It’s been less than two years since I was first introduced to the concept of female hypergamy – the desire for a woman to be with a mate of the highest possible status. This desire will drive women to “trade up” when given the opportunity. For that reason, it profits men to maintain as high a level of status as possible. Though prestige and affluence clearly play a role, women often prioritize a man’s level of social dominance as the most telling predictor of mate fitness.
For obvious reasons, this “instinct” often malfunctions in contemporary terms. The thug who may provide strong physical genes that will enable your offspring to survive infancy is also an unpleasant individual, lacking partnership skills. Yet the thug, and the many variations on that “bad boy,” will often attract more women than stable, attractive, productive men without the dangerous edge.
The Sexual Revolution, ushered in by the Pill and the Women’s Movement, unleashed female sexuality in an unprecedented way. The result has been a hypergamous free-for-all, with women demanding increasingly long checklists of features from men as qualifications for dating. No one wants to “settle,” so we’ve created a sociosexual environment where a brilliant and attractive professional may go without a date if he isn’t the male that all other males turn to for guidance on what’s cool. Never mind that he’s doing brilliant research – it will count for less than the ability to walk off a rugby field battered and bloody but still smiling.
I believe that this sorry state of affairs is worst in the U.S., since feminism is more entrenched here than anywhere else, and most contemporary cultural trends (including hookup culture), originate here. This weekend, though, I encountered thought-provoking examples demonstrating that hypergamy is thriving around the world.
My husband and I watched the film Leaving (Partir) starring Kristin Scott Thomas, who seems to have made something of a career of acting bilingually in French films. She plays a wife and mother living a gracious and comfortable life. Her husband, a successful doctor, is guilty of having fallen into the routine of taking her for granted, but so has she – they’re a typical affluent couple approaching middle age, and their marriage is boring.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BO3ddnTgF8
As you can see, she throws it all away for an ex-con who roams from short-term gig to gig, and she destroys numerous lives in the process, including her own. My husband was surprised (and reassured) by the strength of my reaction to the total selfishness of Scott Thomas’ character. My impression was that the female director sympathized with her more than I did. The film received critical praise, and I recommend it highly. No effort required – we streamed it from Netflix.
I then spent much of Sunday with my nose buried in a book I simply can’t put down: To the End of the Land, by David Grossman. From Amazon:
To the End of the Land is a book of mourning for those not dead, a mother’s lament for life during a wartime that has no end in sight. At the same time, it’s joyously and almost painfully alive, full to the point of rupture with the emotions and the endless quotidian details of a few deeply imagined lives. Ora, the Israeli mother in Grossman’s story, is surrounded by men: Ilan and Avram, friends and lovers who form with her a love triangle whose intimacies and alliances fit no familiar shape, and their sons Adam and Ofer, one for each father, from whom Ora feels her separation like a wound. When Ofer, freshly released from his army service, volunteers for an action in the West Bank instead of going on a planned hike with his mother in the north of Israel, she goes instead with Avram, who fathered Ofer but has never met him and has lived in near-seclusion since being tortured as a prisoner in the Yom Kippur war three decades before. As they walk and carefully reveal themselves to each other again, Grossman builds an overwhelming portrait of, as one character says, the “thousands of moments and hours and days” that make “one person in the world,” and of the power of war to destroy such a person, even–or especially–when they survive its cruel demands.
Grossman, whose own son was killed during the 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict, writes directly from the heart in this scorching antiwar novel.
Ora, Ilan and Avram meet in a hospital in 1967 when all three are recovering from serious hepatitis, and forge a lifelong bond. Ilan is emotionally distant, but intimidating, and on one occasion he kisses Ora in a feverish state that makes her weak in the knees. In contrast, Avram is smart and funny and incredibly present emotionally. Here is the text of a telegram he later sent Ora, after they’d been released:
“It was not love at first sight because I loved you long before that stop before I met you stop I love you backwards too stop even before I existed stop because I only became me when I met you stop.”
I guess you know who got the girl.
Avram, a prolific writer, continues to share his thoughts in letters to Ora, who pulls back after receiving his telegram. He shows amazing insight, and no resentment whatsoever, in this excerpt:
“Last night I was at a jazz show with Ilan (who keeps trying to peek over my arm at what I’m writing, even though he continues to insist that he’s not interested in you!). Anyway…I was able to pull together some of the opinions I’ve been gathering about girls lately, and I came up with some well-founded and interesting theories about them, and mainly about you. I believe that, ultimately, you will not tie your fate with mine but with some other dude, Ilan or someone of his ilk, the point is, a guy who will definitely not tickle your navel with giggles like I do, and won’t drive your mind wild with sharp obsrevations like I do, and make every organ of your body tremble with pleasure like I do. But the thing is, he’ll be hunkier, much hunkier, and calmer and more solid, and mainly more understandable to you than I am. Yes: that in the end you’ll mate for life with some gorgeous, grave-looking, silver-haired alpha male.
…For I suspect, my duplicitous Ora, that deep in the depths of your light-filled and beautiful soul (which, I do not need to tell you, I love very much) lies a minuscule recess (like the ones in some corner stores, where they keep the old preserves?) that is, forgive me, slightly narrow-minded in matters of love. Of true love, I mean.
..I can only eat my heart out over the fact that it didn’t happen to you with me, that revelation of love (because love is a revelation!!), because I was so close (fuckit, hissed the defeated Avram as he poured out his wrath), and that’s also something I feel quite a lot in my life, the almost-happened, and I only hope it won’t be the guiding principle of my life, the main tenet of all the guiding principles of my life.”
“Yours, Dispirited by Torments.”
{ 273 comments… read them below or add one }
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@GudEnuf: I stand corrected. Thank you.
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Ok… so we have to refine our scale a little bit, but it’s not going to help. If it is true that intelligence and beauty tend to go hand in hand, and MOST PEOPLE who are beautiful are also intelligent, then people who are a little beautiful AND a little intelligent are a LITTLE above average.
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I get what various folks are saying — good qualities come in bunches. And if that’s true, then fine. But all this does is shift our scale a little bit. If a person has nothing above or below average, they’re a 5. If they’re a little intelligent (and also a little pretty, since the two come as a matched set), then we can effectively say that they have one above average quality, and call it intellibeauty.
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Which means they’re a 6. For this scale to have any meaning, different attractive qualities must be independent. So for the sake of argument, we could even just lump good qualities together. Make it one variable, and say that a person is varying degrees of smart/funny/pretty/fit/secure/etc. But that’s getting a little ridiculous.
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The point is that MOST women don’t get to be above average while MOST men don’t get to be above average. For this to have meaning, there must be an equivalent number of males and females at each rank.
As far as looks are concerned, I dated a guy that was so ugly the other people I knew (including my mother) made fun of me. He was bone skinny, had really bad skin and was the opposite of a looker. But he had a hell of an intellect and was dominant. I fell for him rather hard and ultimately he rejected me (which was a good thing, because that indirectly led to being with my husband).
To be completely biased for a second, I think of my husband as my perfect 10. He is everything I’ve ever wanted and then some, and no prince or celebrity or any other man in the world can top him. But other women don’t have that same reaction to him. At some point the purely numerical market analogy breaks down as you get into the individual level.
Hope wrote:
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Not at all. No hate coming from this corner. Just the observation that if a woman is slightly above average, she only gets to ask for slightly above average. And women seem to think that slightly above average is significantly above average.
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Yes, physical attractiveness is the number one thing guys look for, but take an average bar crowd in a college town. Look around at the women there. Are most of them reasonably fit, well groomed, and wearing nice clothes? Then THAT’s the baseline. If you’re not above that baseline, you’re not above average. If you’re below it, then you’re below average.
Hope…”no prince or celebrity or any other man in the world can top him. But other women don’t have that same reaction to him. At some point the purely numerical market analogy breaks down as you get into the individual level”
Yes. While there’s no question that physical appearance is important, personality match is also critical–the spark that ignites the fuel, so to speak. And by “personality match” I don’t mean simple compatibility–the mix of personality characteristics that attracts someone by be quite different from his/her own.
There may be a whole batch of women or men who would be judged by an average set of opposite-sex judges as a “7″, let’s say, based on appearance, status, whatever….but a specific individual who meets them all is not going to fall in love with all of them equally.
@hambydammit, college aged women vs. college aged men is a special case. That is an age when most women know they have the highest SMV, because every man from 14 up to 60+ is salivating over them. An average college girl might be average compared to other college girls, but compared to the rest of the population? You get the idea. My husband got basically no female attention when he was in college. These days he gets IOIs from girls in classes he TAs for as a grad student. Men gain points as they get older.
A woman’s looks in the long term fade and decline, and she loses points. On some level most women know this even if they won’t overtly admit it. So they leverage the value they have in their youth to try to get the best mate possible, and therefore they tend to be very choosy at that age. Unfortunately due to the later age of marriage, women are staying choosy even as they approach 40, which is why men are (rightfully) upset.
Notice in my earlier post to you, I said a woman in her 20s who’s a 6. She can actually get a man who’s a 7 or 8 in his 30s or 40s. This is the truth. A woman in her 40s might look similar to the 6 in her 20s, in hair, clothes, body type and everything, but her actual value will have drastically decreased because she won’t have 20 reproductively fertile years ahead of her.
Dennis Kucinich in his 60s married a beautiful young woman in her 20s after divorcing twice. If you want to look at it like this, that’s a young man in his 20s who didn’t get her.
Hope, I agree with everything you’ve said. Which makes it very puzzling to me that we seem to be disagreeing.
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Sex ranks are appropriate to the people who we might mate with. Discussing a college girl’s rank relative to that of a 45 year old plumber with four kids and a kick in the teeth alimony payment isn’t worth doing. So college girls’ sex rank is properly compared with college guys.
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Sex rank is also compared to our peers. We don’t hold 40 year old women to the standard of beauty for 21 year olds. So we compare a 21 year old with a 21 year old. If you’re 21, in college, and you are relatively fit, good hair, nice smile, etc, YOU ARE AVERAGE for your peer group. If you’re trying to attract a college age boy, you must realize that for him, someone like you is the baseline, even if you could land any old 35 year old by just flipping your hair a couple of times.
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If you take the same 21 year old girl and move her to a coal mining town in the rust belt where most everybody is poor, unkempt, and generally uneducated, she will probably be a ten within her peer group. But there won’t be any hotsy-totsy lettermen with trust funds and perfect teeth running around, so her ten status isn’t worth as much as her 7 status at school.
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The point is that women think of themselves as automatic 7s or 8s because they’re thin and have boobs. But if every girl around them is thin and has boobs, she’s not a 7 or an 8. She’s average. And the girls with much better smiles, brilliant blue eyes, perfect ivory skin, and asses to bounce quarters off of are the 8s and 9s. And they’ll get whatever the best choices are in men. And those same men will sport fuck our poor 5 or 6 because she overshot her reach in thinking she was good enough for them.
@blogster
It really depends on what you consider an Alpha Female. I don’t think Madonna is an Alpha myself. Hillary Clinton, Margaret Tatcher on pretty much all ancient queens are what I would consider Alpha females) Women are harder to classify as dominant or not because this are aspect that don’t show unless required. I mean how many times did you know that your mother had the last word at the home even if she didn’t needed to raise her voice to make it so?). Do I believe she was choosy? Possibly but then the only time she married up was when she was starting to get famous and married Sean Penn and that didn’t worked out, she didn’t hooked up below with a dancer and then with someone a little bit up but still below her Guy Ritchie (and I’m talking about things we know as fame I have no idea how this people is on the intimacy so it might be she is an Alpha or maybe she is just emotionally unstable. Hard to tell.
Some have ventured as far to say any skinny woman is an automatic 7 (!).
The problem with fatness is that is socially flexible. I always was skinny and I was always ignored to favor women with more meat and I was 5’7” on a country where the average female is 5’1” so I was also too damn tall (Olive Oil and Sstick-bugs were some of the monikers a couple of mean kids used for me) but like ten years ago I started to get a lot of male attention (and I mean a whole lot more than my meaty friendes) because skinny=hot from American culture had been already implanted on the psique. So if you guys are not getting boners from fat chicks is because you had been indoctrinated to think they are not hot, not because actual fatness (of course I mean within reason if she is so heavy that she can’t move she can’t have sex with you obviously)is a biological turn off.
I’ve never seen any scientific correlation between intelligence and looks. Half of the problem with great looking people is that they are often dickbags.
I will say that pretty people are as smart as average ones at least. The issue is that they have to work less hard so they don’t have to use their smartness as much as us average mortals. Pretty girls always have guys willing to help them with anything they need, homework,in the job place and teachers are usually biased and give them better grades or are more generous and forgiving when they fail. Survival of the prettiest.
My guess is that the average person is far closer the upper limit of human attractiveness than the lower limit.
According to many scientist we had been selecting beauty for quite sometime now so we are probably prettier than our ancestors ever were. Take that Nefertiti!
To be completely biased for a second, I think of my husband as my perfect 10. He is everything I’ve ever wanted and then some, and no prince or celebrity or any other man in the world can top him. But other women don’t have that same reaction to him. At some point the purely numerical market analogy breaks down as you get into the individual level.
Again I ask are you sure we are not accidentally married to the same man?
My husband is my Edward…Of course I don’t tell him this to his face often, given that he hates the books 
The point is that women think of themselves as automatic 7s or 8s because they’re thin and have boobs.
I will add that women over value themselves because they have a whole support system telling them how beautiful an amazing they are for just having a vagina in the likes of self help books, and internet devoted sites to “empower” women but also their girlfriends gushing about all they do like is some big accomplishment, specially banging certain guys. Women are hard pressed to call each other on their crap if they are friends and if they are no friends then the other woman is jealous of their security or some other validation stock phrase they have available for situations like this.
@Susan
“This implies a willingness to jump ship for a man with more status. I’m not sure whether women are more inclined to do this than men are, but the fact that 2/3 of divorces are initiated by women suggests that they might be.”
Yes, this is the “trading up” fantasy/impulse for women to which some bloggers (Dalrock, perhaps? Badger?) have referred, as an analogy to the hareming/seed spreading impulse for men. It’s stands to reason that women are more likely to want to do it, although it may be exacerbated by a popular culture/media that shames men for dumping the wife for a hotter younger model but celebrates equivalent female activity as empowering, soul saving, etc., and a legal system that sometimes provide economic and other cover for it.
@hamby
I think you’re a bit off in your reply to Hope. What she is saying is that college aged women are at their absolute SMV peak. That’s not true of college age men, as their SMV peak will not occur for a few years. Also, the difference in SMV between a woman at her absolute peak and one 10 years old is much greater than the difference for men (their curve is a little flatter). I thought the guy who does the stage two blog mapped it pretty well here, for the most part. I think he could have moved the female peak over to the left just a smidge and not had it drop off quite so quickly, but the basic concept seems about right.
http://stagetwo.wordpress.com/2010/04/04/sexual-attractiveness-as-a-function-of-age/
“and one 10 years old ”
Umm, make that “10 years older”. lol
There should be a version for women to create a boyfriend as that would really prove how rampant hypergamy is. Once this up an running, and if statistics are revealed by the company, I bet it shows most men opting for female traits from forty years ago or present day foreign female traits, as they are both highly sought after norms.
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http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/cloud-girlfriend-start-offers-fake-relationship-facebookers/story?id=13241621
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…and here is the expected and typical American female commentary -
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http://www.dailytargum.com/opinions/digital-girlfriends-degrading-to-all-1.2525524
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This statement is from a woman who does not like having female nature revealed:
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“Some argue that having a fake girlfriend plowing around your social media accounts will spark other women to talk to you. This argument is invalid, because it operates on the backwards assumption that “women always want what they can’t have.”
@Jeffrey of Troy
Thanks for the pointers re philosophy! I actually just downloaded The Fountainhead onto my iphone – I read it as a teen, and have never forgotten the Ellsworth Toohey character. I’ve seen him many times IRL.
@Hope
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I’m as willing as the next guy to blame feminism for a lot of things. But really, this is something we all have a part in. It’s society that tries to de-masculinize the violence out of men, and it’s done poorly.
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First we teach boys that the good-guys win, and they want to be good-guys. Then we take that away and pound it into them that they are being cowards and wimps. “Real men fight.” Worse, we tell them from teenage years that being “a nice guy” ™ is the easy way, not viable and not masculine.
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Bigger lies are seldom told.
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The truth that we too often fail to tell our children is that doing the right thing is not the easy way at all (and it certainly isn’t the coward’s way). In the long run it’s the hard path, but it’s the surest path to success and commensurate rewards. Those who seem the bravest and most daring by stepping over that line often
become Senators and Congressmen… uh… get to the place where they no longer cheat with impunity..
And when the jig is up, it’s hard on everyone around them.
“And those same men will sport fuck our poor 7 because she overshot her reach in thinking she was good enough for them.”
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But who will sport marry Miss 7?
@Jeffrey
Fascinating article on narcissism there, with lots of things I haven’t read before. Like this:
The old school causes of narcissism – insecurity, childhood trauma or lack of parental love – don’t seem to hold much validity anymore. Scott Barry Kaufman is one of the better bloggers on Psych Today, IMO.
@Susan
I’ve been thinking what would you think of having a humor label on the blog, so we can post some jokes regarding dating/hipergamy/sexist/mysoginist? I think that some levity would be good IMO (sense of humor is a sign of Alphas *wink*) and I’m sure some guys here probably have jokes or personal anecdotes to share as well.
I just though of suggesting that.
@Stephenie
I love that idea! How do you picture it? I come across humorous tidbits all the time, but they may not merit a post. It would be fun to just slap them up here. And I love the idea of readers submitting stuff directly.
@Susan
I mostly see it as a new label (if there is space of course) like Home, Best Posts, About…or if you want to we could pick a day (of the week or month) with a post for just humor where we all can add stuff. I would prefer the label because newbies could see it and post and we all have the chance to check it out regularly and enrich it, but again your are the dungeon’s masters so is your call.
I like the humor idea
@Susan
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I’d heard of several of those, but I got a laugh out the description:
Mary Wollstonecraft: 1759-1797
English feminist and egalitarian, associated with Thomas Paine and William Godwin (her husband). A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790) argued against the slave trade; A Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792) did what it said on the jacket. Described marriage as “legal prostitution”. Opposed monarchy, church and military. Died after giving birth to the future Mary Shelley.
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Wow, they got started early on trying to dismantle marriage
@hambydammit, Passer_By already mentioned what I was getting at about college aged men and women, so I won’t rehash it.
Okay, I think I know what you’re trying to say. The girl who is thin, young and has boobs still must have facial beauty to be a “true” 7 or 8. This is a much more complicated topic, but suffice it to say that a more feminine face is generally more attractive. See following articles:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/10/091020153100.htm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4396230.stm
Also, a 7 or 8 in the general population can be seen as a 3 or 4 in a modeling agency. Does that mean the normal 7 or 8 guy wouldn’t be thrilled to have that “ugly” girl who is rather un-photogenic when compared to the super incredibly beautiful models? Nope.
You’re looking in too small of a pool. When that “6″ college girl walks out into the general population, she is treated in every way as a 7 or 8, by every straight guy she comes across who sees her in a cute outfit on her way to the bar. Even though at the college bar she doesn’t stand out, she certainly will stand out the rest of the time, at the grocery store or walking down the street.
By the way I didn’t date any college guys at all while I was in college, so I can’t really speak to how guys slept with girls whom they considered “plain” and then dumped them. Maybe the competition was fierce for the top college guys with lots of status, and the incredibly gorgeous girls in college went for that. But I avoided that altogether.
OT: an interesting post by VD:
http://voxday.blogspot.com/2011/03/why-women-dislike-nice-guys.html
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You’re overestimating the power of a young college girl. Even if older men do find her insanely attractive simply due to the nature of her youth, that doesn’t mean that she would instantly be able to “land” him as a boyfriend. Many older men are wary of jailbait. I dated a 27yo man when I was just a few months shy of 21, and he was really awkward about my age. I dated a 29yo, and he was obviously not serious about it at all. Youth may be an invaluable asset, but that doesn’t mean that it serves as a guarantee of commitment from mature men, which is what girls want.
dear, sweet, Stephenie: “the problem with many Nice Guys activities is that the places they have to display become boys clubs (or are men’s clubs by definition like the army). I will say that for example warhammer games are a very good displaying manly traits but there is no way women see men doing this”
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The Warhammer player in this video appears to agree with you; watch especially at the 0:48–1:03 mark. Behold, the new, undiscovered sexy!:
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http://vimeo.com/2958560
@Dilithium
Heh and we don’t even have the humor section yet!
Showing this one to the hubby…thanks
@Susan
Message sent.
Hope, Passer_by et al present much more accurate picture of the SMP than Hambydammit, Saywhaat and others.
In a highly competitive, modern day, high-tech (internet – which allows people to search the globe for attractive mates) SMP women compete not only against their same age/race/region cohorts but against all other women. As do men against all other men. IOW, all women are in the same pool, and all men are in the same pool. It was only social convention which forced people to look to mates of their own age, class, religion, race, etc. Now women can look for alphas wherever, and men can look for beauties wherever.
What all of this really demonstrates is that women and men have vastly different interpretations of what constitutes value within the SMP. Women see the world in terms of relationship/status objects, and men see the world in terms of sex/beauty objects. So a woman of average status (even if she’s ugly) feels entitled to a man of average or higher status, and a man of average youth/looks (even if he’s beta) feels entitled to a woman of average or greater youth/looks.
This is why we get the “women don’t like betas” angst parallel to the “men don’t like accomplished women” angst.
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This is going to sound un-PC to you, but people still mate according to social convention. We still seek mates close to our own ages, class, race, etc. and these preferences are emphasized even in our globalized SMP. Even in online dating, where users of various backgrounds have direct access to one another, these preferences are still prevalent: http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/what-if-there-were-not-so-many-white-people/
Israel is a Hebrew word meaning “he strives with God”. El comes from the Hebrew word Elohim, and does not mean god in Egyptian. Your evidence for the claim about the Hebrew origin story is non-existent, and as we push backwards via the use of archaeology we do find information that supports the traditional account as for the house of David.
Admittedly finding much after 3500 years in a country that experiences regular rebuilding may be expecting too much.
“This is going to sound un-PC to you, but people still mate according to social convention.”
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Yet, it is primarily men, especially American men, who defiantly detour around “their own kind” when considering a life mate from an extensive global female menu. This phenomenon is fueled by the Internet and and competitively eliminates modern [read: for-fun-only] women perceived to be comparatively void of centuries-established wifely qualities. American men revel in their dual status as local empowerment service providers and global hypergamy beneficiaries.
For marriage and serious ltr’s (which I think is what the big dating sites are mainly about) convention still plays a big role, especially for men, who tend to view marriage as being more about social respectability and passing on one’s wealth and lineage than raw attraction.
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But for short term relationships, casual sex, hookups, affairs, flings, and other pairings that are not as well defined – which comprise the bulk of the activity in our modern SMP – convention increasingly plays a much smaller role and people are simply looking to satisfy their raw desires. Men want beauty and youth in women and care much less about other factors and women want status/cool/dominance in men and care much less about other factors. And since there’s so much choice and variety out there, which technology and mobility makes accessible – it really shakes things up in a way that we are just begining to come to grips with.
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If people can’t get a good enough “deal” within their own sphere they will simply look outside of it. For example, we see lots of beta white guys with asian females, white girls with alpha black and hispanic guys, younger women (of varying socioeconomic backgrounds) with older men, people of different religions and backgrounds finding each other attractive, etc. It’s enough unconventional activity to shake up society’s previous understanding of the SMP and of what people find attractive.
“It was only social convention which forced people to look to mates of their own age, class, religion, race, etc.”
Maybe I want a woman with similar values. Crazy, I know.
@Hope
I’ve got this theory that the standards of beauty have shifted pretty dramatically. That is not a new insight – celebrated beauties are far more masculine than in previous generations. However, my hypothesis is that a culture of casual sex further rewards masculinized women, to the point that they are now becoming the “10s” for alpha males. Giselle Bundchen is an obvious example – she looks like a tranny, has a WHR of about .9, and fake boobs. Yet Tom Brady threw over a much more feminine looking woman for her.
@SayWhaat
FWIW, guys have said here and elsewhere that if they’re in their late 20s, bringing around a 21 yo girl is embarrassing, especially if she’s still in college. Obviously, there’s no bio basis in this, so there must be a social taboo of some kind around men going too young when dating. I know several women of this age who found dating older guys (25-30) awkward for this reason. Part of it was that the two groups of friends are not easy to mix, and one is bound to feel either very old or very young when hanging out with the other’s crowd.
Dilithium couldn’t stay away! Welcome back, we missed you!
@Benjamin
Got it yesterday. Will respond today or tomorrow.
@testify222
That’s a good insight.
Diversity is also having a dramatic effect on our definition of what’s desirable. For example, as the US becomes more Hispanic, the Latina beauty becomes more highly represented in the cultural values. This is already happening – the US has totally embraced the booty in recent years, with JLo, Beyonce and many other women of color proudly strutting their stuff. We are currently transitioning from a standard of big boobs with tiny hips (Victoria’s Secret Model) to a more curvaceous ideal. This is a good development, IMO!
I agree with this, but it’s not just about trading up by going to a different race. At least in the US, we are intermarrying like crazy in terms of religion. The taboos against, say, Irish marrying Italian were real 75 years ago, but are hard to fathom today. There will be a steady increase in heterogeneous mating of all kinds – it’s inevitable. Through exposure to a wider variety of people, we are learning that our attraction triggers are far more flexible than we might have thought.
Ah, this is a very different question. I agree with you – where values are vastly different, you won’t see mating occur. An extreme example might be a secular American woman marrying a religious Muslim. But there are a whole host of more subtle differences that are also important to people – I would argue that values are good criteria for selecting a mate.
“I would argue that values are good criteria for selecting a mate.”
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Thus the low and declining rate of marriage in the US between white men and white women.
@blogster
you said:
“I know I might be a bit late on this one, but can someone (Susan?) articulate what is meant by the concept of social dominance and how it may differ from something such as social prestige? Still trying to get my head around it.”
in practice it means that you’re rad bro, raaad! it means you are permanently juvenile. not in theory but in practice. you spit, say f@#%, where what mtv said to and basically be a top consumer. f@#% yeah dude, dominance. chicks dig it. that’s why they are downbreeding us and are discouraging normal folks from breeding. it’s an entertainment culture. just think, all of this was supposed to end war or something, lol.
the ladies make the case against their ‘freedom’ once again. if you can’t handle it, it will eventually get taken away. matter of time. you go girl, lol!
@Anonymous 10:13am, “I broke up with a girl I was with long term after finding out she’d had hook ups at a few frat parties before we were dating.”
That’s all you really had to say. That one statement summarizes lots of the discussions we’ve had on here.
@Susan, “Part of it was that the two groups of friends are not easy to mix, and one is bound to feel either very old or very young when hanging out with the other’s crowd.”
After school and still in school are indeed different. I grew a marked amount in “maturity” after college even though I was working throughout those years. Lots of people don’t think of college students as fully adult yet, but as still “kids.” When my husband was supervising some guys in the 18-23ish range, only 2-5 years younger than him, he called them “Job Corps kids.”
This is my first time visiting, but I have to ask, is hooking up all that prevalent, really? I ask because I’m 23, and I have to say that I would never be in a relationship with a girl that has hooked up with guys she didn’t know. And I’m especially confused about the whole concept of alpha and beta males. If a girl is in a relationship with me because she thinks I’m a good beta male, and in the past she’d hooked up with guys because she thought they were good alpha males…. I’d tell her to go to hell and to find of of her alpha jerks to take care of her.
What I don’t get is why we’re making more of these issues than they deserve. If a girl is out getting it on casually with a guy, she’s a bit easy, and that’s distasteful to some and not to others. If she’s hot for guys that are adventurous, but want’s a stable guy in a relationship, what it means is that she’s a. a boring person who can’t be her own source of fun and adventure, and a. that she’s a weak person who can’t depend on herself to create stability.
I just don’t get what man would be comfortable thinking of himself as beta, and, more to the point, marrying a woman who thinks of him that way.
Instead of teaching young women how to have their cake and eat it too, shouldn’t we be teaching young people on both sides of the gender divide to have self-respect?
Don’t get me wrong… I’m not a conservative. I have nothing against sex. I think sex is amazing. Nor do I think that couples should necessarily wait to have sex until they know each other very well. I think sex is an acceptable way to get to know one another. And an enjoyable way, too. But to get busy with people you neither know nor care to know in any sort of meaningful way is shallow and pathetic.
At least this is the way I see it. I’m trying to understand it differently, to be honest. I broke up with a girl I was with long term after finding out she’d had hook ups at a few frat parties before we were dating. People are telling me I’m naive if I let that get in the way, but I tend to think that they’ve just lowered their expectations too much. I don’t know. Insight would be welcome.
@susan
“FWIW, guys have said here and elsewhere that if they’re in their late 20s, bringing around a 21 yo girl is embarrassing, especially if she’s still in college. Obviously, there’s no bio basis in this, so there must be a social taboo of some kind around men going too young when dating. ”
Yeah, I think it’s simply social convention, as you say. And the mixing of groups of friends would be awkward, especially if all of your friends wives or girlfriends found it distasteful (or the older guy finds it awkward to be around her friends). If more people were doing it, I think you’d see a real shift that way in terms of say 29/22 pairings. It will always be a little hard for people out of college for a few years to connect with and relate to people in college -their worlds are so different. Just after my first year of grad school, I met a girl during the summer who was between her freshman and soph year. Everything was pretty great, but then when I visited her at school in the fall, even that age difference felt really awkward. It ended soon thereafter.
@ Anonymous:
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Hookups are very, very prevalent in college, and even after college, it seems. It depends on the context of your girl’s hookups. Were they just for fun, or did she feel like they were mistakes? I wouldn’t write her off if it was the latter. Plenty of girls think that hooking up leads to a relationship and end up getting seriously burned in the process, which today is pretty much the only way to get one in college.
Hope… Summarizes those discussions in what way?
SayWhaat: That’s not exactly true, since I’ve had a few relationships, yet I’ve never hooked up with someone. Sex on a first date once, but that was after meeting the girl at a party and exchanging numbers. And with a girl I knew I would be seeing again. For me, if I don’t have some sort of a connection with a girl beyond an appreciation of her bazoombas or something, then it’s just glorified masturbation.
I do get your point, though, about a girl sleeping with a guy she likes only to get burned. I think that’s different. But that wasn’t my situation. And plus, if someone continually gets “burned” then they’re either slow or else not being honest.
testing for paragraph
breaks
@Anonymous
Welcome, you’ve made a very insightful and self-aware comment there. I encourage you to stick around – we debate these topics at great length around here! Just so you know, I am not in the business of teaching anyone how to have their cake and eat it too when it comes to casual sex. The title of the blog refers to any kind of hookup – including making out. I don’t know what kind of hooking up your ex was doing, but there’s quite a bit of variation. The fact that she was hooking up with frat guys leads me to believe she was doing more than making out :-/ Frat guys aren’t known for their meaningful sexual experiences.
P.S. You’ll like my next post – it’s about this very topic. Going up in an hour or two.
“This is going to sound un-PC to you, but people still mate according to social convention. We still seek mates close to our own ages, class, race, etc. and these preferences are emphasized even in our globalized SMP. Even in online dating, where users of various backgrounds have direct access to one another, these preferences are still prevalent:”
Very, very true. PC thoughts and notions get in the way of true understanding sometimes. And it makes perfect sense because the way we’re socialized makes us who we are.
I’m a black man, and chose to marry a black woman largely because deep down there’s a comfort level of having someone who understands the “struggle” or the issues we face just looking the way we look and our history in this country. Even the less complex things like understanding the way our hair behaves is something that brings us together.
With that said, I’m wildly attracted to women of every race and enjoy our differences. Culture and social dynamics just happen to play a big role in choosing partners, because they really make us who we are.
@Anonymous, perhaps summarize was the incorrect word to use, but the discussions here often deal with the fact that men generally do not want to be in long-term relationships with women who have had lots of casual sex. What you said about forgiving the one time mistake has also been mentioned.
This is why I am starting to think of using a 1-10 scale for both sexes is just misleading. Here’s why:
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For guys, a 5 is average. There’s a perfect bell curve of how attractive a women is, which correlates directly with her incidence in the population. Put bluntly, this means typical woman == average boner. And by typical, I really mean mean — there are just as many women higher as lower.
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Visual: http://cdn.okcimg.com/blog/your_looks_and_inbox/Male-Attractiveness-Ratings.png
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This just doesn’t happen for women, the numbers simply do not add up. Women think of men more like a school grades: A-F. There is NO bell curve here, it’s heavily weighted to the bottom. Put bluntly, this means a typical man == below-average tingle. He’s a D-minus. And by typical, I mean mean — there are just as many men higher as lower.
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Visual: http://cdn.okcimg.com/blog/your_looks_and_inbox/Female-Messaging-Curve.png
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It’s worth reviewing the difference between “typical” vs. “average”, and how that plays out across a large population of people. I’m not a statistics expert, so someone else may be able to explain better. It’s just a lot of words to say that typical woman is attractive and the typical man isn’t, and we have to deal with it.
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So, using 1-10 for both sexes implies that we both judge each other similarly, and now we have to draw comparsions how female 6′s don’t like male 6′s. It’s true, but the numbers in my mind encourage us to make false assumptions. I think it’s more help to say here that a female 6 doesn’t like a male C-minus. This separates out the “tingle/boner” grade from the idea of distribution, at least in my mind.
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Maybe it’s just me, but when I see “male 5″ it makes me want to think “typical male” not “average tingle”. A typical male does NOT produce average tingle.
Hope, I don’t mean to imply that a girl who has casual sex would be good for the short term either. I’m not a hypocrite.
@Anonymous
I broke up with a girl I was with long term after finding out she’d had hook ups at a few frat parties before we were dating.
Every man has a certain level of prior experience he’s willing to accept from a girl. Don’t compromise on that. If she lied about it, then get rid of her, whether the relationship is 6 weeks or 6 months old. But if the topic was never even brought up, don’t be a dick about dumping her when you do.
@OffTheCuff
That’s another manifestion of female hypergamy and male polyamory.
@OffTheCuff
Statistically, what seems to be the case is that the attraction curves might have the same average (mean), but they have a different variance.
So, 5 women getting rated by a bunch of guys might have these ratings:
2, 3, 5, 7, 8 -> average of 5
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For 5 guys getting rated by a bunch of women, you might get these ratings:
3, 4, 4, 4, 10 -> average of 5
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Note that in the first case, more than half the women were average or better while the second case, most of the guys are “below average”. The okcupid results seems to suggest this type of thing is the case.
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Unfortunately, it does mean that simple one-to-one connection (a male 6 vs. female 6) doesn’t really work. More men will be “below average” in the female mind than the other way around. Female hypergamy in action…
No, I was honest, but I wasn’t rude about it. I just said I’m not comfortable with that. It wasn’t easy, and she was insulted, I’m sure. But I was as gentle as I could be about it.
VI: Indeed. My point is not to show hypergamy/polyamory exists, I think we all know that here. Rather that using the same 1-10 scale causes us (myself included!) repeatedly confuse attraction level, with the scale of how often it shows up in the population.
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It seems we use vague terms like “average guy” to mean very different things. I most often mean it as “typical guy” meaning there’s lots of us in the middle of the pack — most guys are like him. To women, it seems to be “average tingle-level”, but that means there are very few men who make the cut.
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BTW, the comment quality has gone up quite significantly lately, and I’m once again learning new things rather than just becoming pissed off. It seems our favorite troll is on vacation.
XNY: Heck, I goofed that long comment. I typed “mean” but had “median” firmly in my mind.
@OffTheCuff, I’d like that analogy more if it wasn’t for grade inflation. Most kids are getting A’s and B’s no matter what these days. Also it’s worth noting that while the rating curve is more to the left for female opinion of male attractiveness, women are messaging men at a higher rate than the attraction level would suggest. In fact at the very top levels, women don’t bother responding to the most attractive men. The trend is opposite for men (I saw the stats from that same article), with most of the messages going to the top most attractive women. That would suggest men are hypergamous on the physical attraction dimension and compete fiercely for the super hot women, while most women know they can’t get the super hunky men and don’t even bother messaging them.
For reference, here’s the article:
http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/your-looks-and-online-dating/
Men might rate women on a normal distribution curve, but wow do they flock to the top women when it comes to taking action! Those hottest women receive 5 times as many messages as the average woman, and 28 times more as the least attractive woman. Meanwhile, women message the least attractive man at a rather decent rate. Hmmm…
@ExNewYorker
Had you checked out Roissy’s scale for both men and women? What do you (generally you) think of it? Its accurate or there are things that you find…odd. Just curious
Ah, I knew someone would try to change the subject based on messaging rates and spin it differently. I’m talking solely about how women see men.
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However, the asymmetric messaging rates are a clear manifestation of risk. Men have to go out and ask someone. If we don’t ask, we’re finished. Also, note the graphs are in percentages, not actual numbers. You can be sure that a female 5 gets tons more messages than a male C in absolute terms. The face that the 10 gets 19x the amount of messages means the 10 is living in unfathomable abundance, not that the 5 is in poverty.
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Finally, note this is email. You can spam a hundred people with little effort. There’s no opportunity cost here, if you send a message to the 10, it’s not a lost approach to the 5. So, that high rate you see is simply the net result of (smart) guys sending messages to EVERYONE above his attraction baseline. It makes perfect economic sense. In real life, approaching a 10 with low a chance success, mean you can’t approach a 5 with a higher chance: you can’t do both at once. The costs in real life are very different.
A woman leaving her husband for a “bad boy” is very similar to the man in a mid-life crisis who leaves his devoted wife for a 20 year old. It is perfectly natural and perfectly stupid.
I am trying to formulate a better understanding of how men manage to fight the instincts to mate with 20 year olds when their wife is aging because I think the same tactics can be used for women who start to lose the tingles for their husbands. I imagine that the key is in projecting the qualities you want to see so that your perception better reflects what you actually desire.
Athol Kay has been very helpful in this pursuit.
@Stephanie
I’ve seen the “Dating Market Value” posts, but I don’t recall seeing the scales themselves, at least for men. I do recall seeing some posts where he had his readers rate the women, but that’s all I recall. Do you have a specific link in mind?
This ones:
http://roissy.wordpress.com/dating-market-value-test-for-men/
http://roissy.wordpress.com/dating-market-value-test-for-women/
@OffTheCuff, what do you mean approaching a 10 means you can’t approach a 5 in real life? In most situations like at a coffee shop or library, people aren’t keeping track of who you’re talking to, and even in bars I don’t think it matters that much (though I’ve never been in the bar/club scene so I could be wrong on this one). The only cost is the guy’s own “nerves” causing him not to go for the super hot girl.
Also, emails are a reflection of what the guys actually want to pursue in earnest, and we see this in the fact that the hottest girls have guys willing to do all kinds of stuff for them. If it really was a minimum attractive threshold thing and messaging takes 0 effort, then the average girl (whom lots of guys say is good enough) should be getting just as many emails, which is not the case. Men will put in effort in proportion to the girl’s attractive rating. That’s fairly obvious and self-evident, I would think.
@OffTheCuff
First things first.
Hmm, if you mean Plain Jane, she’s gone for good. She did try to sneak in recently as “Hypergamouse” but I know the IP address by heart. (I have to admit she can be clever.) I haven’t banned anyone else, though – so your nemesis may be back.
Well, that makes sense from an evo POV. We all know that guys want to get it in, and they can turn out the light if necessary. We also know that women aren’t built that way – the tingle either goes or it doesn’t. It’s totally a binary operation.
I do think that women’s attraction triggers have been warped by the culture – specifically they’ve got unrealistic expectations, which amounts to a sense of entitlement.
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Spoken like someone who’s never had to make an approach in her life.
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Do I have to explain this, really? It’s basic physics. Every person you approach, means you didn’t approach everyone else. Unless you’re Charlie Sheen asking for a threesome, you can’t approach two people at once. You have finite time in which to approach people, so you have to choose.
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In email, you can simply approach them all at the same time, since they can’t see you approaching other people.
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There’s a big downside to approaching a 10 in real life, and nearly zero on a dating site. Worst case IRL is she pyro-rejects you, her boyfriend beats you up, you go home alone, and you never go that venue again.
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Online? You simply don’t hear back.
I’ve totally veered off point here… all this was in response to Hamby’s set of posts of comparing a male 6 to a female 6, and how the attraction differs. The matching “6″ implies they are equal in some way, and all I’m trying to say is we (well, me) often mix attraction-level vs. distribution.
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Hope, you can try continue to project hypergamy onto men, but we don’t operate that way. Men may want to, but reality constrains them.
@OffTheCuff, have you ever emailed on a dating site? Unless you’re gathering someone’s personal email address off Facebook or something and spamming them all at once, you can’t email multiple people at the same time. The messaging system doesn’t let you. You also should write a customized message for each person you message, otherwise you’re just copy-n-pasting which sounds super generic.
Approaching a girl in person usually doesn’t lead to being beat up by a boyfriend unless he’s right there. Even if he’s nearby, how often does that really happen? Anyway, you can approach the 10, get shot down in 2 seconds and still have time to approach the 5. I imagine if the 10 is talking to the guy for half an hour and “wasting” his time, the guy would still prefer that to talking to the 5 for an hour.
And if there’s zero downside and nearly zero effort to messaging someone online, then there would be zero downside to messaging the less attractive woman. Men are polygamous right? So why don’t they cast an ever wider net and go for the not-so-super-hot girls in addition to the hot girls? Zero downside, remember? Yet the hottest girl receives 5 times as many messages. It makes no sense given what you have just said about the zero risk and what others said about men liking average women.
By definition, men are not technically hypergamous because hypergamy is marrying “up” in socioeconomic status, which does not take into account physical appearance. Maybe it can be called hyperlooky?
Besides, reality constrains everybody. Above we’ve already mentioned that the female 6 can’t get the male 10 in a relationship. But it doesn’t mean she doesn’t want to try for it. Likewise the male 6, given less downsides, prefers to try for the female 10 over the 6.
Hope, regular guys don’t approach a woman every five minutes. There’s just no way to keep that rate up, until the room figures out you’re the creep who’s hitting on everything that moves. Saying you can “move on” in two seconds is not possible as a strategy.
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Perhaps guys with excellent Game can both operate at that speed and tolerate that level of rejection. But most guys don’t. In my younger days, it was probably more like one person every few months… Sad, but true.
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You’re veering off into totally uncharted waters here about what it’s like to make approaches, the risk/reward calculation men make, likelihood of rejection and recovery time, and how that greatly differs online vs. IRL.
@OffTheCuff, I’m not saying men are approaching a lot at all. In real real life, not bar/club life which I never participated, I got approached maybe once a year. More like once every few years. It’s just not done very often, so all this theorizing about whether most guy would approach the 5 or 10 is basically moot. However, you brought it up in order to try to refute my original point, that men would rather go for the 10 than the 5.
You said that the different message rates are a manifestation of “risk,” and that people avoid doing “risky” things hence they don’t approach the 10 in real life (to avoid a beat down by the boyfriend), but how is messaging a 5 any riskier than messaging a 10? You and I both know it’s not, yet 10s are being messaged more than 5s. If it’s a time cost, then men have collectively decided that they’d rather spend their time messaging 10s than 5s.
I don’t have much experience in real life approaches or being approached, so yeah you can bash me there. Still, you haven’t provided compelling evidence contradicting my “hyperlooking” theory.
OK, Hope, you got me thinking on the drive home. It’s a good conversation when I can’t put it down!
For refernce, you’re asking about this graph: http://cdn.okcimg.com/blog/your_looks_and_inbox/Message-Multiple.png
So, hot women receive a lot more messages than average women, right? And you think that, the explanation is because men are sending messages to the 10, but not the 5. I think that’s not the case, based on my experience as a regular guy, and regular guys I know.
First, let’s get something straight. This is aggregate number of messages, not unique pairings. If each guy sends 22 messages to the hottest girl, and sends 1 message to the average girl, then he is not ignoring the average girl. Maybe he’s obssessed. Maybe she’s leading him on, just chatty, who knows. We don’t have is unique pairings in this data, which would be very interesting indeed. Or, rather, who gets ZERO messages?
So what’s the explanation? A few things come to mind.
I think what you see is top guys harem-building, or attempted harem-building. They are sending lots of messages to lots of women, and it’s working. The message rate is not correlated against the men’s rating.
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Or, what you might see is attention-whoring. Or they just like to talk more.
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I think without pairing information — how many pairs of people actually have a two-sided conversation, regardless of message count — we can’t reasonably conclude that men are spurning women their own level.
I’m with @Hope of the fact that Men will feel more atraction to a 10 than to a 5. Even Roissy had a coment that practically says that the hotter the woman the easy for the guy to get it up regarding the age (meaning Viagra was invented for guys that married average women and can’t get it up after they lost the few extra points youth and weight gave her) and I must say that I knew a man on his 70′s and in his 8th marriage that said that the best Viagra is a young girl so who knows, maybe there is some truth to it.
In any case I think the difference is that many women will be satisfied with a high enough status Alpha and be focused on it, without desiring other man (at least till he keeps the status and/or no other higher status man makes a clear better offer), while the man will have the hottest woman without losing the desire to bang any other woman around even if she is less hot.
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I think this is wrong, at least from what we’ve heard from some of the male commenters here. The woman will be satisfied with the high-status Alpha, but the guy with the bangin’ 9 girlfriend will get bored after some time and have the desire to bang other (less hot) women around.
@OffTheCuff, I have actually been on okcupid for a small time. You raise a good point about not knowing the content of the messages, but from experience I know there is a large number guys messaging girls that they like the looks of and would like to get with, not harem building. Okcupid has a lot of “nerdy” and “alternative” types, and the kind of guys like top athletes and alphas would be out in bars and clubs not on dating sites. Likewise, the model-esque girls wouldn’t usually be posting their profiles on a dating site. They can land men left and right with ease.
Believe it or not dating sites take some effort. It takes a lot of time to go through other people’s profiles, to read and write messages, and to do the back-and-forth to get to know someone. All the while there is this feeling like “I’m a loser for doing this.” I got tired of it after a short while and went back to spending my time playing World of Warcraft, which ironically is where I met my husband.
The photograph is really key. I have put up profiles with well-written messages without photos and received literally zero messages. Most guys really don’t care much about a girl’s brains, and I couldn’t really use the dating sites to find such guys either, because even if they do care, looks come first and they message girls with photos first. Sadly after I put up some photos, I received messages that were rather poor in quality, like “hi how r u pritty grrl.” Yet more reason I stopped checking the messages and closed down my okcupid account after a little over a month.
I should think it obvious that an alpha exists *in relation* to the other men of society. In general, the ratio of alpha to beta should be more dependent upon the organization of society (how many leaders per X population to manage things, how many sports team per capita, etc.) rather than the innate qualities of the males themselves.
I imagine the average Spartan ‘beta’ if dropped into modern society would be quite successful at pillaging the ladies’ squishy bits.
@Susan
I don’t believe there’s any contradiction there. Just because a guy isn’t an Avramian puss doesn’t mean he’s got to be a bad person. I wouldn’t advise a girl to go after a creep, but I wouldn’t advise her to go after a wimp who doesn’t turn her on either. I don’t think either are good LTR material, personally, for a woman who wants to have a happy and fulfilled life.
@Extinguish
No doubt! I agree with you that these definitions are relative. Squishy bits – love that. Can we assume that you’re a Brit?
No, sorry to dissapoint! It is simply that I was raised on BBC programming (by way of PBS) and british novels (such as Arthur Conan Doyle & HG Wells), so sometimes it unconciously creeps out.
Brendan/Novaseeker explains the probable origins of enforced lifelong monogamy:
http://www.hookingupsmart.com/2011/03/16/tidbits/we-could-be-friends/#comment-34534
-Hope is right about the SMP, and that men are hypergamous when it comes to looks, just as women are hypergamous when it comes to status.
-Women are more sexually attractive to men than men are sexually attractive to women. This is a fact of evo-bio due to the relative scarcity of eggs to sperm. Therefore the average man is not equal in attractiveness to the average woman, but is well below it.
-Both genders tend to have a blindspot when it concerns the unattractive members of the opposite gender. Women do this with betas, and when they say “average male” or “beta” they really mean “man of average attractiveness” – which is not the same thing as “average or beta male” Men also do this wrt to female beauty. A female “5″ is NOT in the middle of the pool of all women, but only of attractive women (a significantly smaller group, since only women of reproductive age are attractive, and then only those who are pretty).
-I never implied that the SMP was politically correct nor should be, just that there are enough unconventional pairings out there to shake up the mainstream understanding of the SMP and of human attraction, and that this phenomena is consistent with evo-bio and game theories. Society tends to believe that there’s one male for each female, and that similar attracts similar, etc. This leads feminists and conservatives to always thinking its the guy (whether he’s a different age, race, class, etc) who has harassed or manipulated some poor young woman into sleeping with him. It also causes society to think that women who step out of the typical choices are whores. IOW, a false narrative harms us all.
-As a PUA/Game adherent I disagree with Anonymous breaking up with his girlfriend just because he found out she hooked up with some guys in the past. What matters is her personality and character aside from this. ALL women (including our mothers, sisters and daughters) want to bang alphas – even if they don’t actually do it. And all women can (if they wanted to) have higher notch counts than all men (including alphas). IOW, there really is not much difference between the so-called good girls and bad girls. So what? And guys want hot girls, right? You like porn-stars and strippers, right? How do you think women get to be so hot – because they compete against other women to attract the attention of the alpha males. Would you rather the girl be plain and boring? I wouldn’t – I like sociable, sexy women who are exciting in bed and otherwise. I guess it all depends upon if she was a cheater or not, or if she’s just a status junkie, materialistic, sexually compulsive, etc. But to me, punishing a woman for being a “bad girl” (when men tend to beg women to be slutty) is just as bad as women punishing the good guys for being good (when women tend to beg men to be good guys). It creates a vicious cycle where each gender punishes the other and actually works against getting what each actually wants. The solution for you is to learn Game, so you don’t have to feel insecure about female sluttiness or hypergamy – which as I stated – is innate to all females.
all that comes from this thomas woman’s behavior in real life is forced societal inferiority.
Was this the situation forty years ago?
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http://hugoschwyzer.net/2011/03/31/if-i-were-thinner-id-have-the-right-to-expect-more-on-perfectionism-and-the-scarcity-model/
I have to say, Chico, I’ve never seen more amazing quads than on speed skaters, though I’ve only ever seen them in the Olympics. They are incredibly strong and fit athletes.
Ha, you should see my quads! They’re just crazy and a little out of proportion with the rest of my body. They’re not as defined with the post-grad weight gain (15-20 pounds in 6 months, ick), but I’m back in the game now and working out hard. 10% body fat target and Boston Marathon next year!!
I think another issue with individual sports like speed skating is that you’re not physically attacking anyone like you are in football or UFC. An offensive lineman can be obese and have little finesse, but get by in their sport through sheer mass. Women will still adore them too, for their status and dominance. Top notch speed skaters/figure skaters/swimmers will have less status, even though they often fit the “underwear model” profile a lot better.
If it really was a minimum attractive threshold thing and messaging takes 0 effort, then the average girl (whom lots of guys say is good enough) should be getting just as many emails, which is not the case. Men will put in effort in proportion to the girl’s attractive rating. That’s fairly obvious and self-evident, I would think.
Not if they know game on the theoretical level (which most men don’t). Originally, I used to read girls’ profiles and start up a genuine conversation with them based on what their profile said. No more.
I used to be opposed to the idea of mass messaging girls with a pre-packaged neg. I A friend who was into game recommended me to do it, so I decided to do it as an experiment. Boy, how illuminating that was!! Half the girls responded to me, up from 0%. Even pulled off a few dates using it. So in short, game works…”being yourself” doesn’t. Logic be damned.
The hottest girls are the ones who need to be negged the hardest, since they’re so used to swimming in a sea of generic compliments.
speed skaters/figure skaters/swimmers
I will add dancers, Male dancers usually have a killer very toned body IMO. But I think only a few had managed to become ladie’s man. Joaquin Cortes and Baryshnikov are the most famous exceptions I think.
At least we can salvage some humor from the present situation that seems to be consistent as this clip is about twenty years old. Where did women begin to go wrong?
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=818mdF2_FVo&feature=related
At least we can salvage some humor from the present situation that seems to be consistent as this clip is about twenty years old. Where did women begin to go wrong?
The Epic poem of Gilgamesh. In it Enkidu is a savage man surrounded by animals. How did he became civilized, rejected his wild ways and made friends with Gil? When he is bedded by Shamhat. Even though this was a more honest about men needing sex than love it was the first time I had seen the meme of the “savage men changed by a woman’s “love” and is over 4000 years old. But then essentially women had usually played important change for our species on legends and myths, from Eve eating the fruit, to Isis making the journey to save her brother/husband that created Egyptian civilization.
@Chico
Yep game “works” just like a girl being hot “works.” I never said game didn’t work. But guys only really bother using game on the attractive girls, which is an “effort” in and of itself, because you did have to go out and learn game, then implement it. That in itself confirms that “Men will put in effort in proportion to the girl’s attractive rating.” I didn’t say that men should compliment a girl in proportion to her attractive rating.
Negging takes effort.
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Eh. Maybe from her perspective she’ll get more attention from men in general, sure, but not from A man. If she’s too hot, it doesn’t follow I’m going to expend an infinite amount of effort on pursuing her… there’s a cutoff limit where you know that no amount of extra effort won’t help:
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Say I’m a 5. I’m not going even approach an 8, 9, 10. Why bother?
I might take a pot-shot with a 7, and walk away quickly if it doesn’t work. That’s the shit-ton of email you see — pot-shots.
I’ll put in the good college try with a 4-6 in my range, all the same effort, really. Why try to fail?
I’ll probably ignore anyone below a 4.
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This is how average guys think. Men with good game won’t set such a low ceiling but then again, they’re not typical guys, right?
Say I’m a 5. I’m not going even approach an 8, 9, 10. Why bother?
Then Susan is right about the really pretty girls having it harder isn’t she? If most men are averages they won’t try and get the real hotties thus means that only Alphas will be confident enough to try and then if the girl also have one or two brain cells she will probably realize soon that they are not relationship material and Alphas nowadays don’t need to get into a relationship no matter how hot the girl is. So they will also have to wait till they meet an Alpha that is done and that could take enough time to lower their own market value (late 20′s) so is a bad situation for then as well.
Nowadays, it is not how the average guys think anymore. Lots of young men are growing up on a steady diet of photoshopped girls, media-prepped celebrities and porn actresses. They may be average but they would not settle for a mere “4.” They’d rather play their video games and watch their porn.
Not really. The really pretty girls have a lot of things just handed to them. Jobs, grades, little favors, etc. People treat them well due to their appearance. They often get noticed by agencies or get promoted quickly. The super beautiful live a different life than the rest of us mere mortals. So even if there are fewer “alphas” that commit to them, they don’t have it “hard” at all. They also still have a gazillion average to above average guys who compete fiercely for them.
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This has to be one of the most entirely wrong comments I’ve ever read here. First, you’re not average, and you’re not a guy. Second, you must be smoking some really good stuff if you don’t think celebrities were picked and “prepped” 30 years ago as today — the only difference is that we can do it a whole lot faster now.
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And finally, for the real meat of the argument:
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Guys don’t grow up awash in hot images, look around at the normal women, and then decide that they “won’t settle for a mere 4″. A guy who is a 4 would most certainly rather been paired off with a live, female 4 than being alone in the basement with 10.
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Guys who get to this omega-ish stage of “dropping out” get to it because they didn’t have SUCCESS with the 4′s. Maybe the 4′s had big heads and thought they were all 8s, but it’s just as likely the men just grew up with weak-male role models, no Game, and feminist lies about how to approach them, and thus no clue how to successfully approach those 4′s. But come on, he does not prefer the porn to the 4′s at his level.
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It might be better to say, he accepts the porn over because the EFFORT required to attract real women at his level seems too high — and to a 15-year old, that can seem like climbing Mt. Everest. He would certainly prefer a real-live women if only he knew how.
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And now the 180:
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Exactly. I had a housemate was slightly above-average looking, but very charming. It just boggled my mind how much easier her life was, and how much leeway she got because she had a little bit of looks and charm. I mean, she would write bad checks all over town… she could talk law enforcement out of arresting her, get local merchants to “forgive” her, talk higher grades out of her professors. It stunned me at the time she wasn’t expelled or arrested. Now I know better.
Hardly. In my example, the 5 knows his place, but for sure, the 8-10 men are going try like gangbusters to hit on this 10. Those guys, by virtue of being in the top range, aren’t going to ask one girl out every few months when the stars align and it seems right, like your typical AFC. They’re going to approach all day, every day, and make their destiny happen.
Precisely. Ironically, I find that the women I think are the most beautiful have low sexual experience relative to their female peers. Granted, I’m not a guy, but it’s not hard to see who’s gorgeous.
Yes, but those 8-10 men refuse to commit, even to a 10. They get more mileage and social proof out of banging different 7s every weekend, than having the same 10 on their arm at all times, and diverting resources, including time away from the guys, to a relationship. As you and Hope say, beautiful women know the value of their looks, and benefit from them every day. This leads them to be unwilling to settle for no-strings – they know their worth, but can’t find a buyer in this market. There are very few beautiful sluts in college. In essence, the hottest girls price themselves out of the market.
I may not have been a “4″ myself, but I grew up being close friends with a physical “4.” She’s been overweight all her life and has been considered a nerdy freak for all that time as well. She is sandy-haired and blue-eyed, but below average in looks and above average in height for a female. I was an outcast along with her in high school, and we hung out together a lot. She would literally PURSUE guys at her own level, to get rejected.
That’s how I know about the plight of below average girls, despite being “above average.” When she was younger she even went all the way to Canada to get with this nerdy looking black guy several inches shorter than her. Let me tell ya, she wasn’t the one who dumped him. She is incredibly bright and has a great personality, and she was even nerdy (we were both on the Internet in the late 1990s before the “cool” kids discovered the Internet). And even back then all the guys online preferred the pretty girls.
I knew other overweight girls who struggle to get any kind of relationship out of guys. I had a coworker who remained perpetually single. And even my husband, who hadn’t had a relationship in years, turned down a real woman who was too overweight. This girl literally threw herself at him and got nothing but a hook up (he had to get drunk to do it). No relationship came out of it. She even played the same video game as him, something that nerdy guys say they adore. But he would rather remain celibate than be with a girl he wasn’t in love with, and didn’t feel much attraction for.
If guys really go for the girl they can get over the hotter girls and girls in porn, the these girls I just mentioned would have no problems whatsoever. And when I say girls in porn, I don’t just mean the typical made-up porn actresses. I also mean gorgeous looking girls who are just posing for a still picture in the nude. I can’t even compete with that, because I’m not photoshopped and never wear makeup. A lot of younger guys basically trained themselves to respond to porn by masturbation and no longer really respond to real women. Here are some articles:
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/married-and-still-doing-it/201006/porn-not-warm
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/cupids-poisoned-arrow/201001/was-the-cowardly-lion-just-masturbating-too-much
http://nymag.com/news/features/70976/
Sue: hot women have orbiters they aren’t aware of.
Hope: there’s so much wrong there, I don’t know where to start. First, I don’t buy the sob story, sorry, an ugly girl has the problems as a typical man (OMG! she had to actually ASK and BE REJECTED! The horror!)… cry me a river. Second, if your husband didn’t pursue that girl, it’s because he was 6 and she was a 3 and below his attraction threshold. Classic beer goggle syndrome, not because they were both 4′s and he had unrealistic expectations due to porn.
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Let me say it more clearly… guys *do* have an attraction threshold. It’s way lower than yours, but we do have it. It can be lowered temporarily with booze. This whole thread started when we were talking about SayWhaat’s hookups turning her down for relationships. The only reason a guy does this, is if he has other options. Now, the other reason would be that she’s just below his attraction threshold, but this is unlikely, since they got together in the first place. In your husband’s case, it certainly was this.
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Lastly, I don’t doubt people can get addicted to porn, but that’s the symptom, not the disease. Like I said, maybe they think the risk/reward for porn is better than real women. It doesn’t mean that if a real woman dropped in his lap, he would reject her and “prefer” the porn. Finally, I’m talking about when people initially meet — the use of porn in an LTR is a totally different issue I think.
Well, seeing as how men are collectively whining over the fact that they have problems, it seems rather interesting you find my friends’ problems to be somehow less. For what it’s worth, I don’t deliberately belittle men’s issues.
It’s not the only reason. There are some guys simply don’t want to be in relationships without love. If my husband had been a different guy who valued sex more, he wouldn’t have been single for many years and would have just gone into a steady relationship with a girl he found acceptable. But he was waiting for love, which sounds cheesy, but many men are quite romantic creatures.
Be careful when speaking for all men. I don’t know if you remember, but David Alexander, who used to post a lot around the manosphere, was infamous for being the guy who “prefers” porn.
Well, seeing as how men are collectively whining over the fact that they have problems, it seems rather interesting you find my friends’ problems to be somehow less. For what it’s worth, I don’t deliberately belittle men’s issues.
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It was just a weird tangent. I was saying you weren’t an “average guy” and can’t speak for us… and you respond with an irrelevant story about a below-average girl. Actually, I *can* relate to the her, because I’m an average guy. I do have a soft spot for below-average women and try to always be nice since I can relate. The sarcasm was reserved for *you* who seemed to imply that it’s horrible and awful that she had to actually experience rejection. Maybe I got that wrong, apologies.
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Violently agreeing here, as I was the same way. But by options, I don’t mean “a black book of FWBs”… options also includes the ability or confidence of getting a girlfriend soon.
Oh, that dude? All I saw was an omega who’s rationalizing like crazy. If you took 100 single guys who were a 5, put a hot-enough 6 right next to him willing to get physical, and a Playboy magazine… almost nobody going to “choose” the magazine. It’s just too ridiculous to think.
@OffTheCuff
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Guess what, rejection isn’t any easier for women, especially when they see their hotter friends doing nothing and turning away men they’d kill to have. When a women steps out and pursues, she’s fighting nature, culture, and herself to do it. (Speaking as a woman who was that nerdy, overweight, below average girl.)
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I have a great deal of empathy for men who have to do it all the time. But I also know that when they don’t have to do it, they don’t seem to appreciate it as much.
David Alexander was not a bad looking guy, and not really an omega. I think people throw around the word omega way too much. He was probably a 5, but he rejected other female 5′s. My thought is that he fell in love once with a 7 and never found it again, so he uses porn as a substitute for relationships.
I have a lot of sympathy for both men and women who have trouble. I had been an outcast ever since I moved to the US and would have loved for the nerdy girls and nerdy guys to get together. They were my friends and people I could relate to. But instead they don’t connect. I even tried playing matchmaker a few times to no avail.
Below the “top” of the sexual market there are lots of lonely girls and boys who, instead of turning toward each other, remain alone.
OffTheCuff, your playboy vs. live woman example is not one that happens in reality over a long period. The 5 girl is asking the 5 guy for a committed relationship. If she gives up the sex, he’ll take it over the porn momentarily, but he’s going to go right back to being single and looking at 7+ girls. That’s not going to lead to happy, unlonely people who start families. It’s just more of the same.
Out of all the guys I’ve hooked up with, I can say with certainty that only 3 of them had other “options”, one of whom was an ex-girlfriend. The rest didn’t develop into relationships simply due to poor timing.
Also, this thread did not start wrt my failed hookups. Did I just become the HUS postergirl or something? Fuck.
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This sounds pretty pessimistic. I really would like to hear this from a man’s mouth, or more precisely, more than one. The “I-heard-a-guy-say-it-on-the-internet” doesn’t make a trend in my book. Even “this-is-what-he-said-when-he-broke-up” can be wrong since, well, people lie. I can buy that it sometimes happens, but I don’t think it happens enough to have any real effect.
Precisely. Ironically, I find that the women I think are the most beautiful have low sexual experience relative to their female peers. Granted, I’m not a guy, but it’s not hard to see who’s gorgeous.
I agree, what people don’t get is that really gorgeous women might have a lot of attention and social perks but that doesn’t mean all men pursuing will want a relationship and their own attraction threshold is pretty high just out of being very hot. So even they are not necessarily more successful they need to find a way to attract a guy that will commit and that is not only pursuing her just to have a hottie as part of their notch bell and that is not as easy. When you are really hot the players use the best weapons and many times are willing to lie about their intentions. I never was a hottie but I made friends with many and even though they got all the help and could sweet talk their way out of many hairy situations, they didn’t had any easier time finding a guy to commit than I did. In my country we had a very old saying: La suerte de la fea la bonita la desea (The girl with the good looks wants the ugly girls good luck).
I even tried playing matchmaker a few times to no avail.
Me too. I do wonder where is the disconnect. One will think that people with few options and something in common like nerd hobbies would be easier to pair up. But it doesn’t happen that way…weird little phenomena.
Seriously, guys, let’s cut SayWhaat some slack! I would not describe her as a “survivor of failed hookups.” Sheesh, she’s one of the sensible ones! She’s good enough to come on here and share real life details from a real college experience. We should hang onto every college student we can get – they’re the ones who really know what’s going on in the trenches. Let’s not toss their names (and reputations) around while they’re not even actively engaged in the discussion!
Those of us who have been out of school several years, or in my case, ahem, many, don’t really have a grasp on it. Not really. My own sense is that lots of guys who are not natural alphas do get some hookups, and some are scooped up as boyfriends as well, following the logic of supply and demand. There are also many women on college campuses who are not promiscuous. Is everyone getting what they want? No, not by a long shot. But I truly don’t believe that college is feast or famine. There’s a spectrum.
Hookup culture is a huge factor for young people today, and pretty much all are affected, even if they don’t participate. The stories that hit the media tend to be rather sensational, and they’re fun to discuss and debate. But we shouldn’t make the mistake of thinking that rooftop sex is happening regularly on college campuses, or that 75% of the new female freshman are racing over to frat row to look for alphas to bang.
The problem is not hypergamy. The problem is contemporary culture.
Complaining about hypergamy is like complaining about gravity; it’s a natural fact of life. The fact that women are attracted to alpha males seems to be something that’s wired into their genetic material. The “tingles” are not a character trait but a physical response, in the same way that pain is in response to harming stimuli. How a woman (or man) responds to the “tingles” is a function of character and intelligence.
Lot’s of Asian girls choose beta husbands because they evaluate their prospective partner as a whole person rather than by their superficial qualities only. In most traditional cultures (including traditional western ones) marital partners were evaluate on more than just superficial features. People were expected to be a bit “hard nosed” about their prospective partner. Prospective partners may have been attractive, but if they had other serious character flaws they were passed over.
The Romantic Movement in the West lopped at the traditional intelligence and attraction approach to marriage to a simple attraction based one. Having “noble” feelings is all the matters, love (frequently the mask of lust) was justified as the sole motive for a good marriage. Executive summary: if it feels good do it. The traditional approach on the other hand said it might feel good but if the person is a bad long term bet, skip over them. The Asian approach to marriage is more a more mature looking at the person as a long term investment rather than the western evaluation based upon the feeling of the moment.
The person to avoid being is not Avram of Ilan but Ora. Two kids, two fathers, it’s all about her. The doctor’s wife is also loathsome, her justification for leaving her husband being “boredom”. She made a promise on the altar (an oath) that she refuses to keep. People who can’t keep their promises are people of poor character. It doesn’t surprise me that the French, with their “romantic values” treat the doctor’s wife sympathetically.
Commentator Paige made the following comment:
I am trying to formulate a better understanding of how men manage to fight the instincts to mate with 20 year olds when their wife is aging because I think the same tactics can be used for women who start to lose the tingles for their husbands.
It’s easy if you live your life governed by your mind instead of your dick(or your pussy) and you’re not superficial. Whilst attraction is not a choice, love is. You can choose to stick with your partner but you can’t choose who you are attracted to.
Nicely said, slumlord.
@slumlord
I’ll agree – that was a great comment.
One of the things I always struggle to get across is how I fell for my beta husband. Many men here believe that if he’s beta, sexual attraction is not possible, period. I just have never felt that way. I value his traits that would disparagingly be called beta by some. I think perhaps I am like the Asian women you mention -evaluating a man as a whole person. I was attracted to him physically, and his character and personality did not kill that attraction because he wasn’t dominant enough. On the other hand, he’s not a pushover either – so I don’t mean to imply that women don’t feel attracted to strong men.
Women with this “whole person” view may be far less common than they once were, but they’re still out there, somehow managing to wade through the terrible cultural messages and hang on to a more traditional value system. I believe this has to be the result of strong parental influence, plus intelligence, as you say.
The Romantic Movement in the West lopped at the traditional intelligence and attraction approach to marriage to a simple attraction based one.
I will also add that the Western has this fantasy that is even worst than the original prince charming one. In the past if the guy was responsible, made good money and didn’t mistreat the wife/girlfriend the marriage/the relationship was considered ideal and he was close enough to prince charming to keep the woman attracted, but nowadays the man has to fulfill ever single need the woman has, do it fast and be always on the job so to speak to be considered worth it. Too much pressure, too little time, too irrealistic expectation, IMO. Thus is easier on western countries for the man to lose status in the new fantasy that it was on the past, YMMV.
Many men here believe that if he’s beta, sexual attraction is not possible, period. I just have never felt that way.
I must say that I totally support your idea that the pill is doing a lot of damage to natural desires (not sure if you are on the pill tough), I had been out of the pill for a few weeks (do to my stupidity) and we are using condoms and I’m totally more attracted to my husband that I had ever been. I mean before I was attracted but I was happy with 2-3 times a week now is almost painful to wait for more than a day, I believe that interruption the normal cycles must be having an effect on the attraction triggers somehow. After all if the primary function of sex is reproducing how the body sex drive works if there is no ovulation anymore? Maybe that is way hook up or slut culture had it so easy to recruit women, they needed to create an artificial way for it to work and hooking up under the influence of tons of booze might be doing the job, YMMV.
In much the same way one might “enjoy” the extraction of a painful, foreign body that has long been the source of great torment, I have very much enjoyed this article and reading the comments discussing it. Much truth, much pain.
A few comments of my own:
@Susan:
You write, “Women with this ‘whole person’ view may be far less common than they once were, but they’re still out there, somehow managing to wade through the terrible cultural messages and hang on to a more traditional value system.”
You know, my whole life I have consciously bet on this statement of yours being true – and by conscious, I mean: no one needed to teach me about “alpha” and “beta”, … but it was clear enough that so many “alpha” behaviors that would have resulted in immediate noteriety and therefore success with the opposite sex also came at a long term cost. Believing that investing in my “whole person” for the time to come when that right, “whole person” woman would find me and we’d have this incredible, rewarding relationship, I consciously eschewed decisions that took me towards “alpha”. Occasionally I deviated when the cost/benefit made sense, and they were very enjoyable deviations that have profited me much, but they were, on the whole, deviations.
I also literally made the judgment that “alpha” success more often – is success at the easy stuff. The things that take time, persistance, commitment and faith to self … that do not display “irrational self confidence” and “expendability” that would lend to alpha, but which generate solid value as a long-term human product, those are also the hardest. And, I routinely observe that observed closely, so called “alphas” are professionals at avoiding the kinds of challenges that would expose their very real vulnerabilities and the irrationality of their self confidence.
What comes to mind is one of the quotes about the uber-alpha Dos Equis “most interesting man in the world” guy:
“…he considers practice to be cheating”.
That says most of it right there.
So, having made that call, at the age of 39, to read your statement, that such women “may be far less common than they once were, but they’re still out there”, it sounds to me like you have a subtext wrapped up in the statement that needs to be called out and unwound, because I spent years listening to such things and fairly well bet the farm on the trust I placed in them.
The subtext seems to be, “they are hard to find, but out there, … keep looking, you’ll find one”, a sort of encouragement to young men to keep up the good fight, even as we watch our inferiors score much better with the ladies. i.e.: they are getting hamburgers, but you will eat steak.
If I’ve read the subtext rightly, I have to challenge it.
Of course you are right to say that such women exist, but they exist in the same way that lottery winners exist. And we can say this even if you don’t just include jackpot winners, but you include all lottery winners, even those who win $2 or $3, then there are tens of thousands of lottery winners out there.
Sounds like a lot – tens of thousands of lottery winners.
But as to what that tells us about the wisdom of “investing” in the lottery … charitably we can say it tells us nothing at all. The lottery is simply no place to invest, not matter how many winners there are.
In sites like this one what you really get a sense of from the comments is the dis-equality that is emerging between men and women – the previous 266 comments are entirely exemplary of this. Men are increasingly convinced that as 6s and 7s themselves (where, by the way, you would expect average to be, by the way … 5 is NOT average), and here I mean “as a whole person” 6s and 7s … they sense that they are being expected to settle for 4s and 5s, while women 6s and 7s write books like EPL, watch SITC or when they aren’t authors and actresses they wax philosophical about both, lamenting how they just can’t keep a good man down as they grow single into their 40s, these are women who are going from one 8-10 to another, never understanding why he won’t “commit”.
They will not “settle”, but damnit, the bastards just won’t “commit”.
Men, 6s and 7s, these women’s equals – they are “settle” material, the stuff of a boring and unfulfilled life.
So – I respect what you’ve done with this site and your mission and I wish you well with it and I support and hope for your success – but spade-called-spade: if that needle in the haystack of a woman is a needle in the haystack – is she really worth sifting through every strand of hay to find, and if she is so rare, won’t she be taken when we find her? And if that much is true, isn’t the subtext really a way of telling young men: settle for 4s and 5s? And if it is: I don’t really think that’s your message, but the subtext is there starring at us just the same.
@Paige,
You write,
“A woman leaving her husband for a ‘bad boy’ is very similar to the man in a mid-life crisis who leaves his devoted wife for a 20 year old. It is perfectly natural and perfectly stupid.
“I am trying to formulate a better understanding of how men manage to fight the instincts to mate with 20 year olds when their wife is aging because I think the same tactics can be used for women who start to lose the tingles for their husbands. I imagine that the key is in projecting the qualities you want to see so that your perception better reflects what you actually desire.”
Yours is a fair line of inquiry, but I think the more important line of inquiry is:
how do we extend the same standard to men as to women?
In other words, @slumlord has succinctly answered, “It’s easy if you live your life governed by your mind instead of your dick(or your pussy) and you’re not superficial.”
Simply put:
1) We expect men in their 30s, 40s and 50s, as they enter into their highest SMV, peak, then ebb – to think with their minds and not with their penises
We are let down by them when they succumb to thinking with their genitals.
2) How can we expect of women in their 20s and early 30s, at their peak of SMV, that they too think with their minds, and not their genitals?
And, until we find out the answer to this question, why shouldn’t men in their 30s and 40s, peaking in SMV, why shouldn’t they be disgusted with women their own age and older who have squandored their own?
What!? I’m within my highest SMV? Time to go pick up a 20 year old!
Well this is rich. Amanda Marcotte, yep Jaclyn Friedman’s BFF, is now offering dating advice for men.
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http://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/nice-guys-finish-first-without-pickup-gimmickry/
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Oh, and this rounds out Marcott’s fantasy:
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http://goodmenproject.com/ethics-values/solution-mra-problems-more-feminism/
@Abbot
Yeah, Amanda Marcotte has her head up her butt, as usual. Rachel Kramer Bussell has written a post calling me out. I may just have to smack down those feminists again.
You mean this from Bussel?:
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http://www.alternet.org/story/150473/slut_shame:_why_do_we_still_attack_women_for_having_sex
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Ah, but once again, what is identified as “slut shaming” never includes the real concern: men who will screw the very same women they will reject for marriage. Denial will not change what men think. Only women changing their behavior will change the perception men have. And make no mistake – these feminists are very very concerned about what men think. Men DO NOT attack women for having sex. That would but just plain stupid. But men DO detour around certain *types* of women when its time to settle down and that, to feminists, is an attack on women. Well, too bad.
I followed the link. That article is mixing issues for convenience.
Sluts dont fuck jerks because they are looking to marry. So what is this really about? You cant have one gender shame-free while still shaming the other
Easy: Men are pushers and women are gatekeepers. Anyone who gets out of balance gets shamed.
If the man is overpusher he is a rapist, an evil patriarch.
If the man doesnt push he´s a mangina, a creepy.
If the woman opens too eagerly she´s a slut, a whore.
If the woman doesnt open she´s a frigid, a bitch.
If you try to bring both genders to uniformity, it means putting the man down and pushing the woman up, like pairing a flaccid penis and a voracious vagina. Good luck with that.
“That article is mixing issues for convenience”
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Well of course. It is after all a feminist diatribe. And on top of that, the subject is about being “sex positive,” a euphemism for the act of screwing [expressing sexuality] 15% of the single male population and then demanding [begging, hoping, wanting] accolades from the other 85% of men for having done so.
Hypergamy leads to Donald Trump and his current wife. I don’t really see the thug as the ultimate goal unless you’re referring to the DJ trend. I think of the Italian modelizer –a fat billionaire that’s been with all the top models. That’s the hypergamous dream. Or perhaps an ugly, bald Prince. Women don’t crave a “nice guy” until they are older. Then they appreciate sweetness and kindness. An ugly woman will learn to settle at around age 30.
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