This post is dedicated to Ted D.
Jason DeParle’s recent column in the New York Times highlighting the growing class divide between married and unmarried parents in America provides a representative narrative well worth studying. In it he describes two women, close friends and coworkers, whose family lives could not be more diametrically opposed.
Jessica Shairer is a single mother who works in a day care center. Her boss Chris Faulkner is a happily married mother. Both are white. Let’s compare them side by side.
| Jessica Shairer | Chris Faulkner | |
| Marital status |
Never married; cohabitated with two men |
Married to Kevin |
| # children | 3, incl. one with Asperger’s | 2 |
| # involved parents | 1 | 2 |
| SES background | LMC | LMC |
| Religious background | Raised in church, still active | Raised in church |
| Mother’s Education | College dropout | College graduate |
| Father’s Education | College dropout? | College graduate |
| Home | Rent > 50% of income | Owns 3 BR home |
| Salary |
$12.35/hour $24,500 plus food stamps |
Household income of $95,000 |
| Benefits | None; could not afford to take time off after surgery for cervical cancer | Full, from Kevin’s job as a computer programmer |
| Child Support |
None No contact |
Kevin works sunrise shift twice per week to allow his attendance at children’s activities |
| Children’s Extracurricular Activities | One sport per year max |
Swimming, karate, baseball, Boy Scouts, $3,500/year Kevin is a Boy Scout Leader |
What in the personal histories of these two women separates them so tragically and increasingly typically? We know there are several risk factors that correlate to poverty and limited opportunities for children. Lack of education, less than two parents actively engaged in raising them, and teen pregnancy are just a few. But what is the root cause, the thing that we find when we strip away all the demographic factors?
Female Choice.
Shairer and Faulkner came from very similar backgrounds, and both were given the opportunity to attend college. Once there, they made very, very different choices.
1. Shairer got pregnant her freshmen year. Faulkner did not get pregnant.
2. Shairer considered terminating the pregnancy, but her boyfriend said “we should start a family.”
They agreed that marriage should wait until they could afford a big reception and a long gown.
3. Shairer dropped out of college. Faulkner graduated.
4. Shairer had two more children by the same man, remaining in a “troubled relationship that collapsed six years ago.” Her children’s father is completely off the scene, including financially.
Ms. Schairer has trouble explaining, even to herself, why she stayed so long with a man who she said earned little, berated her often and did no parenting. They lived with family (his and hers) and worked off and on while she hoped things would change. “I wanted him to love me,” she said. She was 25 when the breakup made it official: she was raising three children on her own.
Faulkner refused to marry a man without a bright future.
At the same time, scholars have found that marriage itself can have a motivating effect, pushing men to earn more than unmarried peers. Marriage, that is, can help make men marriageable.
As Mr. Faulkner tells it, something like that happened to him — he returned to college after an aimless hiatus because he wanted to marry Ms. Faulkner. “I knew I had to get serious about my life,” he said.
5. Shairer got a new boyfriend to move in, hoping he would help with the children and bills.
No Legos got built during his six-month stay, and it took a call to the police to get him to go. The children asked about him a few days later but have not mentioned him since.
The Faulkners divide and conquer, sharing parenting responsibilities every day.
Two parents also bring two parenting perspectives. Ms. Faulkner does bedtime talks. Mr. Faulkner does math. When Ms. Faulkner’s coaxing failed to persuade Jeremy to try hamburgers, Mr. Faulkner offered to jump in a pool fully clothed if he took a bite — an offer Jeremy found too tempting to refuse.
6. The Faulkners built a home in a community known for its good schools. Shairer is facing a move to a part of Ann Arbor with lagging schools but more affordable rent.
Jessica Shairer is not a bad person. She is by all accounts a loving and concerned parent, and a responsible one. She takes full responsibility for her choices:
Ms. Schairer barely lifts her children out of poverty, but she is not one to complain. “I’m in this position because of decisions I made,” she said.
That’s admirable, but I wonder if Ms. Schairer would acknowledge the real problem.
She has sex with bad men.
Education is indeed strongly correlated to female mating choices:
I. BIRTHS OUTSIDE MARRIAGE
1982: 17%
2012: 41%
High school education or less: 60%
College education: <10%
II. CHILDREN BY MULTIPLE MEN BY MID-LATE 20S
High school diploma: 33%
Some college: 12%
College degree: 0%
But education does not tell the whole story. Some women, like Jessica Shairer, will fail despite having been given the opportunity to attend college. The tragedy, of course, is the reduced opportunities for her children.
It’s estimated that 40% of income inequality is attributable to this state of affairs. Risks for children of single mothers include:
- Childhood poverty
- Behavioral problems
- Teen parenthood
- Dropping out of school
In contrast, married parents:
- Have children later
- Divorce less
- Provide a committed, involved father
Of course, feminists disagree that Ms. Shairer is responsible for her circumstances. Katha Pollit, writing in The Nation, says:
Well, if only we could clone Kevin—or maybe put great big Good Guy and Bad Guy signs on young men so that naïve college girls could tell which slacker boys are exploitive louts and which ones just need a nudge to become prime husband material.
…I don’t mean to be discouraging here, but maybe there was never going to be a Kevin for Jessica. Maybe there aren’t enough Kevins to go around, because of a whole range of developments over several decades, from the decline of good union jobs to our penchant for putting staggering numbers of men in prison.
…Jessica rejected abortion, she stuck by her man, she tried too hard to make a family. If we really want women like Jessica to avoid early childbearing and single motherhood, we have to stop promoting outmoded ideas about sex and gender: abstinence-only sex ed, shame that leads to inconsistent use of birth control, stigmatizing abortion, woman’s worth depending on keeping a man, “fixing” the relationship as woman’s responsibility, motherhood as women’s primary purpose in life.
…Why does it seem like a reasonable policy suggestion to tell Jessica she needs a husband, and pie in the sky to say she needs a union? Or a national day care system like the one in France, where teachers are well-paid, with benefits?
Jessica Schairer is doing the best she can. In fact, she is pretty heroic. It’s the rest of us that are falling short.
We can’t let feminists derail the conversation by focusing on financial band-aids for single mothers, or canonizing women who have behaved irresponsibly and are now struggling. Jessica Shairer made one bad decision after another, but it all started with who she chose to have sex with.
There are enough Kevins to go around. Choosing a worthy man of good character and potential as a sexual partner is the single most important decision any woman can make. The costs of choosing poorly amount to much more than losing a job, interrupting a career, or failing to earn a seat in the boardroom. They amount to raising children who don’t have a bright or promising future, children who are primed to repeat your mistakes. Children who are destined to participate in the decay of American family life.
{ 2474 comments… read them below or add one }
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Escoffier, personally, I have no problem with how much money Harvard has. But I would like for people to start understanding how many non-profits really work, and who really benefits from them.
(I am not claiming that they are all evil or something, but they are not the modern worlds new churches…or, maybe they are, depending on which old church you are comparing them to.)
@OTC
I was that way too. I’ve never been one to coo and sigh over other people’s babies. Once I got pregnant I felt a huge love for the baby right away, and I remember feeling relieved about that.
@Escoffier
Agreed, which is why it’s remotely reasonable to expect them to lead the way. The opportunities are not there, and neither are the incentives, except in the most abstract sense.
Yes, I’m surrounded by these types too, as you know. I’m usually half crazed with frustration in social situations as a result. They would agree with Katha Pollit that Jessica Shairer is heroic.
Susan – “Yes, I’m surrounded by these types too, as you know. I’m usually half crazed with frustration in social situations as a result. They would agree with Katha Pollit that Jessica Shairer is heroic.”
And to me that is a very serious problem. If indeed the UMC is supposed to be what us lower class folks strive to be, it would make sense if the UMC espoused better morals and virtues. For the most part they may LIVE by good values and morals, but they seem to celebrate the lower SES’s lack of responsible choices every change they get. If anything they should be the ones bringing on the shame and pushing back on social changes that are detrimental to our society.
Put another way: the UMC and up should be leading this country forward, not cheering as its torn down.
Susan, do you really think that some guy had sex at the top of a playground slide for pure physical pleasure?
I am guessing that they both pursued what they wanted. And got it.
@Bastiat Blogger
I agree with your assessment of these types. Almost all of my friends fall in either the “Tucker” or Rob category. I have a few friends who when they get girlfriends, disappear, because they actually aren’t huge fans of bars, parties, etc, and they just do it to meet girls (Robs). I also have friends who are like Tucker, who even when they have a girlfriend still go out, party, and hang out with friends because it’s what they like to do. I definitely fall into the Tucker category. I think he’s a neanderthal, so I don’t like him as the example, but those are my preferences, at least as of now. I probably still lean more towards the “let’s get fucked up” frat-style party, but it’s changing more and more to the “let’s get drinks at a great cocktail bar” or “let’s do a beer tasting at a great beer garden”, or “let’s try this great new restaurant”. IE more laid back social activities. I’m actually known among my friends as a cocktail/beer/food connoisseur.
However, what I think you fail to mention is that this “tucker” category is not necessarily incompatible with having a girlfriend. I know plenty of “tucker” guys, myself included, who enjoy many of the aspects of having a girlfriend and don’t feel like it crimps their lifestyle at all. With my ex, we went out all the time to restaurants, cocktail bars, parties, and she always enjoyed it and had a great time. The key was I picked a girl who was compatible with me in that way (unfortunately she wasn’t compatible enough in other ways). Just as Rob wouldn’t want to date a girl who loves to go out and party all the time, I wouldn’t want to date a girl who likes to spend every Friday indoors with a book and glass of wine. I don’t think one’s better than another (although I do have issues with friends who drop everyone around them the moment they enter a relationship), it’s just about choosing a gf who enjoys the same things you do. For instance, this past weekend I was in Chicago, and a girl there (a friend’s coworker) said she wanted to set me up with her friend who lives in NYC. This girl I was talking to was very attractive, so it’s likely her friend was too. However, when she said her friend was at architecture school at NYU, and was indoors studying all the time and never got out, I said no thank you. It’s just not someone I’d be compatible with.
@Jackie
Actually, of the 24 girls I’ve slept with, only 3 were ONS, in that I slept with them once and never saw/talked to them again. Most were what you might call “reliable booty calls” in that we’d keep sleeping together on and off for a while (weeks, months, one girl even a year) until it petered out.
Escoffier, your whole comment deserves to be repeated, so I will:
+1
Nice people who live in nice neighborhoods will not shame the impulsive gatekeepers. But they will read to them at the library.
One feels good, the other does not. One makes you look nice, the other does not.
Yes, there was a lag. The first ruling against in loco parentis was in 1961, and the first coed dorms were in 1970, I believe. But it’s taken many years to get where we are today – 90% of college housing is coed. Initially, dorms were split by section, or floor. Today, there are coed rooms in many schools. Also, over time a much larger percentage of college students has moved on campus.
Ted:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/13/opinion/brooks-why-our-elites-stink.html?_r=1&ref=davidbrooks
Susan,
Ok. I get it. Discussing group differences is verboten. Discussing Affirmative Action is also verboten. I will cease and desist, but let’s not pretend we are searching for root causes. Nobody is really interested in finding root causes and possibly helping people like Jessica, including you. Female choice indeed!
Susan: “Denied the chance to grow up? I’m not a fan of the “man up!” school, but that really is rich. If my son behaved even remotely like that at 23 I would consider myself a complete and total failure as a mother.”
Yes, you’re making my point here exactly: if a guy turns out like this, then someone else, eg his mother, failed at something, failed to provide him with some essential guidance or feedback. Failure to get something important = being denied that important thing, here denied something vital to growing up. It’s not”rich”, it’s the same thought you’re having.
Nonprofits…they can be quite profitable for those who are run them and are in key positions inside them. Direct salaries & benefits can be pretty good (check out a university president’s salary and (usually tax-free) mansion), and there can also be good payoffs in jumping across organization types: for example, from a “policy” nonprofit in DC to a “policymaking” job in the Federal government to a corporate job involving the exploitation of, or at least survival under, the aforementioned policies.
The main thing about being a “nonprofit” is that there are no pesky shareholders you have to share the loot with!
That is not true in general, though it may have been true for that wealthy friend. I personally know at least a dozen middling students who got in on the basis of ties or friendships in the university. Harvard has something called a Z list, which is where they put these admits. They are required to take a gap year, but matriculation is guaranteed after that. In this way, Harvard avoids including their scores, GPAs, etc. in the stats for either class.
Of course, there are many very bright kids who are legacies or faculty offspring and while they get special treatment, they are within the range of admits, though generally not of the caliber of all the valedictorians that Harvard rejects.
@BB
Agreed, I think personality traits and individual preferences would (and do) play a large role.
As Michael Blowhard (Ray Sawhill) of 2Blowhards.com used to say, “If all guys cared about was sex, and rock stars get more of it then anyone else…why do rock stars ever get girlfriends? Because relationships are nice.”
“He’s/She’s my best friend.”
Many people never truly understand why I am against the idea of your significant other being your best friend.
For one, I have a best friend. I don’t want to fuck him. Nor do I want some version of him with tits.
And two, like you said, many of these people simply bail from any social scene and spend all of their time with each other. And it is rarely, IMO, some beautiful love that they are experiencing.
They get together. They start playing house. They rarely see their friends. They have kids. They then see their friend at children’s birthday parties. They then complain about how they never see their friends.
I then tell them that this started BEFORE they had kids and I get the deer-caught-in-headlights look.
(Actually, I am a pussy, and only say this to select guys when their wives are not around. They then tell their wives, and their wives don’t bring the subject up when I am around).
I hope you mean him. She is at least productive and providing a home and basic necessities for her children. He is doing neither for his.
She used poor judgment, and I disrespect that. He is of poor character, and I loathe that.
Re: elites. When I was at Magdalen studying financial WMDs, an Old Etonian type with a legit aristocratic background and wild thirst for blood-sports, rugby, cocaine, breast implants, and service in the Coldstream Guards Regiment made the snobbish remark that “the problem with America is that the only difference between the rich and the poor is that the rich have more money.”
Zach, you are absolutely right…I did neglect to consider several important aspects of dating among various campus subcultures. Your expanded version is much more useful than my oversimplified caricatures.
@Ramble
No that is one way, you’re just wording the same concept two different ways.
The other way would be to define the alpha male as a natural leader, one who inspires, gets things done, is intelligent, driven, of excellent character and values. This alpha would not cheat – not on his wife, or on his taxes. IOW, this alpha is a hero. It is this man who would decline to “soil his oats.”
David Foster @ 612.
Yes.
Susan @ 613
I simply meant that this guy apparently “reported” that you can even get a non-legacy, non-Harvard type into Harvard with a simple payment. And that payment, currently, is $5 million.
@Ramble
For one, I have a best friend. I don’t want to fuck him. Nor do I want some version of him with tits.
This made me laugh.
I have a best friend, too. And what I’m looking for in a mate is not a male version of her. Hahahaha!
My freshman dorm was an 8-story bauhaus monstrosity. Six floors were co-ed, and then one was all male and one was all female. There were no co-ed rooms (goodness!).
Still, as I have said, my college experience was not that wild as what peopel describe from the generation before or after.
Totally speculation but my thesis is that in the first dawn after the SR, only a portion of people took advantage. The wildest, most adventurous, least traditional, etc. immediately took advantage of the smashed restraints and had a party. My parents were in college at this time (they married the summer after graduation) and they did not participate nor did, really, anyone they knew or hung around with. Some huge % of people just did not participate and kept on living on the old ways.
The “party” peaked some time in the ’70s and then for whatever reason (AIDs? Reagan? Exhaustion? Moral Majority? I don’t know) people calmed down a little. Mores did not revert to pre-SR levels, but the key parties did stop and on campus 1985 was a lot less crazy than 1975.
But then the pause ended, probably that was inevitable. It’s not like the old restraints had been reimposed. It’s just that people slowed down for a while but at the cultural and intellectual level the SR had completely triumphed. So, inevitably, people and especially kids started to go wild again except this time the cohort was much larger. What was, in the early days of the SR, a sub-culture and kind of a disreputable one at that was by 2000, if not a majority culture in terms of absolute numbers, definitely the dominant culture in terms of setting the tone and getting all the attention.
Which, it appears, remains where we are today.
@Ramble
100% agree with you on the whole “best friends” and disappearing act bit. What I find hard to fathom is the friends who immediately forgive their former friends who disappeared for 2 years. I had a girl I was very, very close friends with in college. She also moved to NYC after. Within 6 months she was dating a guy (she’s a serial monogamist) I had introduced her to. She then dropped completely off the face of the earth (so did he). Three months ago, she finally broke up with him, and decided she was going to come to my birthday party. When she got there, I subjected her to a withering fusillade of insults and snarky remarks (“Wow, I know the upper east side is far away, but I wasn’t aware the travel time was 24 months”), ending with a “go f*ck yourself”. I have little to no use for friends who disappear and refuse every invitation to hang out when they’re in a relationship. If they think they can just walk back into my life after as if nothing happened, they’ve got another thought coming.
@RR
I don’t subscribe to your theories about race, and therefore I do not wish to provide a platform for them. It’s as simple as that. If I believed you were correct about the root cause I would say so. I provided the data by race, and any attempt to delve into the whys and wherefores of why white OOW births are skyrocketing is open to debate. You’ve had your say.
RE: who is hurting society more, she is, definitely.
Susan, he can not guarantee he will have a next generation. She, basically, can.
Her decision in that respect is EXTREMELY important. Nowadays, on some level(s), the consequences are even greater because of large centralized tax-supported social and other services.
In another world, he would have been one lonely idiot. Instead, she has gifted us 3 more of him. Worse, she had a shot at something good ( a college educated adult in a first world country) and gave it up to bear him multiple babies.
He could do his idiotic best at convincing her to have his baby. That is, outside of rape, all he can do (maybe he could have been more, in general, but let’s give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he was an impulsive idiot).
She likely could have chosen some nice suburban guy and have had his babies.
Guys affect society by tending farms, managing grocery stores and, occasionally, inventing light bulbs. Girls affect societies by having babies (and whom they chose to have them with).
The thing that, in general, separates the Dominican Republic from Finland is the decisions that are made by the girls, not the guys.
If the DR, tomorrow, started choosing husbands in the manner that we have seen in Finland (or New Zealand, or Australia, or Hawaii, or…) it would be a different place in no time.
Yes, I have made some HUGE generalizations, but, i think you get my point.
Tons of guys try to spread their seed with little investment. In good societies, they fail miserably. She helped this idiot in a huge way. And hurt her children in the process.
@Esau
That’s a slippery slope, as it leads to the Unabomber, priests who raped altar boys, or the shooter last weekend. In the end, we’ll probably learn that a lot of this is genetics. That doesn’t mean we should stop punishing or shaming people who inflict damage on others.
@Susan
If by superior you mean men who are 10′s then I agree–not going to find any rock stars, movie stars, etc. But she can find men that are 1-2 SMV points higher than her and as long as she can convince them that she’s not a fake and is sincere in wanting sex (probably by simply starting out friendly and flirty and occasionally escalating subtly) she could over some short period of time find a group of 9 guys and schedule them in over, say, a 3-day weekend. She could either do this online or by going to bars. These could be men she meets quickly or that she has been cultivating for a while for this very purpose. My main point, which I believe you agree with, is she can get access to higher SMV sperm and, by letting the sperm of the selected men fight it out, get impregnated by the most successful sperm batch (combining fertilizing ability with fighting/surviving-attacks-from-other-sperm capability).
The one thing I’m not sure about is when you get multiple batches of sperm and they start fighting it out how likely is it that any of the sperm survives?
And no property taxes to pay…
Right, I completely understand.
But, it means that some times you are saying, “You are no Alpha!”, implying that he is not great man. Other times you say, “Oh, she ignored that Alpha and married the beta”, implying that he avoided the asshole and married a good/great man.
It is confusing.
What I am trying to say is, “Pick a horse”.
It is one thing for us to complain that the whole alpha/beta dichotomy is too simplistic to be of much value, but to then go back and forth on how you use it is confusing.
I can keep up, but I also pick over your words with a fine tooth comb. Some of the girls that lurk here may not be so pedantic.
I would personally define an “alpha” very simply as a man who other men would want with them when they were doing something very physically dangerous, facing a psychologically-demanding crisis, or otherwise going into harm’s way.
A “beta” male would be a liability under these circumstances, or at least a neutral factor, although he may be a great guy and have many positive attributes that would allow him to shine under less-extreme conditions.
This is not the way that zoologists would define these terms, of course: they would probably state that an alpha male adopts a privileged position at the apex of a social dominance hierarchy and will enjoy preferential lifestyle and reproductive benefits unless challenged and removed by force. However, I don’t think that my working definition and the more rigorous and accurate one are necessarily incompatible, as both celebrate traits ultimately related to the mastery of violence, physical strength, tactical know-how, bravery, “game” (“game” in fight lingo here, not PUA) or “heart”, etc.
I think men must bestow the “title”, that it should be difficult to achieve and fake, and that women can then reward it to reinforce its presence in the culture. I think that alpha males of this stripe are deserving of “the lamentations of the women”, and it saddens me when they don’t receive it.
Right. You want a man in your life who will be your husband and you want a girl in your life that will be your best friend (maybe, more than one girlfriend). And you, in general, do not want them playing the same, or even similar, roles.
Some will want to take this to the extreme and interpret it to mean that men should not be nice to their wives, or that they should never go mini-golfing or whatever. I am not exactly sure what to say to them. I would like to think that these ideas are self evident.
@Escoffier, @Ramble
You’re right, she’s done the greater damage.
Whoa, Zach, you are definitely harsher than I am. I just give my guy friends a little bit of shit.
Ugh, you’re right. I wish I could avoid the terms altogether!
Alpha in terms of the SMP is not the same as alpha among men. There is overlap and correlation but ulimately the two are seperable. Our conversation here is really about the SMP not about delta force platoon leaders who might have bad one-itis for a skanky stripper he met at a bar near Fort Bragg.
What is alpha in the SMP is what attracts most of the women most of the time, what appeals to women’s blunt, unrefined and uneducated female id. These traits, again, correlate highly with bad-assness. But crucially, they can also be learned and to some extent faked. A man cannot fake his way through SEAL training but he can teach himself to attract and dominate women in a manner that lots of them will enjoy.
Plus, let’s be honest, it’s easier for most men to dominate women than it is to dominate men. Men will eventually make it phyiscal if they think you don’t have the chops to back up your attempts to lead. Contrast that with skinny loser pimps would lose a fight with a man at the first blow but who can, amazingly, keep a whole harem of women slavishly devoted to them for extended periods.
It’s these guys, the Fredos, the weak losers who nonetheless know how to hook women, who throw us off because in every respect that seems to count they are nullities. And yet in the SMP, they are winners. So, by that definition, for the purposes of this conversation they are alphas.
Another great example from the movies: Lester the pimp played by James Woods in Casino. Based on a real person.
You’re right, she’s done the greater damage.
Susan, I want to say this in the most respectful way possible: how did you not see that?
You are so smart. Is it simply a leaning/bias that you see some impulsive idiot and hate him and you see some mother, who is attempting to provide for her children, and NOT hate her (regardless of previous decisions she may have made)?
@Zach 623 and @Ramble 634
One of my closest friends from high school did that, too. When she did finally want to see my aforementioned best friend and me, it was because she and her boyfriend had broken up and she was devastated. We two sillies took it as a compliment.
I mean, she had finally realized we were loyal, caring, nurturing people worth having around, right? So we rushed to her side and comforted her while she cried.
Then she got her life back together and it started all over again. She didn’t even need a new boyfriend to dump us a second time. The lesson has been learned!
I see her as stupid and him as bad. In general, I think we’re better off with stupid people than bad people, though stupid, bad people are obviously the worst. I hadn’t stopped to consider that her kids are very likely to be stupid, and perhaps bad as well. So she wins (our loss) for reproducing.
If you asked which person is worse, I would say him.
I have no idea, I’m just sitting in the Winners Circle.
@Ramble
It was an extreme case. Most guys I know who dial back do just that, dial back. I go from seeing them every weekend to once a month. That’s fine, I just give them a little shit for that. This was going from someone I talked to a couple times a week/saw a couple times a month to literally no contact for 2 years. By no contact I mean not a text, not a call, not a gchat, not an email, nothing. For 6 months I tried to keep in touch then gave up. So in this extreme case I had an extreme reaction.
+1
Agreed, since dominance is conferred amongst males via intrasexual competition. Women should not have the power to confer alpha status, it goes against everything in nature. Women reward alphas, they don’t make alphas.
OK, if alpha talk is inherently confusing (and I don’t think it is but apparently, it keeps tripping us up), then let’s switch to “winners” and “losers.” That is, winners and losers in this SMP.
Who counts as what depends to some extent on what the players want. A guy with a count of one may consider himself a winner because all he wants is a GF/wife and he found her. He won, the competition is over for him.
But really what we mean most of the time is something different. For men, winners in this SMP either have a high count OR could rack up a high count. A wide range of females respond positively to him. They return his sexual interest with sexual interest of their own. These guys are winners.
They maybe “alpha” in the sense of genuinely accomplished, admirable, able to lead a group of men. Or they may not be. They may actually be dirtbags, contemptible, weak, etc. But as long as a wide range of females reciprocate his sexual interest in them, he is a winner in this SMP.
Obviously the definition of winner is different for girls.
@Susan (573)
“For all the”nihilism” talk and fronting Satanic symbols (downward facing Pentagram, Baphomet)
That Pentagram is the proud badge of “The Evil Patriarchy” a bunch of male bloggers headed by Roosh. ”
Then they are co-opting symbols that have been around way longer than the manosphere. I don’t care for Roosh (or any of that ilk, really) but he should not be using the symbols, even ironically.
The stuff involved with them (symbols) is beyond sick. The stories I have heard from multiple acquaintances are incredibly upsetting. Really.
It’s not worth it to brand yourself with a Satanic logo. We get it, they’re “bad.” But actual evil is not something to mess with.
Susan: re, Isolation, it’s pretty much the way of my life. Or, at least it was chiefly when I bought my place (at 24) and I started learning Game and breaking out of said self-imposed isolation (at about 27 or so). I’m 29 now, fast approaching 30. It’s gotten better as time’s gone on, and I’ve at least been getting out on the weekends and such, but honestly, after spending all day trying to impress clients and outdo coworkers, the /last/ thing on my mind after a demanding workout is having to go out and Game some strange woman, and have to compete with all of the hipster dudes that have the advantage of pulling a mere subsistence wage working part time. It just doesn’t feel like a worthwhile pursuit.
Susan,
I think you are missing the point of this exercise. You don’t have to subscribe to my “Theories of Race” in order to be open to debating issues related to race. I noticed that you disagree vehemently with many of your commenters, yet you don’t delete their posts or ban them. The issue is not whether you and I agree on a particular point, but rather how tolerant of dissent you are. I haven’t been rude, nasty or vulgar to you or any of commenters, so what gives with the banishment? You are being as knee-jerk here as Amanda Marcotte, which is disappointing, but not surprising. You wrote:
I provided the data by race, and any attempt to delve into the whys and wherefores of why white OOW births are skyrocketing is open to debate.
But you aren’t open to discussing that. You don’t want to discuss dysgenic affects even among whites.
Escoffier – That link was very interesting. I can see that the problem is partly that the people currently “in power” just don’t get what it is they are leading. And those institutions that used to be our beacon of morality are now being led by people that are too self-centered and selfish to feel that they are “stewards” to something bigger than themselves.
I certainly don’t want anyone to think I have class envy or something. For the most part, my life is confortable and I really don’t want for much that I truly need. (Surely I’d like to have more “stuff”, but more “stuff” does not make a better life necessarily) It has little to do with envy and a lot to do with disgust and disappointment. I’m disgusted that the people that CAN do something about all this won’t, and I’m disappointed that even as the UMC gives lip service to the terrible existance of the truly poor, they really aren’t doing much in terms of changing things to help. Oh for sure, they donate to charity (most of which I question in regards to actually putting the money to the intended use. AFter all, all the people in those non-profits get paid, and many get paid a LOT) and indentify with the plight of the poor, but many of these same folks actually have the influence to help change public policy, and simply don’t out of greed or lack of self awareness. And as far as it goes, I put WAY more faith in greed being the primary motivating factor. If more people made more money, it would mean less money and power for them.
@Esau
“The metaphor I’m reminded of is the idiot, wastrel rich kid who never has to learn a trade or even civil behavior, because his family’s money will always keep him afloat and cover up his mistakes. He’s not being bound, it’s rather the lack of boundaries that holds back his development.”
=============
Interesting!
I think I was strictly speaking emotional, more than cognitive.
Or imagine him suddenly immersed into a “dry” culture that doesn’t use alcohol or drugs. How much “success” has he had without those ingredients?
FFY is incredibly confined to his social scene, is what I meant by the binding.
Imagine him stranded on an island with intellectuals!
FFY reminds me of the pot-lover I wrote about earlier to Susan. This guy was so into drugs that it kind of pushed him into a corner. He was still doing the same job as teenagers when he was 40, and he’s probably still doing it now. A job’s a job, but he was capable of so much more.
That’s funny. You and I had the exact opposite reaction. I assumed he was a simpleton, unlikely to accomplish much of anything in life, and her as being a girl with opportunities intent on having his babies (i.e. bad).
See above comment. He was, likely, a known quantity from the word go. I am also guessing that he did little to hide who he really was.
OK, I can see how a conversation with that person would then end in a possible, “Fuck You”.
@Zach (607)
Hi Zach,
I appreciate the clarification.
Can you see, though, that my point was the majority of your sex partners belong to your category of “If one of them told me tomorrow that she’d never see me again, I would not care in the least”?
It’s not ONS vs Booty Call; it’s that you don’t care about the majority of your sex partners, from what I understand.
Susan, just understand that one of the things that your daughter has today, and is a fairly recent addition to Western civ, is the ability to choose men on her own terms.
And when we say things like, “the True Alphas TM should be rewarded with the prettiest girls” we are basically reversing that.
In this comment, I am not siding with one or the other, I am simply trying to properly paint the picture.
Girls have put in a a lot of effort to show us that they care about the things that they care about (like, not moving to the middle class, peaceful burbs in their prime, but to the urban hunting grounds of hip and beautiful) and that they are not that interested in playing by the old rules.
They want their hip, stylish, hot singer/actor/artist and they will have him, damn it!
Jackie, I have not kept up with this conversation, but, you do see his coworker analogy, right?
He works with Ted, and Martha, and Jim and Nancy and the rest of them. And they are nice. He even gets a beer with Jim every blue moon and a few times a year the whole office goes out. It’s nice.
But, one day, Ted will move on. Or maybe Zach will move on. Who knows. It happens. No worries. None of them fell in love with the other and they will surely meet some more nice people. There are lots of nice people to meet.
And Zach enjoys enjoyable things. He likes a tasty food. He likes to go fishing. All that.
He also likes to have sex. And he definitely likes having sex with hot girls. Having sex with hot chicks is a lot of fun.
Maybe one day he will meet someone really special. And that will be great. But, for now, he is meeting girls who are cool, but they are not making him fall head over heels.
No worries.
However, you are Jackie. And it is important that you see these things through your prism and label them in the way that you label them.
To a degree, we probably all do this. But the mild shaming that you keep applying would work much better on the girls than guys because, well, watch this:
Zach, you are a complete fucking slut!
…
Jackie, did you notice how Zach did not get upset. Actually, he started to laugh a little and then gave me a high five.
Guys are guys and girls are girls. We each have our roles and responsibilities (and instincts and imperatives) in this world.
And Zach is indulging in one of these instincts and he is not employing Girl Language TM to explain them. He is being frank and a little hardcore. That is much more in line with Guy Language TM, which is bad.
Zach, use Girl Language!
Question… why the hate for FFY, but love for Zach and Jason? They’re doing the same thing, the only difference that I can see is FFY is a bit crass in posting the details. Does it really not matter what we do, but how we sell it?
Ted: “And those institutions that used to be our beacon of morality are now being led by people that are too self-centered and selfish to feel that they are “stewards” to something bigger than themselves.”
I think it was Charles Murray saying the middle class refuses to preach what they practice. That’s pretty much how I feel. I’m sure not “elite” but I am married and keep my mouth shut on morality. It’s not about being selfish, it’s about not having lots of people hate you and making your life miserable. Judging behavior is the mortal sin these days.
@Ted D
“those institutions that used to be our beacon of morality are now being led by people that are too self-centered and selfish to feel that they are “stewards” to something bigger than themselves.”
======
Ted, this is something I see a lot: Nostalgia for a time before you yourself existed. (Example: Works of Aaron Sorkin) I think people like the idea of something more than the actuality.
So when you say “beacon of morality,” can you give a concrete example of what you mean? People talk about how the Catholic Church is so bad now, but there has *always* been shenangians by organized religion. Look at at medieval popes, Leo X or Julius III– they were wild and crazy guys! (You may find this interesting: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sexually_active_popes)
It doesn’t mean that religion is wrong or bad, it just means that institutions run by humans will be faulted by human nature. I think making something or someone a beacon of morality only sets an impossible standard. I think we should strive to be good, as much as we can be.
And I think human nature has always been this way. The only things that have changed are the social mores and technology, both for good and for evil. Plus, there are a LOT more people, so while the percentages may the same, there’s just a lot more of both. My 0.02
For a very long time, people have loved Small Town America. There is a reason why young men wanted to be older (many male actors in the 30s and 40 actually tried to look, and act, older, not younger) and become the town fathers. There is a reason why they wanted to join the volunteer fire department.
Fuck, just watch Hoosiers. Yeah, many of the town’s fathers were simpletons. They cared way too much about their son playing on the basketball team, but, fuck, what a nice town. And shit like that was all over America.
Sure, we were all racist, but a girl could walk the streets at night without blinking an eye.
@Ramble
Well, I’ll let Zach speak for himself! The thing I am getting at is, he does not care for the majority of his sexual partners. He doesn’t care if he ever sees them again, was his original statement.
If he’s so alpha, why all the qualifying and hedging around my point? Why not just say, Yeah, I don’t care about them, but the sex was fun. Why not just call a spade a spade?
Like I said earlier, I don’t agree with his ways but I definitely appreciate the honesty, as I would not get it IRL. Believe me, I learn tons here and will do everything in my power to to use this knowledge to save myself from wasting any time.
Zach is doing lots of people a huge favor by his honesty. I am under no illusion that anything I say will affect his actions in the least.
<emThe only things that have changed are the social mores and technology
and the crime rate.
Places like Detroit and West Baltimore (and East Baltimore) and Gary, Indiana and East St. Louis and a dozen other places are basically unrecognizable to those that lived in these places in the 50′s.
Bully, you’re still playing Diablo 3? My husband and I put in 300+ hours and got bored. Not that we didn’t get our money’s worth, of course.
Ramble, the hot girls do flock to the big cities, but the less “hypergamous” girls tend to stay out of those cities. I lived in Chicago proper for maybe a year before I fled to the burbs. And some people say Salt Lake City is one big suburb.
I’ve generally worked closely with IT/developers at all the jobs I’ve had, since I work in the Web field. And yes, it’s mostly male. They often try to get me to go to the IT side of things because they can tell I’m competent. But I’m still a girl, and even though I can do hardcore coding, I’d rather only do coding half the time.
i really question the premise that “elites” have any moral standing with people in lower soci-economic classes. first of all, most elites don’t particularly live clean either — they just know when to rein it in. namely, elites drink, are promiscuous, etc. — most of them are just smart enough to not do it in a way that affects them materially — and the lower classes know this. so what am i supposed to go preach? wear condoms, only date girls for whom getting pregnant would be a total disaster, and only get blotto when you don’t have an exam the next day? oh, and by the way, if you can arrange it, have the talent, social position, and cultural capital to get away with certain “youthful indiscretions”. later, when you marry a nice girl or boy, when one of you cheats, hush it up and stay together until the kids graduate from college — who knows, you’ll probably forget about the affair by then. i think this is hardly the sermon on the mount you’re looking for, Ted D.
an additional point. a lower socioeconomic class male is situtated completely differently than an “elite” male. an elite male has immense value tied up in his social network. being shunned by his network or be deemed of less than sterling character is a big problem, which would affect his literal and figurative worth. if, on the other hand, your social network is just as poorly off as you, what they think of you is much less of concern.
OTC – “I’m sure not “elite” but I am married and keep my mouth shut on morality. It’s not about being selfish, it’s about not having lots of people hate you and making your life miserable. Judging behavior is the mortal sin these days.”
LOL well as an INTJ with an 88% J, I judge everybody including myself, and I don’t give a rats ass if it is a mortal sin or not. (Remember I was born a Catholic. According to them, I was a sinner before I was even born, so I don’t see the point in trying to make up for it…) I don’t care if most of the world hates me, as long as they leave me the hell alone. The problem is, they CAN’T leave me alone because their actions indirectly affect my quality of life, and more importantly the quality of life I can expect for my children. I’m divorced but getting married again, in part because despite our currently flawed family court system, I believe in the stability of two-parent households, and as much as my SO and I could live together until death without a marriage license, it isn’t something I want my children to see as an acceptable solution. And I very rarily keep my mouth shut, it’s just that most people don’t want to hear what I have to say.
But the problem is, I’m not on the board at Harvard. I’m not part of some huge law firm that actively deals with the court system. I don’t know anyone in politics to voice my concerns to, and writing to my local representatives gets me a canned reply thanking me for my concern, and then is promptly deleted from their inbox. Is it asking a lot of people in the upper reaches of society to stick their neck out? Hell yeah it is! But I’ve always said I expect a lot from people whether it is fair or not. Our founding fathers risked everything they had to free us from tyranny. All I’m asking for is for our elite to stop lying to themselves and the rest of us, and make honest efforts to improve things. I wouldn’t expect them to sacrifice everything they have for me. But then again, I would have been one of the people supporting our founding fathers when they were still criminals and trators, because what they were fighting for was something I believe in: freedom. And to me, the willingness to sacrifice for your beliefs is high up on the lists of quality character traits. I guess I’m in the minority in that respect these days.
@Jackie
What Ramble said.
OffTheCuff, speaking just for myself, I don’t feel “love” for Jason or Zach or player XYZ who posts here, and none of them would be somebody I talked to in real life. There’s more of a feeling of, “I’m sure glad I didn’t get with a guy like that,” and, “different people sure are different.” And they’re not rude to people here, so people are not rude to them.
The way they talk about “homebodies” like me is kind of amusing, too. That’s exactly how I feel about “partiers” like them. It’s just a totally different mentality.
Women are mostly to blame for their single motherhood. The only two situations I can see are when a woman is widowed, or where a man leaves a woman for another woman.
The case where the woman divorces a man for mostly frivolous reasons or because she is chasing a new “mr. wonderful” are the cases where the woman deserves scorn and the man deserves pity.
In reality, the word is out. Men have nothing to gain in America by marrying and having children, and they have everything to lose. The smart “Kevins” of the world will take their generous attitude and talents where they won’t be unfairly punished for something they did not do.
@ Susan Walsh
That’s the type of Alpha I like. They are just so freaking hard to find though, not to mention rare.
Le sigh.
@Zach
Since you are letting Ramble speak for you, my reply @ 657 should be directed to you as well. Good luck!
OTC (554)
Most people probably agree with Hope (663). I find them educational and their postings have very likely saved girls a ton of time.
@Jackie 657
There was no qualifying or hedging around my point. I never wavered from saying I didn’t care about these girls. I don’t. I was explaining why I don’t care, and trying to use an analogy that you might understand. I think most people would admit they don’t really “care” about their coworkers. Caring for someone and being friendly with them are completely different things.
Like I said, he used Guy Language instead of Girl Language, and that is bad.
Jackie, if Zach and I lived in the same city and were, say, poker buddies, how much would you expect him to “care” about me? I am talking about playing poker with other guys about once a month, maybe once every 6 weeks. So, we are seeing each other about 8-12 times a year where we share some laughs and beer and get to engage our competitive juices.
How broken up should Zach get if I go from being a regular poker buddy to an occasional poker buddy? Or, if I move away?
How jealous should Zach get when he finds out that I also have Hockey buddies and that I actually see them more often then I see him (sorry, Zach)?
Again, I did not read everything, but, as far as I can tell, Zach was trying to speak/write honestly from the beginning. But, again, he was often employing Guy Language on a forum aimed at girls.
Sassy, simply hang out near the local military base and you will find tons of them.
I can not speak towards how “hot” they will be and I doubt that they will want to costar in the towns next musical, but you will find TONS of stand up guys.
Same goes for IT office parks.
Luckily for you, America has tons of both.
Jackie – “So when you say “beacon of morality,” can you give a concrete example of what you mean?”
Any and all denominations of Christianity – Every church/faith I’ve looked into over the last year is rife with modern ideals that DO NOT match the core principles of the faith. Divorce is rampant in ALL denominations, and from there it gets worse.
Academia – I’m not even going to go into detail on this, but I’m sure you get my drift. School is where we USED to go to get an education AND to learn how to be a good citizen. Now? It is mostly a mouth piece of the leftist agenda and nothing short of a propaganda device. We are now not even teaching proper history because some of it just isn’t “politically correct” enough for our children to learn. Never mind that truth or the facts, it how those facts and truths make us feel that is important. (NOT, but it is the premise academia seems to work from these days.)
The U.S. Legal system – once upon a time, our legal system was about truth and justice. Now it seems to be about greed and deception. How can we expect people to behave in a moral manner when our own courts don’t? I get that morality and justice aren’t the same thing, but justice SHOULD be based on morality, at least to some extent. But we’ve done a great job of ridding our legal system of those pesky religious morals, and it got us right where we are now.
The Media – I’m not going into detail here either, but the popularity of trash TV (known as reality TV) is all I need to see in order to fully know our media is corrupt beyond all hope of redemption. They all pander to the lowest common denominator and do nothing to help our society. They sure do profit like mad from our collective stupidity though…
I’m getting all riled up, and I’m still at a client site today, so I’m keeping this list short. I can go on, but these are the big hitters to me. And keep in mind, each of these has a trickle down effect, in that anyone that participates in even one of these organizations will spread these corrupt ideals on to others.
“And I think human nature has always been this way. The only things that have changed are the social mores and technology, both for good and for evil.”
Well, I’m an IT guy so I make my living with technology. However I would say that overall the influence of technology as probably NOT been a net positive, at least in terms of helping us achieve a better society. In truth, technology has given us far too much leisure time. When we have to work sun up to sun down to survive, we didn’t have time for all this stupidity. And in terms of social mores, I can’t say there is anything much there I’m at all happy with or proud of. Perhaps the fact that we are more accepting of others is a good thing, but it came at a horrible cost.
I’m not longing for “days gone” because I somehow idealize them. I know things were screwed up for prior generations. But, I believe they were far LESS screwed up, and although individuals had far less choices, society as a whole benefitted greatly from the combined efforts of everyone. I don’t believe that people can have unlimited choices and at the same time feel obliged to work towards the greater good. The more independent we allow people to become, the less they feel like part of a community for which and TO which they are responsible. In short, it is not in human nature to work for the greater good, certainly not at your own expense. It was only through societal restriction that people were forced into roles that benefitted everyone, even if they themselves were not thrilled with it. I don’t necessarily want to go back to a time when no one had choices, but it seems to me that too many choices doesn’t work either.
Slim’s Tuna Provider – “a lower socioeconomic class male is situtated completely differently than an “elite” male. an elite male has immense value tied up in his social network. being shunned by his network or be deemed of less than sterling character is a big problem, which would affect his literal and figurative worth. if, on the other hand, your social network is just as poorly off as you, what they think of you is much less of concern.”
Not to be a dick, but I really don’t care how important someone’s “social network” is. If that is the case, then everyone in that “social network” puts far too much stock in what other people think of them, and far too little into being a quality person. But if I’m understanding you correctly, you are implying that the UMC is just as corrupt and deviant as the rest of us? If so, then my original point still stands: they need to stop lying to themselves and the rest of us, and just deal with the consequences of their actions. You should realize the thing that pisses me off the most about the UMC is that I know that many of them are corrupt, but they have the money and means to hide it. THAT is a primary reason I have class issues. Not that they have more money or power, but that they abuse it so absolutely while preaching to me and my lower SES ilk about “doing the right thing”. It is a primary reason I left the Church. Telling me I’m a sinner for having sex out of wedlock while abusing altar boys?! Preaching to others how power and money corrupts while stockpiling wealth and property without paying a dime in taxes?! But sure, I should follow what they say to be a better person…
Susan, the thing is, my husband is a man *exactly* like this, every point. But girls didn’t flock to him the way they did to guys who are flashier, cooler, or whatever. He is only able to inspire people who can be inspired by him, and most young people just don’t care for alphas like him these days.
I think the media has done much to damage what girls respond to, personally. A guy like this just isn’t trendy enough for Prime Time TV.
I think the media has done much to damage what girls respond to, personally.
Really, Hope. Madonna was *forced* on young girls back in the day? Or, is it just possible, that tons of adults were really concerned about our more liberal ways and young girls flocked to Madonna?
They loved Brittany too. And Hannah Montana is morphing into a wonderful little whore as well.
Girls Are Making Choices.
But, Ramble, they are simply following the herd.
One, that is a horrible defense, and two, who the fuck created the herd to begin with?
There is a reason why they “herd” around these whores and fakers (Taylor Swift…I am a good girl, and, yes, I wanted to suck John Mayers cock.) and not around Otis Redding and Bob Dylan.
They are making their choices.
Ramble, Sassy wants the man with options, who chooses not to exercise them. Yeah, pretty damn rare as she says. That means either “flipping” a player, coincidentally catching a player at his “Come to Jesus” moment, or, finding a fried ice unicorn who never exercised them at all. Maybe she can flip Zach…
@ Ramble
I actually think that there are a lot of attractive men in the military, but I would never seriously date a man in the military.
I know myself well enough to know that I wouldn’t be able to handle a hypothetical military boyfriend/husband being deployed or spending months/years apart from me. Long distance relationships do not work for me whatsoever. I like to have the person I’m with within reach.
As far as IT office parks, I’m not sure how many “Hero” Alphas could be found there. I’ve only ever met two personally. One was my ex-boyfriend. The second is a guy that I just finished working with in a production of Hairspray. He’s really smart and currently studying engineering. On top of that, he is devastatingly handsome.
All I have to say is that EVERY girl in the cast had a crush on him, including myself. We would all talk about him in the dressing room, and some girls ended up fighting over him. What’s so surprising is that he is oblivious to the effect he has on women. I ended up pulling him aside and telling him that he needs to be careful. I told him that he doesn’t understand the effect he has on women, and he admitted that he didn’t. I asked him if he was interested in a girlfriend, and he said that he was. He also told me that he had no interest in casual sex, which blew me away.
He and I are friends, and I’m currently helping him by attempting to set him up with our mutual friend, who he has a crush on. I’m trying to be selfless in helping him get with another woman, but it’s a little painful for me sometimes.
They need to figure out a way to make clones of him, and fast.
@ OffTheCuff
Haha! I’m talented, but even I probably couldn’t do that.
As far as an update on “James Franco”, he and I stopped seeing each other a week or two ago. He told me that he was into me, but that he was “too young to settle down”. He’s 27. He also said that he was only interested in a summer fling, at this point in time of his life, and that a “good girl” like myself probably wouldn’t appreciate that sort of arrangement.
Duh.
I did appreciate his honesty though. It was refreshing.
Choices are made among the choices one has. When there was no Madonna, Brit, Montana or Perry in the media, girls didn’t get to choose any of them. They got to choose between say, knitting and sewing.
I was watching Sesame Street and Mr. Rogers when I was a tween, because we were poor, and all I had to watch was PBS. The rest of the time I was reading books. I literally read the A-Cs of an encyclopedia sample set that we got for free over and over again. Those were the choices I had.
Adults do provide choices to their children.
Hope – “He is only able to inspire people who can be inspired by him, and most young people just don’t care for alphas like him these days.”
Precisely! I don’t think the problem is a lack of old school alpha men: real leaders and upstanding citizens. I think the problem is that our modern soceity in general and women in particular simply DO NOT REWARD these men. And the reason why? They just aren’t that exciting. Being a good citizen IS NOT exciting. Being a good leader IS NOT exciting. It is mostly doing the right thing at the right time, regardless of the negative consequences that come from it. Our society is far too involved in minimizing/eliminating all negative outcomes to bad behavior, when it is those negative outcomes that are supposed to STOP such behavior.
Sassy, Susan did not say “Hero”. She said “Natural Leader”. And, I repeat, there are tons of them.
Of course, they learn to work as part of a team, because, well, that is how a first world economy works. Thankfully.
@Sassy
I’m sorry to hear that about “James.”
Sassy. Is oblivious part of his charm? Would the clones be with or without oblivious?
When there was no Madonna, Brit, Montana or Perry in the media, girls didn’t get to choose any of them.
Yes, and in the previous culture, there was obviously a market failure because the demand for them has been huge. And once Madonna showed up, that all changed.
Girls really, really, really wanted to have their Madonna, and Brittanys and Gagas.
They really, really wanted them and now they got them.
OK, I’m going to pick up where I left off viz. winners and losers in the SMP.
Let’s compare three sets of hypothetical males, archetypes if you will.
Aaron and Andy are both IB associates in the City, 25 y/o, making good coin, on track to make tons, UMC backgroudns, elite schools. Both are conventionally attractive, not spectacularly so, but not ugly either. On paper they are equals. Yet Aaron gets lots of pussy and Andy does not. You might chalk that up to effort (Aaron is in the bars as often as he can be whereas Andy prefers to pursue hobbies in his limited spare time) or you might conclude that Andy has dropped out of the chase since in his prior forays he was not that successful and thus judged it a waste of time.
Aaron is a winner in this SMP and Andy is not.
Ben and Bill were both succesful HS athletes but mediocre students. Niether went to college or has left his home town. Both are conventionally attractive, very fit, and employed in blue collar or government jobs. Both are sort of pedestrian in their tastes, not very bright, read maybe one book a year, always a thriller or a sports memoir, and watch a lot of ESPN. Ben cleans up with the local townie chicks while Bill drinks beer in the alley.
Chris and Carl are both HS drop-outs. They are skinny, scruffy, 5s at best, and only intermittently employed. Both have some musical talent and play in bands when they can get their respect acts together but also like to smoke weed and zone out in front of a DVD or video game, activities which take up a great deal of their time. Both live in their parents’ basement. Yet when Chris gets gigs, he cleans up with band groupies but Carl hasn’t had a girlfried in two years.
I think we all know, or know of, people in all of these categories. Societally, Aaron and Andy are big winners. Chris and Carl are big losers. Ben and Bill are in the middle.
By one definition in this thread, only Aaron is really an alpha. However, three of the six are nonetheless “winners” in the SMP despite having nothing else in common. At least on the surface.
But do they REALLY have nothing in common aside from being sexual winners? Or are there traits they all share that make them sexual winners despite their obvious differences? Game theory says there are. I agree.
As for this studly person of good character and perfect dominance that all the ladies profess to pine for, in former times we used to call such men “virtuous”, as in, posessing all the virtues (of character, body, and mind). It’s fine to want one, who wouldn’t, we’re talking about the top of the human pyramid here. The problem (for you) is that men of virtuous character only outnumber, by a lot, men of virtuous body and/or mind and ladies by and large don’t seem that interested in them.
The fact is, you HUS girls may be outliers, but men in the field say that the majority of women will go for Aaron, Ben or Chris over Andy, Bill or Carl pretty much without fail.
Hope – “I literally read the A-Cs of an encyclopedia sample set that we got for free over and over again. Those were the choices I had.”
My mother invested in a full set of Encyclopedia Brittanica when I was around 10 years old. By the time I left home, most of those books where well worn with use. When I had nothing else to do, I used to grab a book and start flipping from the front, stopping to read and mark everything I found interesting. I didn’t read them cover to cover, but the last time I looked in them there were a LOT of little check marks in every single one of them. The thing is, I had access to a TV in gradeschool, and had one in my bedroom by middle school. Yet I chose to read instead, because TV was just too damn simple minded and boring, once the afternoon cartoons were over.
TedD, to answer your specific question, the reason i mentioned the social network (not facebook, obviously, your ACTUAL social network) is to argue that moral suasion by one’s peers is far more effective in the upper classes. to demonstrate, in our fair gotham city, if an ivy league lawyer knocks someone up, he cannot abandon her without serious repercussions. this is because he has a lot to lose, and his friends are powerful. if his friends and business contacts look down on him or deem him unreliable, his career prospects dim. furthermore, his female acquintances can make his dating life very difficult — he is going to want to date in his social circle, which is small, and will be promptly thoroughly poisoned. oh, and he can’t even move away — first, there’s only one gotham city, and even if he does move, his social network is national, even possibly international, and rumors about him will follow him through the grapevine. this dude is HIGHLY incented to toe the line.
now, let us say that instead, there is a dude in west toe fungus, iowa. he works at the amazon warehouse packing boxes. his career aspirations are to drive a UPS truck. he has lived in west toe fungus all his life. half of his friends are unemployed, the rest have jobs like his. the only “connections” he has is that he gets first dibs on factory reject tires at the jiffy lube where his buddy works. one third of his female friends have had babies out of wedlock. one fine day, he knocks up suzy in east toe fungus. even if his buddies shun him (they won’t), it will be unpleasant, but the effect on his career is nil. maybe the women try to give him a bad name, but shit, a third of them got knocked up themselves, and really, he’s one of the ones with a job! worst comes to worst, he moves three counties over to south fly turd, where there is another amazon warehouse, and no one even knows he knocked up suzy. this man is NOT WELL INCENTED by his social network to not knock up suzy.
@Ramble
fakers (Taylor Swift…I am a good girl, and, yes, I wanted to suck John Mayers cock.)
I don’t know the details of what you’re alluding to, but I’m wondering about what you’re implying.
Are you saying that if a girl wants to do something that isn’t “good” but doesn’t do it, then that’s just as bad as if she had done it?
Or are you perhaps referring to any unladylike language Swift used in an interview?
Girls really, really, really wanted to have their Madonna, and Brittanys and Gagas.
Tastes are formed in young childhood and influenced by upbringing. I was a little girl, and yet didn’t want them. I was exposed to a variety of classical music since I was a kid, so as I grew older I preferred classical to pop.
Likewise with food. I grew up on lots and lots of vegetables in my childhood. My pregnancy cravings don’t involve ice cream but instead salad with green peppers, spinach, broccoli, etc. I’d better quit before I make myself hungry.
@RR
I am far more tolerant of dissent than any blogger you can name.
I’m happy to do that. If you’re saying that low IQ whites are less likely to go to college and stay there, and more likely to have children OOW, I don’t disagree. That seems evident.
What I do not want to get into is discussing the differences in abilities between races. If I misunderstood the point you were making, I apologize. I have no interest in HBD debate here – I’ve never allowed it in 3.5 years and I see no reason to start now.
If Ted is reading, here’s a great big fat reason why I’m better off sticking to my knitting.
@ Ramble
Yes she did. Here’s the quote.
@ Richard Aubrey
His obliviousness is a part of his charm, in a way. He really doesn’t understand what he does to women. It’s very cute, and highly attractive to me. Due to his obliviousness, he hasn’t gone out and plowed through hordes of women, which I really like.
The intrasexual competition between the women in the cast was pretty fierce as well. It was a little shocking to behold. I hope that he manages to avoid getting caught up in any drama or antics.
@ Bellitta
Thanks. I wasn’t too bummed about it. I was able to avoid a bad situation and wasting a lot of time. He did me a huge favor by being honest.
Bellita – “Are you saying that if a girl wants to do something that isn’t “good” but doesn’t do it, then that’s just as bad as if she had done it? ”
Well this is the logic I use when I say I am NOT a nice guy. On the outside I appear to be nice, but all the while I might be thinking to myself “wow this person is a total idiot and I am SO glad I don’t work with her/him”, smiling at them the entire time. And being born a Catholic, I was taught that what you did mattered, but what you thought mattered more. Simply acting “good” does not make someone actually good. Being good (which includes thinking good things) is what makes a person good. Therefor, I am not good or nice.
So although it may be commendable that a woman won’t act on her less “good” thoughts, the fact that she has them is an indication of her tendencies, just as my thoughts are of mine. I fully admit that I act in a manner that is not congruent with my thinking often, because what I’m thinking just isn’t socially acceptable. Regardless of what others think about me based on what they see, I know I’m not nice.
Now that being said, I would commend a woman that acts in a responsible manner despite her thoughts or instincts.
@Ms. Walsh, @RR:
Whoa, did I miss something overnight? Exactly what was the bone of contention between you two?
Let’s see if we can sort this out…
Here’s RR’s most recent comment at #611:
“Susan,
Ok. I get it. Discussing group differences is verboten. Discussing Affirmative Action is also verboten. I will cease and desist, but let’s not pretend we are searching for root causes. Nobody is really interested in finding root causes and possibly helping people like Jessica, including you. Female choice indeed!”
And here’s Ms. Walsh’s response at #624:
“I don’t subscribe to your theories about race, and therefore I do not wish to provide a platform for them. It’s as simple as that. If I believed you were correct about the root cause I would say so. I provided the data by race, and any attempt to delve into the whys and wherefores of why white OOW births are skyrocketing is open to debate. You’ve had your say.”
O: Hmm. It seems that the bone of contention, is whether the races differ in terms of intelligence, or I.Q. if you prefer. On this note – particularly since the area of contention does not directly have to do with the topic at hand, you of course are more to disagree and cease discussion. However, simply because you don’t like or disagree with RR’s position, doesn’t mean that RR (or for that matter Murray, et al) are in fact wrong.
It just means you don’t wish to discuss it further.
But the facts – and I cite among other things, The Bell Curve, clearly point to the fact that all manner of testing over the past century does indeed point to a constant lag on the part of African Americans in relation to Whites, and that includes IQ tests and their proxiess, for example, the SAT. We can quibble over the “causes” of the “gap” but the gap is indeed persistent – and as Murray et al argues, they can and will have realworld implications.
But again, this is all water under the bridge since the topic wasn’t about Black folk, but White.
Fair enough. Let us examine it from that angle, then.
In his book Coming Apart, Murray again asserts (from The Bell Curve), that part of the reason why the American Project is under threat is due to the fact that a dysgenic mating pattern is taking shape; I quote Ms. Hymowitz, who discusses Murray’s book and by extension, central argument in this way:
“In short, America has become a segregated, caste society, with a born elite and an equally hereditary underclass. A libertarian, Murray believes these facts add up to an argument for limited government. The welfare state has sapped America’s civic energy in places like Fishtown, leaving a population of disengaged, untrusting slackers. It has also diminished upper-class confidence: the well-to-do dare not suggest they have a recipe for the good life. “The underpinning of the welfare state,” Murray writes, “is that, at bottom, human beings are not really responsible for the things they do.”
But might Murray lay the groundwork for fatalism of a different sort? “The reason that upper-middle-class children dominate the population of elite schools,” he writes, “is that the parents of the upper-middle class now produce a disproportionate number of the smartest children.” Murray doesn’t pursue this logic to its next step, and no wonder. If rich, smart people marry other smart people and produce smart children, then it follows that the poor marry—or rather, reproduce with—the less intelligent and produce less intelligent children. Once you accept Murray’s view of genetic destiny, a loss of confidence in the American project on both sides seems entirely justified.”
White Blight, Jan 2012, City Journal
http://www.city-journal.org/2012/bc0125kh.html
Indeed, this is the central argument of The Bell Curve – that America is experiencing a class stratification based on cognitive lines – IQ – and that this stratification will become, over time, more rigid; that those born on one side or the other of the bell curve, will pretty much remain there, *for the whole of their lives*.
Now, Ms. Walsh – do you agree, or disagree with that premise, and if so/not, on what basis? I remind you, that you have, on several occasions over the course of this discussion, said that Ms. Jessica was “stupid” and that she was clearly “not intelligent” based on the NYT videotaped interview of her speaking.
Your response?
O.
Are you saying that if a girl wants to do something that isn’t “good” but doesn’t do it, then that’s just as bad as if she had done it?
Honestly, I don’t keep up with this shit, but I thought that she “dated” John Mayer. If not, then, I guess I take it back.
Granted, she did feel the need to Tweet the details in which Jon/Jack/Whatever-the-fuck-his-name-is Jonas dumped her.
Well, his urging her to drop out and start a family by saying he was ready might have been a bit misleading.
Hope, your comment at 687 doesn’t mean all that much unless you are implying that all of those Madonna/Brittany/Gaga lovers were simply raised to actually like that music. And we all know that is not even close to being true.
Their fans were raised in a variety of households throughout the West. And they are/were extremely popular.
Fuck, I hate when I am wrong.
Either way, I stand by what I said. There are tons of these guys in the STEM world. They are not hard to find.
But, I think you want what you want, and it is not them. Which is fine. But a good man is NOT hard to find.
that last comment was at Sassy.
Ramble, their fans were raised by parents who probably liked rock and roll, which was probably also said to be “bad influence” by their grandparents. I could be off on this, since I’m not a music history buff, but as far as I know popular music didn’t start with Madonna.
They are not doing the same thing. FFY is telling chicks it’s none of their business if he has a job. He’s shitting his pants. He’s committing to a gf, but gets pussy on the side. He takes another guy’s live in gf on a beer run and fucks her in the playground. In short, he is a disgusting pig.
Whereas Zach and Jason are wearing lipstick.
Seriously, Zach and Jason are honest and respectful of the women they see. There is no comparison.
@Ramble
I also know she was involved with him for a while, but that’s pretty much the extent of my knowledge. I think I heard Dear John a couple of times but it never became a favorite. (Honestly, when it comes to Swift, I hear the song that is supposedly about the guy before I hear about the guy!)
I know even less about John Mayer, but reading between the lines now, I understand that he’s a bad sort for a woman to be attracted to. And so a woman who is attracted to him is a bad sort as well. Is that what you’re saying?
Well, his urging her to drop out and start a family by saying he was ready might have been a bit misleading.
You know, I am curious about that.
Here is my guess: his actions and words before the 1st kid and on through to the 3rd kid were probably pretty consistent.
Let me put it another way: I am guessing that a 19 year old Susan Walsh, even if she had just smoked a bowl, still would have seen this guy a mile away and had said, “No, thank you…and no Bogarting!”
Kevin is not being punished, he’s happily married and has a great family life. Neither of the women in this article left their men. Two men left Jessica S, one in police custody.
“But a good man is NOT hard to find.”
Depends.
Sassy has a very narrow definition of good. Not bashing her, I actually respect the fact that she is honest. But basically she wants an alpha with a heart of gold and sterling moral character. Reminds me of the Simpsons episode when Bart gets a big brother and the guy turns out to be a super handsome fighter pilot, martial artist, motorcycle- riding uber-stud who comes to the rescue of orhpans and small animals.
I mean, who wouldn’t like a guy like that? I’m straight and I almost want to date him.
Of course, though, if your standards are that high, you are bound to spend a lot of time alone. The law of averages.
Hope, OK, so then what about all of those girls that did NOT get influenced by the whorish pop stars, but were raised by Rock and Roll parents, of which, there must have been a ton?
Or, even better, what about all of those girls that became rock and roll fans that were raised by traditional parents?
Hope, the “logic” is simply not adding up.
Susan – “If Ted is reading, here’s a great big fat reason why I’m better off sticking to my knitting.”
LOL. Nah. Look, the topic of this blog is contraversial, you know that and everyone here knows that. What makes matters worse is, this topic ties into many more contraversial topics, and they are all interelated. I understand that you are uncomfortable with some of these, but the truth is one can’t be solved without at least discussing the others.
Perhaps it is my unique outlook on life, but I have no issue discussing such things because I don’t take it personally. I’m mostly Polish, yet I’ve been telling Polish jokes all my life. I’ve been overweight, (and still am but not nearly so bad!) and I don’t take offense when people pick on “fatties” and the like. If someone were to come out with a study tomorrow that proved Polish people are not as intellegent as Chinese people, I wouldn’t take offense or be upset. Because even if that was true, I’ve done pretty good with my supposedly lower intellegence, and what some study says doesn’t matter to ME. But, I can’t simply disregard something if it has sound data behind it.
I get into arguments over profiling by law enforcement a lot because I’m all for it. If statistics showed that blond haired, blue eyed Polish people stole cars more than any other group of people, I would understand if on occasion the police wanted to make sure the 300 I’m driving is actually mine, especially if I’m driving around in a high crime area. The problem is that although they can see I’m blond and blue eyed, they can’t know I’m Polish unless they stop me first. I sympathize with minorities because they can’t simply hide what they are, and in that respect I can see how unfair it appears when police stop black folks simply because they are black and driving a 300. But if most 300′s are stolen by black folks (and to be clear I AM NOT saying blacks are thieves!!!) it’s hard for me to fault the police for checking.
My point is, just because I may not be as smart as a Chinese person does not mean I can’t succeed. In fact, I’d say it is more important that I know what I’m up against, so I can make better decisions about my future. I’d rather know where my weaknesses are and work around them then be lied to by everyone about those same flaws. I’m not a racist by any means, but I don’t see a problem with discussing real differences between the races, no more than I see a problem discussing the differences between the sexes. If you accept that NO ONE is equal to anyone else, it really isn’t such a hard pill to swallow that I may not be as smart as a Chinese person. If nothing else, it actually makes my accomplishements that much more impressive, since I started at a deficit.
@Ms. Walsh #568:
“Other White groups, you mean?
“No, Ted has requested that I look at other SES groups, particularly wrt education.”
O: Then why not start with the groups that show the sharpest disparity, if it was truly about “education”, Ms. Walsh? Hmm?
Which begs the question: why all the handwringing on your part?
“Handwringing? How so?”
O: Because, as I’ve said before and as bears repeating, Murray makes clear in his book Coming Apart, THAT YOUR DAUGHTER IS GOING TO DO JUST FINE, REGARDLESS AS TO WHETHER HUS EXISTS OR NOT. The reasons for why this is so is again, to be found in Murray’s book and Hymowitz’s writings.
So again, I ask: why all the handwringing on your part? Especially since chances are very high that your daughter, and the daughters of those of your cohort reading this on the regular, are highly unlikely to be or wind up, like Ms. Jessica?
Please explain?
“I saw a teachable moment in the story.”
O: Given the above stated facts, it is difficult to see exactly who you are indeed “teaching”.
“I’m playing the role of exemplar for anyone who cares to read here.”
O: Indeed, you are – but what are the chances a Ms. Jessica is going to read this? To ask the question, is to answer it. And worse, Women of your cohort have successfully destroyed what few cultural traditions and institutions that could have assisted the Ms. Jessicas of the world. Take a bow!
“My motive is the same as always, trying to help young women make good relationships. Filtering out bad men is the most important thing a woman can do.”
O: By all accounts the young ladies of your daughter’s cohort are doing all of that just fine; the Ms. Jessicas, are not. Nor do I see how what you are saying here are helping her and her ilk – which is and has been, precisely my point.
*Quoting me*: And his argument is that the UMC/SWPL cohort has turned its back on their role of showing the way to the rest of White society.
“I don’t agree. If lower SES whites were interested in modeling their lives after UMC whites, they’d be using birth control, filtering carefully and marrying later, before kids. UMC whites are living by example, and Jessica Shairer was well poised to follow that trajectory. Instead, she got impregnated by a loser and dropped out.”
O: Of course you don’t agree, LOL. But what you’re missing is the fact that, as Ms. Hymowitz and Murray make very clear in their writings and studies, that the UMC Whites have all manner of checks and balances in their lives that make it darn hard for them to screw up. Whites like Ms. Jessica don’t – and which goes right to RR’s argument that (UMC White) Feminism has successfully undermined important cultural traditions and mores that guided less intelligent White Women like Ms. Jessica (I remind you, that YOU called her “stupid”). Hymowitz and Murray make it clear that UMC/SWPL Whites are very careful to make certain that their kids don’t screw things up, and they have built FOR THEMSELVES a cultural matrix to assist to that end. On the other hand, they have and continue to peddle a worldview that actively destroys the very cultural traditions that help the Ms. Jessicas of the world.
*Quoting me*: As for the UMC’s role in the invention/mainstreaming of hooking up etc, they are pretty much singlehandedly responsible for what you are discussing above. They, directly and indirectly, created the conditions by which the Ms. Jessicas today could even exist.
“Hookup culture sprang up when dorms went coed and universities stopped operating in loco parentis. Relaxed sexual mores plus that loss of chaperoning student behavior led to the prioritization of casual sex. That’s a different phenom entirely than 9th graders getting pregnant.”
O: Fun question: WHO CREATED ALL OF THAT? Was it working class Whites in Fishtown? Inner city Black folks like Obsidian?
Or UMC White folks – particularly Women – who look a heck of a lot more like Susan Walsh and Kay Hymowitz, than Jessica Schairer?
Hmm?
Holla back
O.
@Jackie
I know I’m coming in late the party but this is something that has both perplexed and angered me for some time:
Despite my position in a prior thread the two times I had a pregnancy scare I made preparations to step up. The second was my fiancee so, well, that’s more speeding up thing, but the first was a woman I had sex with the first time I went to college. I told her after the semester was over I’d enlist and we’d get married (ironically I dropped out of college and signed up anyway, needed the growing up). I was always ready to be a stand up guy.
My sister had more marriage proposals than I’ve had relationships that lasted more than two dates. I’m dating a woman whose N isn’t just higher than mine but is about twice the number of women I’ve dated period.
So I hear all these women complaining men won’t commit and men won’t be the stand up guy.
Well then quit fucking the men who refuse to be stand up guys and date the men who are ready to do that.
Why, why, would women rather chase losers and complain about them? What benefit do they derive from it?
Ramble, the “logic” is that when the girls’ parents were growing up, the choices of music available were rock and roll, jazz and classical. Then when those girls were growing up, the choices of music available were increased to rock and roll, jazz, classical, rap, goth, metal, and pop.
Pop music was also more heavily promoted by the media, certainly more so than rock and roll was by the time those girls were growing up. How is it not logical that when a young girl is heavily exposed to a certain genre, she grows up liking it more? I gave myself as an example of someone exposed more to classical and liking that more.
I don’t think it is rare. Not all men are equally oriented to short-term mating. My husband took himself off the market with options, and that’s hardly unusual. I would never want to be with a man in a LTR because he figured he might never get another gf.
It Sassy wants a player, that’s different, but I don’t think she does.
What I am saying is this:
If some Bellita says, “I am really into John Mayer types.” Fine. Assuming you are not completely brain dead, you know what you are getting yourself into.
If some Bellita says, “I am a ‘good’ girl. Oh, and I just got pumped and dumped by John Mayer. But, it wasn’t my fault. I thought we would have something special, I thought that he blah blah blah”.
She is, IMO, full of it. I haven’t seen everything, but I have seen enough to know that she tells herself convenient lies.
And, most of us do. But I am not going to let that shit fly in the HUSosphere where young lurkers are trying to learn.
Semi-off-topic, but I find it neat:
http://www.cosmiccradle.com/pregnancy04.html
@Hope
I think Ramble’s question has more to do with the music itself than with the marketing around it.
The music of Madonna, Britney, et al. may tap into a long popular music tradition, but the marketing of that music (or of them as celebrities) taps into something deeper in the young female psyche.
@Ramble
What about the Bellita who says, “What is a John Mayer type?”
I wasn’t trying to argue with you. It’s just that I didn’t know what the root of your objection was. That is, I wasn’t sure whether the control variable in your first statement was Swift, Meyer or the c***. Apparently, it’s Meyer!
Susan, how much of a dick I am allowed to be vis-a-vis Kevin’s wife’s weight and looks?
Bellita, the marketing of everything taps into people’s psyche. It’s more about the marketing than it is about the thing itself.
For example, in many cultures “angelic” themes are vastly more popular than “demonic” themes. But the “dark and evil” themes are more popular in America. Is it something intrinsic to Americans or is it marketing? I’m inclined toward marketing.
Uhmmm, no. 49% are below median, but not below average.
Easily constructed dataset:
The numbers 61-100 twice and 1 twenty times for 100 data points.
Average: 64.6
Number of data points below average: 28.
Number of data points above average: 72
Median: 75.5
Number of data points below median: 50
Number of data points above median: 50
Mode: 1
Number of data points at mode: 20
Number of data points not mode: 80
It might seem pendantic, but the confusion of the mean (average) and median and what kinds of sets are best described by each is arguably the worst innumerate mistake people make and the one most exploited by people (for example, why is it more informative to compare median income in the income quintiles than the average).
@Ms. Walsh #688:
“What I do not want to get into is discussing the differences in abilities between races. If I misunderstood the point you were making, I apologize. I have no interest in HBD debate here – I’ve never allowed it in 3.5 years and I see no reason to start now.”
O: Yes, but WHY? WHY is it so very verboten for you to discuss it – given the fact of the times in which we live? I quote Hymowitz on this point:
“In other words, Inge’s mother seems to lack not so much a set of skills as the motivation to bring them to bear in a consistent, mindful way. In middle-class families, the child’s development — emotional, social and (these days, above all) cognitive — takes center stage. It is the family’s raison d’etre, its state religion. It’s the reason for that Mozart or Rafi tape in the morning and that bedtime story at night, for finding out all you can about a teacher in the fall and for Little League in the spring, for all the books, crib mobiles, trips to the museum and limits on TV. It’s the reason, even, for careful family planning; fewer children, properly spaced, allow parents to focus ample attention on each one. Just about everything that defines middle-class parenting — talking to a child, asking questions, reasoning rather than spanking — consciously aims at education or child development. In The Family in the Modern Age, sociologist Brigitte Berger traces how the nuclear family arose in large measure to provide the environment for the “family’s great educational mission.”
What’s Holding Black Kids Back? By Kay S. Hymowitz
http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/miarticle.htm?id=3346#.UA7p3WFfGp0
To be sure, Hymowiz is no HBDer – but her article makes clear the fact of the STARK differences in child rearing between lower class Whites and UMC Whites – and yes, part of that reason, has undeniably to do, with IQ.
Since you and RR seem to be at differences on this point, let me say right now that I am pretty sure RR isn’t jumping for joy over all of this…I know I’m not. I don’t like how many of the HBDers come at me and mine. Nor do I like the fact that few if any of me and mine will be Nobel Prize winners in the hard sciences.
But the bigger picture is that if we don’t deal, honestly, with the facts of all this, the biggest losers WILL be me and mine…and an increasing number of Whites, too. I mean for God’s sake, Ms. Walsh, the very name of your blog is HOOKING UP SMART – even YOU, recognize the primacy of IQ, and the role it can and does play, in the mating dance. And despite the FACT that your daughter and the daughters of so many UMC Whites are gonna do just fine in the end, you aren’t taking any shorts – hence again, this very blog. The simple fact of the matter, among many, is that the Ms. Jessicas and Ms. Shaniquas of the world don’t have any of this, and what they did have years ago in the form of the Church and Big Mamas, are gone – in large part due to radical feminist ideologues who are cut from the same demographic and yes I’ll say it, racial cloth, as you. We can quibble and gnash our teeth and you can ban and delete anyone and everyone here, and in the end it won’t change one jot or tittle of what I, RR or anyone else has said.
Your post’s very title, is one that asks a question; but when people begin to offer answers – not willy-nilly but rather, rooted in actual data and empirical study mind you – you suddenly want to put the kabosh on it. This is not a form of friendship with which I am familiar.
Where I come from, Ms. Walsh, true homies speak the truth to each other. Even if its unpleasant; especially if its unpleasant. Because, if you can’t get the truth from those you consider close friends, where can you get it from?
The truth of the matter is, that the SWPL/UMC hasn’t been friends to Black folks, and they definitely haven’t been friends to Fishtown Whites; indeed, quite the opposite. They loathe and have utter contempt for them, which explains in part why they’ve waged a multi-decade, multi-pronged unrelenting assault to destroy them – culturally, educationally, economically, politically.
I’ll hold here.
O.
Hope, I absolutely guaran-fucking-tee you that there parents (in general) were not exposing them to Madonna and neither were the schools.
Yes, their parents may have been listening to rock (and the schools would have been exposing them to classics and/or classical), but those girls did not then go on to listen to Deep Purple or Paul Robeson or Mozart.
The Sex Pistol were all but banned in the UK and they became a huge British phenomenon.
Hope, you are reaching.
I wasn’t trying to argue with you.
Oh, Bellita, I know.
But, yes, John Mayer is the “control”.
I agree. TV has hit rock bottom with the reality shows. When I see shows like Jersey Shore, Housewives, Bachelor shows, or Jerry Springer, I wish I could secede from the Union. I guess that makes me elitist but I’d love a gigantic eject button. I’d get rid of half the population.
Ramble, your material is getting better and better, my erudite friend!
PS: Did you ever read the Mayer interview in Playboy? It was extraordinarily candid and amusing.
Ramble:
“If the DR, tomorrow, started choosing husbands in the manner that we have seen in Finland (or New Zealand, or Australia, or Hawaii, or…) it would be a different place in no time.”
——————
I completely agree that women need to choose better.
However, you’re missing a HUGE component.
@ Anacaona, correct me if I’m wrong.
While Susan would feel like a failure if her son was an unemployed, non-involved babydaddy- many DR mothers (and fathers) probably consider his behavior normal! Perhaps even- momma would be beaming with pride (or think it’s cute) at how her son can woo all of the women, afterall, momma was priming him to do just that since he was a tiny tot.
Momma would LOVE Fresh Fly Watchamaccallit.
He would be able to come back home to mooch off of mom and continue his lifestyle, even repeating it with several women and his mom (and everyone in the culture) would totally coddle him (and now they commiserate with the women too since it’s so prevalent).
Of course, some women will find it abhorrent when they find themselves in the same situation, but it’s Ok when their sons do it.
Several generations of this, and now both genders accept all of this nonsense and don’t have the slighest clue how to break the vicious cycle of dysfunction.
Is this how it goes in Finland?
I highly doubt it.
Susan, they also have “Reality Shows” like Pawn Stars (which is surprisingly informative) and The Deadliest Catch.
I am still willing to bet that most of those girls are going to CHOOSE to watch Jersey Shore over Pawn Stars.
Ramble, plenty of parents sat their kids in front of the TV for hours on end. The phrase “MTV generation” didn’t come out of nowhere.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MTV_Generation
Anyway, no need to be so angry. I’ll stop here.
Others have already beat you to it. However, remember, he was the one who told the story about cleaning up his act to get her to marry him. We can only assume he has no regrets. Also, there was one shot of him, he looks rather portly himself. Their SMVs struck me as similar.
Bastiat, thank you for the compliment, but, TBH, I tend to just hammer the same dozen themes over and over again.
Susan, could probably erase all of my future comments and simply cut-and-paste some of my old ones in places where she would think I would go off.
=====================
No, I never read the interview. I very rarely see or read anything about people like him. I am a little surprised I know as much as I do…it all comes from friends.
However, the funniest thing I have ever read on Roissys (back when I would read there) was some commenter referring to John Mayer as being a Gramscian Whore.
Alias, I don’t think I am missing that at all.
Sooner or later, if you get enough Jessica Shairer’s, that previous culture will be replaced by the newer one.
On Ms. Jessica’s Black Baby Daddy…
I am having a great many problems with this dimension of the discussion thus far. For one thing, Ms. Walsh seems quite ham-fisted on the judgments being brought to bear on him, *when we don’t have his side of the story*. Yes, I am saying that Women can and will lie to make themselves look “righter”, and that Ms. Jessica isn’t above doing so either. In the case of the Faulkners, we have had the chance to hear from both Ms. Chris and her hubbie Mr. Kevin, and so we can make a judgment about them both based on this. In the case of Ms. Jessica however, we do not have any such information – indeed, in the case of the Man who came into her life after her baby daddy, we don’t have any such testimony either. We have, in fact, nothing to go on but her word. And given her own actions, I for one am disinclined to take her word all that seriously.
Such is the big problem I have with such news pieces; they rarely if ever, try to get the Man’s side of the story. I have discussed previously my talks with the authors of the book Promises I Can Keep; I asked them flatout if they had interviewed the baby daddies, and they were forced to respond “no”. The very idea hadn’t even occured to them, even when they had acknowledged the work of Lionel Tiger (I had prompted them on this score).
Moreover, I maintain that the original article by Mr. Deparle, as well as Ms. Walsh’s take on it, is highly misleading, precisely because Ms. Chris and Ms. Jessica are in fact nothing alike because of who they chose to mate with racially. Data on the matter continues to show a higher rate of breakup and divorce between WW/BM couples across the SES spectrum, and a major factor why is due to increased racial pressures placed upon the couple that the reverse simply may not experience as much. After all, Male intrasexual competition is not only very real, but can and has proven quite deadly (recall the lynchings in this country, Emmit Till, Tulsa OK Race War/Black Wall Street, et al). Again, I cite the current President’s travails in this regard.
Having said all of that, I do not wish to give anyone the impression that I am letting off Ms. Jessica’s baby daddy off the hook; indeed, if he is to found guity of failure to pay child support and the like, he can and should be punished accordingly. I am just saying that there is a goodly bit more to the story than we are being led to believe, and it would behoove us to reserve final judgment until we get it.
O.
Susan, I am not saying he regrets it, but, it doesn’t mean that he loves that part either.
Though, you are right, men and women DO have the same standards and priorities when it comes to that issue. I can’t believe I keep bringing it up.
@Hope
For example, in many cultures “angelic” themes are vastly more popular than “demonic” themes. But the “dark and evil” themes are more popular in America.
I can’t buy that. I’m a Horror movie buff (Surprise!) who finds Asian Horror much more chilling than Western Horror could ever be, and from where I sit, it’s not only that “demonic” speaks to everyone, everywhere, but also that Americans look vastly more optimistic and light-hearted than everyone else!
Is it something intrinsic to Americans or is it marketing? I’m inclined toward marketing.
But how can you successfully market a product when there is no need or desire for a product? And even if you are able to manage market conditions for several decades (from Elvis to Lady Gaga) in order to create and ultimately refine that new need or desire, the fact remains that you had your work cut out for you. That is, you started with something that was already there.
I vaguely recall an article that compared the hysterical girl fans at rock concerts to the hysterical girls at the Salem witch trials. The writer’s thesis was that the two phenomena were basically the same. (We can say that the spread of the hysteria through witch hunts was also a form of marketing.)
Having said that, I admit that certain images and associations have no power beyond our historical and geographical context. But I think there are enough that appeal to something more ancient and recurring. And I think that marketers know that better than you or I do.
Ramble
My point of #718, is that there is no better. No one’s expected to be better.
Dovetailing with the other points made here, those who behave better are out of sight or out of reach.
Exactly. I am not interested in data, stats or arguments because I do not wish to discuss it further.
No one disputes the gap, that is statistical fact. The dispute is very much about the causes, and that is where I decline to speculate. For my part, I think a close look at America today more than explains a gap, and it has nothing to do with raw ability.
I agree with the premise, and I believe that we are seeing stupid whites quickly catching up to the numbers of other groups, despite the inherent privileges in being white to start with.
When I saw the interview I was stunned the woman had enrolled in college. I am glad she found gratifying work, but she was never going to be a CPA. Just saying.
Bellita, I work in marketing. It’s about knowing your audience AND influencing your audience.
Taste is a whole subject onto itself. I don’t believe in blank slate or all nature. I’m inclined toward the interaction between nature and nurture.
Anyway, suffice it to say I don’t watch much TV. I see how it tries to affect me, and I don’t like it.
My cohort? Do you mean white educated feminists in my generation? What’s that, about 5% of the population? In any case, none of it could have been accomplished without significant male assistance.
That’s facile. The checks and balances are self-imposed. People need to take responsibility for raising their children. Paging Bill Cosby and it goes for white folks too.
Higher ed institutions created it, reflecting not just a loosening of sexual mores, but also the championing of the ME movement going back to the 60s. American institutions, controlled nearly entirely by men, copped to “If it feels good, do it.”
I was reading an article in Time magazine from 1970 about dorms going coed and yes, all sorts of UMC folks were raving about it. Both men and women.
If you’re aiming to get me to take personal responsibility for the Jessica Shairers of the world, dream on.
@Susan
A little off-topic, but some good material here: http://www.askmen.com/specials/great_male_survey/dating.html
Susan:
“I agree with the premise, and I believe that we are seeing stupid whites quickly catching up to the numbers of other groups, despite the inherent privileges in being white to start with.”
———
I just want to add:
Most people are within the center of the bell curve. That’s not stupid (at least not IQ wise). Normal IQ people certainly have the capacity to make better choices in life. I’m interested in supporting that.
@Obsidian
The question of race is a red herring in this discussion. We can talk about poor and rich, educated and uneducated, with teeth and without teeth. Whatever you like. I made that clear to RR. You say yourself that poor whites and blacks are in the same boat, so why segregate?
What you’re really saying is that liberal policies have utterly failed everyone but the wealthy, yes?
@Alias
Agreed. And the levers are culture – at the individual, family, institutional and societal level. How do we begin to shift those? Shame? Withdrawal of subsidies?
Susan – “What you’re really saying is that liberal policies have utterly failed everyone but the wealthy, yes?”
I don’t know about Obs, but I’ll drink to that statement!
Many interesting things in that survey. Among them, the plurality response to “When do women start losing their looks” was 40. This despite the manosphere’s insistence on 25 or even 22.
Perhaps I am a MILF fetishist, but I’ve always thought that women remain attractive longer than the sphere says. I guess I am not quite as much of an outlier as I thought.
It’s actually not so easy to see what postive effects liberal policies have had on the wealthy, beyond assuaging guilty conciences.
This is to distinguish liberal policies from corporate welfare, crony capitalism and the like, which are non-ideological (though as manifestations of big government, can perhaps be classified as liberal).
Ramble:
“Girls really, really, really wanted to have their Madonna, and Brittanys and Gagas”
Whether its Brittney or whomever young people (9-25) will pretty much buy anything marketed towards them as “cool”, so I’m not sure if we should give them any agency in these decisions. For example, its not mostly women buying hip hop, its middle class white male youth (that’s what I remember hearing at least), and I can see the “cool male” factor involved. But women aren’t paying to watch action movies where the most buff/violent alpha wins the girl, yet adult men are? Why is this?
What “majority” women seem to overwhelmingly support is the romance genre. Sarah Jessica Parker, Reese Witherspoon, Renee Zellwegger, Julia Roberts are all popular 3-6 on attraction scale. It makes sense I guess that women would promote anything that assigns them a high value, but I am just curious to understand why men do seem open to, and fixated on, alpha diversity. Yes, the guy who plays Thor is hot, but men will also watch Will Smith, or Wesley Snipes, or Vin Diesel, or Jet Li or Jackie Chan kicking butt, or Pierce Brosnan (alpha?) winning the girl more than the plain tech guy. What I’m curious about is why?
@Hope (659)
Yep, still am, but I’m closer to about 450 hours in. At this point I already have enough gear to crush pretty much everything in the game (even Inferno Act III). I still find it entertaining though – for the last 30 hours, since I have a fully tricked out barb, I’ve just been using the game to make some extra cash – minimum wage at best, but considering that a.) it’s a video game and b.) you can start and stop anytime you want, it’s a good deal. After a three hour session I’ll have enough gold to make a few flawless star gems, good for about $6/piece. Since I’m a Blizzard fanboy (been to two Blizzcons so far) I’ll probably pick WoW back up after the expansion comes out.
I’m just letting the money accumulate in Paypal for now, I don’t even look at the account. The fable of the crow and the pitcher comes to mind.
@Zach
I love the annual AskMen survey! Thanks for giving me a heads up. That’s nice and easy to post from vacation.
@Ms. Walsh:
“Exactly. I am not interested in data, stats or arguments because I do not wish to discuss it further.”
O: Fair enough. Just so long as you know that the issue will not only not go away, but at some point will come back roaring at all of us. If you can live with it, so can I.
“No one disputes the gap, that is statistical fact. The dispute is very much about the causes, and that is where I decline to speculate. For my part, I think a close look at America today more than explains a gap, and it has nothing to do with raw ability.”
O: But why is that so very wrong? I mean, do you honestly think that Mexican guys are going to start coming en masse into the NBA? If not, WHY?
“I agree with the premise, and I believe that we are seeing stupid whites quickly catching up to the numbers of other groups, despite the inherent privileges in being white to start with.”
O: Indeed; all the more reason that forums, especially like this one, need to be discussing all these things. Because they matter. For all of us.
“When I saw the interview I was stunned the woman had enrolled in college. I am glad she found gratifying work, but she was never going to be a CPA. Just saying.”
O: In light of that fact, please allow me to pose the following question:
What is your position about tracking? How do you feel about it? Do any of your friends/associates discuss it? What has been the results – especially when race/class comes into it?
“My cohort? Do you mean white educated feminists in my generation? What’s that, about 5% of the population? In any case, none of it could have been accomplished without significant male assistance.”
O: Indeed – but I remind you Ms. Walsh, you posed the question as to who was responsible for the single mommy epidemic – and then you made it clear that Female Choice was at fault. I don’t disagree – I just want to more much more precise.
Also, keep in mind, please – that it took less than 20 Men to knock America’s front teeth out – and we still haven’t gotten dentures to fix that yet…
“That’s facile. The checks and balances are self-imposed. People need to take responsibility for raising their children. Paging Bill Cosby and it goes for white folks too.”
O: Please point out where I have suggested otherwise? Indeed, Ms. Jessica lays blame on no one for her decisions – she accepts fully, the implications of her actions. None of that diminishes one iota, any of what I’ve said. Murray hit the nail on the head – BOOM!
“Higher ed institutions created it, reflecting not just a loosening of sexual mores, but also the championing of the ME movement going back to the 60s. American institutions, controlled nearly entirely by men, copped to “If it feels good, do it.”
O: Sure. Nevertheless, the heavy hand of UMC White Feminism, is undeniable. No matter how much anyone may try to deny it.
“I was reading an article in Time magazine from 1970 about dorms going coed and yes, all sorts of UMC folks were raving about it. Both men and women.”
O: OK – so again, where am I wrong?
“If you’re aiming to get me to take personal responsibility for the Jessica Shairers of the world, dream on.”
O: No, I am not. What I am aiming to get to you to see/admit, is that the central parties responsible for the single mommyhood epidemic in America, are UMC/SWPL Women, *like yourself*. Again, I quote Hymowitz:
“Though other Western countries also concluded that it was OK for the unmarried to have kids, what they had in mind as the substitute for marriage was something similar to it: a stable arrangement in which two partners, cohabiting over the long term, would raise their children together. The embrace of “lone motherhood” — women bringing up kids with no dad around — has been an American specialty.”
http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/miarticle.htm?id=8174#.UA7482FfGp0
Hymowitz goes on to explain exactly how this state of affairs that we are discussing came about – and I can promise you, it wasn’t from the Ms. Jessicas and Ms. Rashidahs of the world, Ms. Walsh.
If you really want answers, you have to be prepared when you find the them.
“The question of race is a red herring in this discussion. We can talk about poor and rich, educated and uneducated, with teeth and without teeth. Whatever you like. I made that clear to RR. You say yourself that poor whites and blacks are in the same boat, so why segregate?”
O: Because the results and implicates themselves segregate and because in America – even at this late date in her history – Race Matters. Again, over a century of documented test scores ranging from the US Military to SAT and more – says that we should be concerned. But again, I get that you don’t want to go there for purposes of this discussion, so we can leave that alone. Nevertheless, TBC is onto something in its central argument.
“What you’re really saying is that liberal policies have utterly failed everyone but the wealthy, yes?”
O: No. What I am saying is that policies put forth by the Cognitive Elite have utterly failed everyone but the wealthy and/or connected.
Hence again, my citation of Murray, and the centrality of his argument per this discussion.
Holl back
O.What you’re really saying is that liberal policies have utterly failed everyone but the wealthy, yes?
ion – “Yes, the guy who plays Thor is hot, but men will also watch Will Smith, or Wesley Snipes, or Vin Diesel, or Jet Li or Jackie Chan kicking butt, or Pierce Brosnan (alpha?) winning the girl more than the plain tech guy. What I’m curious about is why?”
Because deep down inside, most men want to be a bad ass. I watch these types of movies because:
1. I don’t want to watch something sad and realistic. Give me guns, car chases, and explosions over real substance any day. I watch movies to relax, not thinkg.
2. I’m not a fan of horror flicks, and if you remove actions and horror, all thats’s left is comedy (which to me most fail miserably) or “chick flicks” and as I said I very much dislike more realistic movies.
3. The guys that do those movies are bad ass, or at least they look bad ass. I don’t care that in the end they get the girl, I want to see them blow shit up.
But maybe that’s just me…
Susan – “What you’re really saying is that liberal policies have utterly failed everyone but the wealthy, yes?”
Ted D – “I don’t know about Obs, but I’ll drink to that statement!”
Agree!
@Ted #738:
“Susan – “What you’re really saying is that liberal policies have utterly failed everyone but the wealthy, yes?”
I don’t know about Obs, but I’ll drink to that statement!”
O: Not so fast, my friend:
http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/289775-1
This isn’t about Left/Right; this is about the Cognitive Elite putting one over on the rest of us.
O.
I like that survey of men. This one is relevant (from Part III):
Which of the following characteristics best defines a “real man” in 2012?
57% Being a great father and husband who takes care of his family.
22% Being a great leader and motivator.
5% Being charismatic and popular.
1% Being a great seducer and/or lover.
Susan:
“Higher ed institutions created it, reflecting not just a loosening of sexual mores, but also the championing of the ME movement going back to the 60s. American institutions, controlled nearly entirely by men, copped to “If it feels good, do it.””
—–
Let’s not forget lawyers, politicians, the corporate world and yes, the media. So many hands in the pot.
Not that the masses were dragged by their hair kicking and screaming, many welcomed it. Pandora’s box.
_______________________
Susan:
“Agreed. And the levers are culture – at the individual, family, institutional and societal level.
—
I support what you do here- influencing youth at the individual level.
Your focus is set on college kids and I totally understand that you can’t go outside of the scope of what you know. It’s just that it’s almost impossible to completely omit from the discussion what’s happening at the macro-level.
______________
Susan:
“How do we begin to shift those? Shame? Withdrawal of subsidies?”"
—-
That’s the 64 million dollar question.
The first obstacle to conquer is all of the PC BS. (that’s what Obs is saying) .
Obsidian – “O: Not so fast, my friend:
http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/289775-1
This isn’t about Left/Right; this is about the Cognitive Elite putting one over on the rest of us. ”
True. But the Cognitive Elite is predominantly a left-leaning group, is it not? Perhaps we are arguing which came first, the chicken or the egg?
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