’s not a question of faking it, it’s a question of developing oneself by acquiring new skills. Everybody wins.
LOL! This is the best line I’ve ever heard on this question.
I do know some young women with very high numbers, and they’re kind, loving, fun friends. However, they themselves are sheepish about their pasts. I do believe that people can change, and many women do stop acting wild at some point. Some women are able to stand back and realize that a steady diet of casual sex is not working to make their lives better in any way.
The question is – has the woman lost market value? It’s clear that she has if her past is known. There may still be a few men who don’t care, but many men will eliminate her as a LTR prospect. I did see one interesting comment on a blog, maybe even this one :-/ One guy said that a cad who has slept with scores of women may consider a number of 20 or so rounding error. So she’s looking at a smaller pool of potential buyers.
Is there anything she can do to market herself more successfully and increase that pool of interested men? Yes, she can tinker with the odometer and keep her mileage hidden. I know women who have done this with relative ease. I don’t think a woman can go from gang bangs and threesomes to appearing chaste very easily, but I do think a woman who has slept with a lot of guys can probably hide it, especially if the man she’s seeing is not extremely experienced himself.
Obviously, moves like massaging the prostate and putting one’s legs behind one’s head need to be retired for this to work.
I disagree that women have zero incentives to regulate their own sexuality. In fact, the incentive is powerful: to attract a quality man who will respect and love you. This is indeed much more difficult than it was 50 years ago. Men have options for no-strings sex and are wary of marriage. However, many men are simply not cut out for the pump and dump lifestyle. Many men want to marry. The women who are discriminating and disciplined in their relationships will have the highest market value when those men reach marriageable age.
FWIW, I don’t believe that I have run into difficulties. I’m not offering a grand plan for humanity here, just a forum for discussion. I know that women are reading and thinking about these issues, and several have made changes in their own lives, or felt affirmed in their decision to not participate in the hookup scene.
What does hurt my feelings sometimes is when the guys tell me I’m pissing in the wind. But that’s just me getting a little emotional. When I really believe there’s no point, I’ll stop blogging.
Honestly, I think my daughter has it harder, but in part that reflects who they are and their particular circumstances.
My son is a sweet, smart guy, aged 23. He had a gf for three years in high school. They broke up for 3 years in college, and have been back together for a year. She is Chinese American, not sure if that is relevant. They are quite happy, and she clearly adores him. During the three years he was single, I think he hooked up a bit here and there, but has zero game, so it wasn’t a regular occurrence. He does attract women based on his looks, so that helped. Of course, I’m guessing about some of this – he doesn’t confide in me at all.
As you may have guessed from the thread, my daughter attracts a great deal of attention from men, mostly the wrong kind. When I talk about pretty girls having it harder, this is what I mean. The men who would be her suitors in a prior age are now the men in the highest demand. They want to “conquer” her resistance, but not to commit to a monogamous relationship. This is a waste of time and quite demoralizing, but hope springs eternal.
She has dated several guys who she had “personality crushes” on. Translation: nice guys 3-4 steps below her on the attractiveness scale. This has been problematic, mostly because these guys never feel secure. It doesn’t help that other men will publicly often remark on the discrepancy, ask her what the hell she is thinking, etc. I think her best strategy is to sit on the sidelines until she’s out of college, and then date men in their late 20s. Even then I don’t think it will be easy. It’s a jungle out there.
But that’s just my experience based on my kids’ genes. A mother of a guy who can’t get any traction with girls and a daughter who is out partying all the time might feel exactly the opposite.
From your lips to God’s ears.
@Anni
Exactly! Hamby once gave excellent advice on this. He said when a woman is being pressured for sex, she should tell the man that she only has sex with someone she knows well. That’s a reasonable POV, certainly. If a man isn’t a cad, then it’s in his best interest to spend time getting to know her, and revealing himself in return. Through this process either love will get a footing or it won’t.
@ Anni
Agreed. I object to a man’s using a woman, and then calling her damaged goods. Men justify this by saying it was her choice, she wanted it, etc. But if that’s true, it is an acknowledgement that women are powerless against men’s seduction tactics, and therefore should not be held accountable.
Ah, there you are. I tried to go to your blog but it was protected. So, the plot thickens. Would you care to share how you know this? I’d love a physical description. I have one piece of evidence – a photo VI took of his own lap. Muscular thighs.
Hi Military wife, welcome. To answer your question: no, nor do I assume that you will cheat on him. My own number was not so very low, and I’ve never cheated. I think many men will not begrudge a woman having had sex with men they cared for. The real problem is when women indulge in casual sex, and get used to having physical intimacy without corresponding emotional intimacy. That is where the damage occurs for women.
.
In this book, Hephzibah shares that often she had sex rather than take a cab home late, or because it was expected of her. We’d probably agree that signals some potentially troubling things about Hephzibah’s state of mind. She also had sex with many men over the years who were not exclusive. In fact, I think the only exclusive relationship she’d ever had was with her college boyfriend.
A man who becomes familiar with her story is likely to have reservations about making a long-term commitment to her, because she has shown very low barriers to entry (no pun intended) and has preferred men who would not commit to her.
It’s been working well. It’s not even that I’m really that nervous, it’s just a matter of training myself out of how I was brought up, which was more conservative. All of my guy friends I grew up with are the exact same way.
Yay, glad to hear it! I think training is the key word here. Sounds like you’re getting some good practice.
Hollenhund, I disagree with your characterization of Ms. Walsh’s motives in generating this blog. From my understanding, she’s not trying to change the sexual marketplace, but provide women with a method to survive it with the least emotional damage possible. And from what I’ve read of her posts and her responses to comments, she suggests that women swim against the tide. I think she’s open to reevaluation of her previous opinions in light of the comments she receives. The internet provides a level of anonymity that, in this case, allowed her to get a window into the male soul. I don’t think she quite had a handle on male psychology when she started and I think she’s getting better, though the PUA v. Lover post was a little setback. What is refreshing is that she’s completely non-ideological. She’s not trying to conform the world at large to her ideology, but I believe has a sincere concern about the happiness of the younger generation. It was this same concern that brought me to this site and keeps me here. I think men, too, would be happier if they swam against the tide and started marrying older women with little or very moderate experience within the context of LTR’s. I have seen this obsession with pretty young women wreak havoc in my family, and see “swimming against the tide” as a method of security for men in a generally hostile, insecure environment. So, in other words, Ms. Walsh keep on doing what your doing.
Fortunately for me, I could care less what your opinion of my personal beliefs is. Also, don’t put words into my mouth — I don’t assume anything about you or your worldview.
1 2 »
{ 2 trackbacks }