Sex is Economics, Even in High School

“Senior girls in relationships show the greatest discrepancy: 72% are having sex, compared with 55% who would like to be having sex.”

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Something I really don’t understand here: how can this discrepancy, 72% vs 55%, be the “greatest” of anything? I’m sure that the discrepancy for freshman boys is close to a 100% difference! between those wanting sex and those getting it. By any standard I can imagine, it’s certainly the freshman boys who are in the worst shape (not that that would register on Anna North’s consciousness in any way, of course).

Well then. Let’s review: “These researchers studied real pairings instead, between boys and girls attending the same school. What they found is that “scarcity determines value” and that dating is a marketplace that adheres to economic tenets…”

Generally? Perhaps. But only in the broadest sense of a SMP. Very loosely defined. Why? Well because like most ‘mechanistic economics’, they cheat. Or don’t consider all of reality. No not really. Can’t find anyone to ‘go with you’ @ your school? You used to be able to date 1-2 towns over too. With little problems. Now with FB et al, slightly less likely perhaps, but still possible. So yeah. It’s always the ‘starting assumptions’ that sets up the false premises. The universe & the action & ‘events’ are larger & more difficult to describe & circumscribe with their very (self) limited models. Here & elsewhere.

So yes, there’s a SMP. And perhaps even Yes there’s a slight decline in some aspects of hypergamy (perhaps Just with educational attainment/prestige schooling too), but perhaps only with the most well educated segment of the samples. (Suggesting a regression to the mean). With more women getting more higher degrees? This is about what we might expect. If they’re to ‘match’ up with similarly educated men? They’re always going to have to adjust a bit. There’s just fewer men in that category! So unless they want to start dating geezers & retreads my age? They’ve got to start looking a bit farther a field! Simple. And that Loss of ‘well being’? I dunno. I’m not understanding that. Not my problem too! Cheers, ‘VJ’

They don’t call economics a social science for nothing.

Synthesis, they also call it “the dismal science”. That too is not for nothing.

Re: Sex pos feminists being annoyed at applying economic principles to the relationship marketplace, I’ve run into that with several feminist friends. Usually meets annoyance or outright hostility. The immediate negative response is something I don’t really understand. What’s at stake there?

I’m increasingly convinced that female desire is impossible to satisfy, in a way much akin to Schopenhauer’s general aspersion towards the human experience. Novaseeker once said something to the same effect, and it’s like the old engineering analogies: you can have speed of delivery or quality, but you can’t have both. In that sense, the real world options for girls essentially amount to: you can have attractiveness or faithfulness, but it’s one of the two. It’s power politics; just like a beautiful girl exerts her power, a dominant man uses his own for much the same ends. The difference is that for men, a high value is something you can achieve even if you were born awkward, while for girls, you’re either born attractive or you’re not. But make no mistake: if girls wanted family and love and whatever, they’d have it; the choice is ultimately theirs. Dating advice for girls, then, is a waste of time, and what girls end up with depends on what they really want.

Ms. Walsh,
As per usual, an excellent post. However, I do have one wee little problem with it:

The premise is that the powers that be are beginning to re-examine the “Grrl Power” notions that have been extant in our coulture writ large for at least a generation if not longer. That’s good, but their reasoning behind it isn’t –

They’re doing it because its now not in the best interest of GIRLS. Please notice that they say NOTHING about what’s in the best intersts of BOYS.

and that’s the problem I have with this whole ball of wax – we never, ever, ask guys what they think, or feel, about anything. And since we all know that nature abhors a vacuum, it was only a matter of time before somebody, somewhere, was gonna come in and actually give a hoot about what are in the best interests for Men.

That something, is broadly defined as the Manosphere, of which Game is a part, and as you and everyone here knows, is indeed spreading like wildfire. Not only that, but if my gut is right on what I read in your piece above, it will only strengthen the Manosphere, because guys will instantly see that the powers that be are again only interested in seeing to it that the interests of Women are met and protected, and the guys will adapt and come back out with new and improved methods, tactics and indeed tech, to advance and protect their own interests. Thus will begin a seriously intense arms race, with guys untimately winning. Why do I say that? Because Women, taken as a group, aren’t nearly as able or willing to adapt and do many of the other things it takes to stay ahead of the curve, and this isn’t coming from any “misogynistic” place, it’s just stating the facts.

The real question, as it always has been throughout human history, isn’t what’s best for girls; it’s what are we gonna do with the males?

Well, if the Black community is any indication; if the Manosphere is any indication; if what we’re beginning to see among White Folk Who Matter are any indication – we’re starting to get a glimpse of the answers.

And, depending on where you sit, it ain’t gonna be pretty.

as I always say, there’s nothing that can be done about it. We’ll just have to deal with the fallout.

The Ladies might want to invest in some petfood.

*shrugs*

O.

@ sestamibi
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Mike C, it’s quite clear you haven’t got the slightest idea of which you speak.
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Don’t hold back. Tell me how you really feel.
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Yes, for a certain segment of the male population feminism indeed has been a terrific deal, but it’s not the segment you identify.
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I don’t recall identifying a particular segment. But it is interesting that you apparently recognize and acknowledge I am talking about just a segment of guys and NOT ALL guys, and then proceed to set up a strawman to knock down that has nothing to do with my main point.
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I don’t want to be too reductionist with the alpha-beta-omega thing, but it works for general points. Yes, omegas, lower betas, and perhaps most ordinary betas are big losers in the new regime. Alphas and more importantly greater betas and even ordinary betas willing to work on self-improvement in terms of physical appearance, Game, and improving economic status can be big winners in the SMP. “Winning” in the “new economy” is a different subject.
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In the old regime of Marriage 1.0, the die was cast when you got out of high school or college. You got married and raised a family. THAT IS WHAT “RESPONSIBLE” GUYS following societal norms did. From what I can gather that was enforced culturally, in the workplace, etc. Older men “guided” younger men as to their “responsbilities” to society. A guy of that era couldn’t go live on the beach as a bum if he wanted to unless he was willing to buck enormous social pressure and perhaps pass on career success and opportunities. Being a “family man” was intertwined with economic opportunities.
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I believe these cultural norms arose because I think men do NOT have a paternal drive anywhere near as strong as the typical maternal drive. I could be wrong but I think few if any guys hit a point where they are just driven to want to have children. It happens more by happenstance then deliberate “I’ve got to have this”. Now I’m sure most guys once fathers love their children and are devoted and happy about it, but I’ve talked to enough guys to know there is a decent segment who might do it differently all over again. And really, bottom line, there is A LOT less pressure with just having to support yourself versus ALSO having to support a wife and kids. I certainly wouldn’t want to have to go back to that just for regular access to vaj when I can get regular access to vaj without that stuff.
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My point is because of feminism, men are now free to “go their own way”. You don’t have to follow the script of early to mid 20s, get a marriage 1.0 and a soul-killing job, and be the sole economic provider to a wife and kids. Frankly, I think most guys are full of shit when they glorify and romanticize the old Marriage 1.0. They are thinking of cooked dinners, “king of his castle” BS without considering all the negatives. BTW, my GF works full-time and she still cooks me dinner 3-4 times a week. And that is about Game and setting the right relationship frame to begin with. Now I do appreciate it very much, and she knows that.
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The losers in all of this are the vast numbers of beta males, who now face the prospect not only of not getting any, but are condemned by a “feminist jurisprudence” as criminals for even making the effort (cf. current tortured definitions of sexual harassment, etc.), and are even squeezed out of the job market in order to provide “fulfillment” for women making $60K married to men making $200K.
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Some of this is overblown and overhyped. I’d love to see concrete data on how many guys are being wrongly accused of sexual harassment. I’m sure it happens, but not as much as some in the manosphere would like to portray it. It is sort of like the flip side of the excessive claims of domestic abuse by women.
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We have deliberately adopted public policies designed to starve large numbers of men. It won’t be long before they catch on and take desperate measures. We can live without getting laid, but we are not going to starve to death by direct government policy.
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Just a bit of hyperbole here? No doubt, there is a lot of bad public policy, but I don’t think it was “deliberately” adopted to “starve large numbers of men”. Like many things in this world, the old adage holds true “the road to hell is paved with good intentions”. The radical change in male-female dynamics the last 50 years started with good intentions and has produced many good results, but many people didn’t see nor even recognize today what some of the 1st and 2nd order derivative effects have been.

@Mike C

Yes, it’s true you didn’t identify the “segment” of men benefitting from feminism, but that’s the point: it WAS just a segment, whoever was part of it. Therefore, not all men were benefitting from it, and many were very adversely affected. You didn’t say either just how big that segment is. My own impression is that it’s quite small.

As for your take on the extent of sexual harassment claims, I can only speak from my own experience with it back in 1993, when a bitch at my company in a different department I hardly even knew accused me. My crime, which she even conceded in the subsequent inquiry, was not that I had touched her or made lewd comments to her, but merely that she felt “uncomfortable” when I was around. In other words, I should lose my job at her whim.

And no, it is not hyperbole to suggest that the intent of policies adopted was to starve men. Again, I speak from personal experience at having endured a two+ year period of unemployment in the mid-80s when I was single. Obviously, I don’t blame feminism for my job loss preceding that, but only for dragging it out longer than it might have been otherwise. It would be a better world if women didn’t compete with men, had babies instead, and didn’t expect the state to take care of their bastard spawn or themselve in their old age either.

Susan…”seek out good men and pluck them from obscurity. What is her incentive?”

Perhaps the same incentive that leads investors to search for companies which are little-known and unpopular and hence have undervalued stock prices?

The analogy isn’t perfect, of course. But maybe a girl would be better off searching for a guy who has the kind of status attributes that matter most *to her* rather than those that matter most to her high-school group, which really aren’t going to matter all that much 10 years later.

“Yes, these are the guys at the top of the social hierarchy in college. But their example is observed and copied by many young men on campus.”

No, it really isn’t. Men, college campus or otherwise, are not being so overwhelmed with pussy that they just can’t find time in the day to tend to it all. I’m telling you that this is a completely ludicrous vision of life for the average male, and I think you know it as well.

My view of teenage girls is quite the opposite (I think) than is presented here. I have four kids, two are now older than eighteen. By chance, they were quite sociable (the youngest two are very non-sociable) especially my oldest. On top of that, I was perceived as a cool dad because I treat teenagers with respect (mainly because I don’t know how to deal with them any other way; didn’t even as a teenager

One thing that really astonished me was how sexually aggressive girls from 14 to 17 are. They are FAR more sexually aggressive than the boys. I thought it might be just the demographic, but my son hung out with an entirely different crowd (which was non-religious, but very clean cut) and the girls were the same. Now, I’m not talking slutty aggressive, just aggressive.

Everyone I talk to says that it isn’t much different in college. Yes, guys want to get laid, but they are no where near as aggressive as females. Nor as mean.

I think you have to think of it in terms of a recast market, especially at the younger ages. Most women who are educated are not looking for marriage material before 25 or so. So before then, what are they looking for? Validation. Who can provide this validation? High social dominance, high SMV men, whom other women will recognize as “validating”. The degree of validation directly relates to the degree of “commitment” in the sense that a more or less exclusive boyfriend (more or less because, as the UNC women admit, they’ll tolerate straying when it comes to their high SMV boyfriends) provides much more validation than a one night stand, but a one night stand with a high SMV male provides more validation than being completely high and dry.

The “price” men are extracting for this validation is sex. The degree to which they are able to do so has to do with the sex ratio to be sure, but in my view it has more to do with the “effective” sex ratio than the “gross” sex ratio. That is, the relevant ratio is really the number of “men with whom women will trade sex for validation” relative to the number of “women who are willing to trade sex for validation, given a high enough SMV man”. That ratio, in my opinion, will *always* be low, due to hypergamy, in the absence of massive slut shaming among the women themselves (that is, reducing the female “supply” side of that exchange, and hence the female side of the effective sex ratio). And because that ratio is pretty much always going be low, the men can demand sex and get it in return for validation. That pattern is broken when you have social rules like slut shaming, or social conventions that demand early marriage. Neither applies today. The fact that the overall “gross sex ratio” on college campuses is low as well serves as an exacerbating, but not the determining, factor. There are elite colleges that cook the application books to get a 50/50 ratio, and I’m sure that there is the same feast or famine thing going on for the guys there, but it’s slightly better for women because there are slightly more high SMV men (due to there being more men overall) so the sex ratio is a tad lower. When it comes to high SMV men, though, even in a 50/50 world, that ratio is low. Unless there are social rules condemning it, these men will *always* be able to demand sex as long as women are willing to provide it in exchange for the validation these men provide.

Of course, women like sex for pleasure, too, no argument there. But there are numerous studies which suggest strongly that the appetite women have for casual sex, all else being equal, is much lower than it is for men. The Jaclyn Friedmans of the world are outliers among women. However, women will engage in casual sex if high value validation is on the table, because that’s not a situation where “all else is equal” –> they are getting something of great value to them out of the deal. And, yes, guys, it is of *great* value to many young women to get this validation from high SMV men — that’s why they are providing the sex to the extent that they are.

One of the main points of this blog is that this transaction isn’t such a good one for the women involved, because it often leads to disappointment and worse when the guy moves on too quickly (perhaps almost immediately, or perhaps a bit later on), which leaves women with less validation than they wanted, while they have already paid the sex price the man demanded. In other words, this is a game rigged in favor of the high SMV males, because they get “paid” the sex up front, and then can decide by themselves just how much additional validation, if any, they wish to provide.

Feminist sexual mores = paradise for alpha males, and the outlier women like Jaclyn Friedman. Not so good for anyone else.

Mike, it was even worse than you think for men back in the old days. A man didn’t have to be married or have a girlfriend for the crushing weight of responsibility to land on him. Herman Melville’s father was emotionally unstable and died penniless when Herman was 12. The family became “poor relations” despised by their wealthier relations. The responsibility for supporting their mother and siblings fell on Herman’s older brother, who also couldn’t handle it. Herman Melville had to drop out of school and support the family. I know another guy slightly older than me who had to drop out of school to support his parents. He ended up doing OK running a bicycle shop (there are still ways to make a living without college) which brings me to my next topic which I will put in another post. Anyway, used to be, before Social Security and stuff, the son, especially the later-born sons, didn’t always get to go to college because they had to step in and support their families NOT even wives.

Snowdrop…but people skills have always been important in the workplace for a signficant % of the people. If you were a retailer or a miller, for instance, the important of not antagonizing your customers is obvious–there’s a Yiddish saying to the effect that “don’t have a shop if you don’t know how to smile.” And people skills have always been an important element of any kind of management—although arguably, certain approaches (like yelling at people a lot) are probably less-effective than they used to be.

Several years ago, I posted what I think is a fascinating case study of the human element in decision-making in a very hierarchical environment, a US Navy destroyer sometime during the 1950s.

The definition of “people skills” has changed. When “people skills” meant purposefulness and forthrightness, men had better people skills. Today, “people skills” means attractiveness and obedience, which favors women.

The difference is due to centralization, which causes employers to seek passive vessels for scripted interaction rather than harder-to-identify value-adding independent employees.

Susan says…”research shows that women who go for cads are low in agreeableness, high in neuroticism, and high in novelty seeking.”

I’d guess that novelty-seeking or absence of same is largely inborn–in fact, I think I’ve seen research to this effect—but that agreeableness and neuroticism are largely learned. And the virtually insane levels of “self-esteem building” going on in the schools and elsewhere tend to develop and increase these traits.

Merely anecdotal, but I did know one woman with a very agreeable personality who fell hard for an obvious cad who most people would also consider an extreme beta.

Good morning Ms. Walsh,
Replies below:

SW: I agree with you that boys have long been ignored, or even worse, pushed to fit into a female model of learning and behavior for over a generation. I don’t agree though, that these researchers came at this question with that bias. It’s hardly surprising that a result of 18 year-old women offering sex to get relationships is more troubling than 15 year-old boys offering relationships to get sex. Especially since that 15 year-old boy is going to be a senior in three years, and they are the happiest of all the groups.

O: Then, and I say this with all due respect Ms. Walsh, you haven’t the slightest idea of what you’re talking about. Go and tell that to Lionel Tiger, author of the book The Decline of Males, and see what his response would be – in agreement, or disagreement, with what you just said? Assuming you know who he is and have read at least some of his articles if not the book I referenced above, you probably won’t be surprised by his response.

Moreover, I know for a fact that what I said is true, in large part because I actually took the time to discuss the matter with people who make it their life’s work to study social phenomena in many ways. For example, I know a Woman who works in the healthcare field, and for the entirety of her career, nearly 20 years, she’s done nothing but stuff pertaining to Women’s health in one way or another. When I asked her about issues pertaining to Men and boys, she looked at me like a deer in the headlights, or like I had an eye in the middle of my forehead. I’ve gotten that same resonse from easily half a dozen other researchers.

Several years back when the book Promises I Can Keep came out, I had the chance to pose a few questions to its authors, to Women sociologists. The book focuses on poor single motherhood. I asked them if they were familiar with Tiger and his work, and they replied “yes”; but when I asked them if they ever bothered to ask the poor young Men about their views of fatherhood one way or another, why they did what they did one way or another, I again got a Bojangles style tapdance. And this was odd, considering that these authors talk ABOUT the daddies in their book – it just didn`t occur to them that it might be a good idea to talk TO them. That book has been highly acclaimed. Question, and this is for anyone reading this: please name me the Male version of such a book? I’ll wait.

Furthermore, your statement about 18 year old highschools in relation to 15 year old highschool boys is indicative of what I mean about research bias – how do we know exactly what boys feel? Why do we automatically assume that said girls have it harder? If anything, as the recent The Atlantic article, The End of Men, clearly points out, as well as Kay Hymowitz’s New Girl Order piece, that this is a great time to be female. Simply no doubt about it. There IS no thinking, no caring, about what Men and boys, do or don’t want – and that’s from Madison Ave, all the way to Princeton.

As you know, I’m something of an amatuer social scientist, and am always taking my cues on what I write based on what I directly observe. Well, last night I had the chance to conduct a social experiment by attending a Justin Bieber concert. I don’t need to tell anyone here who he is – and I can tell you the place was packed with girls ranging in age from toddlers to teenagers around Bieber’s own age of 16. 15K strong.

Amid all the yelling and screaming and hustle and bustle, one question loomed large for me – what about the boys? Surely, it is not unfair to say that most of these girls have brothers – where are they? What are they doing? Is there a male equivalent to what I saw last night, and if not, WHY? I also think that Bieber himself, his very personhood and story, among other things, raises all manner of questions: essentially, he is the teenyboopper, sanitized version of Eminem – a “Black” performer who happens to be White. Additionally, we find out that Bieber himself is the product of a singlemother home (just like Usher, the famed performer, himself), his parents having divorced when he was very young. In the photo montage that was shown on the big screen in the concert hall, his dad was never pictured, just his mom. Although there were a few dads in attendance with their girls at the show, it was clear that mom-daughter(s) pairs made up the vast majority of those in the round. Bieber himself is, in so many ways, the living embodiment of the very issues you, I and others discuss on the regular – and so attending such a spectacle last night brings home, front and center, so many questions that other social reasearchers don’t even think about – or is it, don’t even care about?

Please allow me to reiterate what I said earlier, because it bears repeating, and people like you, who make it their life’s work to assist young Women in our time navigate the very changed social landscape, need to seriously hear this: the refusal, unwillingness, and/or inability of social researchers and the like, to examine the Male side of the equation, has directly led to what some know as the Manosphere – of which Game, is a part. Game, is but one of several “responses” – and as we both know, it can and probably will be used, with less than honorable intentions in mind, if by honorable we mean, interactions that Women find favorable. Men are beginning to respond to the changes in the social atmosphere, and attempts to engage (read: change) them have been paltry, at best. Nature abhors a vacuum, which means that somebody, somewhere, is gonna engage all those little boys at home while their sisters were out screaming their heads off for a Junior Alpha Male. And we’re so hidebound to our ideology, so wedded to our political views, so deeply invested in the Church of Goddess Woman, that we either don’t see it, don’t care, or attempt to shame and browbeat guys out of it – and we all know how well that’s working out, now don’t we?

The Reckoning, is upon us. Now we’ll simply have to deal with the fallout.

You heard it here.

Holla back

O.

I don’t think it’s a case of “He is more invested in the potential for sexual variety than he is in having a relationship,” as much as it’s a case of him not seeing that girl as relationship material. He tried her out for 3 weeks, and said “Thanks, but no thanks.”
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Don’t interpret this as hateful or bitter, but I just don’t see most girls these days as being relationship material. They’re too masculine. For most guys, the cost of committing greatly outweighs the benefits of having a girlfriend. What does he get out of the deal that he wouldn’t get by having a FWB and haning out with his buddies all the time?
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I’m with MikeC, I think today’s environment is much better for men than it used to be. In the past, a guy would’ve been obligated by society to date these girls. Now, he can invest exactly as much as he feels they deserve, and not an ounce more.

Susan Walsh–

What are you saying is well documented in Latvia. Someone on Roissy’s demoed that the skewed overall female to male ratio there is only for the over fifty crowd. In Russian I know that’s heavily due to higher rates of alcoholism among the men; don’t know about Latvia in that regard.

Senior girls in relationships show the greatest discrepancy: 72% are having sex, compared with 55% who [say they] would like to be having sex.

I added the bracketed language because women in surveys underreport their number of sexual partners by a significant degree some of the best designed studies to get at the truth have shown. This is for anti slut reputational reasons, including their own self concept. (In contrast it seems men don’t lie up their number of partners nearly as much.) The simulated lie detector versus no lie detector study is quite convincing.

Stating whether or not they’d prefer to be having sex in an unmarried college relationship touches on these same issues for a minority of women. Even so more than half say they want sex in their relationships. The gap between those that are having sex and the lesser number who say they want to be in their college relationships might well be close or almost so by this anti-slut rep factor. After all, many college girls will have in mind more than one and maybe a number of college relationships.

Obs–

I’ve never disagreed with you that social engineering efforts haven’t very often focused on black men or poor black men.

But I see it a bit more broadly. Those efforts have tended to focus on blacks or poor blacks as a whole, or women, or poor women, as a whole. What’s relatively left out if you do a mental Venn diagram are black men, compared to black women, even though as you point out, black men are doing much worse than black women in school. What’s entirely left out of any social concern are white men – including one’s not doing so well. See the near universal media cheering that there are so many more women in college now than men. See this mancession and NOW’s and other women’s groups successful lobbying of Obama and Pelosi to shift from the original stimulus proposal more money to women heavy areas of employment.

*prefer to be having sex in an unmarried high school relationship

“I suspect that like Esau and Hollenhund you believe it is the woman’s responsibility to seek out good men and pluck them from obscurity.”

Ms. Walsh,

what I find problematic is women’s tendency to say “boys/men do this”, “boys/men do that” when they are actually describing the behavior of 15-20% of all men (the alphas). If there is no way to snap women out of this solipsism, then their situation is hopeless.

Mike C,

I’m sure many men and women resent the notion that marriage 1.0 as practiced in the West was, from a historical point of view, the best deal they, as genders, were ever going to get. In any other arrangement, one gender loses and thus everyone loses in the end. It sucks, but building an advanced civilization which we all want to enjoy requires a lot of work and sacrifice.

On another note, I’m pretty sure those supposedly disappointed early feminists aren’t horrified by the effects of said unintended consequences on MEN, for the simple reason that they had zero empathy for them in the first place.

Ms. Walsh,
separating sex from procreation, dissolving the nuclear family and marriage 1.0 were the stated goals of feminism from the beginning.
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I don’t think this is true. I think the stated goals were more things like equality of opportunity in the workplace, equal pay for equal work (which I think are positive things). The other things were more unintended consequences I think.
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People miss consequences ALL THE TIME. Just a few years ago, it seemed like basically no one could see (although I did) that lending money to people who couldn’t pay it back for homes they couldn’t afford would blow up the banking system. Human beings have an amazing capacity for self-delusion when we don’t want to deal with reality, especially when it doesn’t co-exist with what we think is “fair” or what we are “entitled” to.

It sucks, but building an advanced civilization which we all want to enjoy requires a lot of work and sacrifice.
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Yup, but right now we are in a transition state I think where many people are “free riders” (for those unfamiliar with economics look it up) either knowingly or unknowingly. Although I’m somewhat conflicted, I’ll admit I am one. I am childless and I plan to remain so. My economic resources are being directed toward personal wealth building instead of raising future productive citizens while someone else is raising the children who will pay my Social Security.

On another note, I’m pretty sure those supposedly disappointed early feminists aren’t horrified by the effects of said unintended consequences on MEN, for the simple reason that they had zero empathy for them in the first place.

I think they actually couldn’t care less about that, but they *are* horrified that especially young women place so much emphasis on validation by high SMV males. You read that all the time in the feminist press, mostly in articles written by women who never received such validation so there is that element as well. But seriously, after 50 years of non-stop feminist indoctrination, most of which has been successful in terms of making girls and young women much more like men than they ever were before, some things are durable and very resistant to change, and one of those is the female desire for male validation. That burns feminists, because one of the core feminist slogans was “a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle”. But that’s not true. Women very much crave male validation, and feminism hasn’t changed that one bit. The main problem for women, however, is that the way the sexual revolution changed the SMP has not really been to the benefit of most women, and in the quest to receive their desired validation they are basically caving to the desires of the high-value males, who are essentially the overlords, and complete winners, of the current SMP. Conspiracy theorists would say that this was the “underlying intent” of feminism — to betatize most men, thereby making silverbacks more dominant than they were before, while providing access to these men for a good half of the women. But personally I think that’s far fetched. I think the more realistic interpretation of what has happened is that the feminist recasting of the SMP resulted in one of history’s great “own goals”, because, while most men also suffer under this, most women do, too — the winners are the apex males whom feminists sought to dethrone from the beginning, and whom remain just as firmly ensconced in their powerful perches, thanks to the unchanged desires of most women. Ah, irony can be sweet sometimes, I think …

Mike C,

“I don’t think this is true. I think the stated goals were more things like equality of opportunity in the workplace.”

The writings of even the early feminists makes it obvious that they were hostile to marriage 1.0 and the regulation of female sexuality and wanted to do away with both. They knew what they were doing.

“Yup, but right now we are in a transition state.”

I prefer to call it irreversible social decline. One red flag is that the children that will pay your SS in the future are becoming very scarce. I hope you have a retirement fund.

Brendan,

“Conspiracy theorists would say that this was the “underlying intent” of feminism — to betatize most men, thereby making silverbacks more dominant than they were before, while providing access to these men for a good half of the women. But personally I think that’s far fetched.”

I’ve read interesting pet theories about this. Zed once wrote that after the death of many alpha males in WW2, women’s evolutionary programming dictated that they make up for that loss by subconsciously and collectively weeding out beta genes. Hence the gigantic collective shit test known as feminism, and American women’s massive alpha chasing and cuckoldry after men have failed that shit test. It’d be very difficult to prove or disprove this, but it’s great food for thought nevertheless. It’d explain why American men have passively accepted feminism – by the ’60s most of them were already betas. Those alphas that could have resisted had already died on the battlefields of WW2 (or weren’t even born in the first place due to the birth dearth between 1920-45).

Roissy has also written that the pendulum has swung too far by the ’50s – the old system has reached its peak, beta males have acquired too much social and economic power, and women have started a long-term “correction” by embracing feminism and rejecting those betas en masse. The pendulum has been swinging the other way ever since and feminism has not yet peaked. At some point in the future, the West will face a beta shortage, as difficult as that is to imagine today.

All in all, one obvious interpretation is that feminists and their believers were following their subconscious urges by abetting social changes that have already begun after 1945. MRAs and conservatives complain about feminists all the time but it seems obvious that feminism, like all other significant political movements, is largely a product and an amplifier of massive social shifts rather than the cause of them. The loss of alpha genes in WW2 and subsequent wars, the invention of the Pill and women’s economic empowerment were all inevitable. They doomed the old system, with or without feminism.

Damn, this was completely off-topic. Oh well.

Tedious? What’s tedious is having to read through reams of borning data, or flowcharts or grids and grapsha about stuff that should come naturally to anyone with a bit of commonsense, LOL. But, as we both know Ms. Walsh, commonsense ain’t too common these days, and your blog and many others like it wouldn’t exist were it not for this simple yet profound fact of life.

*shrugs*

Look, you can parse all this stuff out, about what *this* study is about or what *that* study says, but as you know, I am very good at looking at the big picture – and that is, as Hollenhund, Mike C, Brendan, Doug, all of us have said, that no one gives a you know what as to what Men think or feel, and that goes for boys, too. That study you referenced above, it talks about ultimately, what is in the best interests of girls, NOT boys. Trust me when I tell you, and I am certain all the guys here – who, for the umpteenth time, why do you NOT understand this, have NOTHING in common with me, would agree with me – that telling a freshmen guy in highschool, don’t worry, by your senior year you’ll be getting laid is small comfort, because the reality is that most guys even at the senior level aren’t getting laid AT ALL. But of course, you’ll pay attention to studies that umpteen guys who have nothing in common with each other, all telling you in real time, are seriously skewed.

This is the reason why I keep saying that you and other Women as a general rule, simply don’t want to grapple with the things I and others here and elsewhere are saying; it’s just too painful and/or problematic to admit. I’ll say it again this time with feeling: the Manosphere, of which Game is a part, is extant as a direct result of a vacuum out in the larger culture that doesn’t even consider Male interests, desires, feelings or views as important. Nature, abhors a vacuum, and that vacuum is being filled. Nor will it have the interests of Women even considered. You’ve already seen it with, for example, Roissy. Say what you will, but he is indeed making a big impact. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. I’ve tried to tell you about what’s going down in Black America, and how that foreshadows what’s starting to happen in White Folk Who Matter America. The issue isn’t what’s in the interests of girls. It’s what are we going to do with the males. One of the things we can do, is actually talk TO them, to ask what they feel, want and deem important.

Do that, and you may finally get a clue.

Holla back

O.

Im sure there are many, when young that might prefer hand releif but eventually most men prefer the real thing. I have never undestood why some men accept public non politeness from their partners- an odd dynamic but common enough. might be sex I guess but I suspect there are other issues.
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sometimes it was true at college that the vaguely pretty but not hot girls quickly paired up. I suppose that describes me at 18/19 really.
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I had some femme fatale friends that had a string of glamorous dates. I never felt jealous though- not consciously anyway.
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The handsome guys did seem to have mini harems- this is going back 20 yrs so SW may have a point about SMP there. The girls seemed quite happy with the set up though.

Ms. Walsh,

“Do you feel that I let feminists off the hook and treat them with sympathy?”

I was responding to Mike C, not you.

“The study in this post had two male authors. They are saying “boys do this” and “girls do this.” It is not female solipsism, it’s the general mindset.”

I was referring to the quote by Linda Perlstein. It caught my attention because I’ve seen many women make the same kind of generalization, portraying all guys as unscrupulous cads.

As Mike C says, a woman is going to have to bring a lot more to the table than good looks and sex to make the trade worthwhile.
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That said, I also believe a loyal and supportive girlfriend/wife is one of the best things a guy can have in life. I think many guys underestimate that. I think there is a lot of truth in the expression “Behind every great man there’s a great woman”. Unfortunately, these days, great women are rare, and spoiled entitled narcissistic princess brats are far too common.

Mike C,

and let’s not forget that 3D-VR porn is just around the corner. I’m sure porn addiction will skyrocket and the SMP will be an even bigger mess.

Another thing to keep in mind about LTRs is that. let’s say, hooking up with a different 5 every two weeks confers greater social proof upon the average man than having an average 5 girlfriend.

“The truth is that there are women suffering who are not engaging the apex males, for whatever reason. Perhaps they are not attractive enough, perhaps they have more sense than to go for the continuous P&D. Those women definitely deserve empathy, IMO, by any standards.”

I try to have empathy, but it seems obvious to me that the overwhelming female desire for alpha attention, dominance and validation, the longing for a man to sweep them off their feet and rescue them from their misery, the innate urge towards submission are all concepts totally alien to the male mind. Men experience attraction to the opposite sex in a completely different way, which obviously shouldn’t strike anyone as surprising.

Susan–

I’ve tried at least five times to subscribe to your RSS feed using google reader, but have gotten error messages every time. This has been spread out in time and over many reboots. I’ve never had this problem with any other site that offers RSS subscriptions. I use Firefox except for a few things. Any guidance?

I have noticed a great reluctance among some men to share the misery. It is very important for them to believe that only beta males suffer in the SMP. It is a very dissonant and unwelcome notion that women, who are to blame for the entire mess, may also be suffering. Many men have said that women being deprived of relationships is nothing compared with men being deprived of sex.

A man deprived of sex is almost certainly deprived of a relationship, too.
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I believe there’s a hierarchy of suffering: the alphas at the top of both sexes (no suffering), most women (sex, but no love), most men (sporadic sex, no love) and omega women being roughly the equivalent, and at the bottom, omega men (no sex or love ever).

Isn’t this supposed to be a blog with guidance for _young_ men and women? Where are they? Put off by the middle aged men ranting and bleating with the same old stuff they rant on about at the MRA sites? Sheesh.

Whatever the intention, this blog is actually the most even-handed place where women and men can discuss this, and actually make the attempt to try understanding each other’s POV.
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If young men don’t come here, their loss. Maybe they are all reading Roissy and getting real results, rather than introspecting about their lives and what’s good for everyone.

Susan Walsh, are you actually taking a small study of a minority of high school students aged 14-18 and extrapolating from it to the larger world of college students aged 18-25 and attempting to draw meaningful conclusions about the latter group, based on findings regarding the former?

Does the term “selection bias” mean anything to you at all? I find this a very disappointing posting.

“I am not talking about guys in college being overwhelmed with pussy. I’m talking about what in the culture bestows status on college males. I have witnessed first-hand (well, among women I know well) situations where a girl makes out with a guy who is clearly not a player, not socially dominant. She knows he’s not been with anyone else in recent memory. They start spending time together and after about 3 weeks he tells her he wants to keep his options open. He is literally more invested in the potential for sexual variety (with his newfound social proof) than he is in having a relationship, which is not what dominant guys have.”

I have never, ever heard of this and while I’m trying to remain polite I’m going to tell you it sounds like complete bull. I have no idea what the mindset of a man who’s been alone for years and pushes away a spontaneous conquest would be, and the only feasible reality I can imagine he’d exist in is one in which he’s already read a lot of theory-based PUA material. If anything, the natural instinct of men is to end up clinging desperately to this chick because they have no idea when another one might come along (I’ve had two wingmen who lost girlfriends because of this) and that’s precisely why seduction theory tells you to do the exact opposite.

“Well, seeking the company of good men, noticing their IOIs and responding to their advances in a non-bitchy way is really the minimal effort these women should make if they are truly fed up with the current SMP.”

This is partly why I find this blog so funny. I don’t see any indication that girls are “fed up” with the current “SMP” at all. Fed up of being ditched by hot men? Possibly, I guess, but how many of them know even the first thing about fidelity and story in the first place?

Good morning Ms. Walsh,

Replies below:

SW: @Obsidian
You’ve missed the point. Again. The study does not say what is good for girls or boys. It does not offer hope to freshman boys, or reassure senior girls that all will be well next year when they’re freshmen again. The study does not care how anyone feels. The study simply looks at who has sex and who doesn’t. Who compromises to get what they want. Senior girls compromise most, followed by freshman boys.
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O: And you yet again, refuse to see the BIG PICTURE, which is why I referenced Tiger, the book Promises I Can Keep, etc et al – the focus has been and will continue to be, on what is best for GIRLS, NOT BOYS. The study YOU highlighted above, speaks directly to this. Here’s what YOU said:

“Key Political Implications
I. Educators are finally questioning the results of the “girl empowerment” movement in schools.
Linda Perlstein, a journalist and education writer, had this to say about the study results:

While submersed in years of middle school research, I kept hearing how girls had gained so much power. If that was true, why was I watching them abase themselves to impress boys every day? Yes, they spoke up more. They were sassy. But an awfully large number let boys grind into them at dances even when it made them uncomfortable and cared more than anything what boys thought of them. To me, that wasn’t power at all.

We may have made girls louder and sassier in the classroom, but they still submit to guys behind the bleachers.”

Never ONCE is the question asked or considered from the guys’ point of view, Ms. Walsh. And THAT’S THE POINT. Doug – and you know he and I have rarely agreed on anything – said the exact same thing i said. Ignore it at your own risk.

SW: What is tedious is your constant dismissal of women, all women, who, according to you, “don’t get it” and “avoid the tough questions.” You don’t allow for the fact that you drive home the same point in comment after comment, relentlessly pounding away, never appearing to listen or consider. It’s exhausting + boring = tedious.

O: Ms. Walsh, who’s the one saying the same thing over and over like a broken record here? You trying to get young Women at the height of their sexual power and influence to go for Jeremy the STEM Guy is worse than you trying to iceskate uphill. Yet in post after post, two years running, this is what you say, DESPITE the fact that the vast majority of guys here, from virtually all walks of life, are telling you, it ain’t goin’ down like that. I mean, at some point commonsense would kick in here…whew…

O: One of the things we can do, is actually talk TO them, to ask what they feel, want and deem important. Do that, and you may finally get a clue.

SW: I find this offensive.

O: You can take it any way you want, but I not only stand by what I said, but I can prove it by offering evidence after evidence of it being true. NOBODY talks to Men and boys to determine what they think, feel or view as important. Tiger’s said this. Farrell’s said as much as well, two easily recognizable names out there on the SMP. You want more, I can easily rattle them off for you. Now, why is this important for you? because you’re trying to get the young gals in your charge a “nice guy”. So listening to what these guys have to say, just might help you out. Btw, have you even read The Decline of Males, Ms. Walsh? Or is it offensive to merely ask?

SW: If you don’t think I have demonstrated empathy for males, don’t come here.

O: It’s irrelevant as to whether you personally have empathy or not. What I want you to do is stop ignoring entire groups of frequent commenters on your own blog.

O: Do you really think I work hard to write posts that I believe are relevant to my readers so that you, Doug1, Hollenhund, Esau and others can come here and tell me I don’t have a clue? You are free to disagree with me, but don’t be telling me to turn HUS into an MRA blog.

O: If Doug, Hollenhund, Esau, I and a great many others are all telling you the same thing over and over, doesn’t it occur to you that we all can’t be wrong? Especially since, for the umpteenth time now, I in particular have virtually nothing in common with these guys, and have indeed on several occasions vociferously disagreed with a number of them on other issues? Doug and Hollenhund most specifically. Yet, when it comes to the SMP, we’re shoulder to shoulder. Doesn’t that seem odd to you, Ms. Walsh? You say you

SW: You don’t like studies? Too bad. They’re conducted by the brightest minds in academia and many find their outcomes interesting and worthy of consideration.

O: Which explains why you’ve said virtually nothing about Lionel Tiger’s work – gotcha.

SW: What is common sense to you makes no sense to someone else. The scientific method tells us what is common sense and what does not stand up to scrutiny.

O: If anyone needs the Scientific Method to actually help them figure out how to meet someone, take them home and make whoopie, ESPECIALLY if their a girl, they have much deeper problems than merely meeting boys, let me tell you. Again: how is it that the working classes have this figured out, and the classes you focus in on, haven’t? Hmm, Ms. Walsh? What’s up with that?

SW: You just don’t like it when any study says that women struggle in the SMP as well.

O: When have I ever said such a thing? Here, or anywhere else? What I’m saying, is that YOU don’t like the fact that the vacuum that the Brave New World has created by patently ignoring the interests of Men and boys, is now being filled with things that makes the kind of concerns your girls antsy about look tame in comparison. Game is but a small piece of that filling of the vacuum; to be honest, the whole of the Manosphere is just a small piece of it, because most guys know nothing about it. But that doesn’t mean that guys are coming up with their own ways to address what they deem important to them. Again, being African American, I know what you and others are wringing their hands about, firsthand. The same things you’re trying to do others tried to do there, and really, you don’t need to be an egghead to see how that turned out. And for all the whining and moaning, the books, the seminars, the WaPo and NYT articles, the ABC Niteline specials, the this, the that, at the end of the day, Black Women, taken as a group, are no closer toward changing Black Male behavior than they were 20 years ago – indeed, if anything, its gotten markedly worse, from the Sistahood’s point of view. Meanwhile, the Brothas go right on doing their thing, unabated, and Sistas gotta get in where they fit in, if they fit at all – remember, among a great many things they gotta contend with, is the Downlow phenomenon, something Hacker wrote about some years back.

Are we learning yet?
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SW: As someone else said in this thread, alpha males and sluts have it made in this SMP. The rest of the population has to work harder to get what they want.

O: And not only is the point a non-sequitur – Alpha Males and Sluts have always been with us – but the notion that Women and Men “suffer equally” in the SMP is laughable on its face. Human history has shown us that Men are viewed as expendable, with a sizable minority among them never having a mate or reproducing for that matter; we can’t say the same for the ladies, the vast majority of whom at the very least, get to pass their genes on to the next generation. So, it’s ALWAYS been harder for guys to get what they want. Nothing new there.

But what IS new, is that for the first time in American history at least, its getting increasingly harder for the ladies to get what THEY want – and the reasons for it haven’t been fully explored, and I say that’s because those who own the sliderules don’t like the results of their researches. Hence the near universal scorn for Game by the “professional” community, and so forth. They can run, but they can’t hide, and more and more guys are electing other options that makes your site possible to begin with. Like I said, so many of you, and yes I’m including you in that statement, just don’t get it. You refuse to think outside the box, to think the unthinkable. You refuse to look right next door to your Black American neighbor and ask, are we next?

Whew…and here I’m thinking that De Nile was just a river in Egypt…

Holla back

O.

Ms. Walsh,
Replies below:

SW: @Mister Y
Meaningful conclusions? Perhaps not. In my view, every study is one data point, that’s all. Honestly, I was having a bit of fun with this post because of the flak i’ve caught from feminists re talking about sex in terms of supply and demand. This study really just confirmed the obvious, but it’s important because there are large groups of people, e.g. feminists, who claim that women want sex just as much as men do, and that many women want sex without relationships. Now that “relationship science” is an actual discipline, those questions are being tested. I am enjoying putting every one of those results in my piggy bank of data points that confirms my world view

O: The dangerous assumption, on your part, is that one, those who you deem opponents can or will be swayed by “evidence”, when it is quite clear to me that they couldn’t care less about what the “science” says one way or another, in large part because they were never appealing to science to begin with, but rather ideology. The Sex Positive Feminists who are your nemesis will NEVER be moved by scientific evidence.

Having said that, whether your readers will find what you present of interest or not and act accordingly, remains to be seen. At some point, it would be interesting to see a poll conducted by your site wrt your readers in before and after modes, so to speak.

O.

Anonymous asks:

“Isn’t this supposed to be a blog with guidance for _young_ men and women? Where are they? Put off by the middle aged men ranting and bleating with the same old stuff they rant on about at the MRA sites? Sheesh.”

O: You know what, you’re right – where ARE the young Women that Ms. Walsh’s blog is supposedly the focus of? She doesn’t write for young Men, that’s not the focus of the blog, btw. You say that the blog is basically being hijacked by middle aged angry dudes from MRA world, something I find laughable because you haven’t presented any evidence to support your claims.

But, I CAN present evidence that the vast majority of regular female commenters here are quite a bit long in the tooth themselves, AND they tend to be married – hence, they are completely removed from the very audience Ms. Walsh intends to seek. Yet, I find you being completely silent on that point.

Fascinating.

Hey Anonymous, here’s a great idea – you tell me what’s up with all the older gals hanging out here, and I’ll be more than happy to cue you in as to why so many supposed MRAs hang out here. Fair enough?

O.

“There are also several other college women who have protested and given up in total frustration because angry and bitter men come around here and tell them they’re terrible people for finding alphas attractive.”

With all due respect, Ms. Walsh, the reason why those men found your site in the first place was because you started a blogger feud with Ferdinand Bardamu and displayed a somewhat close-minded and hostile attitude on his site, Obsidian’s defunct blog and other sites as well until you decided to turn around and embraced Game.

On another note, you as the owner of this site are responsible for policing commenters, obviously. If they step on other people’s toes, warn them and if that doesn’t work, ban them. Problem solved.

Hi Ms. Walsh,
I was waiting on ya. Replies below:

SW: @Obsidian
First of all, Linda Perstein’s remark re what this says about women was not part of the study, but a separate article online in response to it.

O: Yes, I know, and I’m pretty certain Doug and the other fellas understand that as well. Nevertheless, the point is made – our culture considers first and foremost, what is good for GIRLS, not boys, and even you admitted as much in your earlier reply to me upthread. What you quoted just proves that. Hence my point.

BTW, have you ever read Kay Hymowitz’s articles Child-Man In The Promised Land, and Love In The Age Of Darwinism? She also did a Bloggingheads with Will Wilkerson, you can find em all via Google. Would love to get your reactions.

SW: I researched this study and found not one male commenting on what the implications are for males.

O: Which isn’t surprising at all, now is it?

SW: Where are the MRAs?

O: They abound online; you already know about The Spearhead, and that’s just for starters.

SW: Why is Lionel Tiger, who has lent his name to the Male Studies effort, not speaking out about this?

O: Excuse me? Tiger has been a relentless voice on these issues since way back in the 60s. He’s written, lectured, spoken and debated about these issues almost nonstop for what, some four decades? Come on.

SW: Men need to speak up about the plight of males, and that did not happen with this study.

O: and I’ve explained to you as to why this is, when it comes to research studies and the like – remember?

SW: Feminists covered it at Salon and Jezebel. The editor of a national education blog covered it. The men are the ones who have been silent on this issue. And that’s nothing new. MRAs have not found a way to organize and get their message out to the general public.

O: No argument on this latter point – however, I do think that outlets like Men News Daily and The Spearhead, as well as Glenn Sacks are noteworthy in this regard. But yes, I do agree, more needs to be done. I plan to do my part.

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SW: Second, I am not trying to convince anyone to go for Jeremy the STEM guy. This is another one of your favorite go-to claims. There are a whole lot of guys between the lacrosse star and Jeremy. Indeed, they make up the vast majority of the SMP. I’m telling girls to avoid the lax douchebag, and many certainly are doing so. That is exactly how it is going down. If you think that the vast majority of women want to peel off the pants of man whores on campus, you are just dead wrong. That contradicts every single thing I have heard and read. The young women who have spoken here regularly confirm my view with their own field reports. With all due respect, you have no idea what is happening on college campuses. You seem to believe that college guys are mostly nerds, and that’s just silly.

O: Well, for one thing, I spent some five years of my life being an instructor at one of the country’s bigger unis, and currently have a nephew attending the same uni as a student, so I think I know fairly well what goes on there. Secondly, true, you’ve never specifically stated that gals should get with Jeremy the STEM Guy – but you HAVE said that they should give the Betas a play. Repeatedly in fact. It would be very interesting to see what the results of your some two years’ worth of Beta Guy Exhortation is. Perhaps you could devise a poll so we all could see, of your readers who’ve taken your advice and are now happily in relationship bliss with Mr. Beta on Campus?

Secondly, if Ms. Owen is any indication, to say nothing about the ladies at UNC earlier this year, your advice isn’t being widely accepted, to say nothing of followed, just yet. We can confidently say this – that the lax douchebags on the lacrosse or football teams will have much more action that Jeremy the STEM Guy OR Mr. Beta Man on Campus – and that one of your own regulars, one Mr. Athlone McGinnis, can back me up on that score, really says it all. But then, you do have a kind of selective listening that I find at turns fascinating and kind of desultory at the same time.
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SW: The scientific method is not needed to have sex.

O: I don’t know about that…

SW: It is, however, helpful in figuring out why major shifts are occurring in the SMP. For example, one of the primary factors in establishing hookup culture on campuses was the advent of coed dorms and the demise of colleges acting in loco parentis. This is something you have never even mentioned or considered. Yet the impact has been huge. Therefore, when you speak of the SMP, you speak in ignorance about the college piece, which in fact drives the culture for educated youth through the late teens and 20s.

O: Well, for one thing, just like you’re interested on one segment of the American population and make no bones about it, I too focus on another, and quite frankly much larger, segment of the American population and make no bones about that. The truth is that somewhere between roughly 20 to 30-some odd percent of all Americans are college grads – which means, in a country with 300M-plus people, a whole heck of a lot of them won’t be college grads. Someone needs to represent for them. I’m doing my part.

Second, I thought you were interested in the micro, Ms. Walsh? What you just said above seems mighty macro to me, ie, using clinical means to assess large group social change vis a vie the SMP. What happened to your more intimate approach? Seems to me that you’re cherry picking whatever “science” you want, which again is nothing new since so many sliderule types do it all the time. But if we’re gonna go macro, then we have to deal with ALL of it – which means, yes, the more ugly sides of the Brave New World. That you, or your readers, or whoever/wherever, can’t or won’t deal with it, isn’t a problem i can or should solve.
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SW: It is increasingly difficult for the ladies to get what they want. On this we agree.

O: The question has to be, WHY? – and I submit, we really don’t know and/or understand those reasons, largely because the last place to look for answers is the place we ignore the most – guys.

SW: In fact, that’s just what this study said. Senior girls in high school get less of what they want than freshmen boys! That’s pretty remarkable. This blog is a place where those senior girls can figure out why things feel so tough, and perhaps to do something about it. In a game of musical chairs, one doesn’t want to be the last one standing. Most women who want to marry and have children can do so. Easily. Even now. But the odds have lengthened, and they need to make smart choices. Why does that bother you so much? Why do you insist that women cannot, will not, see the big picture, choose wisely, and be happy? And even if you’re right, and the unthinkable happens, why does that mean that women should give up and go home? Women want actionable strategies. They don’t want to be told that as Black America goes, so we all go. Or that they need to ask men how they feel about having been disenfranchised.

O: What they want and what they’re gonna to have to contend with are two completely seperate things; again, not a problem I can or should solve. But what I can say, since you’re of the mind that stats and research means something, is that just about every social scientist and commentator of note has said, that Black America is the canary in the mine when it comes to these reproductive/sexual/marital issues, from Tiger to Hacker to Hymowitz, the list goes on and on. You and your readers can ignore this at your peril. But it won’t change the facts that for an increasingly growing number of them, getting marriage proposals, or even getting relationship ones, is fast becoming something that’s not even an option anymore. You’ve talked about this yourself to some extent – the “Spinster Lit” thing? Doesn’t that mirror what Steve Harvey talked about in his NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING BOOK? Come on, Ms. Walsh.

Second, if Women want to get married, they know exactly where to go, and so do you – its just that Women don’t want those kind of guys, at least not when they still hold out hope they can win against the house, ie, when their still young and fresh, and relatively attractive. Many will take the gamble, and many will lose. Badly. Of course, by then, the question becomes, will that guy who got kicked to the curb back in college or whatever, be cool with settling down, for the rest of his days, with the gal who’s got a bit of, if nothing else, time on her? We’re about to find out, although the early returns aren’t promising – some reports are saying that marital rates are the lowest its been in America since records were kept. Hmm…

Third, the reason why I keep the laserlike focus on these points is because its so very important for your readers and indeed yourself to know, understand and ACCEPT, that Men still do decide where Women ultimately fall in the social scheme of things: Jumpoff, or Wifey. And if a Woman wants to be the latter, she needs to cater to what Men want, and you don’t do that if you don’t know what they want in the first place, and then giving them that. This is one huge reason why Black Women, taken as a group, are doing so poorly on the marital front, because the last thing they do is ask Black Men what is it they want in order for them to pop the question and take the plunge in terms of marriage. If ever there was an argument to be made for the Solipsism of The Female Mind, the Sistahood writ large is it. Since, as you say Ms. Walsh, we’re only dealing with economics here, then one of the first laws of economics is knowing your market and meeting their needs. Clearly, the “sellers” in Black America – Sistas – aren’t doing that wrt their core “market” – Brothas. And more and more, we’re seeing this patter repeating itself in White Folks Who Matter America – and hence, blogs like yours. *shrugs* Are we learning yet?
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SW: I’ve told you countless times that is not what I do here. This blog is about the micro.

O: See my previous remarks about micro/macro above. Seems to me that you’re cooking the books to suit your audience, and hey, I can’t knock for you that. But if you want to have a brutally hnonest discussion about the SMP and what it most likely mean for your core audience, by all means holla back.

SW: You are about the macro. Women don’t write to me about pie in the sky stuff.

O: Translation: they don’t want the cold, unvarnished truth.

SW: They write to tell me that they did x per my post, and it resulted in y and now they know the deal. And that knowledge helps, even if it hurts. It’s individual. It’s particular to them, to their individual lives.

O: If that’s so, how does that jibe with the notion of “in loco parentis” on America’s college campuses, Ms. Walsh? Please explain?

SW: Statements like “Women don’t get it” are not useful.

O: Yes, they are. Because it’s pointing out an otherwise bleedingly obvious truth to them, and more and more, I find that such truths need to be forcefully applied, so as to ruthlessly disabuse any solipsistic notions the ladies often have.

SW: If more guys are planning to sit it out, women need to beat out their fellow females for the guys that remain.

O: Something I’ve always said: Women by and large will focus their attentions on the remaining few guys left standing – and we all know what that means, now don’t we, Ms. Walsh? I mean, since we’re applying Econ 101 principles to this thing here…it would perhaps be a better use of your time then, to advise your readers to get used to being in the rotation…

SW: They’re really not thinking about 2020 as the year virtual sex technology is available at Best Buy. They’re thinking that 2020 may be the year they get married.

O: Keyword there being “may be”. Of course, the year 2020 is one prophesized by The Fifth Horseman, a futurist blogger, that the Misandry Bubble, finally bursts.

As I’ve always said, we’ll just have to deal with the fallout. But then again, given my particular background, I should know – right?

Holla back

O.

As long as we are bringing up that unbelievably silly UNC story in the NYT (which I’d like to believe isn’t representative of anything but the narcissism of stupid sorority girls), Susan et al have not discussed the money quote:

“Of those 40%, half are guys we wouldn’t consider, then half of the rest have girlfriends, so we’re fighting over 10% of the campus.”

Hmm, so three out of four men have been eliminated from the get go. Translation: they don’t want boyfriends or “relationships.” They want alpha cock, along with a wish and a prayer said cock might BE their boyfriend.

I’m old; I read this blog because no one else is talking about this stuff except for crazies. (extreme fundies on one side, extremely pissed-off people on the other side, and extreme sex+ crazies on yet a third side.)

And to me, that’s crazy. Fifteen or twenty years ago, no one on either side seemed nearly as crazy.

If there were a site that talked about this stuff and more of the people were non-crazy I’d read that site. Unfortunately, the topic seems to attract crazies or else drive people crazy.

Believe me, I wish there were a blog about this stuff for older people, but this site is the only one I can find that talks about this stuff on a middle ground between “Waiting is manipulative!!!!!!!!!!!!” “Adults need sex!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” rah rah!!!!!!!!!!! and “not only is fornication wrong, so is birth control and women working outside the home”

I see normal people around me handling all this just fine; but I don’t see any other web sites talking about this stuff so that’s why I read here. No one else is talking about it except the extreme sex positive people and the extreme, virgins should marry at 17 people.

Ah, I turn elsewhere for a few days and see my name taken repeatedly in vain; it’s a compliment, really, to be somewhat mis-quoted, better than not being quoted at all!

.

I’d like to address a couple of things, the first of which is to point out that my main beef in the comment waaay upstream was not with Susan per se or the authors of the study, but with a certain, typical kind of writing about this kind of study — of which the quote from Linda Perlstein is a prime example. This is my official recommendation that everyone who reads this kind of commentary should develop an instant, ninja-quick reflex to ask “Which boys?” whenever “boys” are generalized. This will be good for your health and complexion, for men, women and children alike, as you will see.

.

A scenario commonly described in Time magazine-like pieces — you know the kind I mean — is that young women, basically high school age, are now engaging frankly in behaviors that their elders, particularly their mothers, find extremely demeaning: making a public show of kissing other girls, delivering oral sex in stairwells between classes, taking and sending topless photos by phone, etc. When it is asked “Why would they do that? why would they participate in all this sexualized, demeaning behavior?” their mothers all have one very direct answer, which is then repeated by the Time magazine writer: this is what the girls have to do to get attention from boys. As far as Time and the mothers are concerned, the entirety of “the problem” is the degenerate desires and insistence of boys, period, full stop. The girls are simply helpless victims in the irresistible tide of young male depravity: their only choice is either to slut it up or be cold and alone.

.

Now, I don’t dispute for a moment that a lot of high-school aged boys have a lot of degenerate desires, and peer pressure can make them even worse. But, now is the time for the ninja strike! When Time and the mothers say “this is what the girls have to do to get attention from boys”, every reader and listener should ask “Which boys?”, as in, “Which boys do the girls want attention from? Is it all boys, or only some?” and “Which boys demand this slutty behavior? Is it all boys, or are there some who won’t demean girls as the price for their attention?”

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Once you make the ninja strike, a whole new world opens up! Now it is sensible to say, “The boys whose attention girls want is certainly not all boys, it’s a subset. And, the boys who demand demeaning behavior is also not all boys, they’re a subset.” After which, unless one wills a deliberate blindness, one must ask “Why do these two subsets seem to be aligned? Why are the girls eager for the attention of exactly the boys who demean them? Why is there a correlation between a boy’s attention being desirable and the boy being a sexually demanding, selfish jerk?” But Time and the mothers _never_ ask those next logical questions; for whatever reason they’re afraid to go there. Better to put all the blame on boys, period, then to raise any question about the girls’ own choice in the matter.

.

Do you see that the Time & mothers’ approach is harmful? in two very real ways. (A) It really infantilizes the girls to paint them as helpless victims with no agency; and it does the girls no favors for adults to willfully ignore the possibility that the girls get an enjoyable, transgressive thrill out of committing this supposedly demeaning behavior. (B) It utterly ignores the alternate population of boys, however large or small it may be, who _don’t_ demand demeaning behavior from girls; these are the boys who should be applauded and valued by Time and the mothers! but instead they are never even mentioned, and so are radically de-valued as irrelevant bystanders. The ninja strike of asking “Which boys?”, however, cures both these problems: it forces the commentator to acknowledge the existence of the forgotten boys, and shines a light on the girls’ active role as human beings with choice.

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Now that you’ve seen it demonstrated on the Internets, time to try this at home! Start here:

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Linda Perlstein: “why was I watching them abase themselves to impress boys every day?”
You: “Which boys, Ms. Perlstein? Aren’t there some who don’t demand abasement? Why aren’t the girls trying to impress those boys instead? Why is the attention of those boys less desirable?”

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Once you develop the ninja-strike reflex it will come in handy many times a day! in all kinds of conversations. Here are just a few examples:

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Commentator: “Boys don’t like smart girls.”
Ninja: “Which boys? Certainly there are _some_ boys who do like smart girls, don’t you think there must be? Why aren’t these boys more highly valued and sought-after?”

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Commentator: “Boys always cheat and never want relationships.”
Ninja: “Which boys? Certainly there are some boys who want relationships and would be faithful; if you’ve never found one, doesn’t this mean that it’s you who didn’t find them attractive?”

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I could go on, but you get the point. Commentary like that of Linda Perlstein is excrable, yet all too common! and really disrespectful of boys and girls alike. I invite everyone to fight against it.

There’s an element of folks talking past each other, and still more of many not really reading along. Not that anyone wants to waste that amount of time, which is the point, I guess. So my attempt at some cleanup is here:

1.) BN somehow manages to miss the point way up on the thread here about that UNC story. It’s mostly what was talked about, when mentioned here by Susan. Yes, the Missing Men. In a region of NC, yes, the ‘Research Triangle’, filled with STEM Men!

2.) Having followed, met, read & heard from the highly amusing Canadian Lionel Tiger for yes, about 40 years? I can tell you that mostly what he does is not quite ‘original research’ but to be a provocative ‘gadfly’ in any number of academic debates. Some more successfully than others. Entertaining for sure. And always an interesting viewpoint to follow. But as far as ‘original contributions to research’? Pretty thin on the ground for such a ‘controversial’ academic. Some of his ‘stuff’ that he’s collected, collated & popularized over the years have been by in large valuable to be brought forward to debate from differing perspectives. But actually citing him as a ‘definitive’ authority on much? Pretty much a vain hope. And buy him a drink sometime, and he’d tell you the same thing. He’s a provocateur more than anything else.

3.) Obs makes the same point Ad infinitum, but it’s an important one in the context of both real Economics & the SMP as constructed in various populations. Having also read most of the City Journal series on this perspective (Key H. et al), yes much of this is a long time coming. And when you’re talking about the ‘out of wedlock births’ or ‘illegitimacy rates’? Yes, the White (native born) population is about where the Black population was perhaps about 40 years ago when it was declared an ‘emergency’ in Nixon’s day. As noted by Hacker & many others, this presages plenty of social dysfunction if by now 70% of births to Black women are outside of marriage vs about 30% & rising for Whites. That does have tremendous & very real economic implications on many fronts, most of them unpleasant & quite unfortunately ugly too. And it’s now about 50% for the Hispanic/Latino population too.

Still Susan does have a point too. Everyone has a frame of reference. Her’s is not one of an working class inner city Black family/dude. And we really need not expect this of her. Why would we, given her history? And this from Obs misses the point he himself wants to make:

Obs says “Since, as you say Ms. Walsh, we’re only dealing with economics here, then one of the first laws of economics is knowing your market and meeting their needs. Clearly, the “sellers” in Black America – Sistas – aren’t doing that wrt their core “market” – Brothas. And more and more, we’re seeing this patter [sic] repeating itself in White Folks Who Matter America – and hence, blogs like yours. *shrugs* Are we learning yet?”

As I noted above? We get the central point here. Mostly? We’re just not dealing with issues of illegitimacy here. They are quite a bit less common for the middle class college educated & yes, White kids Susan is pitching to, mostly. And the very fact & existence of ‘crisis of illegitimacy’ says something too about the neglected SMP here. Those Sistas? May be doing just what they want to be doing, given the circumstances & their constrained choices. It’s a very complicated picture, but it’s all about the Possibility & probability of family formation here. Obs? You’re talking about Marriage or at least fairly stable LTR’s? And like many other places & populations around the world? Child bearing in the Black community in many places has now become yes, an ‘extra marital’ event/experience. Ditto for some of the ‘Lilly white’ Nordics too, BTW. Now if those Sistas Were Not getting sex? They’d not be getting pregnant, right? Ever stop & think that’s what they want in the end? The kid(s) & not the man? That’s their store of value, that’s their self affirmation & justification right there. At the moment? Although it’s a burning fire in the under brush of White society? This affliction has yet to be essentially reproduced in the enclaves of most of our colleges by the middling classes the blog is pitched to mainly. So again, there can be a SMP, even if you don’t quite understand it or acknowledge it, and it’s working in yes, pretty ‘queer’ & ultimately (likely) deleterious ways. Having the Gumminit try & ‘fix’ that? Would also likely make it worse still.

4.) Following this debate & many others down through the years? I can tell you the fact rarely matter. It’s whomever mobilizes the most emotion to ‘address the issue’, usually with enough anger or resentment to bury it for yet another generation until the next ‘outbreak’ too.

5.) I can’t even imagine having out a ‘fleshlight’ on a night stand where it was actually visible to potential ‘dates’ or even visiting female friends. Amazing, really. The first edict for such a visit from the opposite sex was always ‘Hide the Sex toys!’ (usually for the women) & ‘Hide the p0rn!’ (usually for the guys). See before the Net you’d have to… Oh why bother? Just go here, pony up some cash & put him OR her on a seat next to the TV: Realdoll.com

Get Happy! Cheers, ‘VJ’

Cloud the issues Obs? There’s enough straw men you’ve set to burning to fill fields! And too much confusion to even count. But hey, let’s start from the top?

1.) White knighting? Yeah, I’m supposed to be ‘shamed’ by this ad hominem attack, which basically means ‘a response’ to you. Fine. Imagine you can bludgeon the focus of your very unfocused rage with ever more meaning verbiage & name calling? Yeah. That will work. Everywhere. On the job too.

2.) Since I know the facts never matter, I won’t direct you back to the Post Discussing the NYT UNC story HERE on this blog, as you’ve so thoroughly & thoughtlessly misconstrued the point I was making. I’m Not. A. NYT. Subscriber. OR. Editor. Never. Was. Ergo? Not. Responsible. For. Their. Drivel. My only point. A simple one, yet you managed to deliberately twist it to well just prove you can I imagine.

3.) The point I was making with Linoel Tiger? You missed it. Read it again. Not a definitive source for much of anything. Interesting but thoroughly derivative. For decades. And he’ll freely admit that. Again, refutations? Cites? Alternative theories? Defense? Parry? OK Just more insults? Yeah. Pretty standard.

4.) And the City Journal folks? Have been talking about Black illegitimacy rates ALONG WITH the RELATED issue of declining Black marriage rates as a ‘peculiar & specific’ pathology, well since their inception. You might not know that, and that may have been before you were reading much. But they’re yes, intimately related phenomenon. Older much richer white women having kids ‘out of wedlock’? Notable perhaps, but still not a significant source of dangerous social pathology that has demonstrably produced an upsurge in criminality.

5.) And of course Moynihan had been working on the ‘Negro Family’ problem for awhile. It was yes, Nixon who actually saw fit to try & make policy around the findings. There fixed that sense of Wiki hubris for ya!

6.) 9-11 is directly related to marriage rates. OK. For Marines & such? Sure. Right. Oh and Hip Hop!!

7.) “Women whining and moaning about not being able to find “eligible/suitable” Black Men as mates, ie marriage/LTRs”. Women (and others) will wine, right? Film at 11!! Exciting!!

8.) But now we get right down to it: Them nasty, uncompromising sistas that won’t show you no respect!!

“THAT MEN DECIDE WHO GETS MARRIED OR NOT. And clearly, a simple majority of Black Men are deciding that Black Women in their current state, aren’t worth taking the plunge with. If Black Women were completely cool with this, Oprah wouldn’t exist, there’d be no ABC Niteline specials, and Steve Harvey wouldn’t be laughing all the way to the bank with him, a comedian for God’s sakes, having a blockbuster NYT bestselling book aimed at Black Women…” (Oh & Rap & Hip Hop, truths therein, etc. Poetry of the Streets & all that Jazz!)

Again Obs said: “You just can’t directly deal with what I’m saying: THAT MEN DECIDE WHO GETS MARRIED OR NOT”. Now I Know you can’t deal with what reality might be telling you & us: That those self same annoyingly ‘un-gameable’ ‘unapproachable’ sistas? They get their say too. You know, like Not the Taliban in Afghan caves? Like the 21st century & not the 8th? Like Western & not Sharia Law? They get their say Somehow. And strangely enough? What Ethology there is behind the real research? It’s their ultimate choice for mating. That’s what this whole game is about, right? Have we got that right at least? But you? You want to play a different game! You want Marriage 1.0 or 2.? or a LTR? And seemingly? That’s not in the offing too regularly in your neighborhood perhaps? Or perhaps we can’t yet get our minds around the sad fact that women might be telling Oprah they WANT one thing, ( a loving, committed LTR leading to marriage), but are seemingly unable to accomplish this due to conflicting desires that are at direct counter purposes to this stated goal? Like that NEVER happens, right? Not in your wonder world, right?

9.) So let’s restate that once again for you: “there can be a SMP, even if you don’t quite understand it or acknowledge it, and it’s working in yes, pretty ‘queer’ & ultimately (likely) deleterious ways”. Where do you fit in their version of a SMP? Where do you imagine you fit? For how long? And why? And why does that bother you so much? Just wondering.

Cheers, ‘VJ’

Hi VJ,
Ahh, more clouding from you. Didn’t think it would catch on the first time, sooo….

Replies below:

VJ: Cloud the issues Obs? There’s enough straw men you’ve set to burning to fill fields! And too much confusion to even count. But hey, let’s start from the top?

O: Indeed! Shall we dance?

1.) White knighting? Yeah, I’m supposed to be ‘shamed’ by this ad hominem attack, which basically means ‘a response’ to you. Fine. Imagine you can bludgeon the focus of your very unfocused rage with ever more meaning verbiage & name calling? Yeah. That will work. Everywhere. On the job too.

O: I’ve never had any complaints, if that’s what you mean. at any rate, what I do or don’t do at work is a non-sequitur, as is my supposed emotional state. The issues at hand have been directly addressed by me. Ignore at your own peril.

2.) Since I know the facts never matter, I won’t direct you back to the Post Discussing the NYT UNC story HERE on this blog, as you’ve so thoroughly & thoughtlessly misconstrued the point I was making. I’m Not. A. NYT. Subscriber. OR. Editor. Never. Was. Ergo? Not. Responsible. For. Their. Drivel. My only point. A simple one, yet you managed to deliberately twist it to well just prove you can I imagine.

O: The point was that, as BN noted, the Woman quoted gave an excellent example of the “narrow field of view” that F. Roger Devlin described wrt Women and what they deem as potential mates; they’re only focusing on the top of the heap at any given time. I don’t care whether that’s good or bad; just wanting to point out that’s what it is, and we need to be brutally frank in acknowledging that because it has direct implications for the current SMP.

3.) The point I was making with Linoel Tiger? You missed it. Read it again. Not a definitive source for much of anything. Interesting but thoroughly derivative. For decades. And he’ll freely admit that. Again, refutations? Cites? Alternative theories? Defense? Parry? OK Just more insults? Yeah. Pretty standard.

O: Who insulted you? I simply stated the fact that Tiger’s among the few voices out there speaking up for Male interests who’s a widely respected scholar. That you think Male interests aren’t important isn’t a problem I can or should solve.

4.) And the City Journal folks? Have been talking about Black illegitimacy rates ALONG WITH the RELATED issue of declining Black marriage rates as a ‘peculiar & specific’ pathology, well since their inception. You might not know that, and that may have been before you were reading much. But they’re yes, intimately related phenomenon. Older much richer white women having kids ‘out of wedlock’? Notable perhaps, but still not a significant source of dangerous social pathology that has demonstrably produced an upsurge in criminality.

O: I’ve been reading the City Journal going all the way back when John McWhorter was being feted as the new fresh young Black Conservative voice in residence. At any rate, it still doesn’t deal with what I said about Hymowitz’s articles, neither of which said anything about Black folks, they focused exclusively on Whites, and, as for the whole White OOW thing, ie Gottlieb and Pols, the jury’s still vey much out on that score; but the early evidence as we have it, seems to mirror what we already know based on Black America:

-the moms tend to be poorer
-the kids tend to less well in school
-have emotional problems
-are more likely to be socially problematic, etc et al.

How this will shake out in terms of crime and social pathologies, again, remains to be seen. Time will tell, and my money’s on my canary in the mine theory. If I’m right, that means that Ms. Walsh’s core audience has quite a lot to think about going forward…

5.) And of course Moynihan had been working on the ‘Negro Family’ problem for awhile. It was yes, Nixon who actually saw fit to try & make policy around the findings. There fixed that sense of Wiki hubris for ya!

O: Actually, the whole thing was yet another strawman put up by you, since no one said anything about DPM or his “tangle of pathology” report of the mid 60s, well before Nixon came to power. You were saying?

6.) 9-11 is directly related to marriage rates. OK. For Marines & such? Sure. Right. Oh and Hip Hop!!

O: Nope. My point was, that what happens in one area of the world, has indirect, and sometimes, direct impact, on other parts of the world. This is due primarily to cheaper airfare/travel, as well as the scope and reach of the internet, itself also very cheap in our time. Sep 11 was just an example illustrating this point.

7.) “Women whining and moaning about not being able to find “eligible/suitable” Black Men as mates, ie marriage/LTRs”. Women (and others) will wine, right? Film at 11!! Exciting!!

O: Yea, but here’s the thing: now, thanks to the Almighty Internet, Men have a voice, too – and many of us are about forcing Women to Man Up or Shut Up. Since intense criticism and shaming is such a highly effective tool, the more of us who does this, the sooner we fellas can go back to enjoying our collective peace and quiet.

8.) But now we get right down to it: Them nasty, uncompromising sistas that won’t show you no respect!!

O: Actually, that’s not it at all; I simply want them to STFU. I really couldn’t care less what they do, it’s just that I’ve had my fill of Women using the mass media to bemoan their lot in life – and when it comes to a particular cohort of the Sistahood, they’ve been beating this dead horse for what, easily two decades now, if not longer? It’s time somebody told them about themselves with all the vim and vigor at a young Mans command, and since I’m the type of guy to take the bull by the horns and get er done myself, I’m stepping into the gap until someone better comes along. If they’re so strong and independent, they can prove it by first learning how to suffer in silence when they make bad decisions, like Men have always done. Get it?

“THAT MEN DECIDE WHO GETS MARRIED OR NOT. And clearly, a simple majority of Black Men are deciding that Black Women in their current state, aren’t worth taking the plunge with. If Black Women were completely cool with this, Oprah wouldn’t exist, there’d be no ABC Niteline specials, and Steve Harvey wouldn’t be laughing all the way to the bank with him, a comedian for God’s sakes, having a blockbuster NYT bestselling book aimed at Black Women…” (Oh & Rap & Hip Hop, truths therein, etc. Poetry of the Streets & all that Jazz!)

O: Yup – and note again, that you have not refuted, factually, a single word of what I’ve just said. I await your point for point response…

Again Obs said: “You just can’t directly deal with what I’m saying: THAT MEN DECIDE WHO GETS MARRIED OR NOT”. Now I Know you can’t deal with what reality might be telling you & us: That those self same annoyingly ‘un-gameable’ ‘unapproachable’ sistas? They get their say too. You know, like Not the Taliban in Afghan caves? Like the 21st century & not the 8th? Like Western & not Sharia Law? They get their say Somehow. And strangely enough? What Ethology there is behind the real research? It’s their ultimate choice for mating. That’s what this whole game is about, right? Have we got that right at least? But you? You want to play a different game! You want Marriage 1.0 or 2.? or a LTR? And seemingly? That’s not in the offing too regularly in your neighborhood perhaps? Or perhaps we can’t yet get our minds around the sad fact that women might be telling Oprah they WANT one thing, ( a loving, committed LTR leading to marriage), but are seemingly unable to accomplish this due to conflicting desires that are at direct counter purposes to this stated goal? Like that NEVER happens, right? Not in your wonder world, right?

O: VJ, what the hell are you talking about here? I read the above babble of a paragraph three times and still couldn’t make heads or tails of it.

9.) So let’s restate that once again for you: “there can be a SMP, even if you don’t quite understand it or acknowledge it, and it’s working in yes, pretty ‘queer’ & ultimately (likely) deleterious ways”. Where do you fit in their version of a SMP? Where do you imagine you fit? For how long? And why? And why does that bother you so much? Just wondering.

O: The only thing that bothers me is when people ignore the bleedingly obvious. The rules of the SMP are a lot like Game in that it’s pretty much universal, because human beings are pretty much universal. This is yet another huge sticking point with Women in particular and our feminized times in general, because both rail at the notion of generalities, which invariably leads to stereotypes, both of which, in the realworld, WORKS.

Next non-clouding question?

O.

“1.) BN somehow manages to miss the point way up on the thread here about that UNC story. It’s mostly what was talked about, when mentioned here by Susan. Yes, the Missing Men. In a region of NC, yes, the ‘Research Triangle’, filled with STEM Men!”

I haven’t missed the point, I just think it’s incomplete without considering the snotty way the women down there have pre-rejected so many candidates. Susan’s point about UNC, vis a vis this high school study she quoted, is that “women are facing a man shortage and so by the free market they are giving up fidelity and having more sex than they want in order to get “relationships.”"

But there’s no “man shortage,” at least not to the degree these women think. There’s tons of men around they are just not interested in dating. The women “put up with cheating” because it’s apparently better to them than to date a geek from NC State, or a black guy from NCCU (maybe they can’t bring him home to mom and dad?)

It’s also worth noting that if the men are cheating on them, they don’t HAVE relationships by the standard definition of such. Again, they want alpha cock, and they hold out a naive hope they’ll get a “relationship” out of it.

But there are plenty of guys who would be faithful who they have deemed “undateable” by spoiled sorority standards, so I don’t know why I should care about these girls’ problems. Chicks dig jerks, chicks get hurt. Story of the world for generations.

This is not a functioning “economic free market” as alleged by Susan; I think these women are stupid beyond belief.

“I agree with you about the disdain for men who don’t get laid, which must be a huge multiplier in terms of peer pressure.”

Create lying got me around this problem for years (not that I cared whether they cared who I was sleeping with but you know). I may not have had game with girls, but I had enough social skill to be circumspect and suggestive wrt locker room talk. Careful though, you can get into a situation you can’t get out of!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXaJ1YIHqpM

“You’re also right about women virgins – it’s very common for women to go out with the primary goal of “losing it” just so they can prove at least one guy wanted them.”

The “trade sex for approval” dichotomy/paradigm doesn’t always hold. As I’ve said before at HUS, there are plenty of women who want to “lose it” because they are just curious about sex. The ones I knew usually found a caddish guy for it, because they wanted to be led (want a man who knows what he’s doing) and because they want to avoid the emotional entanglements. I really believe society gives women far less credit than they deserve for their own sexual agency.

I will say though that it took me a while to understand how women need to feel sexy to want to have sex. For guys, if the person we’re trying to do is sexy, we’re ready to go. In my experience, women need to feel sexy themselves to get ready for the act. So any man, alpha or no, has to do some buttering up (figuratively speaking) to get his girl ready. Interesting then how negging/qualifying is a paradox – you knock the girl down a peg, which would seem to hurt her sexy self-image, but by N/Q you show your own value, so since a high value man is talking to her she’ll find herself sexy by qualification. It makes the mind spin, another reason evo-psych justifications for popular behavior are tenuous at best.