A frequent source of debate here is the question of what percentage of students in college are participating in hookup culture, i.e. casual sex. Regular readers know that I have made the following tentative statement:
Overall, the sexes show very little difference in the number of sexual partners. This would seem to confirm the hypothesis that a small percentage of promiscuous students are engaging in casual sex with one another, while a much larger group has a few partners during college, and well over a third of students have no sex at all.
In other words, there are approximately equal numbers of each sex having most of the casual sex. It is my assumption that they pretty much service one another – if promiscuous men are getting with sexually inexperienced women, then the reverse must also be true, and this seems highly unlikely.
My claim is derived from two primary sources of data:
I. U.S. Dept. of Justice Campus Sexual Assault Study, 2007
| Female % | Male % | |
| 0 | 37.2 | 42.8 |
| 1-5 | 54.1 | 49.4 |
| 6-10 | 5.7 | 5.6 |
| 11-25 | 2.0 | 0.9 |
| 26+ | 1.1 | 1.3 |
*Intercourse not defined.
N= 26,764
The subjects were distributed roughly equally across grades, with slightly higher representation among freshmen and seniors.
II. The National College Health Assessment, 2010
Distribution of Sexual Partners*
|
# partners |
Males % |
Females % |
|
0 |
34 |
34 |
|
1 |
38 |
43 |
|
2 |
10 |
10 |
|
3 |
6 |
6 |
|
4 |
4 |
3 |
|
5 |
3 |
2 |
|
6 |
1 |
1 |
|
7 |
1 |
1 |
|
8 |
1 |
0 |
|
9+ |
3 |
1 |
*Includes vaginal, anal and oral sex partners.
N = 18,820 females, 10,080 males; 35% freshmen, 19% sophomores, 19% juniors, 11% seniors, 5% fifth year, 9% graduate students
My claim that the promiscuous students are somewhat insular on campus has been hotly disputed here, primarily by males who believe that most if not all women will hook up with a player or cad if given the opportunity. One enterprising young fellow even crunched his own numbers for the NCHA to determine the mean number of partners in the 9+ category in an effort to prove me wrong. (H/T: Wudang)
I said before that the top 2.6% of men were responsible for 29% of the lays. For the same proportion of women, 2.6% (n = 491) are responsible for 18.8% of the lays among women. That means the top guys are taking a much bigger share of the lays than the top girls are. The sluttiest guys are sluttier than the sluttiest girls. The only way that’s possible is if slutty guys are banging girls less slutty than themselves. Which is what I have been saying all along, and directly contradicts Walsh’s explanation of players banging whores.
Indeed, his calculations are correct, but he failed to take several factors into account about the data, which together void his conclusion:
- The data is sourced from 39 diverse colleges and universities. Because the national college sex ratio is 60% female and 40% male, there will be 50% more slutty girls on campus than guys if 20% of each group is promiscuous.
- Of the respondents, 50% of females were in committed relationships, vs. 41% of males.
- The data includes 474 gay males, or 5% of the male respondents, who are undoubtedly heavily represented among the 263 men in the 9+ category, with a mean of 19 partners.
- The data includes 671 lesbians, or 4% of the female respondents. There are only 155 females in the 9+ group. They likely have fewer sexual partners than straight women.
In an effort to gain additional insight about the sexual behavior of college students, especially the highly promiscuous, I have conducted an exhaustive search for the past week to uncover any and all pertinent data.
First a word about real vs. perceived sexual behavior on American college campuses:
The Role of Pluralistic Ignorance in Perpetuating Hookup Culture
More college students hook up than actually date, but most prefer to date, Washington Post, 5/9/10
A new study by psychologists at James Madison University found — not surprisingly — that college students hooked up almost twice as often as they went on actual dates. The perplexing part? The majority of students from both genders said that given the choice, they preferred traditional dating.
All things being equal, 95 percent of female students said they would choose dating over hooking up, and 77.5 percent of men said the same.
So, uh, why don’t they just date?
Arnie Kahn, one of three co-authors of the study, which grew out of undergraduate student Carolyn Bradshaw’s thesis, says it comes down to something called “pluralistic ignorance.” Essentially: Everybody’s doing it, so it must be good.
One of Kahn’s previous studies on the topic found that both men and women overestimated the degree to which the opposite gender enjoyed hooking up — described in this study as “a sexual encounter, usually lasting only one night, between people who are strangers or brief acquaintances.”
Furthermore, students overestimated how much members of their own gender liked hooking up. “Because everybody else is hooking up you assume that they do it because they like it. Whereas you know that you don’t like it that much, but you do it to go along,” Kahn explains. “College students are very conformist.”
…The study, based on surveys of 220 undergrads, found that students are plenty aware of the risks of hooking up, as well. Because hookups are not always planned and often not with a well-known partner, a majority of both male and female students said they saw the contraction of a sexually transmitted disease as a major risk. Almost 40 percent of women also said the potential for pregnancy was a big downside.
Increasingly, institutions are studying their own student populations.
Researchers at Duke University took a random sample of almost 1,500 students at their Durham, N.C. campus and found that only about one-third of students had previously had a hookup in college. Researchers surveyed 732 freshmen and 723 seniors and found that of the one-third in each grade that have had a hookup, less than half involved oral sex or vaginal intercourse. The study also found that nearly 60% of the freshmen reported that they had never had sexual intercourse.
Statistical Inaccuracies By Gender
Several recent sexuality surveys have found no sex differences in self-reported sexual behavior (Browning, Kessler, Hatfield, & Choo, 1999), incidence of casual sexual interactions (Maticka-Tyndale, Herold, & Mewhinney, 1998; Paul, McManus, & Hayes, 2000), number of sexual partners in the past year (Brown & Sinclair, 1999), or desired number of lifetime sexual partners (Pedersen et al., 2002). The lack of sex differences in these studies and in our analysis may reflect currently shifting gender roles and their subsequent impact on normative expectations and expressions of sexual behavior.
Sampling Bias
It is important to keep in mind that college women hook up the most freshmen year, and participation drops sharply after that each year. In contrast, men’s frequency of hooking up does not diminish over time (Bogle, 2008). For this reason, studies with equal numbers of students in each year are the most accurate, but they are also the most difficult to come by, as studies tend to include disproportionate numbers of freshmen.
To the best of my knowledge, the following data comprises all available sources of hooking up research. Any additional links or sources would be greatly appreciated.
A. Short-Term Prospective Study of Hooking Up Among College Students
N = 301 females, 93 males; 41% freshmen, 33% sophomores, 20% juniors, 6% seniors
In one semester, hookup up activity was as follows:
| Female % | Male % | |
| No hookup | 47.2 | 32.3 |
| Non-penetrative hookup | 26.2 | 22.6 |
| Penetrative hookup | 26.6 | 45.2 |
B. The Casualties of `Casual’ Sex: A Qualitative Exploration of the Phenomenology of College Students’ Hookups
N= 155 females, 32 males; 4% freshmen, 44% sophomores, 27% juniors, 25% seniors
70% of students hooked up at least once during college.
26% of females had intercourse during a hookup.
44% of all hookups happened at Greek social events.
C. Hooking Up on Campus: Cognitive Dissonance and Sexual Regret Among College Students
N = 158 females, 134 males; 89% freshmen, 5% sophomores, 5% juniors, 2% seniors
The distribution of the number of hookups vs. sexual (vaginal) intercourse varies greatly:
Number of Hookups
| Male N | Male % | Female N | Female % | |
| 0 | 36 | 27 | 52 | 33 |
| 1-5 | 42 | 31 | 62 | 39 |
| 6-10 | 21 | 16 | 20 | 13 |
| 11-15 | 15 | 11 | 4 | 2.5 |
| 16-20 | 6 | 4.5 | 5 | 3 |
| 21-25 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 1 |
| 26-30 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 2.5 |
| 31-35 | 2 | 1.5 | 0 | 0 |
| 36-40 | 2 | 1.5 | 3 | 2 |
| 41-45 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| 46-50 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| 50+ | 5 | 3.7 | 5 | 3 |
Number of Sexual Intercourse Partners
| Male N | Male % | Female N | Female % | |
| 0 | 28 | 21 | 54 | 34 |
| 1-3 | 86 | 64 | 88 | 56 |
| 4-6 | 16 | 12 | 13 | 8 |
| 7-9 | 2 | 1.5 | 1 | 1 |
| 10-12 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| 13-15 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
Sexual intercourse with someone once and only once:
Males 40%
Females 24%
Sexual intercourse with someone known less than 24 hours:
Males 29%
Females 10%
Received or performed oral sex with someone known less than 24 hours:
Males 34%
Females 9%
D. Prevalence and Characteristics of Sexual Hookups Among First-Semester Female College Students
N = 118 females, mean age of 18
In first semester of college, percentage who hooked up:
Kissing: 65%
Touching breasts: 58%
Touching genitals: 46%
Oral sex: 27%
Vaginal sex: 27%
Anal sex: 1%
Who they hooked up with:
Friends: 47%
Acquaintances: 23%
Strangers: 14%
Ex-boyfriends: 12%
44% of hookups were at least Round 2.
E. Hooking Up and Penetrative Hookups: Correlates that Differentiate College Men
N = 412 males, 36% freshmen, 36% sophomores, 18% juniors, 9% seniors, mean age of 19.4
A majority of studies on hooking up among college students included samples of both men and women. Although they often compare men and women, many have small samples of men. Thus, findings that make gender comparisons may largely be driven by female responses.
Further, those comparing men and women fail to address potentially important within-group variations. Such within-group variation is critical to prevention and intervention programs and this study answered the call of researchers to report specifically on the experiences of men who are hooking up.
…Men who dropped out had significantly more hookup partners in the past 4 months(M=2.63) compared to men who completed the study (M=1.82). Given this difference, our results may be more conservative findings of hooking up and hookup behaviors among men.
69% of subjects reported hooking during one semester.
73% of those, or 50% overall, included sexual intercourse.
Primary predictors of hooking up:
- Extraverted personality
- High alcohol consumption
- Previous hookup experience
F. HerCampus.com annual Ultimate College Guy Survey, 2011
N > 1000 males
| Girls Hooked Up With | Girls Had SEX With | |
| 0 | 4.6% | 15.0% |
| 1-2 | 11.1% | 32.3% |
| 3-4 | 11.3% | 20.2% |
| 5-7 | 14.3% | 11.3% |
| 8-10 | 10.8% | 7.3% |
| 10-20 | 20.3% | 8.7% |
| 20-30 | 12.1% | 1.9% |
| 30-40 | 5.4% | 0.6% |
| 40-50 | 3.3% | 0.5% |
| >50 | 4.2% | 1.0% |
| >100 | 2.5% | 1.2% |
G. Hook-Up Behavior: A Biopsychosocial Perspective
Note: Unintentional hookups refer to excessive alcohol or drug use.
Very few participants (6%) actually expected hook-ups to result in traditional romantic relationships, although over one-third (37%) indicated that ideally they would.
Slightly less than one-third (30%) expected hook-ups to result in nothing more between the participants, although very few (13%) indicated that this would be ideal. For both men and women, the most common expected outcome following a hook-up was further hookups (43% for men and 36% for women).
However, the ideal outcome following a hook up differed by gender, with the highest proportion of men (32%) hoping for additional hook-ups, but the largest proportion of women (43%) hoping for a traditional romantic relationship.
Key Findings
1. Student misperceptions of sexual norms on campus, known as Pluralistic Ignorance, perpetrates hookup culture and affects personal behavioral decisions.
2. Both male and female college students lie about their number of sexual partners.
3. The college sex ratio influences the supply and demand curves for sex and relationships. It also means that equal proportions of promiscuous males and females will produce a larger number of promiscuous girls than guys on campus.
4. Studies consistently estimate that 26-27% of freshmen women have sexual intercourse during at least one hookup. (12% of those partners are ex-boyfriends.)
5. Studies estimate that 45-50% of males have sexual intercourse while hooking up over the course of a semester.
6. Half of men and women who hook up are seeking a traditional romantic relationship.
7. A small minority of students has had more than 50 hookups (3.7% M, 3% F) and 6 sexual partners (3.5% M, 3% F).
The data clearly confirms my earlier hypothesis:
Overall, the sexes show very little difference in the number of sexual partners. This would seem to confirm the hypothesis that a small percentage of promiscuous students are engaging in casual sex with one another, while a much larger group has a few partners during college, and well over a third of students have no sex at all.
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This confirms what I’ve always felt, which is that casual sex isn’t a major problem for me when it comes to finding a partner. While the fact that 65-70% of people have hooked up at least once is somewhat worrisome, it still leaves about 1/3rd of the population that has never participated in hooking up of any sort, let alone casual sex (since perhaps ~40% of those hookups only involved kissing).
The problem is serial monogamy. Someone who has had 5 boyfriends has a very high probability of reaching 7 boyfriends. I don’t want to be #6. Serial monogamy to me indicates either that the girl wants temporary relationships, is too hypergamous, or has very poor planning and doesn’t realize that the relationships she chooses are unlikely to result in marriage.
The sheer amount of energy that went into this post is astounding.
I *love* the phrase pluralistic ignorance.
It’s my new favorite phrase.
I’m using it to replace my previous diagnostic tool, which I call “Stupid People Syndrome”.
Now I have a scientificy sounding phrase.
I can not tell you how happy I am to be able to finally retire “Stupid People Syndrome.”
Thanks!
I knew this blog would come in handy.
wow. how convoluted and complicated. the “liberators” have really delivered the goods to the X & Y generations. and they’re still pushin’ the same lines. losers, the while lot.
Someone needs to complete a study that factors in physical attractiveness. Data is near useless without.
I still can’t put much stock in these things. The men will probably lie up, the women won’t lie at all and will still vastly underestimate.
Apparently I have an uncanny ability to surround myself with one percent of the college-age female population. Strange powers, indeed.
This post is repetitive. Oh well. I just read an article about people who love to be alone. One person in that article is Kate Bolick, who is quoted. LOL!!!
@Ms. Walsh:
As per usual, a heck of a presentation! I’m quickly skimming over the post now, but a few questions pop into my mind that I’m hoping you could answer:
1. What was the point of the Roosh commenter in making/giving his numbers? I take it he was driving at a point but I’m not sure I know what it is. Do you, and what do you make of it if you do?
2. Why aren’t colleges being much more proactive in getting couples together? After all, per an excellent article written by Heather MacDonald a few years back, colleges seem very proactive in the area of “date rape” and the like; why aren’t they being much more proactive in bringing people together in the first place? It would seem to me that this alone would achieve the goal of bringing down the putatively “high” “date rape’ rate. That assumes, of course, that said guys and gals were able of being paired off to begin with…
3. It seems to me, at least insofar as the ladies are concerned, that the lion’s share of sexual behavior (depending on how one defines that) occurs during their freshmen year – which would make sense if you’re a guy and an upper classman; natural hypergamy taking its course on the female side, while “fresh meat” on the male side. Of course, this leaves the freshman guys in something of a difficult spot…and here this brings me back to the Roosh Guy. I don’t know what overall point he was making…
4. The point the researcher made about college kids being “highly conformitive” was very interesting too; I feel an HBD urge coming on…
Which brings me to:
5. Your points about gay and lesbian folk – you do know you just said some seriously politically incorrect things about them, right? You dastardly homophobe, you!
And finally…
6. You had mentioned that the data was based on some 39 *diverse* unis. I gotta ask – by what is meant, by the word *diverse*? Please explain? As you know, I’ve always suspected that the “hookup scene” may not be uniform depending on the school(s) in question. Do HBCUs have a higher rate of hookups than PWIs (Predominantly White Institutions)? I wish one of my own could answer this question, but as I’ve noted before, my own folk just don’t seem all that interested in obsessing over things like this. What about say, community colleges, versus big state schools, versus the Ivies! I mean, does U of Chitown or Northwestern’s hookup rate on par with say, Grambling or Morgan State? Is Penn State (don’t laugh) and UPenn the same, or wildly different, or what? Do the guys and gals at Columbia go at it at the same rate as CalTech?
OK, that’s it.
Holla back
O.
@JP
Thanks for noticing. I estimate 30 hours or so.
@INTJ
You may be interested to know that 15% of couples in romantic relationships have not had sexual intercourse. But the majority of women graduate from college without ever having had a boyfriend. The numbers are favorable.
@ Susan Walsh
Great post Susan. I can only imagine how much time and effort went into gathering research, reading it all, drawing your own conclusions, and writing this post.
*Teary Eyed*
You’re my hero.
“most if not all women will hook up with a player or cad if given the opportunity”
why would they not?
@ Abbot
Some of us would not because we have standards.
I can’t speak for all women, but I know that I do.
So does this throw out Vox’s survey on the pile and invalidate the 80/20 rule.
Commendations on the effort, you seem to be one of the very few trying to unpack the commonly held view without pre conceived notions.
Data Source “D”..
“In first semester of college, percentage who hooked up:
Kissing: 65%
Touching breasts: 58%”
Really? They’re defining *kissing* as “hooking up”? Does anyone else use the term this way?
I bet many grandmothers and great-grandmothers would be surprised to learn about all the guys they hooked up with in college…
@Obs
His interest is in proving that high N men are able to seduce chaste women. He appears to balk at the idea that promiscuous men are getting with promiscuous women. I assume this is an ego consideration, though I don’t know, as I have never heard from him directly. I was pointed to his analysis by a reader.
Colleges are beginning to look seriously at the Pluralistic Ignorance problem. Duke spent considerable time and resources seeking input from its students. Schools have also been proactive in scheduling more events to compete with fraternities. Although only 15% of college students in the U.S. are in Greek organizations, they account for three times that many hookups.
Male freshmen are always at a disadvantage, both in high school and college. It evens out over time, though.
I referred to demographic diversity.
http://www.achancha.org/docs/ACHA-NCHA-II_ReferenceGroup_DataReport_Fall2010.pdf
The report includes all different kinds of schools, though it does not report by school – it is an aggregate.
Awesome article. Favorited.
“I bet many grandmothers and great-grandmothers would be surprised to learn about all the guys they hooked up with in college…”
Those fine ladies would also be as shocked and disgusted as men are today per the behaviors and attitudes possessed by their grand and great grand daughters…who for some demented reason need to “express their sexuality” in order to be fully evolved humans
@Sassy
Awww, sweet girl. Hey, how’s your mom?
@Johnycomelately
Vox has looked at data for all ages, not just college kids. He and I are on the same wavelength in terms of data last time I checked.
@david foster
Most definitely! Among my focus group girls, “they hooked up” means kissed or made out at least 75% of the time.
This is key to the blog name Hooking Up Smart. It definitely does not mean Fornicating Smart.
Haha, I did! At least when I first started commenting at HUS.
I’ve since retired the term, was giving off the wrong impression to people. O_O
Apparently the idea that a chaste woman is chaste right until the moment she is not is offensive to many. Being chaste is not the hallmark of the beknighted or an indicator of godliness. It merely means you recoil from certain biological functions and apparently want to feel superior in your choice. (I know I did).
Yet is it not true that “Under the right circumstances” any healthy woman not beset by psychological problems will engage in physical affection with the (right) man? He does not have to be Mr. perfect – or even her “type” – again, context is everything. And the woman gets to ex-post-facto rationalize whatever she did: I was intoxicated, I was depressed, I just wanted to surrender to…(insert emotion here)- then the entire concept of being “chaste” seems , well, stupid and random.
Taking the power by saying “no” is great. But it is rare rare rare for someone to be consistent: No to sex, no to fast food, no to fat, no to not exercising; no to laying around, no to being afraid of social interaction; discipline is great ( it is all that Catholic school I had….) – now try to remain disciplined …..forever. No backsliding. No vacation. No desert. No indulgences/sin/etc. Repress repress repress. and see what happens. (my prediction – that dam will break…..)
“Being chaste is not the hallmark of the beknighted or an indicator of godliness.”
Define “chaste”
@SW
Astonishing amount of data you’ve culled together. It’s like you’re trying really hard to prove something…
Great research and writing, Susan.
Haters gonna hate.
http://legacy-cdn.smosh.com/smosh-pit/112010/bender-hater.gif
I’ve always thought that it was pretty obvious that the slutty behavior was insular. At my undergrad campus, everybody knew who “those girls” were. I can recall two.
“Define Chaste” – like anything else, it is in the eye of the beholder. I would define it as refraining from any sexual behavior. Think about it. The posters above, the female ones, would likely define it as female who do not engage in casual sex. Oh, but “serious” sex is Ok? What about heavy petting (is this even a term used anymore?)? should the female avoid being alone with the male at all?
I point this out to underscore how ridiculous this is. If a young woman has a steady boyfriend, then technically she is not a “slut” for having regular sex with him? (point of order: I have never, ever called a woman a slut.) What if they are “in love” and they are discreet? Does it count then? Well, it then becomes an exercise in splitting hairs. What if she has a series of very serious, very commited boyfriends? Isn’t that like being married 3,4,5 times before she is 25? Is that OK? You want to justify behavior – go ahead. Just do not preach to me about what an ass some other guy is for saying “run the right game and any woman will give it up.” Because any woman who has sex, at some point, “gives it up”. Heck, you don’t even have to lie. And the women who say “I do not want to have sex. Ever.” Ok – but that is a “tell” and it ain’t “tellin’ ” something positive (or even neutral!). (thankfully, this usually just means – “I don’t want to have sex with YOU, ever.” versus “I am psychologically scarred by [insert horror story here]” )
So why argue with some guy who turns out to be right? Is it because you have to surrender a delusion that allows you to not confront what you are chosing to do? You have to OWN it – whatever level of sexual activity you engage in.
Finally, children shouldn’t be having sex anyway – that is adult play. And you aren’t an adult until you can live without mommy and daddy paying your rent, food, car payment, etc. Especially in today’s economy – this stinks. But it does not make it any less true.
“Define Chaste”
“I would define it as refraining from any sexual behavior”
Why would a woman refrain?
@Megaman
I’m happy to be proven wrong. My interest is in being accurate – my blog and my mission apply either way. Understanding the nature of Pluralistic Ignorance on campus is key to the solution – which is offering that 80% opportunities to connect. (You could have knocked me over with that data from Duke, the poster child of top-drawer party schools.)
@Californio
You are entitled to your views on sex, but unfortunately they disqualify most women from your pool of potential mates. You are looking at very long odds.
I can’t recall a reader ever not owning it. I find that women are generally not ashamed of their choices. Even the very promiscuous women are defiant.
Great work, Susan!
Re: promiscuous sub-groups hooking up with each other. If this is the case, then it would seem that there is a natural quarantine area surrounding “hook-up culture” and that most students are emerging from college with N=0-1 (I’m assuming—as the studies apparently do—that the low-N students are consciously unwilling to participate in hook-up culture and would prefer celibacy to, say, a vile “casual” BJ from a Tri Delt).
Does this all mean that hook-up culture should cease to be a point of agitation for “traditional family values” advocates? Is the culture essentially self-policing and limited in scope and appeal? Has the threat been overblown by the media?
“women are generally not ashamed of their choices. Even the very promiscuous women are defiant.”
Yes they defiantly want to pleasure men sexually. Who’s complaining?
Susan, why does it seem that so many of these studies have disproportionally more females than males surveyed? (Or, in the case of the other study on a different post, a huge differential between married and divorced).
I would understand if the ratio was close to, say, 60-40. I don’ t have the time to look at the studies to see why, and, of course, I am not blaming you, these are not your surveys, but, still, I am curious.
Well, it does not need to be. They should be hooking up with high school girls. And, yes, I am being serious.
I read an article in MIT’s Technology Review that did a survey of some local student to see who was having sex. The people having the least sex were students at MIT majoring in STEM (some of the majors had about 40% of their seniors still virgins) while the students at a local Arts school reported a virginity rate of 0%.
@Bastiat Blogger
It’s clearly got to be a mix of choice and opportunity. Women are more likely to consciously choose to avoid the frat scene, though some percentage would undoubtedly be unwelcome because they’re not hot. Men are more likely to lack the opportunity to access the hookup scene, though 78% of men prefer dating in any case.
One of the most interesting findings, in my view, is that 50% of guys have sex during a hookup at least once in a semester, and many undoubtedly have more than that. Also, a very high percentage of guys in relationships had intercourse with a different girl – 50%.
What this suggests is that there is a minority of hardcore sluts, male and female, but the other 80+% is not in the sexual desert. Most people are hooking up occasionally, and at least half say they’re doing it to get a gf or bf.
That doesn’t mean that if you could blindfold Johnny and deliver him to the warm wet mouth of a Tri Delt, he’d punch your lights out. But whether men secretly pine for Debbie DD is questionable, especially since she is likely brewing some bugs.
The problem is that the culture prevails, regardless of the fact that few participate. This has a detrimental effect on students’ self-perception, e.g. “I’m the only one not getting any traction with the opposite sex.” Essentially, the media and feminists have created the threat, and have a vested interest in the culture continuing to mask the facts. When you put the choice before students, they wish for a return to traditional dating. That is threatening to the feminist agenda.
The opportunity for a shift in the culture begins with making students aware of the facts. Then it will be up to them to storm the Bastille.
@Ramble
When researchers don’t control the sample, they get far more female respondents than male respondents. A good example is the NCHA data – 18K females vs. 12K males. That holds pretty close to the sex ratio.
However, with smaller sample sizes, students are generally recruited from undergraduate courses, especially the large ones, like introductory psych. There may be a difference in who is enrolled, but my guess is that women are more likely to volunteer to participate, for whatever reason.
This is why one team of researchers limited their study to males – they felt that males were generally underrepresented in the research.
They don’t have access. There’s little town and gown mixing. I did mention one frat I knew off that used to sneak local high school girls in for parties, but it was definitely on the DL. Obviously, they were providing alcohol to underage girls.
Ultimately, that frat got thrown off campus, though I don’t know if the high school girls were a factor.
Ha, that would be Mass Art and Emerson College. That’s a testament to the allure of hipsters.
That is threatening to the feminist agenda.
No, it is threatening the Leftist agenda, which the feminists are simply one part.
They must subvert social norms, because traditional morality is oppressive.
Obviously, they were providing alcohol to underage girls.
Most of the college girls are ALSO underage.
Also, they have all summer to pursue HS girls, and, if they really knew that, as freshman, they would be in a sexual desert (and that girls prefer older guys), they would change their culture to go hunting for hs girls.
That’s a testament to the allure of hipsters.
And that non-stem girls tend to be a lot sluttier than stem girls. And, artsy and acting girls tend to be about as slutty as they get.
“Essentially, the media and feminists have created the threat, and have a vested interest in the culture continuing to mask the facts. When you put the choice before students, they wish for a return to traditional dating. That is threatening to the feminist agenda.”
The main underpinning of that agenda is women’s economic independence from men. If women gravitate back to their nature of bonding to a man early then the focus on a job is diluted and reverting to the dreaded caregiver role is eminent. The overarching propaganda is that equality equates to some myth that men have always fucked lots of women then women should fuck lots of men. That equality equates to some myth that women have been sexually oppressed and unshackling requires practice at de-bonding sex from emotion and since men are low hanging fruit in terms of willingness to screw then women should just go for it. That myth boldly extends to the radical “discover her boundaries” “grow as a woman” “express your sexuality” “embrace your sexuality” “explore your sexuality” and all that uniquely applies to women as men, well, are just plain ‘ol fucking. But those feminists really get their panties all in a twist when there is even the slightest mention of men resisting commitment to sluts, yes the very sluts that feminists want propagated. Wooops! looks like they did not anticipate that. But alas, here we are.
I think that the leftists, led by feminists, went after a particular social engineering goal on campus—increasing the rates of college attendance by women—and that hook-up culture is an unintended consequence of that movement.
If you had a campus with 10% women, you’d have LTRs and traditional dating and courtship left and right. Men would be fighting to lock things down. Move to 60% women (I’ve read estimates that it will hit 65-70% and then stabilize—Vassar, which is 68/32 IIRC, would be the demographic template) and a very different dynamic emerges. Maybe the real fight—the underhooks, to use a term from grappling and MMA—is over the attendance numbers agenda, the spigots that put men and women into these classrooms to begin with.
It would be great to see if Guttentag-Secord-type predictions hold true on college campuses, with casual sex frequencies scaling directly with relative male scarcity.
Wow – I’ll join the “Great Post” choir, Susan. I guess we reaped the benefits of your unavailability for the Olympics this year.
And how *is* your leg doing, btw? Well, I hope.
I’m not sure I understand this key finding:
Does this mean that more promiscuous males than females are dropping out?
A student population that changes over or 5 years would explain why the perception varies from the reality. I suspect every student’s local group of cohorts is stable, relative to the overall population, and that would skew the perception.
@Ramble
Can you expand on this? What other groups have an incentive to support a sex-positive ideology?
That’s true, but there’s a lot more opportunity for scandal bringing 16 and 17 year olds to a frat house. Imagine someone gets super drunk and her friend calls 911. If she’s a college student, that’s one thing. If she’s been “rounded up” from the town by predatory males, that’s something else entirely. And there’s the statutory rape issue as well.
@Susan
I think two of the major drivers of this pluralistic ignorance is the fact that students tend to associate with like-minded students in college, and that the promiscuous students are much more visible than the virgins.
For instance, especially at my school, Greek students tend to associate with other Greek students. As you’ve noted, the Greek population is a hotbed for hookups and promiscuity. So if you’re Greek, as I was, and the vast majority of your friends are Greek, you are surrounded by the most promiscuous students on campus. Therefore, this type of behavior seems more like the norm than the exception. Greeks are also largely unaware of the rest of the student body who are not participating in the hookup scene. At Penn, 35% of the student body is Greek, but I’d say that for Greek students, 80-90% of the peers they socialize with are. There’s literally another 50-60% of the school that the Greeks barely know exist. I distinctly remember at the Senior prom, all of my friends saying “who ARE these people??”, referring to the crowds of folks who we’d never, ever laid eyes on outside of a brief passing in the halls or in a class one semester freshman year.
For those other 65% who aren’t Greek, I believe their perceptions are formed in 2 ways. First, the Greek scene dominates campus social life. Almost every single house party is hosted by a frat, almost every single downtown club party is, and all of the campus bars are dominated by upperclassmen Greeks. So if one of these 65% ventures out to party, he’s likely to be surrounded by the Greek culture, and consider it the norm. The second factor is the limitation of social groups outside of the Greek scene. In a fraternity, you are a member of an 80-100 strong group (150-200 for a sorority), which gives you a very broad social circle from which to draw conclusions. As a GDI, your group of friends is likely much smaller, and therefore your assumptions as to what “everyone else” is doing are based on a far smaller sample of people, leading to extrapolation based on a very small sample.
@Joe
Better, thanks. I managed to crack my husband up the other day by “sticking” a difficult landing. I really can be very goofy sometimes. I once broke ribs on the uneven parallel bars, but I love watching the Olympics. (Yes, I am clumsy and accident prone. Also careless.)
This is just a simple matter of arithmetic. Let’s say you have 100 students; 60 are women, 40 are men. 20% of the population is promiscuous (I’m actually convinced it’s well below that for females at this point. Anyway.) That gives us 12 promiscuous women and 8 promiscuous men. Because there’s a sex ratio imbalance on campus, there will be more of every kind of woman, including slutty.
@Ramble
High school girls? Any guy at my house in college would be laughed out of the party for bringing high school girls there. The assumption would be that he couldn’t get anything with the college girls and so had to resort to hitting on 16 year-olds.
@Susan 46
Where’s the communications major? I honestly think half the sororities at Penn wouldn’t have existed without it.
Huh. Neuroscience is pretty much a hard-science field, AFAIK, but note the 20% virginity number, i contrast to the 72% biology and 83% chemistry/biochemistry.
Can’t remember–what field was Tom Wolfe’s heroine majoring in in “Charlotte Gray”? Neuroscience was certainly important in the book.
@Zach
I think you nailed it re the Greek scene. That is precisely my sense of it via the research, and also how each of my kids (who were both Greeks) described their own campuses. I think I need to publish that survey you sent me!
@Ramble
Our version of “high school girls” was importing girls from schools like Temple, La Salle, etc. True or not, the perception was that those girls were both more attractive and more slutty than the Penn girls. I still remember the one time we poured $5 vodka into Grey Goose bottles at a Drexel mixer. The girls couldn’t stop talking about how “amazing” it was.
@Zach
Good question. I was surprised to see Comp Sci and Neuroscience women on the sexually active end of the spectrum. Also, this is data from Wellesley College, all female. One would expect that even the artsy types might have trouble losing their virginity. Then again, I believe a very high percentage of the student body is lesbian, so there’s probably a lot of non P in V sex represented here.
Having spent a number of years as a grad-student teaching, I found that more than a few of the women were very happy to attempt to exchange sex for a change in their grade. While I never engaged in such – no piece-of-tail was worth risking my career – it was easy to see the professors who did. In checking the transcripts of the most aggressive women, I would regularly see two grades – either and A or a D/F. It wasn’t too hard to figure out which professors accepted the offers…
I do not see that in the charts – and it was quite prevalent from my experience, with several offering sex for a change of grade every semester – about 5-10% of the class any given semester. While I’m sure they would justify it for a study such as this as “starting a relationship” or some other non-sense, I don’t know of many relationships starting with the college co-ed sitting in the front row with her legs spread giving a view, and a note on her exam saying that she would “do ANYTHING for an A or B” or my personal favorite, the short and to the point, “I swallow”…
Made it so that I only had office hours when there were others in the office, and kept the door open at all times, since I was sure that they would resort to any means to up their grade…
“Live alone? You’re not alone”
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-3445_162-57437837/live-alone-youre-not-alone/
“I grew up very close with my family, and I’d always had long-term boyfriends, roommates,” (Kate) Bolick said. “I thought, ‘God, you know, who am I on my own when I’m not being supported by these people who love me?’”
—-
I suppose this is a follow-up to those who follow the hookup culture.
BTW, is she still 39? She’s been 39 for quite a long time.
I don’t recall that Charlotte Simmons had declared a major…she was a top student, though. And she did hook up and lose her virginity freshman year
Re neuroscience, I loved the bit about the cat amygdalas.
How would that data be in the charts? To get at that number, you’d have to have faculty willing to document the offers. I recall one time in b-school, sitting next to a woman who was very, very slutty. We were getting papers back. I don’t know how good hers really was, but at the top of the page the professor (early 30s, British) had written in red marker: “98. Good doggie.”
“they would resort to any means to up their grade…”
Or to dupe and secure a husband years later. What a mal-parented minefield of detritus men have to tip toe through these days, huh?
@ Susan Walsh
She’s doing much better. She’s returning to her normal day-to-day lifestyle, but she’s also taking enough pills to stop a horse.
I’m just glad that she is home and doing better.
LOL! She was 39 when she came to dinner in July of 2011, and she was 39 when this article was published in May. So I guess she was born in June
Doc, I am familiar with the phenomena that you describe.
Heh. Is it perhaps reasonable to expect that the women who proposition professors with promises of heavenly BJs are the same women who may be found in the very high N group? The 5-10% estimate would work quite nicely.
@Abbot
Your comments lately have bitterness coming out the ears. I’m not sure if something happened to you (cheated on, lied to, etc), but trust me, I’ve seen some of the absolute worst women around, and for every one of them I can pull up a guy to see and raise her in despicable behavior. There are worthless people in both sexes. Get over it and find the ones who aren’t. I’ve been royally f*ed over before by girls, and I’m sure I will be again. And I’ve done some things with women I’m not too proud of either. Perhaps one of my favorite quotes on women is from Californication, from Hank Moody, the ultimate cad:
“You ladies really are the most amazing creatures – my life’s work. But then there’s the morning after – the hangover, the realization that I’m not quite as available as I thought I was the night before. and she’s gone and I’m haunted by yet another road not taken.”
So instead of devoting your time to bitching and grumbling, I suggest you actually go out there and try and find a better woman.
Bastiat Blogger, I’ve been in opposite gender ratio situations, usually 10% female to 90% male, especially in video games. It’s not as great as one might think.
I experienced a lot of negative attention (insults, put-downs, nasty guesses about my looks) in male-dominated games. Women tend to be a lot more indirect in communication, so the direct harshness was not fun. I enjoyed the activities so I put up with it.
Women usually know where the favorable gender ratios are. They tend not to want to go to those places, because often they aren’t all that interested, and because there is a great deal of direct hostility.
I don’t know where people get the idea that nerds are “nice.” This is also true of STEM majors. They’re still guys, just smarter than average, so there is the same breakdown of jerks, good guys, supplicants, sociopaths, etc. I don’t idealize nerds even though they were my “target,” because I’ve been insulted by them enough to know better.
Can you expand on this? What other groups have an incentive to support a sex-positive ideology?
I could, but it would take too long. Basically, feminism is simply a subset of Leftism.
Leftism = Cultural Marxism
They must subvert Social Norms (even when Social Norms no longer dominate, or are almost dead, like we see in many parts of the West).
I guess I should clarify that I am not familiar with any strictly transactional grade-for-sex proposals (the students I am familiar with tend to have very good grades, anyway), but the aggressive sexuality and overall forwardness are there in a different way.
Not sure of N distribution in this group, but the aggressiveness definitely is packaged with total physical confidence, high SMV, and high ambition level regarding politics, law, and/or business.
Oh, I don’t disagree at all. I am just saying that having underage girls drinking is not the crux of the issue (assuming that we are talking about girls that are, say, 16 and older).
===============
The thing about the Comp Sci and Neuroscience girls being a little sluttier, I suspect, has much more to do with how few of them there are at a place like Wellesley, or most other colleges. Small sample sizes can really screw things up.
But, yeah, in general, the more subjective the coursework (and preceding interest) the sluttier the girl is likely to be.
Any guy at my house in college would be laughed out of the party for bringing high school girls there. The assumption would be that he couldn’t get anything with the college girls and so had to resort to hitting on 16 year-olds.
I am not saying to bring some hs girl to a frat party. I am saying that if you are a freshman and you think that you are likely to be in the sexual desert, than definitely look at hs girls.
For instance, you are a guy, and you are not in a frat. You go your whole freshman year without any play. Working your summer job back home, some cute hs girl starts asking you about college (she either finished her junior or senior year). I say, go for it.
A good approach would be to make sure that she, and her friends, are around you at, say, a pool party. Let them compete a little for your attention and then pick your favorite.
Either way, the point is, those lonely freshman should absolutely consider girls 1-2 years younger than them. And anyone that attempts to call you a loser (“Dude, you should totally go back to being lonely and sexless”), tell them to fuck off.
@Zach:
“Our version of “high school girls” was importing girls from schools like Temple, La Salle, etc. True or not, the perception was that those girls were both more attractive and more slutty than the Penn girls. I still remember the one time we poured $5 vodka into Grey Goose bottles at a Drexel mixer. The girls couldn’t stop talking about how “amazing” it was.”
Apparently, Grey Goose isn’t the most tasty vodka out there.
The $5 vodka may have actually tasted better.
So, this isn’t the best example…
Do you know what’s great about Penn? People think that Penn and Penn State are the same college.
So, when I was at Duke for law school, everyone thought that I went to “Penn” rather than “Penn State”.
I found this quite entertaining.
@JP
You’re not at all the first one to notice this. There were shirts for sale at the Penn bookstore that read “NOT PENN STATE”.
Either way, the point is, those lonely freshman should absolutely consider girls 1-2 years younger than them
Isn’t an 18 yo guy running the risk of legal trouble in dating a 16 yo? I’m not necessarily against it, but I’d have concerns if it was my son. I’d want him to be very careful about not exposing the girl to sexual situations or ones where there were drugs and alcohol involved as he might be held responsible.
I don’t know where people get the idea that nerds are “nice.” This is also true of STEM majors. They’re still guys, just smarter than average, so there is the same breakdown of jerks, good guys, supplicants, sociopaths, etc. I don’t idealize nerds even though they were my “target,” because I’ve been insulted by them enough to know better.
Some of the nasty people around are injured nerds. It’s bad to piss off smart people; they have creative ways ot getting payback.
@SW
I don’t recall that Charlotte Simmons had declared a major…she was a top student, though. And she did hook up and lose her virginity freshman year.
She didn’t declare a major.
I read the book on vacay–mostly on your recommendation. I was extremely diasappointed as to how she lost her virginity–though I suppose it was a realistic depiction of how frat boys lay in wait for the naive and inexperienced and how those girls delude themselves. I did find Wolfe’s description of the actual act amazing; you’d think he’d had a hymen at one time.
The end disappointed me too. I was rooting for Adam, not Jojo I’d have chosed Adam in her situation, but then again I’d have avoided the frat boys and jocks anyway.
Isn’t an 18 yo guy running the risk of legal trouble in dating a 16 yo?
Yes, to many a judge, he is a rapist.
I’d have concerns if it was my son
And you would be right to be concerned.
to many a judge, he is a rapist.
It depends more on the law itself than the judge. Some states allow an age difference; for example, sex with a 16 yo is statutory rape except when the age difference is less than two years. There may also be an exception for relationships that began before the older party turned 18. I’d want to know the local laws if my son were in that position. In fact, I’d actually seek legal advice.
@Ms. Walsh #14:
“Colleges are beginning to look seriously at the Pluralistic Ignorance problem. Duke spent considerable time and resources seeking input from its students. Schools have also been proactive in scheduling more events to compete with fraternities. Although only 15% of college students in the U.S. are in Greek organizations, they account for three times that many hookups.”
O: Thanks for the response; I’ve been giving all this a goodly bit of thought overnight, and I think I have a solution.
All of this started with the advent of the Sexual Revolution; most selective colleges like say, Princeton, were all-male less than a half century ago. Of course, you had all-female schools, too. Bethune is one such example, as I recall.
So, all of this stuff came along when the sexes were brought together, along with a few other “great ideas” courtesy of the White UMC Feminist arm of the Cognitive Elite.
Here are my ideas to obliterate the hooking up problem:
1. End all fraternizing between students of differing classes: since we know that freshmen guys get next to no love, and since we know that upperclass guys view freshmen gals as fresh meat, putting a hard stop to fraternizing in this way will knockout two birds with one stone – it will end freshmen gals getting took by cads on one side, and make sure that freshman guys get a shot at wooing their potential lifelong mates. Violators of this policy will be punished by expulsion. Once the Mr. & Mrs. HUS’ of the country find out that the unis are deadly, aggressively serious about this, they’ll get on board.
2. Get much more serious about the matchmaking business: since colleges are defacto mating grounds for some of America’s young people anyways these days, why shouldn’t the unis do their part in seeing to it that young people get together? In step with Item #1 above, the unis can take the wealth of information they already have on their students, and match them per their shared interests, etc. SAT scores and the like can be used to pair student pairs as well. Events can be scheduled during off-classroom and study times, specifically for the purposes of the putative matched couples to meet and socialize.
3. Bring back mandatory single sex dorms, and place them on opposite ends of the campus grounds: this will also act to cutdown on matters of importance to the Feminist Lobby, such as “date rape” and the like, as well as keeping more of a focus on academic concerns and the like. Assign existing uni/campus police and draft volunteers from the student bodies, male and female alike, to assist in policing the dorm grounds to be certain that members of the opposite sex are in the others’ dorms. Also: no booze or drugs of any kind on campus should be strictly enforced. The penalty for violation is summary expulsion.
4. Banish all Greek organizations off campus. They have every right to organize and do their thing, but in that they have been proven per your excellent presentation of data and research to be a noted source of tension and monkey business on campus, often involving potential sexual assaults and the like, they are a noted liability to the uni system and thus must be relocated off campus. Any pledges to said organizations must sign waiver forms with the uni office releasing said uni from any liability should anything untoward happen while on said Greek property off-campus. We’ll see how long said organizations will hold up when such rules are put into place.
All of these very simple steps not only *can* work, they have already proven themselves *to* work – the US Military, as well as professional sporting teams and Corporate America, all have rules very similiar to the ones listeed above. We could solve the hooking up problem, AND the date rape/sex assault issue, over night.
Of course, I think you and I both know that far too many folk would howl at these impositions, even if it’s for the greater good (H/T: Mike C!) – and therein lies the problem. Perhaps of most import is the fact…
…wait for it…
THE WOMEN WON’T WANT IT.
You see, it is my firm belief that a great deal of all these problems are being driven by Female Mating Choice. The problem is, that young Women being what and who they are, they don’t have the wisdom and wherewithall to handle their sexual choices. They need guidance. The fellas do too, but since we’ve had all-male schools for centuries with little to no incident, that can be easily handled. The ladies are the wildcard here.
The above steps, can and will solve it.
So…whaddya think?
Holla back
O. (The Problem Solver)
It depends more on the law itself than the judge.
I was just being flippant.
Some of my “favorite” stories in the news are what charges are brought against girls after it is discovered that they filed a false rape claim.
@Ms. J #73:
“@SW
I don’t recall that Charlotte Simmons had declared a major…she was a top student, though. And she did hook up and lose her virginity freshman year.
She didn’t declare a major.”
O: Per Tom Wolfe’s Wiki, Ms. Simmons did seem to have one:
“Much of his recent work also addresses neuroscience, a subject which he admitted a fascination with in “Sorry, Your Soul Just Died,” one of the essays in Hooking Up, and which played a large role in I Am Charlotte Simmons—the title character being a student of neuroscience, and characters’ thought processes, such as fear, humiliation and lust, frequently being described in the terminology of brain chemistry.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Wolfe#Novels
I’m a big fan of Mr. Wolfe; his Mau-Mauing The Flak Catchers was excellent! (Same deal with A Man in Full)
O.
@Ms. J #73:
“Some of the nasty people around are injured nerds. It’s bad to piss off smart people; they have creative ways ot getting payback.”
O: Very interesting – and timely – insight! In light of your remarks here Ms. J, what do you say of the “Dark Knight Shooter”, Mr. James Egan Holmes? Some in the ‘sphere have argued that he is yet another example of what some have referred to as “Beta Male Rage”.
Your thoughts?
O.
There’s no question there’s a direct effect, though there may be other effects at play as well. Mark Regnerus has written about this.
@J
Did you like the book overall?
The sex scene is one of the most cringe inducing things I’ve ever read. And the way Hoyt spoke of her afterwards…
The ending is a disappointment, but very plausible.
@Ms. Walsh:
Wrt Regnerus:
I find him to be something of a religious zealot and ideologue, and not terribly interested in much of what he has to say. However, since you’ve directly quoted him, let me respond to a few of his points.
The problem with the idea of having more Men to Women, is that there will be Men left standing when the music stops. Out in flyover country, in places like Montana and even Alaska, while the ladies there might be quite happy, there are a lot of not too happy guys. Suggesting a system like this as Regnerus is doing basically shifts the unhappiness from Women to Men…not a terribly good look from my vantage point.
Second, I deeply question and challenge Regnerus and others’ notions and ideas of what they mean by “success”; for me, the fact that I’m still alive instead of working myself to death, in a job that I hate, under a mountain of debt from school from taking a subject that I didn’t like and can’t take full advantage of due to among other things, market vagaries, bait and switch and yea I’ll say it, discrimination against Black Males, etc et al, means to me that I am quite successful, because I live life on my own terms and per my own schedule. I owe no one anything, and do the work I actually like doing. I am in good health, mentally and physically – certainly better than Black Men a half century ago. Guys like Regnerus are little better than Feminists who try to guilt trip stay at home moms into going back to work for the sake of “the cause”. I’ll pass.
O.
@Obs
It’s obvious you don’t know much about the college environment
The study of men, which was 3/4 freshmen and sophomores, revealed a mean of 2 different hookup partners per male. 69% hooked up, and 73% of those included sexual intercourse.
There are also the college marrieds, which tend to be couples who meet early on freshman year and stay together the whole time. So it would appear that freshmen guys, are doing OK, in a 70/30 split.
In loco parentis was struck down more than 40 years ago. Colleges provide education, period.
Great idea, some schools are doing just that.
In loco parentis again.
The data says otherwise.
Your ignorance is showing, Obsidian. I suggest you sit this one out.
Does this all mean that hook-up culture should cease to be a point of agitation for “traditional family values” advocates? Is the culture essentially self-policing and limited in scope and appeal? Has the threat been overblown by the media?
Like you mentioned before about having “just” 10% of more men than women a small percentage can change the end game for everyone really fast and effectively. So taking away their power is important for the good of all of us.
And that non-stem girls tend to be a lot sluttier than stem girls. And, artsy and acting girls tend to be about as slutty as they get.
Hey I take offense on that :p but then I was supposed to take the major on art and then do my second major on STEM, but remembering that my eggs are not going to live forever I decided to try and find a husband first then do it when the kids are on school so I might not count.
Heh. Is it perhaps reasonable to expect that the women who proposition professors with promises of heavenly BJs are the same women who may be found in the very high N group? The 5-10% estimate would work quite nicely.
Yeah IME you are not going to find the shy virginal girl offering a BJ for a grade. She rather you know study
I don’t idealize nerds even though they were my “target,” because I’ve been insulted by them enough to know better.
Nerd are diverse like any other group and some of them recent the presence of women because they whether had bad experiences or assume the girls are going to paint everything pink with unicorns…
I think another problem is that men in a all male group treat women like men and that reads nasty. I usually was the only woman on a group and most of them didn’t knew how to “switch” to female speak while others felt that if you invade a male space you have to proof yourself capable of probing that you were as though as the boys. Luckily having grown up with brothers I learned to endure my “baptism of fire” and from them on it was easier for them to treat me a bit less harshly once I found my place in the pack. You can see how that works on manosphere blogs and how the interact with he few female sympathizers they have, of course this method leads to all the issues we have witnesses to *le sigh*
@Ms. Hope #64:
“I experienced a lot of negative attention (insults, put-downs, nasty guesses about my looks) in male-dominated games. Women tend to be a lot more indirect in communication, so the direct harshness was not fun. I enjoyed the activities so I put up with it.”
O: I was listening to NPR last week when they reported a story about the online sexual harrassment of female gamers. I’m ambivalent about the issue, because I see the potential for feminizing yet another, and rapidly dwindling, all-male activity. Hmm.
“Women usually know where the favorable gender ratios are. They tend not to want to go to those places, because often they aren’t all that interested, and because there is a great deal of direct hostility.”
O: BOOM! Ms. Hope, if there’s one thing I absolutely LOVE about Asian culture, it’s that you guys haven’t forgotten to call things for what they are. The above explains why Women aren’t flocking to Salt Lake City and instead head to NYC, for example. I’ve always argued that Women have always known where the Betas are; they just aren’t that into them, yet.
“I don’t know where people get the idea that nerds are “nice.” This is also true of STEM majors. They’re still guys, just smarter than average, so there is the same breakdown of jerks, good guys, supplicants, sociopaths, etc. I don’t idealize nerds even though they were my “target,” because I’ve been insulted by them enough to know better.”
O: Please repeat this to Ms. Anacaona and others? The notion that Alpha=bad/Beta (nerd)=good is utterly downright ridiculous…
O.
The relevant Regnerus bit is the rather obvious observation re sexual economics wrt sex ratios.
Regardless of how you define success, the reality is that there is and will continue to be a shortage of men for assortative mating. Female hypergamy dictates marrying a man of status higher than one’s own. In a time when women are achieving more status than men are, many men will be found wanting, i.e., unmarriageable. Whether this constitutes success or failure for them is subjective. In any case, female choice is reduced.
I have been saying this for a long time. Girls absolutely flock to cities. Few have much interest in living in some 1960′s apartment complex and meeting guys at Applebees.
Huh? Now beta and alpha are geographic? NYC is full of beta men making bank, and most of them are enjoying the lopsided sex ratio there. I’m sure Utah has more than its share of dominant Mormon males.
Let’s nip the alpha beta ridiculousness in the bud right now. It is not relevant to this post, unless you want to point out that there seem to be far fewer betas in college than some have claimed. (80% of the women have sex with 20% of the men is now officially DEAD.)
@Ms. Walsh:
“It’s obvious you don’t know much about the college environment”
O: I know enough to know that an entire cottage industry has grown up around the hooking up problem.
“The study of men, which was 3/4 freshmen and sophomores, revealed a mean of 2 different hookup partners per male. 69% hooked up, and 73% of those included sexual intercourse.”
O: Fair enough; but what is wrong with instituting anti-cross classmen fraternization laws?
There are also the college marrieds, which tend to be couples who meet early on freshman year and stay together the whole time. So it would appear that freshmen guys, are doing OK, in a 70/30 split.”
O: So it would appear. “College marrieds”? You mean they got married in college?
“In loco parentis was struck down more than 40 years ago. Colleges provide education, period.”
O: If that were true, HUS wouldn’t exist…yes?
“Great idea, some schools are doing just that.”
O: Like Duke?
“In loco parentis again.”
O: It needs to be tweaked.
“The data says otherwise.”
O: Does this mean that you agree with what Ms. MacDonald has said?
“Your ignorance is showing, Obsidian. I suggest you sit this one out.”
O: I’ll take it under advisement…
O.
Hey I take offense on that :p
I know you were just kidding, but, let me “rephrase” that:
And that non-stem girls tend to be a lot sluttier than stem girls. And, artsy and acting girls tend to be about as slutty as they get.
I find it is particularly hard for the actresses to not be at least a lit bit slutty. These are girls, after all, that basically decide at 16 or 17 that they want to dedicate their lives to making out with, and getting fondled by, guys they just met because some other guy told them to.
@Ms. Walsh:
“Huh? Now beta and alpha are geographic? NYC is full of beta men making bank, and most of them are enjoying the lopsided sex ratio there. I’m sure Utah has more than its share of dominant Mormon males.
Let’s nip the alpha beta ridiculousness in the bud right now. It is not relevant to this post, unless you want to point out that there seem to be far fewer betas in college than some have claimed. (80% of the women have sex with 20% of the men is now officially DEAD.)”
O: No. What I mean is that the Men deemed sexually desirable by Women. We can quibble over all of that, and to be frank I’ve never been into that debate; I know what I see around me, and that’s good enough for me and mine. Simply put, my point is that there is a reason why Women flock to places where there aren’t many Men there, instead of places where Men are in abundance. This can be easily seen in places like NYC, for both races, White and Black Women. In the case of the latter for example, there is a fact that there are fewer Men to Women, and this evens out the further South you go. Indeed, in the South, Black Men are much more marriage-minded. The question therefore comes up – why are so many Black Women up in NYC bemoaning their relationship fate, given the simple census facts in this regard? One suspects there is a bit of cognitive dissonance going on there…
O.
These are girls, after all, that basically decide at 16 or 17 that they want to dedicate their lives to making out with, and getting fondled by, guys they just met because some other guy told them to.
And a lot of the classes teach to be comfortable with their bodies as to act in underwear, nightgowns and do nude scenes and the likes so a lot of opportunities for inhibitions to be discarded, not all of them follow suit of course but there it is….
Yeah, it’s called career opportunity.
@Ms. Walsh #86:
“The relevant Regnerus bit is the rather obvious observation re sexual economics wrt sex ratios.”
O: What’s obvious is that we are experiencing a glut of Spinsters, and not quite for all the reasons that are being touted…
“Regardless of how you define success, the reality is that there is and will continue to be a shortage of men for assortative mating.”
O: But how I – and by extension, Men overall – define success is key here, unless Women enmasse take on the role of proposing marriage and the like?
“Female hypergamy dictates marrying a man of status higher than one’s own. In a time when women are achieving more status than men are, many men will be found wanting, i.e., unmarriageable.”
O: Hmm. So, a Man who owns his own business doesn’t suffice? I’d say such a thing would be ridiculous.
“Whether this constitutes success or failure for them is subjective.”
O: No, it is very much objective. Like I said, healthwise I am doing far and away better than my dad did when he was my age. My quality of life is better. I am happier. I have less stress, a big part of that being, virtually no debt. I am drug, alcohol and Baby Mama free. These are quite objective measures of life indices, Ms. Walsh. That Women, some of them anyway, may not think they are not important or do not like them, is not a problem I nor any other similarly disposed Man can or should solve.
“In any case, female choice is reduced.”
O: They’ll live…
O.
@Ms. Walsh:
“Yeah, it’s called career opportunity.”
O: LOL. Go try that on folk who don’t know any better. All the jobs ain’t in NYC, and besides, as Zach has previously noted, Women can and do flock to places like NYC because of all the…recreational activities – which I have no problem with whatsoever. I’m just sayin, though.
O.
@Susan, Re: Sex is Cheap
“what many young men wish for—access to sex without too many complications or commitments—carries the day. If women were more fully in charge of how their relationships transpired, we’d be seeing, on average, more impressive wooing efforts, longer relationships, fewer premarital sexual partners, shorter cohabitations, and more marrying going on. Instead, according to the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (which collects data well into adulthood), none of these things is occurring. Not one.”
Don’t you agree that this kind of relates to what i was saying in our discussion this weekend?
If the immutable fact that women yearn to earn commitment, is going to dictate that a man of long-term-orientation is of lower value than that of a man, of similar looks/status, with little or absolute no commitment interest – then these trends are sure to continue, no?
I really do think I’m speaking in women’s best interest when I say: the one hardest to catch isn’t necessary the one of most worth.
(during our discussion, did you ever consider whether I’ve had similar results when dealing with women below my SMP (IMO)? And that simply being open to commitment was enough for them to adjust my value to below theirs – something that I found astonishing, as in some cases we were points apart (again, IMO).)
The states with the most favorable sex ratios for women include Wyoming, Idaho, and other states whose local economies rely heavily on male manual labor. There just aren’t a lot of jobs for females in those places.
When I graduated from business school, I had four offers in NYC, and zero elsewhere, even though I had put considerable effort into looking at other locations. I believe a very large percentage of my class went to NY.
” At my undergrad campus, everybody knew who “those girls” were. I can recall two.”
I believe this.
My major was art history, on the slutty end of the chart, but I swearrrr it was because I eventually wanted to be an archaeologist or librarian, and not to carousel hop. I was popular enough, some of the slutty girls befriended me, but I never did any carouseling, even though I had a fair amount of offers.
I did meet at least 30 slutty girls over the years. But this was art school. By art school, I mean the dance/acting/visual arts majors, coke, nonstop drama, “liberal” ideologies, feminism, lesbians for male attention, nude artwork, etc., I don’t blame anyone who is more suspicious of arts campuses, even though we were frat free.
From what I heard, and saw, betas in my school did pretty well, some even were quite popular among the slutty girls. I assume this is because a good portion of men otherwise were gay.
@Ms. Walsh:
“The states with the most favorable sex ratios for women include Wyoming, Idaho, and other states whose local economies rely heavily on male manual labor. There just aren’t a lot of jobs for females in those places.”
O: No, there just aren’t any kinds of jobs for Women *that these Women want to do* – and that’s perfectly fine. Like I said, there are plenty of guys around; just not the kind of guys the ladies want. That’s too bad. Guys understand that Dimes, by definition, are and always have been in short supply, and make do.
It’s the Ladies’ turn. That is, if they don’t want to go the Way of the Do-Do Bird…
“When I graduated from business school, I had four offers in NYC, and zero elsewhere, even though I had put considerable effort into looking at other locations. I believe a very large percentage of my class went to NY.”
O: That may be, but there’s Chicago, St. Louis, Atlanta, DC, San Fran, LA, New Orleans, Newark, Miami, Dallas, Houston…I mean, I’m just not buying the notion that the *only* place to work on the planet is NYC. What I will buy though, is the notion that for many young ladies, NYC is the “it” place to be, which I have no problem with; in that case, you have to be willing to make tradeoffs. Just like anything else in life. Such is the Way of an Adult.
O.
@Cooper
Don’t forget that it’s the minority of women who are promiscuous, and they’re throwing a wrench into the SMP by significantly increasing the supply of casual sex.
There’s still a large percentage of men and women who have 0,1 or 2 hookups in their entire four years.
You’ll get no argument from me there. The hardest guy to catch is probably a very poor relationship prospect in any case.
Cooper, I’m not sure how avoiding commitment and hooking up correlates, but I know that it does. Not having time for a relationship is one of the reasons that promiscuous women give for preferring hooking up to dating. If they are linked, then the data in this post demonstrates that only a small percentage of women fits this description. Even if you assume that all 26% of the freshmen who have sex during a hookup become hardcore sluts, a fairly outlandish assumption, that still leaves 74% of female students who didn’t go that route.
The data also shows that more than half of women hook up in order to get a boyfriend.
If you can’t find them, you’re not looking in the right place.
Again, this is subjective. If he has achieved demonstrably high status with his own business, I’m sure he will do fine. He may want to avoid women with more education than himself anyway. I will be surprised if we see many pairings between SES groups.
I have never suggested that men should plan their lives according to what women want. One’s strategy should follow one’s objectives, and if men prefer to GTOW they have every right. Many women are effectively choosing not to marry. Make no mistake, Kate Bolick chose not to marry her boyfriend, and her two most recent relationships have been with men 11 years younger than herself. She’s got a big smile on her face. She’s only a cautionary tale to women who want marriage and family.
Of course we’ll live. We’ll just reproduce less.
In the US general population the numbers for YOUNG people are:
“While the number of sex partners increased with age, by the age of 24 more than 14% of men and 7 % of women have had 15 or more sex partners.”
” report uses data from the 2006–2008 National Survey of Family Growth. The answers are collected through in-person interviews with over 13,000 men and women. The data are collected using audio computer-assisted self interviewing, so the person being surveyed enters answers into the computer without revealing their responses to an interviewer. This method of responding hopefully eliminates (or at least limits) the need to artificially inflate or decrease the number of sex partners based on concerns over reporting real numbers to a live interviewer. The survey has a pretty high response rate: 75%.”
http://drjengunter.wordpress.com/2011/12/03/how-many-sex-partners-do-people-really-have/
So in the general US population, amongst young people it IS the case that the most promiscuous males are dipping into the 80% less promiscuous females. And they don`t just dip, as they have double the number of their female promiscuous counterparts. I know your focus is the the college hookup culture, but it is important to remember when thinking about gender dynamics.
These are the differences between the male and female numbers in the GSS data. So again general population, a mix of college and non college educated:
0: 5.6//5.8 (97%)
1: 17.2//33.6 (51%)
2-3: 15.9//24.8 (64%)
4-6: 18.9//18.8 (101%)
7-10: 13.9//9.2 (151%)
11-25: 16.9//6.0 (282%)
26-99: 8.4//1.5 (560%)
100+: 3.3//0.3 (1,100%)
I find it extremely dubious that the discrepancy for the highest numbers can be explained solely by male lying. To get the differences we have here amongst the highest numbers the men in the second highest group would have to lie up their numbers by 600%. Guys with 10 partners would have to write 60. To get the discrepancy at the very highest level guys would have to lie up their numbers by 1100%, meaning a guy with 10 partners would have to write 110 or one with 20 write 220. I find that utterly implausible.
The other GSS numbers you linked to in the half Sigma post also showed very large differences between the most promiscuous men and women. for the 11-20 group almost four times as many men and for the 21-100 group 6-7 times as many men as women and this is despite the male group being drawn from a smaller number than the female group.
As for the college data you have presented there are big problems stemming from the 60/40 split. Your data show equal numbers across the board. When the females are 50% more than the males, if they only sleep with each other the males MUST have 50% higher numbers. Since they don`t the women must be sleeping with someone else. With 100 students, 60 being female and 40 male and both having equal numbers of partners the men can only account for the numbers of 40 of the 60 females. 33,3% of their partners must be from outside the college population. In reality the number would be higher because for every male who sleeps with a woman outside the college population it reduces the amount of sex partners amongst the female college population he can account for, but lets just presume for the sake of illustration that the numbers it at the absolute minimum, 33,3%. Those 33,% of the female college students sex partners must either be from the pool of older men that have already graduated from college or they must be from the pool of men without college education. Most likely it is a combination. Indeed if the college educated are all going to get married a third of them will have to marry someone without a college degree (I agree with Susan that many of them probably wills tay single instead). If indeed all the 33,3% can be accounted for by older college aged men, and women do generally go for men that are older than them, by the time the college educated men and women get around marriage age the mens numbers would now include those 50% extra partners that aren`t showing in these numbers. This is hugely problematic. If the 33,3% are to be explained not by older college educated men it must mean that they are sleeping with non college educated men which makes the claim of a separate SMP for the college educated dubious. Most likely the reality is somewhere in the middle. Regardless wether the 33,3% is explained by older college educated men or non college educated men or both, the fact that 33,3% or more of the women’s sex partners are not the male college students throws the numbers all out of whack as we don`t know how they distribute.
A further problem with the 60/40 split is that the traits of the average male and female college student becomes different from if it where a 50/50 split. With 50% more female than male college students there will be a twist in the composition of the degree of sociosexuality amongst the genders. Adding more and more college students does not mean you get more and more people with the same traits. If you remove the third of the women that where the least likely to go to college you won`t remove an equal number of good girls and sluts, you will remove a disproportionate number of sluts. College attendance correlates with future time orientation, IQ and other factors that correlate with a less restricted sociosexuality and the numbers of the college educated are lower than amongst those without. Those that are now the least likely to have gone amongst those who are there have the least of those factors that correlate with restricted sociosexuality. Remove those and you remove a higher percentage of good girls than amongst those who stay. Likewise, if you add the men that aren`t going to college that where the most likely to go you won`t add as many dads as cads, you will add a higher percentage of cads than dads compared to the proportion that is already there. If you adjust for this the proportion of promiscuous college women becomes smaller than the proportion of male college students that are promiscuous. So the similarity in numbers is not so much a factor of being a college student, it is a factor of the gender imbalance.
As for lesbians , they have more sex partners than straight women not less. A lot more.
@ Ramble and Ana, I second your comments about acting majors (I think it applies to dance majors as well).
Another reason these girls seem to have moral judgement issues is due to overall narcissism, being shallow and vapid, using attention to validate themselves, etc.,
Re: draconian on-campus policies. I for one don’t want college campuses to be run by committees of central-planning enthusiasts looking to impose their top-down social engineering experiments on young adults. We’re dealing with complex adaptive social systems—lots of things may sound like great ideas, but will end up having unintended, hideously perverse consequences when second and third-order effects are properly accounted for.
I’d rather have some Girls Gone Wild slutfest Hook-Up Culture ^ 3 than a neo-fascist fantasy world of coercive breeding experiments. We’re talking about a cohort of “adults” who have, as a group, been unmitigated disasters when it came to managing their own affairs—divorces, family law, substance abuse, public finances, political corruption. I wouldn’t trust most of them to manage a pillow fight, let alone some kind of makeshift eugenics program. It’s helicopter parenting taken to perhaps its final, terminal state of micromanagement, where a college campus becomes a kind of white collar prison.
If they do want to practice central planning, perhaps they should change the admissions process and make women more scarce on campus. The rest will surely follow at some point. Yes, it would set feminism back. Yes, it would make women more dependent on male breadwinners. I personally don’t think it would be a good idea to mess around with this very much at all, but it probably would kill off hook-up culture if that was truly the goal.
Re: Guttentag-Secord and Obsidian’s remarks about men left without chairs when the music stops. The theory does predicts increased levels of territorial aggression and violence among men when women/sexual outlets become more scarce. Campuses with percentages of female students *should* be reporting less instances of violence between males, but I’m not sure if this is being realized.
Young people going off to work in the big city. Nothing new there. For college graduates, New York City is one of the easiest places to find a job in the United States, especially a good paying job.
If you have data that shows why women move there, or proves that it’s based on chasing a SATC lifestyle, let’s have it.
“The question therefore comes up – why are so many Black Women up in NYC bemoaning their relationship fate”
Here we go again…..
Yeah, it’s called career opportunity.
Bullshit.
I am not saying that some girls don’t move to the city because that is where the best job opportunity came from, but, that is not what I am seeing.
One case in point, the State of North Dakota (which consistently ranks has having one of the lowest crime rates) had to start advertising for people to move to their state. They had a low unemployment rate and more and more job opportunities.
One of the main sticking points for them was that they could not get girls to move there.
“Oh, Ramble, that is because it is cold.”
Yeah, so is London, but girls flock there like crazy.
This entire “hooking up” thing definitely confused me when I was in college.
It would have helped if someone had explained what “hooking up” was and what it meant. In fact, it would have made college a much, much less traumatic experience.
I’m still amazed by how absolutely clueless I was when I was younger.
But then I’m generally immune to pluralistic ignorance.
This makes no sense. You’re right, women don’t want to farm or be cowgirls, with a few exceptions. That isn’t to say they don’t find cowboys sexy. Women don’t chase men, they chase job opportunities. And then they date men with similar job opportunities. I’m not sure why this is surprising – it seems obvious. This isn’t the era of women become nurses to meet interns, or ad agency secretaries to meet Don Draper.
@Ms. Walsh:
“Again, this is subjective. If he has achieved demonstrably high status with his own business, I’m sure he will do fine. He may want to avoid women with more education than himself anyway. I will be surprised if we see many pairings between SES groups.”
O: I never cease to be amazed at the utter unimaginative stuff some folk say – after events like Sep 11, no less! Ms. Walsh, I can assure you that it is not at all uncommon to come across guys who run their own businesses who are better read than graduate degreed Women. It happens a heck of a lot more than many in my community would like to admit, because then it hurts the Narrative. But I’m living proof that it does.
Nor am I in any way alone.
To be sure, these guys aren’t the ones burning everyone’s ears off with their laments; all of that jazz occurs on the other side of the aisle, as your appelation “Spinster Lit” clearly attests to. Being that this is the case, it would seem that they need to be the ones to do a bit of “rethink”.
*quoting me*:That Women, some of them anyway, may not think they are not important or do not like them, is not a problem I nor any other similarly disposed Man can or should solve.
“I have never suggested that men should plan their lives according to what women want.”
O: You most certainly did suggest this, Ms. Walsh; and there is at least some evidence that some guys have done a bit of “rethink” themselves on this front…
“One’s strategy should follow one’s objectives, and if men prefer to GTOW they have every right.”
O: I’m glad you brought that up because it gives me the chance to clarify something. For me – and I only speak for myself – I am NOT anti-marriage, or anti-relationships with Women; indeed, quite the opposite.
What I’m against is the notion that Women get to call the shots as to what world I am to operate per their whims – 19th century Victorian England on one side to pander to their Jane Austin fantasies; and 21st century egalitarianism when it suits her. Other guys are more than free to indulge such things; I’ll pass. I like the idea of people actually upholding the ideals of equality, when the lights are on and everyone’s looking – when it actually counts. If I can rise above my base instincts, she can too. In fact, I demand that she does. The standards will not be changed, they will be adhered to. Aggressively. Freedom ain’t free; somebody’s gotta pay.
It’s the Ladies’ Turn.
“Many women are effectively choosing not to marry. Make no mistake, Kate Bolick chose not to marry her boyfriend, and her two most recent relationships have been with men 11 years younger than herself. She’s got a big smile on her face. She’s only a cautionary tale to women who want marriage and family.”
O: Which explains her massive ink spill in The Atlantic? Her appearance on Today? Her parlaying her bad judgments, missed opportunities and relationship lamets into potential multi-media fame and hype? If she was indeed very happy with her decision(s), why the need to go on and on about it in such a public way? Methinks the Lady doth engage in Cognitive Dissonance just a weebit much…
Edited.
O.
Susan, I’m not trying to relate it to promiscuity.
@Ms. Walsh #109:
“This makes no sense. You’re right, women don’t want to farm or be cowgirls, with a few exceptions.”
O: OK then; so what were you disagreeing with?
“That isn’t to say they don’t find cowboys sexy. Women don’t chase men, they chase job opportunities.”
O: That’s fine – and those choices lead to consequences. I don’t like trying to save folks from themselves.
“And then they date men with similar job opportunities. I’m not sure why this is surprising – it seems obvious. This isn’t the era of women become nurses to meet interns, or ad agency secretaries to meet Don Draper.”
O: Just because something is “obvious” doesn’t mean that it’s the only way things can be or that it’s even right. Those who can’t, or won’t, think outside of the box are gonna find themselves in a heck of a pickle in a minute. Seems quite a few will be the gals…
O.
“Young people going off to work in the big city. Nothing new there. For college graduates, New York City is one of the easiest places to find a job in the United States, especially a good paying job. ”
Agree totally Susan. The reason why so many people moved up north to begin was to “follow the jobs” provided by industrialization.
I am from northern NY a full 8 hours away from NYC, and many young people (of both genders) moved to NY to find jobs period, not even good paying ones. I’ve run into a few people from home who’ve moved here.
I’ve attempted to discourage people I know from moving here, but they don’t see that because I have a job, and they don’t, or they’re part time, or working bare wage, etc., The alternative could’ve been a 28 year old who stayed in their hometown and is now 5 years behind me in terms of work experience/salary, even though we’re the same age.
If I could do it over again (and I just might), I’d pick some place like Denver. I didn’t then because it seemed too far from home and family.
My question to some of the single guys is, why focus so much on the girls who aren’t really your target audience, who don’t live up to what you want, and who dislike LTR-orientation in men? It seems kind of like a waste of time.
If you don’t want an arts major girl who slept with ten frat guys, or an overweight below average looking girl who rejects nice guys, or a Kate Bolick wanna-be who wants the SATC lifestyle, then don’t. But all the time, energy and effort you spend on thinking about these types of girls aren’t going to do you any good either.
While you’re preoccupied over the girls you *don’t* want, what if the girl you *would* want is out there and single? And you’re not looking for her because you’re still focused on the girls you say you don’t want. Am I wrong on this?
Well obviously no one wants to go to North Dakota, not just women. Having lived in NYC myself, I think it’s something every young person should experience in life.
Personally, I have never known a graduate to move to NYC without a job, though obviously the starving artist who waits tables to make ends meet is a tried and true NYC character.
The largest cities will always have the most opportunities.
@Ms. Hope:
“My question to some of the single guys is, why focus so much on the girls who aren’t really your target audience, who don’t live up to what you want, and who dislike LTR-orientation in men? It seems kind of like a waste of time.
If you don’t want an arts major girl who slept with ten frat guys, or an overweight below average looking girl who rejects nice guys, or a Kate Bolick wanna-be who wants the SATC lifestyle, then don’t. But all the time, energy and effort you spend on thinking about these types of girls aren’t going to do you any good either.
While you’re preoccupied over the girls you *don’t* want, what if the girl you *would* want is out there and single? And you’re not looking for her because you’re still focused on the girls you say you don’t want. Am I wrong on this?”
O: *Raises hand* I know! I know!
It’s because many of these guys aren’t being honest with themselves; they want the hotness, too. They just have problems with the downsides of wanting the hotness. Like the ladies and Betas deal, the fellas know where the “good girls” are – right out there in your neck of the woods. If they were really serious about it, they’d pack their stuff and make it happen, just like you have. But they won’t.
And I just told you why.
O.
@Ion, Ramble, ANa
“Ramble and Ana, I second your comments about acting majors (I think it applies to dance majors as well).”
=========
Co-signed.
In my experience, there is a correlation between the physical requirements (I’ve never seen a chunky lead [non-character] actress or dancer) and sluttiness. If your body is so central to being looked at– as a *requirement*– I would think it would make you either crazy neurotic or really narcissistic.
Also, I was thinking that there has got to be some kind of scale, where the more your body is involved, the higher the narcissistic/slutty factor. For example, singers’ bodies are more “on display” than cellists, who are still performers but the gaze is re-directed to their instruments. There is some kind of transference going on, I think.
And, I wonder if there is some kind of correlation between the obejctivity/subjectivity or art and the sluttyness/non-sluttyness. For example, some actress who is doing a scene: How can this be quantified and measured, objectively? How do we know the performance is “good”? There is no objective standard, but a lot of varying opinions.
For example, look at someone like Kristen Stewart from the Ana’s Twilight series. Some people LOVE her acting, others despise it. Yet they are viewing the same performance.
I find a lot of these types, where the same performance can be “revelatory!” or “derivative,” tend to be more promiscuous.
Contrast that with the hypothetical cellist. There are so many objectives that can measured: intonation, tempo, rhythm, dexterity, tone, etc. There can be many viewpoints on interpretation, but they will all have the same quantifiable baseline of objective standards.
These types, in my experience, are a LOT more disciplined and a lot less slutty.
OK, that was a pretty nerdy post! Oh well
Overall, the sexes show very little difference in the number of sexual partners. This would seem to confirm the hypothesis that a small percentage of promiscuous students are engaging in casual sex with one another, while a much larger group has a few partners during college, and well over a third of students have no sex at all.
__________
This is exactly the case in the 70`s, so things have not changed much in the last 40 years. The stats are almost identical.
There is hope for the younger peeps…lol
@Bastiat:
Wt your take on my Four Point Program:
I’m not hearing exactly what you take issue with. Clearly there is a problem that needs addressing here. The hooking up phenomenon has proven itself to be problematic. I have proposed some simple, commonsense solutions to eliminate, or failing that greatly reduce, these poblems. Aside from ideological reasons, I am not hearing practical reasons from either you or Ms. Walsh as to why my proposals wouldn’t work. Again: these proposals have a proven track record of success; they were adapted from pre-existing policies found in pro sports, military and corporate cultures.
Please explain? I need clarification.
Thanks!
O.
Hope
If you don’t want an arts major girl who slept with ten frat guys, or an overweight below average looking girl who rejects nice guys, or a Kate Bolick wanna-be who wants the SATC lifestyle, then don’t. But all the time, energy and effort you spend on thinking about these types of girls aren’t going to do you any good either.
___________
Im thinking the easy target is too much to resist for a lot of men. Also I think the biggest problem with a lot of men is they are not very good with judging women when they first meet. Libidos do seem to get in the way of sound mind……lol
@Wudang
Your tenacity in arguing the point about promiscuous females is truly remarkable. You’re like the HUS Terminator. Having spent many hours analyzing the data already, I don’t have much of an appetite for delving into unrelated matters, but I’ll address some of your key points.
1. As we have seen, the SMP in the U.S. is strongly bifurcated by SES group. For our purposes, it’s the college population that is relevant.
2. I linked to two sources that explain that gender discrepancies in the general population disappear when prostitutes are added to the female sample.
3. The numbers do not require any partners outside the college population. There are many, many students who have an occasional hookup, and more women than men do not hook up at all. I believe, in fact, that the percentage of highly promiscuous women is well below 20%. I am certain that college students are not venturing beyond campus for many of their sexual experiences, especially the women. It’s actually a preposterous suggestion that reveals a lack of understanding about the American college experience. As I said earlier, there are a few campuses where this might be the case, e.g. NYU, but by and large college scenes are quite self-contained and very insular, as Zach has confirmed.
4. The gender imbalance on college campuses reflects an educational system for children that nurtures female learning and expression. It’s not a question of personality traits or native IQ, it’s a question of girls in the U.S. having been actively groomed for college while their male peers were not served equally well. The colleges don’t admit for sex, they admit for achievement. Even the finest public universities in the U.S., e.g. UNC, reflect this. So the idea that more sluts are in the college population has not been demonstrated. Indeed, it’s very clear across studies that only a tiny percentage of women (3%) have more than 6 partners in four years.
5. As for lesbians, they have more sex partners than straight women not less. A lot more.
That goes against my own understanding of all-female college dynamics, as well as of lesbians in coed schools, who tend to be Women’s Studies types.
In any case, it’s a moot point. The sex ratio, gay men, and higher percentage of women in relationships in the sample more than explain the discrepancy between the male and female means.
Also, you’re consistently committing the error of regarding college samples as closed heterosexual populations. They are not.
I explored every one of your links and many more besides. I have not excluded a single source quantifying college sexual behavior. At this point, I find your reasoning rather tortured, to be honest, so I’ll ask you to provide data to back up your point, or cease arguing it.
Re: North Dakota
This is a really interesting discussion! Pretty recently, I relocated back to the area where my dad and brother live. Partially because the culture was so much more favorable! But another part was *definitely* the economy.
Depending on your field, it may be detrimental to move without knowing your prospects. I want to say there was a recent BBC or profile on a woman who has relocated to one of those spots like Wyoming, ND, Montana, specifically to have a better chance of finding someone. (IIRC, it didn’t really work out for her.)
Also: A lot of long-range thinkers may be thinking: Where do I want to raise a family? Because I want my children to have opportunities for a *great* education, not just book-wise but culturally.
There was a point when I was young that we lived in a town so small, it didn’t even have a STOPLIGHT. I had just started school and one of the field trips was to walk to the Dairy Queen. Not a museum or a concert or a science exhibit. A DQ! They still used corporal punishment as well (spanking/paddling).
My parents had me reading like crazy at home and we soon relocated to a metro area. Some people like to romanticize small towns, but in my short experience it was incredibly depressing and stagnant.
>> “If you don’t want an arts major girl who slept with ten frat guys, or an overweight below average looking girl who rejects nice guys, or a Kate Bolick wanna-be who wants the SATC lifestyle, then don’t. But all the time, energy and effort you spend on thinking about these types of girls aren’t going to do you any good either.”
I think that some of these guys (and one in particular) actually LOVE sluts, which is why they spend so much time obsessing over them.
I forgot to add: Also, everybody was up in everybody’s business (ie gossipping), which annoyed my mom to no end.
Jackie, what you said above has a lot of truth to it.
Another way to look at is is extrovert vs introvert.
Actors and dancers are not shy, normally. They cant be too shy to be up infront of an audience. extrovert
The chello player while infront of an audience, is not drawing the same attention or focus. introvert.
Naturally one would think the extrovert would be more prone to “activity”
“Libidos do seem to get in the way of sound mind”
Unfortunately for some women, a man’s sound mind kicks in hard when he switches to the wife-material pile
However abbott, do not the facts show that @ 95% of women are infact not sluts? I would think even the most discerning man can find what he is looking for right here in the good ole US of A. That is , ofcourse, unless he has totally unrealistic expectations.
Hope…”If you don’t want an arts major girl who slept with ten frat guys”
Most of the art chicks I’ve known wouldn’t be very interested in frat guys…much more likely to go for a hipster musician. Commercial art, maybe for the frat guys, but art-art, I think that would be an exception. YMMV.
Well then I’m sure they’ll clean up with the ladies. What’s the problem?
Where?
She was not bemoaning her fate. When I met her she was very accepting of it and earnestly seeking ways to enjoy the second half of her life without husband or children. I admired her for it, no one has to pay for her choices but her.
@Emily
“I think that some of these guys (and one in particular) actually LOVE sluts, which is why they spend so much time obsessing over them.”
=======
Hahaha! I think you hit the nail on the head, Em!
If you are thinking of our mutual friend, he wrote that men LOVE sluts. So apparently, it’s no secret.
I almost wonder… so much of the ranting and railing (“NO RINGS FOR SLUTS!!!”) is almost to convince themselves, more than anyone?
It must be very strange to be attracted to someone, have sex with them, and then repulsed by them for acquiescing to your request! And believe that, by sleeping with you, they have only degraded themselves more.
And that the girls you “value” the most are the ones who will deny that same request of yours!
I would think that would be very strange and difficult, even. Like driving by stepping on the gas and the brake at the same time trying to get to a destination. A lot of wheel-spinning, without going anywhere.
The largest cities will always have the most opportunities.
No, they won’t. You lived through the 70′s, you should know this.
“Last one to leave Cleveland/NYC/Milwaukee/etc. turn out the lights”.
Almost all of the biggest companies in the 1970′s, 80s and 90 started somewhere in the burbs. Microsoft, Sun, Apple, Google, etc. I happen to know that UPS has almost all of their major offices in Suburbs…just like FedEx.
Now, Finance, they are most definitely in the city. No argument here.
But, in general, almost all recent examples of successful companies are in the burbs.
But, UC and UMC types demanded that their cities improve, while bemoaning gentrification.
Young, hip people, especially girls, really, really wanted to move to the high rent, expensive car insurance, cities.
Which are outside the big cities. Can you name some great companies in North Dakota, Idaho or Wyoming?
A little late to the party. But “warm wet mouth of a Tri Delt” is Roissy worthy. Good show.
J…re Charlotte Simmons…”I did find Wolfe’s description of the actual act amazing; you’d think he’d had a hymen at one time”
Huh. Will have to go back and re-read. The main thing that struck me about his descriptions of sex in this book was that they were as clinical and un-erotic as can be imagined. My thought is that this was quite deliberate, that he was trying to send a message about the lameness of sex if decoupled from emotion.
@Tom (125)
Thanks, Tom!
I think that a lot of it boils down to the performer’s motivations. There are *awesome* actresses and narcissistic cellists, for sure.
But the narcissistic performance is almost always shouting, “Look at MEEEE!!!” and a truly great performer will almost envelope you in their work, so much that it is a mutual experience of the music or art. You and them, together.
There actually has to be a ton of humility and very little ego to do this well, I think.
>> “Some people like to romanticize small towns, but in my short experience it was incredibly depressing and stagnant.”
Yeah, I grew up in a rural area and I always felt the same way. At risk of reinforcing stereotypes: I LOVE big cities!
I recently moved to the middle of nowhere, but that’s because I couldn’t find a job in the city.
For example, look at someone like Kristen Stewart from the Ana’s Twilight series. Some people LOVE her acting, others despise it. Yet they are viewing the same performance.
I actually have a different theory. I think is more like meeting people in real life. Some people you fall in love with, some other people you despise, some other people are just meh. The whole idea that you click with some people and don’t with others due to a good chunk of factors not all of them obvious. I for example never saw the appeal of Leonardo Di Caprio whether young or old. I just never bought a single character he has played. But I can admit that it might be a perception problem given all the praise and awards he has had. I have a good chunk of recognized actors that I don’t buy (Julia Roberts is another one) and another that I just can’t get enough for some reason Kate Beckinsale to use an example fascinates me even though she is not very well regardless as actress so again I think this is more of a personal taste, YMMV.
@david foster (134)
” My thought is that this was quite deliberate, that he was trying to send a message about the lameness of sex if decoupled from emotion.”
========
I thought that as well! Something Uncle Tom said once, about copulation not even rising the state of barnyard animals comes to mind.
I was thinking about this gratuitousness in things like the show “Game of Thrones” (which is fantastic, by the way).
The sex is GROSS and rapey, a lot of the time. I think it’s supposed to make you feel that way: Seeing that pimp, Littlefynger, and his grotesque bordello with Joffrey being mean to the prostitutes made me SICK.
It’s not “Wow, being a medieval pimp is *awesome*!” More like, how unsexy is this sex, when people use each other and everything is a transaction? (Answer: Very)
Sorry about that. I did not need to respond like that.
@DF:
“Huh. Will have to go back and re-read. The main thing that struck me about his descriptions of sex in this book was that they were as clinical and un-erotic as can be imagined. My thought is that this was quite deliberate, that he was trying to send a message about the lameness of sex if decoupled from emotion.”
O: He did; and I think he did so for the reasons you note.
O.
Some people like to romanticize small towns, but in my short experience it was incredibly depressing and stagnant.
Cosign that I grew up in the city and small towns are great for visit not for living. Although I prefer a middle ground like the medium cities sort of mix of suburbs and shopping and job places a huge city like LA is too big for my taste and the traffic will drive me insane.
I think that some of these guys (and one in particular) actually LOVE sluts, which is why they spend so much time obsessing over them.
I think we mentioned that there is a blind spot for both sides of the Beta scale men and women.
I think it would be good for Susan to actually try to write about this how do the “normal” people can meet and mate instead of looking up to the sluts and cads that are screwing up everything for everyone.
Jackie
It must be very strange to be attracted to someone, have sex with them, and then repulsed by them for acquiescing to your request! And believe that, by sleeping with you, they have only degraded themselves more.
And that the girls you “value” the most are the ones who will deny that same request of yours!
I would think that would be very strange and difficult, even. Like driving by stepping on the gas and the brake at the same time trying to get to a destination. A lot of wheel-spinning, without going anywhere.
__________
Hense most guys do not understand what being a hypocrite is…lol
@Hope (114)
That’s a pretty good question, and I think that Obsidian partially answered it.
I think, too, that those “slutty” girls are like neon signs, in some ways, instead of lighting up they are blinking “OBVIOUS” or “EASY” at some pheneromic (sp!) level.
It’s almost like, if you are really really really hungry, you aren’t seeking out a fine restaurant. Most people will look for the golden arches of McDonald’s to get something ASAP. Also, hunger can make you kinda crazy (or in my case, I get kinda mean and “hangry”!). You don’t want to debate points or contemplate anything, you just want chow!
It’s a poor metaphor, but I see some of these guys who aren’t into subtlety. Especially if they use/abuse a lot of porn. That is this example’s equivalent of a Hot Pocket!
Their tastebuds get acclimated to something that is not exactly healthy.
@Ms. Walsh:
“Well then I’m sure they’ll clean up with the ladies.”
O: They most certainly do.
“What’s the problem?”
O: There was none – at least not on this end…
O: You most certainly did suggest this, Ms. Walsh
“Where?”
O: Upthread with your citation and apparent cosigning of, Regnerus’ statement.
“She was not bemoaning her fate.”
O: That’s not how her article reads…
“When I met her she was very accepting of it and earnestly seeking ways to enjoy the second half of her life without husband or children. I admired her for it, no one has to pay for her choices but her.”
O: So again, why the need for the exhibitionistic display? See Ms. Walsh, being who I am and where I’m from, this is all oldhat to me.
On the cover of the August issue of Essence magazine, we see actress Nia Long and her *two* sons – one of them an infant – with the caption “Single, Satisfied & Raising Her Boys”.
http://www.essence.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nia_Long#Personal_life
Baby Mama twice over, and her being promoted in such a fashion is NOT a good thing for Team America.
Would you agree?
It’s like installment 5,768 of the whole stiff upper lip routine, but she’s not fooling anybody; she’s certainly not fooling the fellas.
Back to you…
O.
@Susan, David Foster
\
Re: I Am Charlotte Simmons
That sex scene and the aftermath made me so sad. Did you guys almost get a Tess of the d’Ubervilles vibe? (The impoverished background, being used and cast aside, the preoccupation with status)
At least the ending of IACS wasn’t *that* sad. But still.
@SW
Kidding… your analysis is akin to standing against conventional wisdom, saying “Hold it!” Excluding non-sex kissing from the stats, college students really do look like mostly Victorians vs. a handful of hedonists. If “hooking up” is greatly exaggerated, I wonder if the prevalance of normal relationships is underreported? I think I emailed you some stuff on LDRs…
Radical individualism, mainly male-oriented and on the right. History is replete with examples of unholy and opportunistic alliances between the two extremes.
@Tom
Re: Hypocrites
In my experience, I have known a LOT of hypocrites (religious and not) and those people are actually suffering. Cognitive dissonance is like aural dissonance to your soul.
Yesterday I was dealing with a client, and somehow child discipline came up. (Someone had asked my advice, even though my “kids” have 4 feets and fur.
). This person has a TON of cognitive dissonance and it shows up in many, many areas of his life.
Anyway, this person said, “Why don’t you just whip em? Whup em? That will solve everything.” This person went on to say that he got “whupped” all the time, his parents would tell him why they were going to hit him, hit him, “then came the ‘I love yous.’”
To justify it, he quoted the Bible. (Incorrectly, I might add.)
The way he told the story gave me the creeps. (He also tried to squish my cat.) I don’t think this person is a bad person– they probably could be an awesome person! Laboring under cog. dissonance is going to cause a TON of pain, and pain makes people mean.
But acknowledging “something is not right” is perceived as even MORE painful! And it probably will be, like needing to get a broken bone in a cast, before it can heal.
So there they stay, believing they are between Scylla and Charybdis. I can’t imagine that it’s extremely pleasant.
@Ms. Walsh:
On the economies of ND, WY and ID…
North Dakota:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Dakota#Economy
*3% unemployment rate!!!*
Wyoming:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wyoming#Economy
Admittedly not as strong an economy as ND, but the unemployment rate is still lower than the national average: about 7.6% or so.
On the upside they have a very interesting taxation system…
Idaho:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idaho#Economy
ID’s got a very interesting economy and is home to some of America’s best known Fortune 500 corporate names. Aerospace seems to be big there too.
So, in sum, if a lady wants to get hitched, she can make it happen in areas where the guys are plentiful; that’s not likely to happen in areas like NYC, for a number of reasons. For the Sistas, the South is the place to be.
Have fun!
O.
NYC should be on the downswing again as the financialization of the economy continues to reverse itself.
Avoiding large cities was pretty easy for me. I got zero job offers from major metro areas back in 1999/2000. I had to pay back my nice six figure loans, so I settled for a small market sub-six-figure job.
I avoided NYC and DC because I didn’t feel like billing 2400 hours a year, even I all the BigLaw jobs paid $125,000. Mostly because I thought it was the fast track to total burnout.
I feel bad for lawyers today who are being larded up with even more debt and entering a horrible legal job market.
Although with more women going to college than men, that means that the women are taking on more unpayable non-discharagable debt. Interesting.
@Susan
“Don’t forget that it’s the minority of women who are promiscuous, and they’re throwing a wrench into the SMP by significantly increasing the supply of casual sex.”
I think promiscuity has very little to do with it. As you often remind us, the promiscuous are a small minority. And of that small minority, (whom usually are invovled with the likes of each other) how many are really hooking up with serious consideration – especially in terms of SMP/MMV values in the long-term? Not many I presume.
My point was how can we expect those trends, listed in Sex is Cheap, to change if the message to young men is LTR-preference = DLV.
“I really do think I’m speaking in women’s best interest when I say: the one hardest to catch isn’t necessary the one of most worth.
You’ll get no argument from me there. The hardest guy to catch is probably a very poor relationship prospect in any case.”
But, as you said this weekend, girls don’t value a guy who *isn’t* hard to catch – one that doesn’t make them earn the commitment, as much as another guy might. By sentiment, that means that poor relationship prospects have a higher precieved SMP-value.
You must realize how this looks for a young guy, like myself, who is trying to calibrate his behavior to exhibit the highest value possible. The message is, (and I’ve had to calibrate some of these things through trail and error myself), that by demonstrating LTR-interest, or romanticizing the courtship, it is quickest way to lose attraction and demonstrating poor relationship potential, and unwillingness to commit, is indeed going to enhance your perceived value.
This phenomena is going effect those seeking a relationship, and possibly the SMP in general, far more than that few being promiscuous with each other. (as the others don’t want them anyways – they have themselves to themselves.)
The two traits that you said were immutable were hypergamy and ‘sexual variety,’ right?
At least to me, it seems like everyone has unified against hypergamy; now-a-days men seek women who demonstrate low hypergamy potential, correct?
Why is it for men: “access to sex without to many complications or commitments” still “carries the day?”
Are only one of the immutable traits desirable?
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