Category Archives: Relationships

College Education and Impossible Standards

Here’s another one of those whinefests from a liberated career woman about how she and her “successful, gorgeous, and amazing friends” in their 30’s can’t find a man to save them from themselves.

This stood out for me from the article:

For one, it’s not as if we are holding out for Jake Gyllenhaal, but we do have certain non-negotiable expectations for potential mates that include college degrees and white-collar jobs. Life has always gone according to our plans, so why wouldn’t we land a man with these (reasonable) requirements?

This point has been made before, but I will make it again.

A woman requiring an education from a man is not a reasonable requirement, at least if she actually wants to find a man.

There are 1.3 females graduating for every 1 male who graduates. For every 10 females that may potentially find a man with a college degree, it is an absolute impossibility for 3 of them to.

I repeat: it is a mathematical impossibility for at least 23% of college-educated women to find a college-educated man.

The article, like most of these types, does mention this, but glosses over and understates the severity of it:

But increasingly, there aren’t enough of these men to go around. Women now outnumber men on college campuses, and single, childless women out earn their male counterparts. In fact, as author Liza Mundy writes in her book, The Richer Sex, Millennial women are increasingly finding two options when it comes to romance: marry down or don’t marry.

It’s not that there just “aren’t enough”, it’s that there is a major shortage.

And men know this.

Can a women honestly think that a 30-year-old college-educated man, knowing that he’s in very high demand is going to settle for a 30-year-old career broad, rather than the newly minted 23-year-old college grad or the cute 22-year-old waitress?

Honestly?

Sure, I said absolutely nothing new, but it bears repeating. While some seem to recognize the problem, it is always understated.

It is an absolute impossibility for 1-in-4 college-educated women in the US to find a college-educated man.

If you are a women looking for a college-educated man, look hard and when you find bite hard while young before both you and the college-educated man enters your 30s and he realizes his high value, otherwise you could be in the 25%.

On the bright side, if that happens you could always write freelance articles complaining about how you can’t find a man.

****

For those women who don’t want to be in the 25%, the Captain runs down how to capture your college-educated man. You simply have to be:

A physically attractive woman who is
nice
responsible
reasonably intelligent
and likes sex

That’s it. May probability be with you.

Housework, Independence, and Entitlement

The issue of men and housework seems to have sparked renewed interest among the chattering classes. It seems to have been sparked by this Tide commercial of some vaguely metrosexual father washing his daughter’s princess dress.

Judgy Bitch had some fun with this and CR points out the biological origins of the issue, but I’m going to weigh in as well.

Now, honestly, I don’t care if men do housework. Doing the laundry, cooking, or cleaning because you want to makes you neither more nor less of a man. If stuff needs to get done, men get stuff done.

A family should pursue whatever division of labour works best for them.

On the other hand, being a kitchen bitch is emasculating and will ruin your marriage. If you are a man, avoid it, it won’t go well for you.

Of course, all this assumes that there’s actually a chore gap. Which is unlikely as the time-use studies on this tend to ignore traditionally male chores.

I’m not going to write about proper housework division, that’s a personal issue. Instead, I am going to write about how this debate relates to independence, entitlement, and the society.

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First, independence and strength.

Feminists, you wanted careers, you wanted to work outside the house, you got your wish, please shut up.

What these women don’t see when they complain about the “patriarchy” and being “oppressed” by staying at home rather than work mindless corporate drudgery, is that they now are doing what men have always done.

In the industrial era, men have always gone to work, they have always come home to do house work (home repairs, renovations, garbage, car repairs, yard work, finances, BBQing, etc.), and they have always participated in family life (to a greater or lesser degree).

The thing is, they didn’t, and still don’t, bitch about it. They didn’t write articles about how “over-whelming” it was. They didn’t demand that women step up and do they’re jobs for them. They didn’t whine about how unfair life was.

They just did their jobs, because that’s what independent adults do.

Independent and strong people don’t whine about how tough life is, about how unfair it is, they just do what needs to be done.

Women, you are now in the position those “oppressive” men have always been in.

Working all day for somebody else then coming home to take care of the house and family is what men have always done. You wanted to do it, now you are doing it.

You can not complain about women being “oppressed” when you do not have men’s responsibilities, then whine about having men’s responsibilities when you have spent decades demanding them.

From the Atlantic article:

The good news is that many men already seek out these responsibilities. I like to call their actions “small instances of gender heroism” or “SIGH”s, in honor of the intense pang of gratitude and relief a damsel-in-distress feels when a superhero notices her especially—amidst a crowd—and swoops in to enact a rescue that was so unexpected that its impossibility had become the central pillar of her fierce independence. You know, like the dreamy effect Mr. Darcy has on Elizabeth Bennet, Superman on Lois Lane, and Antonia on her line through Danielle and Therèse.
…
Find a working mom and lead with the following SIGH: “What do you need, in order to raise your children and advance in your career at the same time?” Just swoop in and help her out, not because you’re obligated to rectify an injustice, but because you can. Responding to the misery of the people you care about is what you do.

Independent and strong people don’t need SIGHs.

What the hell is wrong with you people?

If you need someone else to help you, you are, by definition, not independent. You are, by definition, weak.

If you want to be independent, be independent, but then don’t beg others to pick up your shit for you, do it yourself.

Don’t demand men clean your houses, don’t demand men come to your rescue, don’t demand others do things for you. You are independent now, deal with it.

****

Second, entitlement.

If you read these articles, you get a strong sense of entitlement.

The SIGHs talk above and the rest of the Atlantic article reek of entitlement, but as usual Jezebel just does horrible, entitled bitch so much better than anyone else.

The title of the Jezebel article (no link, if you’re curious see JB’s article) displays this perfectly:

“How to Make a Dude Sweep the Kitchen Floor (Correctly), Without You Even Having to Tell Him”

What kind of world-class bitch writes this? It sounds like a manual on training dogs to urinate outside.

In this mentality men exist to do what women desire, in the way women desire, while telepathically understanding both.

A few gems of overactive entitlement:

It’s not just that you’re tired and pissed, it’s that you never get the feeling of having your own life, or free time, or time to recharge, if you feel like you are the only person overseeing the household’s concerns and making sure they are handled, or worse, if you are re-doing the work your husband or partner did poorly.

Because the entirety of everything revolves around the women’s feelings. As well, men are incompetent and everything must be done to the women’s standards or its worse than not having done anything at all.*

The Atlantic has some fancy sociological theories for this well-documented disparity as to why humans with peens can’t scrub a bathroom right without a lot of rigmarole:

Remember, all the jobs have to be done to the women’s standards, because men are incompetent and their standards don’t matter.

They Can’t Be Bothered (Motivational Hypothesis)

Of course they can see what needs to be done, but in their eyes, it’s just not that important to do it, especially when other stuff matters more. Homemade valentines for your class party, kiddo? Why bother when we can just buy some and save time?

No matter how useless the man may think the project is, if the women desires it must be done and he’s a jerk for not counting it as important housework and sharing the duties.

Later, Travis wonders why Alice can’t just constantly leave him notes to tell him what he has to do? Sure thing mister, right after she cuts the crust off your PB&J.

Because men should know what women want. We’re all mind-readers.

Here’s an idea for the women complaining: go fuck yourself.

If you want to be a controlling bitch and demand things be cleaner, do it yourself. If you want the house cleaned to your spoiled, exacting standards, do it yourself. If men’s standards are not up to those that your entitlement complex demands, do it yourself. If a man doesn’t think your little social-climbing and status games are important enough to act on, do it yourself.

Essentially, quit trying to force your neuroses and perfectionism concerning cleanliness and social status-seeking on men.

Do it yourself, and stop bitching that men don’t care about your neurotic desires.

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Third, society.

From the Atlantic:

Only a handful of working parents have the “village” they need to care for their children during the period in which career opportunities slam up against pregnancies, births, years of nursing, and other crucial forms of caregiving. Most of us have to buy the village, and it’s expensive—so expensive that almost everyone has to stop hiring once they have paid for childcare and, in the very best cases, a cleaning service, despite the fact that there is much more to do.

To completely eliminate the destruction that childrearing exacts on your mind, body, and career, you would have to hire workers to handle your finances, home repairs, pets, laundry, afterschool commitments, errands, and shopping, among other responsibilities. Add to these costs the overtime that most working parents pay to accommodate the fact that their childcare needs extend well beyond the presumed eight hours a day, and you’re talking about a lot of cash. No one has this kind of money.

Because no one can afford to fully replace themselves at home while they are at the office and because, when it comes to more important tasks like selecting afterschool lessons and resolving playground disputes, no one wants to replace themselves, working mothers have famously picked up the slack for both partners, subsidizing our market with their free labor, enabling our companies and institutions to charge artificially low prices for their goods and offer artificially high salaries to their employees.

All of this means that mothers are important, in all of the ways in which socially conservative forces routinely note. But it could also mean that mothers—especially working mothers—are exploited. They are being used as a means by their partners, our institutions, and our economy in a system they did not design, to do more than their fair share of the family’s work, all without compensation. No one yet has asked or empowered working mothers to reimagine and restructure their workplaces to suit their own ends. So the basic lack of self-governance and self-determination, combined with the unpaid labor, raises the specter of injustice.

I’ve written about all this before, but it bears repeating. Nobody is meant to work, take care of family, keep home, raise children, and all those other responsibilities at once. Of course child care is expensive. This is why we once had a division of labour in the family. It made it so people could manage all these things.

An you know what? It worked, at least until whining feminists destroyed it.

Now that they’ve destroyed the family division of labour which “oppressed” them, they are now whining that there is no division of labour and they actually have to take on multiple roles.

Well, boo-dee-fucking-hoo.

Feminists, you got what you wanted. Why are you so unhappy?

Please stop complaining about the changes you wrought on society.

Enjoy what you created.

****

Anyway, to sum, the whole housework debate, assuming that it is not a myth created by statistical manipulation, is simply women acting entitled.

Women wanted the “prestige” of the careers of men, so they “liberated” themselves and started to work outside the home.

Now that they are working outside the home, they are realizing it’s a lot of work, but instead of simply sucking it up and being strong and independent like men always have, they are bitching about how hard it is to work both outside and inside the home.

Instead of engaging in self-reflection on their own choices, they are choosing to blame men.

In addition, they are choosing to force their neurotic standards of housework on men and whining that men don’t comply with their controlling attitudes.

The whole housework debate is a ginned-up non-issue created by controlling, neurotic feminists who want to blame the hardship created by their own personal choices on men.

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* As an aside, the sentence “or worse, if you are re-doing the work your husband or partner did poorly.” sort of validates some aspects game theory. It is better to forgo helping women at all then to be a beta about it. They may dislike you doing nothing, but they will hate obsequiousness that isn’t perfect obedience even more.

Feminist Self-Annihilation

It seems it’s now a thing that women feel guilty about desiring a long-term relationship. As per that liberal rag, the Atlantic:

As a sociologist who’s interviewed several 20-something women on their sexual development, I’ve found straight young women aren’t necessarily embracing hooking up because they’re masters of their own destiny, as suggested by Hanna Rosin here a The Atlantic but because they face a new taboo and it’s not about sex or money or power. Instead, it’s a taboo about that traditional province of women: relationships. Ambitious young women in their 20s feel they shouldn’t want relationships with men at this phase in their lives.

I can’t believe this is a thing. I knew some feminists wanted the right to be sluts without shame, but what the hell?

What could possibly possess a person to feel guilty about desiring a human relationship?

But what really got me about this piece was this:

Some young women deeply desire meaningful relationships with men, even as they feel guilty about those desires. Many express the same sentiment again and again: “Why do I, a young and highly educated woman in the 21st century, value relationships with men so highly?” To do so feels like a betrayal of themselves, of their education, and of their achievements.

Really? I can’t even really feel anger over this, just sadness.

Women value relationships with men because humans were created (or evolved) to live with each other, to love each other, and to form relationships. We are social creatures; relationships define who we are.

To not value human relationships is to engage in self-annihilation.* The desire for companionship is the most human part of you, to fight against it is to destroy yourself and your humanity.

Meet a girl named Katie:

Katie, a 25-year-old woman I spoke with as part of my research, confided that she worried her single-minded pursuit of a graduate degree might limit her ability to meet a man with whom she could build a life. This realization—that she might want to prioritize a relationship over a career—felt shocking to Katie, and she did not admit to it easily. She felt deeply ashamed by such thoughts, worried that they signaled weakness and dependence, qualities she did not admire. To put such a high premium on relationships was frightening to Katie. She worried that it meant she wasn’t liberated and was still defined by traditional expectations of women.

Read that again: “She worried that it meant she wasn’t liberated and was still defined by traditional expectations of women.”

This women is destroying herself, destroying the things that are real in her life (relationships, family, and her desires for such) over ideological cant.

Dear Katie, if you are not pursuing what you truly desire because you are worried about signalling weakness and dependence, then you aren’t liberated and you are weak. If you are denying your human desire for companionship to “signal” independence, you are a slave, not of the body, but much worse, of the mind.

You are still letting others define you, you have just changed which group is doing the defining.

Also, which do you think you will value more in a decade: a man who has loved you for the last decade or an over-priced piece of paper that you are still paying off?

I have heard Katie’s dilemma from countless young women. Many feel ashamed about being too relationship-oriented in their 20s. Parents warn, “Do you really want to settle down so early? We just don’t want to see you miss out on any opportunities.” Friends intone, “How will you know what you like and want if you don’t play the field? You’re only young once. Now’s the time to explore.”

I think these parents and “friends” are going to have a lot to answer for on judgment day. What kind of idiotic advice is that?

Like Hamilton and Armstrong’s respondents, many young and aspiring women with whom I spoke felt as though it were counterproductive to their development to prioritize a relationship with a man.

Because human relationships are not a part of self-development?

This is a new phenomenon that goes against the grain of centuries of female socialization.

Because the desire for human relationships is something socialized?

Anxiety is difficult to tolerate, and rather than experience it, many of the young women I interviewed and work with in my psychotherapy practice split their desire for a relationship off from their professional and self-development desires. Confused about freedom and desire, young women often split their social and psychological options—independence, strength, safety, control, and career versus connection, vulnerability, need, desire, and relationships—into mutually exclusive possibilities in life. Romantic relationships then often become something to be avoided and denigrated rather than embraced.

Wow. Why would any women tolerate this kind of psychological self-annihilation?

Why? Why would women put up with an ideology that required them to destroy themselves?

I find this more sad than maddening, but if I were a women, I would be pissed over this.

****

Slate XX commented on this. Read:

How can you want a relationship if you have no prospects? Unless you’re actually casually dating someone (or have a secret crush on someone you interact with regularly), actively “wanting” a boyfriend seems rather silly to me.

Really? It’s silly to desire the basic human need of companionship?

Ellen Tarlin: I disagree. I think it’s almost unavoidable. Relationships are so romanticized and overvalued in our society! We are plagued by images of them.

Materialistic nihilism on full display.

Laura Helmuth: I don’t mean to be unsympathetic, but I am kind of thrilled that this is considered embarrassing among smart young women.Having a boyfriend and/or being well on the way to marriage used to be the default for twentysomethings. It’s fascinating that the social stigma has reversed so dramatically.

I am thrilled that women are denying their basic human desires and needs to pursue empty corporate work and a consumerist lifestyle.

Hanna Rosin: I feel like this moment we’re in now of shame about the boyfriend is great and necessary for progress and all that but will recalibrate and settle down.

Is she a fucking sadist?

Emma Roller: On the other side of this, I feel a lot of guilt for having a wonderful, stable relationship with my boyfriend of two-plus years. I’m  anxious about missing out on what the zeitgeist says the 20s lifestyle “should” be (playing the field, etc.), but what if I’m happy where I’m at?

Please re-read that, and just think about it for a minute. “I feel a lot of guilt for having a wonderful, stable relationship with my boyfriend of two-plus years.”

Juliana Jimenez: I hear you. I sometimes get a bit anxious over that as well—that I’m missing my 20s and I’m really living a 30s kind of life with my stable boyfriend and what not.

Again, consider that.

Meg Wiegand: I guess I’m the minority here: I’m in my late 20s, perpetually single, and very much worried about not finding someone. I know I’m absolutely fine on my own, and like Aisha, I’ve rarely met anyone I would ever want to consider being ”attached” to. But I continue to bounce on and off online dating sites and go on dates with friends of friends (mostly just ending up with great cocktail fodder) in hopes of finding someone who could be a partner.

Part of me is embarrassed by this—that I’ve escaped small-town Ohio and lived abroad and have a master’s degree but can’t find a partner. The other part feels that society already tells me that I should be ashamed of my body fat and short legs and hair that isn’t straight and blond, so why should I take this any more seriously? And why is this any different than feeling lonely because my family members and close friends are a plane ride away?

Wow. You could write an entire post just on these two paragraphs. It’s like every manosphere stereotype of modern American women rolled into two paragraphs.

Alyssa Rosenberg: What strikes me as weird about this conversation, and why this shift in priorities doesn’t seem like a complete feminist victory, is that it discounts the idea that a relationship can be an incredible source of support for career and life goals. Having someone who, say, helps with chores to give you more time to study or work, or who encourages you when you’re discouraged, or works in a similar field and helps you with ideas, who backs you publicly, etc? All this stuff can make it much easier to work harder and in a more productive way or to work through difficult challenges. I’m not sure we should get psyched by the idea that young women don’t want relationships but rather by the idea that women want more from their relationships or that we view relationships as part of a larger matrix of things that can work well together.

Alyssa here is comparatively rational. She sounds almost human and not like she had her heart replaced by the archives of Jezebel.

Ellen Tarlin: Because twentysomething men are selfish! (Joke. Sort of.) No, I’d say because these ideas about what women should be or do die hard. Your boyfriend or husband may support the ideals of feminism, but when he gets home, maybe he’d just really like it if you would make dinner, too. (Who wouldn’t?)

Read that again: “No, I’d say because these ideas about what women should be or do die hard.”

Think on it for a minute. You should now realize how insane this whole thing.

These women are sitting around discussing a sadistic, near-psychopathic (feminist) societal expectation that is causing women to annihilate themselves and their base human desires, and celebrating it because it destroys older societal expectations.

Dear women, why do you listen to people like this?

Why do you take the advice of people like this?

Why?

I don’t know, there’s not much left to say. This makes me sad.

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* Severe autists, clinical psychopaths, and others with a natural inability to form human relations excepted.

Accomodation to Sensitivity-Driven Discourse

Over the last few months, Vox has been writing a fair amount about rabbit people and the various forms of discourse. I personlly am very much within the heterotopic or modern discource camp, often to a fault. This, combined with my natural introversion, emotional detachment, and my poor ability to read social cues, leads to me being naturally insensitive to others or their feelings.

It is one thing to be purely heterotopic on the internet. Savaging some random idiot you’ve never met and will never meet or having sport with a silly rabbit is one thing. The internet and internet discourse is naturally impersonal and oriented towards modern discourse, so I feel free to let loose without worrying about offending people or being insensitive. If you get offended by some random jackass (ie. me) on the internet, you have much bigger problems than that random jackass; you should probably work on those.

I generally surround myself with male friends more given to the heterotopic side of things, although, not quite as extreme as me. So when with my male friends in RL I can usually engage in discourse with only a minimum level of attention to being sensitive.

On the other hand, I do have some female friends and many of my male friends are married, so often our activities are mixed-company, and females are more prone to sensitivity-driven discourse. While in discourse with said female friends, I try to generally be more sensitive, but my “more sensitive” is still far more analytical than the norm.

At one such mixed activity, after a negative off-hand remark to one of my male friends about Naomi Wolf, I found myself in discourse with four females (most of my male friends left for the other room, unnoticed by me until I was already well-enmeshed in the conversation; the others stayed quiet) about such sensitive topics as feminism, rape, submission in marriage, etc.

While I tried to keep myself from being intentionally inflammatory, it ended up with one of them blowing-up at me emotionally (I hit an personal emotional button or two without intending to). It came to light that it was the consensus among my female friends that I can be a pompous, insensitive ass at times and that this can cause them hurt.

I recognize that I can at times (usually?) be an insensitive ass, and I admitted as such as we spent some amount of time discussing it. Once that conversation ended, I ended up meeting each woman individually and apologizing any times I may have hurt them by being insensitive. I also said I would try to be less insensitive in the future, for they are my friends and I have/had no intention of causing them distress.

I did not apologize for either my positions or for expressing them, although, they did make me reconsider my position on the Biblical view of women in the workplace. (As EW recently argued, “Women were meant to labor so as to help their men support a household and multiply the species. A clear-eyed read of the Bible makes this clear.”)

So, now I’m going to try to be more sensitive in my discourse with the females around me.

But at the same time, I do not want to become a man beheld to the whims of others’ emotions. I do not want to become a rabbit given to prostration and capitulation at the whiff of negative emotions.

So, how do I do this? How do I become less insensitive?

Additionally, as I do so, how do I avoid letting my rhetoric become overly feminized?

Essentially, how do I draw the line between working towards being a rational Sigma/Alpha (or at least a strong upper beta) and not being, as Francis so delicately put it, an “Aspergery fucktard”.

Or should I just avoid discussing “controversial” topics with women?

Anyway, based on the recommendation of Joseph of Jackson, I pre-ordered the 2nd Edition of Verbal Judo from Amazon. I’ll review here when completed. I’m hoping reading this might give me more information to work within sensitivity-driven discourse, without giving myself over to it.

Friend Zone: Wherein I Agree with a Feminist

I came across this article by a feminist on the “friend zone” concept. My anti-feminism is readily apparent to any reading my blog, but this time I have to give her credit, she’s right.

The friend zone, for those of you older folks not hip to the jive, refers to:

a platonic relationship where one person wishes to enter into a romantic relationship, while the other does not. It is generally considered to be an undesirable situation by the lovelorn person.”

The vast majority of the time the man is the one being friendzoned. (Although, I did end up friend zoning a female friend once).

Anyway, she posits three reasons why the friendzone concept “sucks”:

1) It ignores the actual wishes of the woman
2) It displays an entitled attitude to a woman’s body
3) It posits that the worst thing ever is to be “just” friends with a woman
4) It’s a go to complaint of guys who are actually deeply misogynistic

I agree with her on all four.

Remember men: you are not entitled to sex.* A women’s body is her own, as your body is yours. You have not claim on hers, she has not claim on yours.

Being a “nice guy” no more entitles you to her vagina than it does to my labour or freedom.

If you want sex, win it. Develop yourself as a person to the point where women want to give you sex.

By being friends with a women solely to get in her pants you are disrespecting her and manipulating her. You are using her as a means, not an end. You are not actually her friend, you are an ass. You are not a “nice guy”, you’re an entitled jerk.

I know all the women, movies, TV shows, and authority figures in your life have told you to just be yourself, make friends with her, and you’ll get the girl. That’s bollocks.

If you want a romantic relationship, develop romance first, friendship after (or grow both together). If you want a wife, same thing.

If you simply want to use a woman for sex, than be honest about it. Game the shit out of her, sex her, then dump her the morning after like a proper player. Use a woman who wants to be used. Don’t screw around pretending to be friends with a women and hoping to prey on a moment of weakness, you ass. It’s not only a jerk move and immoral, it’s also a waste of your time.

And yes, you’re damn right I’m shaming you.

Because, here’s the thing, the friend zone is not only disrespectful to the woman, it’s far more disrespectful to yourself.

You are showing how low you think your value is (very low), as you are willing to waste so much of yourself on nothing more but a very low probability chance of romance with a woman.

You are showing how worthless your friendship is, by offering it solely in the hopes of getting sex.

You are emasculating yourself by putting yourself under the power of a woman.

By being friendzoned, you show your time and effort are worthless, as you have so much of it to waste on faking a friendship you don’t actually want.

You are showing how desperate you are as your only hope of romantic success is to spend your life hoping to prey on a moment of weakness.

Remember, you will be treated exactly as you believe you deserve to be treated in life. By allowing yourself to be friend zoned you are showing you deserve to be disrespected and are not worthy of a real romantice relationship.

I’m shaming you. By allowing yourself to be friend zoned you are showing yourself to be worthy of shame.

The friend zone is for losers. Don’t be a loser.

Don’t be this guy.

If you are, you deserve the pain you get.

Have some some self-respect.

So, here is the remedy, here is what you need to get from this post:

If you are currently in the friend zone with a woman, stop spending time with that woman. Cut her off from your life and stop being “friends” with her. Stop thinking about her. Do not spend your time, effort, or resources on her. Do not respond to her requests for your time or effort.

Be like Mike.

If you ask a girl out, and she says no, cut off contact with her. Don’t go out with her as friends, don’t spend time with her, do not get into long phone calls or text exchanges with her, etc.

If you are in the friend zone or about to be put in the friend zone by any woman, cut her out of your life. Do not be “just friends” (how I hate that phrase).

If she asks why she’s being cut out of your life, tell her the truth. You want to be romantic partners with her and do not desire and will not accept anything else.

Man up and stop disrespecting yourself (and others).

****

Also, a sidenote:

While writing this I almost (did?) wrote or implied that a romantic relationship is more than a friendship and that being friends is settling for less.

It is not.

No relationship is higher than that of a virtuous friendship, the highest form of relationship you can have. A marriage is also the highest form of relationship you can have.

A marriage and a virtuous friendship are equal in value. They fill different needs in your life but both are equal, neither is better, neither is more.

A romantic relationship that is not a marriage (or becoming a marriage) should always be worth less than a friendship.

If it is not, your priorities are wrong. Fix them.

It is sad commentary on modern society that friendship has somehow become worth less than romance. The general acceptance of the phrase “just friends” is a tragedy.

Do not devalue the value of your friendships by being friendzoned.

****

None of this is to say you can’t have a friendship with a woman. Some (not many, but some) women are worth having as friends. Some women can be enjoyable, productive friends without drama, BS, emotional games, attention whoring, etc.

You just have to choose carefully and make sure you are not romantically interested in her.

But do not befriend a woman when you do not value the friendship in and of itself. Friendship is an end, it is not a means to a further end.

Despite my ‘romance first, then friends’ declaration above, you can have friends first, then romance, but only in very narrow circumstances. If the friendship is the end in itself and the romantic relationship evolves naturally with no attempt or desire from yourself to try to force it, then there’s no problem.

****

For those women (and men) who have “friends” that you know are in a friend zone relationship in regards to you, my advice is the same, stop spending time with them.

They are not your friend, they are using you. Even if they are your friend, being in the friend zone hurts, end their suffering.

As I said, I put a women in the friend zone (and knew she was there). At the time I didn’t realize it, but after it all came to a head and the friendship ended because of the friend zone thing, I realized I had been hurting her through the whole time we were friends, simply by being friends. I regret allowing it to get to the point, I should have cut it off earlier.

Learn from my example, do what’s best for both of you, and end that friendship.

If you have a friend-zoned “friend” and do not want to give it up because of the attention you receive, because you get free stuff, because you like the unrecipricated adulation, or some other selfish reason. You are an asshole. Stop it!

Anyone who manipulates a friend-zoned “friend” for selfish benefit is a horrible person.

****

* Excepting where you are biblically married and/or you and your wife got married on the agreement not to deny each other sex, in which case you are both obligated to provide sex to and entitled to sex from each other.

Sexbots – Redux

Today, SSM had a look at the world of sex dolls and felt both ickiness and sadness. I’m going to talk a bit about it and answer some of her questions. I have already written about the rise of sex dolls* and potential implications here, so check that out first.

Would women have any interest in these whatsoever?

I think no.

I agree; women are generally sexually attracted to dominance and indicators thereof, no sex doll can replicate that. On the other curves of 36-24-36 are not overly complicated to replicate; a pretty face is more complicated, but not insurmountable.

Is sexual activity with a sexbot a sin?  Would it be fornication?  Would it be adultery if the participant is married?  Is there anything in the Bible that would justify condemning the invention or use of sexbots?

It would be neither fornication nor adultery, in itself. On the other hand, it might violate commandments against lust. On the third hand (I’m am mutant), is it lust if it’s not towards an actual woman?

It’s a fairly similar question to masturbation, and whatever your opinion on masturbation should be your opinion on sexbots.

Would it be pedophilia if the sexbot is formed as a child?  Think I’m way off on this last one?

It would be. I think she’s dead on here. As I talked of in my previous post on the subject, illegal and physiologically impossible sex acts are going to be one of the primary drivers of sexbots.

I’ll put it simply, there are more clinical pedophiles out there than there are homosexuals. They can’t sex a real 10-year old (at least not without violating both social taboos and the law), but when they can sex something that looks like a 10-year old without actually injuring a 10-year old, why wouldn’t they?

How do you argue morally against sexual gratification without harm without using religious or socially conservative arguments about the spiritual and/or societal importance of proper sexual relations? Note that the argument for proper sexual relations has been lost for decades, so there is no real societal defence against letting pedophiles get theirs rocks off on toys. In fact, it would probably reduce harm by letting them satiate their perverted lusts on inanimate objects rather than children.

Of course, SSM has not mentioned the potential of sexbots which cry, scream, and resist to satiate the rapists and/or sadists which make up an even larger minority of the population than pedophiles or homosexuals. Then of course there’s sexbots for all the other, weirder and less predominant fetishes out there.

Do people see sexbots as being replacements for actual human life partners?

Some do view it as a replacement for actual human life partners.

Or more accurately, they have been so scarred by negative interactions with women and/or have a keen enough awareness of their own low sexual value that they no longer even desire and/or hope for a normal human relationship with a real women. Instead, they make due with the best alternative.

The better term might be substitute good.

Is that the attraction?

The attraction is simple: for the omega male (and even for the beta male) finding a mate in these times is a grinding, brutal, and confusing process of rejection, mind games, loneliness, shattered hope, hopelessness, boredom, inanity, pettiness, and humiliation. At some point he simply decides it’s not worth it.

A sex doll provides a better than masturbation simulator of the real thing.

If it’s just a sexual thing, why attach a body to it in the first place?

Because it’s a sex thing. Masturbation relieves sexual urges but is lacking a certain something. Sex dolls somewhat close the gap between sex and masturbation; they trick your mind and body (somewhat) into believing you’re with a real woman. The more realistic they get, the better the mind is tricked and the narrower the gap between masturbation and sex.

How would this affect the relationship between men and women?

Once they get realistic enough: poorly.

Relational options for low-attractiveness women would evaporate; why sex a fatty when the sex doll looks better?

A significant portion of omega (and beta) men would leave the sexual/relational market; why waste all the time, pain, and effort required to attract an average looking woman after a decade or two of loneliness, when $3000 get’s you a reasonable facsimile of companionship right now?

Average women will be strongly negatively effected. Sexual/relational options and attention provided by betas/omegas will dry up.

Alpha males and greater betas will make out like bandits, as women becoming more desperate as their options dry up.

Hot women will have their marriage options dry up, but will still be able to get sexual and relational attention from higher status males. Competition from more average women though will decrease their ability to make demands and be bitchy, so they will be forced to be more feminine and nice.

Marriage will become almost solely the domain of the religious. Why would any secular man link up with a woman for life and risk his mental health, property, stability, and freedom on a woman, when woman are so driven to desperation and a sexbot can give a reasonable facsimile of real sex?

Those of you who question if omegas and lower betas would do this, simply lack the understanding of just how brutal the sexual market place is for these folks.

Will we still have any interest in one another?

No idea about women, but a lot of men will stop caring about women. Most women are simply, by male standards, shallow and uninteresting on a friendship level; with sexual desire satiated on demand by plentiful sex (from desperate women and sex dolls) many men will simply stop trying to sift through all the vapid, flaky, emotional, attention-whoring women to find the minority of sane, level-headed, and enjoyable ones; there will no longer be enough incentive to.

If men could choose between an average, real woman and a super-hot fake woman, which would most men prefer?

For the average man, all things being equal, the former, but all things are inherently not equal. An average, real women comes with a lot of costs: the joyless, painful grind of pursuit, rejection, and dating to find her, the emotional costs of living with an emotionally volatile creature, the risk of divorce rape, the risk of her changing and becoming frigid over time, the loss of freedom a real relationship implies, the monetary costs of a relationship, etc.

Even so, I think the majority would prefer the former, if they could get it and the costs were reasonable. Unfortunately for a certain, but unspecific, number of men, they can’t get it or the costs would be unreasonable.

If (probably “when” is a more accurate question) sexbots hit the market, will people buy them?

Absolutely. They will sell well.

MEN: would you buy a sexbot?

As things stand now no. But in the future if the following four conditions are met: my Christian morality fades, my desire for a family fades, they were to get sufficiently realistic looking, and I were to find the costs (material and immaterial) of picking up women too high, I probably would.

Wouldn’t it be a better idea to fix marriage?

It would. Let’s see when ending no fault divorce becomes a viable political debate.

****

I think Cail got to the heart of the issue:

If you think having sex with an inanimate object seems like it would be dispiriting — well yeah, but jerking off into a kleenex doesn’t exactly make you feel like a king. Honestly, the prospect of cleaning the thing disturbs me more than the idea of having sex with it.

That will be most men will take on the issue. A reall women is best, but if they’re gonna end up masturbating regularly anyways, why not do it better.

Of course, some disagree:

With my “no” vote, the poll is back to even. I’m honestly surprised there are that many who would bed a robot, regardless of religious affiliation. It’s a robot.

From my understanding though, Stratton has had a happy marriage from a fairly young age. I would expect this reaction from most men who have never been involuntarily celibate for an extended period of time.

Who uses the bots will depend highly on their success in sexual/relational market in early life. Those men who are successful early and either marry young or have a lot of sex in high school/college, will probably find the idea repulsive. Those who aren’t successful will find the idea more alluring than their hand.

****

* Note: When I talk of sex dolls or sexbots in this post, I am referring to all semi-realistic stand-ins for sex, which would include VR sex, realistic sex dolls, future sexbots, etc.

Game and the Single Christian Man

Badger had a post today outlining the basic game toolbox.

Essentially, it says to be actively disinterested, pass shit tests, and approaching. These sound like good skills to learn, but…

My question for today is how does the young, single Christian man develop these tools for monogamous marriage?

Any new social tools are developed through practice. When I wanted to learn  how to hold up a conversation, I took the Dale Carnegie course*. Yes, I was socially awkward enough that I had to take a course simply to learn how to hold conversations with strangers and make small talk. As I’ve said, I was an omega loser.

I was taught the skills in the course, I then went and practiced by starting conversations. After a few months, I was able to talk with strangers, after a year or two I was able to hold real conversations with people I didn’t know; nowadays I’m not really noticeably more socially awkward than your average male.

When I wanted to be confident, I simply acted confident; I practiced. After months/years of this, I became confident (some would say arrogant) to the point where I’ve had to dial it back a bit.

I’m trying to improve my posture, so I make sure to practice walking with my back straight, chest out, my head up, and my eyes forward. Slowly this position is becoming increasingly natural.

I’m trying to improve my eye contact after my dad mentioned my lack of it a few months ago. When talking with someone I make a point of looking them in the eye. When walking down the street I’ll make a point of occasionally just looking whoever I’m passing in the eye (it’s amazing how many will then just look away). If it’s a women, I’ll then try to give them my patented half-smirk/half-smile. It’s slow and difficult to change a lifetime habit of avoiding eye contact, but I’m improving.

I’ve digressed. Improving social skill requires practice, but I’m not sure how to get it.

Being an emotionally detached INTJ, disinterest is rather easy for me. I’m naturally aloof and unemotional involved in other people. Although, with the few women who actually managed to make me care in the slightest about them, I used to slip into showing too much interest too early (I believed the women want marriage, so actively express your intentions early mentality), but that’s disappearing. The active part is more where the problem is. How to interact and ‘show interest’ without showing interest.

As far as I can tell, I don’t really get fitness tested. Occasionally, the wives of friends will through out something that may be a fitness test (or not), but I usually just laugh, smirk, “meh”, or agree and amplify, but I’ve never noticed one from a women I’ve just met. Maybe I’m lucky, maybe oblivious. I don’t know, but practice would let me know

My problem comes with approaching and with conversation.

I’ve demonstrated to myself I can approach with moderate success, but I can still use practice.

While I can hold a conversation, but when in a one-on-one setting, like an approach, coffee, or a date, I usually can’t think of things to say, so it ends up being kind of like an interview, which will not attract women.

For example, a few weeks back I was at an event and during an icebreaker opened up a very cute girl (18, brunette, thin, pretty smile). I remembered what I read. I talked with her, but focused a lot of conversation on her less attractive friend (active disinterest). Left her to do other stuff to avoid showing neediness. Noticed her looking at me sidelong a number of times (yeah); met her gaze, gave a little smirk; she looked away. Met up with her later, talked some more. Walked out with her and her friend to my car, asked for her number so we could go for coffee on a specific day, she accepted. There were some mistakes, but I mostly kept my frame. It was my first time getting a number close with a stranger (huzzah).

We went for coffee at appointed time; we talked, but it kept up in the interview format mostly. She displayed a number of traits indicating a potential good wife. Phoned her for another date a few days later; rejected.

Now, had I been able to better establish a mutual connection over coffee, this could have gone somewhere. So I need to get better, so next time it does.

But the only way to get better is to practice one-on-one conversation with women.

But how?

The married man has his wife to practice on. The player-to-be can just hit on any random girl. But who can the single, monogamy-oriented male practice with?

Female friends?

I have a good female friend I see for coffee regularly, which gives me some practice, but talking with someone I know is fundamentally different from a stranger.

My friends’ wives?

I practice a little on them, but there are some very narrow limits in which to act.

Random Women?

I could approach random women, but to what end other than the practice itself?

Approaching and going out with women I know I’m not going to pursue; learning to build attraction with women I know I am not going to have sex with or marry seems pointless. I also don’t really care for conversing with females, I generally don’t find them very stimulating conversational partners. We rarely share interests and they illogically emote too much rather than think logically.

Even if I do succeed, what then? I would have a girl desiring sex with me, when having sex would be a sin. This would be throwing myself purposely into major temptation, which I know I would have a hard time resisting.

In essence, I would put in all the effort, deal with all the hassle and annoyance, and have little to show for it other than increased temptation. I don’t have the draw of casual sex to work towards that players have.

One of my friends (who’s anti-game) has suggested I do this but without the sexual/relational angle, but I find I have no motivation to do so without it.

I see a woman, think about approaching, ask why, then simply can not come up with a worthwhile reason.

Women at Church or in social group?

I could take the random women approach, but at church. The problem with that is it poisons the well. In close social groups word gets around. If I practice much within them, what I do will become known and the type of a girl I am interested in would likely be put-off by that kind of knowledge.

So what to do?

Does anyone know how a good way for a single Christian man go about practicing his game skills so he can land a good wife?

Or should I just force myself to start talking up random women and hope I don’t run myself headlong into sin.

****

* I’d heavily recommend the Dale Carnegie course to any person who has a hard time in social situations. It’s extremely expensive, but if you can afford it or convince your work to pay for it, it is well worth it. That course was far more use to me than anything else I ever learned in six years of university. At the very least buy and apply the book. It won’t turn you into an alpha stud, but it will let you function in social situations, make friends, and hold small talk, which to socially awkward folks like me is a godsend.

** I’d also heartily recommend Toastmasters to everybody. It’s relatively cheap and great for practicing speaking skills. If you can’t afford the Carnegie course, do Toastmasters.

Venker Backtracks

The video of Venker’s interview with Fox & Friends is now available online from here. She seems to have backtracked on her earlier article; she’s not advocating traditionalism at all, just a kinder slavery of men.

Some observations:

She did not do a shout-out to the manosphere as some thought she might.

Second, she looks like a typical ballbuster. The short, masculine haircut, business-like button-up shirt, and hard, unpleasant expression. She does not seem like the type of feminine women you’d hope for from someone arguing that women are becoming less feminine.

She doesn’t seem to be agreeing with us, but rather seems to be suggesting, as Dalrock has written, that men should be women’s servants, but treated a little bit better so they remain compliant servants.

The male host said almost nothing, but what little he did say was generally good.

Also, take a look at the hamster running itself ragged in the female host:

3:15 – Angry women angrily talks about women not being angry: Makes Venker’s point.

5:04 – She argues her kids and marriage are the most important things in her life; which is why she abandons them to work.

6:10 – She asks: Could it be that women are angry because they’re taking on masculine roles, but men don’t desire to take on feminine roles?

Your thoughts?

The Frustration of a Single Man

So this comment appeared over at Dalrock’s. There’s a chance it might be a troll, but I thought it was worth highlighting. In full, bolding mine:

Hello. Is there an introduction board for this website? My name is Michael. I’ve been reading this website for 3 days. I’m shocked to see everything I’ve experiencing written in such a perfectly stated way. Never before have I seen a blog/media outlet so perfectly written. The writer is surely a genius. I’m amazed and relived to see so many responses. It means I’m not alone.

I’m 32 years old and have never been married. Unfortunately (or fortunately I’m not sure which anymore at this point) I have no kids. I am single and alone and not dating anyone. I live in Los Angeles. My income was $120,000.00 (net earnings after creative deductions and business taxes) in 2011. Income is projected to be $170,000.00 (net earnings after business taxes) in 2012. I’m exactly the kinds of “independent man” women claim they want. I drive a luxury car with an amazing apartment in Los Angeles directly on the beach. It’s quite a panty moistener and costs me $6,000.00 per month. I work from home because an office would cost at least another $2,000.00 month. I keep in great shape. Gym 3-4 a week + running + organic diet (I spend $700-$900.00 a month on organic foods and supplements) I was raised in a Christian “7th Heaven” (old TV show) type household. We always went to church. Strong hard working father figure was always present for me and my siblings. I went to private school, university, law school, and then started my own practice at 28 years old.

My parents met and married in college. They have been married for 39 years. And it hurts me to the core to be 32 and unmarried. Alone. Without a loving wife. I feel pain from it every single day. It’s like a sharp invisible dagger constantly stabbing at me. But perhaps I’m part of the problem listed in the graphs above. Let me explain why:

I went to the same college my parents met and married at. I was hoping to meet marry and settle down. Instead I was met with hundreds young college aged women who were NOT interested in marriage. They were interested in: 1) Partying 2) Having sex. College was 24/7 fuck fest. At first I was able to begrudgingly “socialize” in this element. What do I mean by “this element” within this context? College: Extreme social promiscuity, cheating, drama, drugs, and parties. I was an observer but NEVER a direct participant because my heart would not let me. This eventually caused me to stick out as a third wheel observer on campus. Someone who was always “not mixing” or “participating”. As a result I never enjoyed the benefits. I rarely dated. Instead I was sneered at. Cute girls flicked their fingers at me. I was used by women as a person to tell their problems to. I was passed over. I was seen as “weak “lame” and “boring”. I was ignored in the hallways, library, classes, by these women. And it didn’t help I was cash strapped broke working a minimum wage job and eating Raman noodles..

The vast majority of these young hot girls vigorously pursued college life sex like you would not believe. They had sex with a large variety of guys. What I personally call “lily padding”. These girls did anything and anyone in the name of “fun” (fun=parties, fun= sex with new people, fun= drugs, fun= raves, fun = frat party etc.

It hurt me to watch these girls go out of their way to pursue and spread their legs for complete losers. COMPLETE LOSERS. I’m talking: Hi I work in a carnival part time, I’m covered in tattoos, I have no job, I failed my minimum wage drug test and I’m in a band. These guys were losers. Some did not even go to the college! They would hop a bus stay with friends and get laid THAT NIGHT.

Many nights I could not sleep because of the girls getting fucked hard… 1,2,3,4 dorms down. The dorms were old military barracks from the 1940’s with vents through the ceilings. It was very loud. All the time. I remember how much it hurt to be rejected by one girl in particular I had my open hopeless romantic heart set on… We had allot in common. I pursued her like a complete gentlemen – and was eventually turned down. That same weekend after getting turned down I got to hear her getting fucked hard and loud in the room next door. The guy who lived there was a super scraggly unattractive heavy drug user covered in tattoos majoring in “music studies”. This girl was young hot thin beautiful in her physical prime. I never said anything. But I felt so hurt she turned me down for casual sex with a guy like that.
This guy was very open about his exploits with her and told me not to worry because practically every guy he knew fucked her. As the years passed the same thing happened again and again, and again and again, in various ways with all kinds of unrelated girls. What I mean is: I was looking for a LTR leading to marriage. I would meet trade numbers talk and “feel” a girl was a good person. Then she would do other guys. Or I would find out things like this. When this kind of thing happens to me over and over all through my life….it hurts me and makes me doubt senses. What is wrong with me that my heart is telling me she is a good person when she is clearly not?

As time went on I was labeled “husband material” by the girls on my campus. This phrase continued to plague me into my late 20′s. This label resulted in ZERO DATES all through college. I wasn’t “down with it”. I wasn’t “participating” etc (sex, drugs, parties, etc.) My heart wasn’t into it. So I wasn’t entitled to any of the benefits (having sex with young attractive girls in their prime etc.). However party guys, flash in a pan athletes, loser guys in bands, wanna be DJ’s and self-professed “club promoters” – were ALWAYS getting these girls at their youngest hottest physical prime. Basically the more of a loser the guy was… the more these women would have sex with them. Hot sorority girls flocked to Football players like a butterfly’s on a beast. It didn’t even matter if the guy was black. College athletes did not even TRY to get laid.

One night I had enough. I confronted a room of 8-10 gorgeous white girls. These girls were 18-24 years old. I asked them if they planned to get married. All seemed to say more or less – YES. I asked what their future husband would think about their behavior. I was immediately met with hostility. I was told the future husband would “never know” and “it’s none of his business”. The girls said they knew exactly what they were doing and were planning to “have their fun” (fun= partying, fun=sex, fun=going on spring break etc.) and would “settle down later”. I asked: when are you planning to settle down? They said: “It depends” and “probably around 27, 28” or “maybe sooner it depends”. I really put the girls on the spot. During our exchange they saw I was upset. They told me I should be happy because “nice guys finish first in the end”. I told them you cannot have your cake and eat it to. Then I was told by Kaylene (a young thin super sexy blonde with curves in all the right places (who BTW refused to date me even though we were friends and according to her roommate had sex with almost 30 guys in one semester ) she told me “Michael let me tell you something: not only am I going to have my cake eat it and eat it too. I’m going to have it with ice cream and sprinkles”. All of the girls laughed and smiled in agreement.

I thought things would change after college. They didn’t.

Now at 32 and successful these women are hitting me. In my mind these are the same women who rejected me. I’m not interested. The Bible says something to the effect of “don’t forsake the wife of your youth” or something like “remember your young wife”? Something like that. How am I supposed to remember something I never had? I have no history with these women. Ticking ovaries are scandalous. They will lie and say anything to get what they want. Which is: BABIES AND A LOVING HUSBAND TO PAY THEIR BILLS. Yet these women did not even give a few good years of their youth!

As a man I am very visual. God made me this way. I cannot help finding a physically beautiful woman attractive. Why did these women not at least give me a few years of their youth so I would have time to fall in love with them and permanently burn their image in my mind’s eye? I need something to remember when we are 50 and married. Yet she spent her 20’s parceling herself out to guys who gave her nothing and offers nothing to the guy who gives her everything. I’m expected to commit hard earned resources to raising children with what is ultimately a suspect woman whose history I know nothing about. A 30+ unmarried women has very high chance of having a questionable past and baggage. I believe the more men a woman has been with the less likely she is to be emotionally committed each subsequent one. When you have handed out little pieces of your heart over years to dozens of different men what is left for the husband you proclaim to truly love? What value do the words “I love you” mean when she has stared into the eyes of 10-100+ different men and said the same thing?

At 30+ women’s physical appearance has nowhere to go but DOWN. Is this what women mean by “saving the best for last”? Marrying at 30+? How can women spend trillions of dollars a year on beauty products yet at the same time claim a women’s age “shouldn’t be important” to a man? And what about children? Did they ever think their husbands might want to have children? What’s more likely to naturally produce a quicker pregnancy and healthy offspring? A fertile 24 year old in her physical prime… or a 35 year old aging womb? What if I want multiple children? At 30+ a women can easily before infertile after her first pregnancy.
As a result of everything I’ve seen and experienced in my life I would like to make an announcement to all the desperate 30+ year old women out there: I would rather suffocate and die then spend my hard earned income, love, trust, and substance on you. Your entitled, ageing, feminist, jaded, baggage laden and brainwashed. And if I cannot marry a women in her 20’s I REFUSE TO EVER GET MARRIED. Given my high income this should not be a problem. However I’m concerned at some point I will have to start looking overseas (Ukraine, Russia, Eastern Europe etc.). I’m not going to marry one of these 30+ ageing entitled females who clearly have an agenda of their own. I intend to get married once. Marriage is meant to be forever. I will not be a starter husband for one of these used up women. I can’t tell you the number of men I’ve known who married late and were rewarded by losing everything they spent their lives building…

The way I see it I’ve been given the following choices:

1) Marry a 30+ women.
2) Marry a women in her twenties
3) Be single and enjoy my money.

This is (barring it being a troll) the plaintive cry of a beta Christian male without game whose running head-first into his red pill awakening. He’s been trained to live a certain way, then when what he realizes the disconnect between the lies he’s been taught and reality he letting loose his anger. I kinda sympathize.

Anyhow, Michael, if you happen to see this, do either #2 or #3. Do not do #1, I’ve outlined why here.

First thing to notice: these women are actively and with foreknowledge planning to engage fraudulently marry a beta provider in their 30s. I will repeat for anyone who didn’t read the link: do not marry a women over 30 (unless you are also a new divorcee or widow and much older). There’s a reason they are in their 30’s and unmarried and it always bodes poorly for the potential success of a long-term partnership.

Now some might think it unfair to blame all women in their 30s for the actions and intention of a few, but every women in their 30s did a similar sort of calculation in their 20s of why they chose to wait to marry. They would have their fun, their career, their education, their ******, and prioritize it over their future husband and family. That was their choice; all 30-something women made the choice to prioritize something ahead of their future husband and family and can be judged for these choices.

Others might think its sexist to discount a women in her 30s for marriage. That would be incorrect. It’s about choices: males have a very clear and very well known preference for younger women (even aside from the numerous other considerations I outlined earlier). Females are free to make their own choices about their sexuality, but men are also free to make their own choices. If you don’t like that than either change your behaviour, or fuck you. Your choice.

This objection would also be sexist in itself, by trying to force female sexual preferences on males while dictating male sexuality to them.

I will join Michael here: there is no way I am wasting a drop of sweat or a single penny on an unmarried 30-something; they simply are not worth it. I would rather go without.

They made their choice to deprive their future husband of their prime, sexiest, and most fertile years and, in many cases, chose to gave them to losers, cads, and assholes. They willingly squandered their youth, beauty, charm, sexuality, and fertility. Having made that selfish choice, it is very simple to say they are not worth marrying. They have put their own happiness above that of the person they will later profess to loving. Someone who puts themselves before their marriage partner, is not a good marriage partner.

It is far better to be alone than to be stuck with one of these women.

If that offends you as a women, too bad.

Instead of being offended, you should ask yourself why you choose to deprive your future husband (who you supposedly love) of your most youthful years, your most fertile years, your years where your beauty and sexiness were at your height. What was more important than offering this gift to the person you are professing to love before any other?

Again, I’m not trying to control women’s sexuality here. Women are free to make whatever choice they want, but so am I and so is every other male.

So, males, make the right choice: no rings for 30+ women.

Let your fountain be blessed,
and rejoice in the wife of your youth,
a lovely deer, a graceful doe.
Let her breasts fill you at all times with delight;
be intoxicated always in her love.
(Proverbs 5:18-19 ESV)

The Desire for Casual Sex and Relationships are not Incongruent

A new interview from Salon about men’s sexual preferences has been passed around lately. The interviewee, an Andrew Smiler, argues that men are not naturally promiscuous based on research he did for his book. Not surprisingly, Susan Walsh trumpeted this. So did Amanda Marcotte (it’s amazing how eager feminists who cry foul whenever men supposedly dictate their sexuality are to to dictate men’s sexuality to them).

Interestingly, the interviewer is one Tracy Clarke-Flory, who manospherians may remember as the former apologist for the hook-up culture who changed her mind as she began to hit the wall. Now that she no longer believes in casual sex, she now seems intent on showing men don’t like it either, because that would be convenient, wouldn’t it? There must be tons of men who are sick of the hook-up culture and just looking for The One (ie. her).

Obviously, I haven’t read Smiler’s book and don’t plan too. I’m far enough behind on my reading list already, so I hope I don’t misrepresent his arguments. If I do, he can feel free to correct me.

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I’ll start with the Amazon blurb, just ’cause, then get to the interview. The book description:

In his groundbreaking new book, noted expert on teenage and adult masculine behavior Andrew Smiler debunks the myth that teenage boys and young men are barely able to control their sex drives, which may lead to destructive hyper-sexuality, unwanted pregnancy, and sexually transmitted diseases. Dr. Smiler? helps us recognize that the majority of boys and men do not fit this stereotype and that boys? sexual development is multi-faceted.? He also shows how this shift in attitude could help create young men who are more mature, and have better relationships with partners and friends.

I’ll ignore the weird punctuation, but notice how not having casual sex is somehow more “mature” and “better.” Now, as a reactionary Christian, I think casual sex is a sin and that marriage is better for society, but to anyone who does not have a reactionary Christians pre-suppositions regarding sex and marriage, judging free life choices as more mature or better is just silly. Either sex is reserved for marriage or it is a free lifestyle choice. From the interview is seem unlikely that Smiler is one of the “religious guys”.

There is no moral difference between a casual hook-up, a short-term relationship, or a long-term, non-marriage, relationship. All are simply life-style chocies, none are more mature and certainly none are “better” (however better may be defined absent strong pre-suppositions on the spiritual and societal value of sex).

Here are the “4 Ways the Casanova Stereotype Is Incorrect” according to the book as per the Amazon editorial review:

Most guys want only a few partners
Anonymous surveys of undergraduates tell us that about 25% of young men want 2 or more partners in the next 30 days; that means 75% of guys want 0 or 1 partners during that time. If all – or even most – guys are Casanovas, many more should tell us they want multiple partners in the next 30 days.

This is obviously stupid. A full quarter of guys want 2+ different partners in the next month (if extended to a year, that would be 24+). This tells us is that 25% of guys do fit the “Casanova Stereotype” (to a degree).

Three quarters want 0-1. This tells us nothing. A man wanting one partner in the next month time horizon is meaningless; maybe he’s busy, maybe he likes STR’s rather than ONS’, maybe more than one is a pain in the ass (or expensive), maybe he’s tired. Who knows? It’s meaningless.

As for those wanting zero partners in the next month, are they asexual? Probably not, it just means that in a short time frame, they decided the cost is not worth the potential benefits.

All we really learned is that at least 25% of guys want a lot of partners.

Most guys have only a few partners
In studies that ask young men to describe their sexual behavior, about 15% of guys say they had 3 or more partners in the last 12 months and only about 5% of guys say they’ve had 3 or more partners each of the last 3 years. Together, these numbers tell us few guys actually live like Casanovas.

Any idiot can tell you is and ought are not the same thing. Just because 80-85% of guys have <2 partners does not mean that they only want <2 partners. There are a lot of variables (particularly the one where most men are not overly successful with women).

Most guys do want relationships
According to the stereotype, guys only want sex and aren’t interested in relationships. If it’s difficult to get your son to clean his room, how difficult must it be to get him to date when he supposedly doesn’t want to? Real life says that most guys choose relationships and enjoy them. In fact, about 90% of guys will get married at least once.

Mmm-hmmm… Again: is and ought. Not all men can be Hugh Hefner.

Also, relationships and sex are not the same drives, but sex is intrinsic to relationships. Men could (and do) want both relationships and casual sex.

Puberty is not only about sex
Puberty includes sexual development as well as other aspects of physical development like increased height and broadening of the shoulders that help distinguish men from boys. Puberty is one change among many for adolescents: changes in the way they think and understand the world, new concerns about personal identity, and a shift away from parents towards friends. Sexual development is just one part of growing up; it’s influenced by and influences each of those other changes.

Completely irrelevant to a discussion of the “Casanova Stereotype”.

So, so far, it seems his logic is faulty,  his grasp of statistics shaky, and his philosophy defective, but this was just the Amazon book blurb.

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Let’s check the interview.

This stereotype “tells us that guys are primarily interested in sex, not relationships,” he writes. “This contributes to the notion that guys are emotional clods who are incapable of connecting with their partners because, hey, they’re just guys, and guys are only interested in sex. “ The result is the belief that “guys shouldn’t be expected to achieve any type of ‘real’ emotional intimacy with their partners.”

This is idiotic. It’s not a dichotomy. Even when they are interested in relationships, sex is a major component of a relationship. They are interested in both, to varying degrees on a personal basis.

If Casanova-style promiscuity is men’s naturally evolved state, then why do most men want no more than one partner?

My guess, they have some understanding of their market value and act accordingly.

All of the research that we have show that it’s only a minority of guys who have multiple partners per year, and I typically talk about this as three partners a year because that’s the Casanova average.

Here we go: again, mistaking is and ought. Desire does not necessitate ability.

It’s actually a minority of guys who want multiple short-term partners — that even comes up in the evolutionary research.

We’ve already dealt with this. Unless he has better evidence in his book than the evidence he used for his blurb (which would seem unlikely to me; wouldn’t you put your best bit of support out there) you can not draw this conclusion.

It made it out of scientific circles and into popular culture in the 1980s as sociobiology, and parts of it got recreated as evolutionary psychology in the 1990s. So it’s gotten a lot of press attention as a new theory. Another part is it really caught on because it gives us essentially a simple answer to a difficult question and, for whatever reason, we here in the U.S., if not in many other places, really like those simple answers to difficult questions.

Obviously, he’s not boned up on either his history or religion. Spreading the seed goes far older than that. King David had many wives and still slept with Bathsheba. Solomon had 700 wives, and 300 concubines to boot. I’m sure other ancient faiths/traditions have their own stories of men engaging in mass copulation. Ghengis Khan had untold partners. I could go on ad infinitum, but why? Polygamy is ancient. Men spreading their seed across numerous partners is ancient and precedes 1980’s popular culture by millenia.

In mainstream media we’ve had all of this stuff on TV since the 1970s that really promotes this idea of promiscuous young men. The history, as far as I can tell, really starts with Fonzie on “Happy Days” and “Hawkeye” Pierce on “M*A*S*H.” And it continues with guys like Sam Malone on “Cheers” and Charlie Sheen’s character on “Two and a Half Men” and Barney on “How I Met Your Mother.” For several years now we’ve had so-called good guys who were also promiscuous. If you looked at TV and movies from the ’50s and ’60s, the promiscuous guys were always very clearly the bad example.

That sounds almost socially conservative of him. Interesting how at one point society discouraged anti-social behaviour.

If you look at the public health research tracking things like unplanned pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections, that research typically shows about 15 percent of guys have three or more partners in any given 12-month span. If you follow those guys over time the number of guys who have three or more partners a year for as long as three years, that drops to about 5 percent. So there are definitely some guys out there who are doing it — but it’s really a small percentage of guys. By contrast, if you look at guys who are very religious, that’s about 15 percent of guys, and most of them really are devoutly religious, really dedicated to their partner. There’s way more of that than guys that are having three partners per year for three years.

Again, he implies desire necessitates capability.

Also, no offence to religious guys, but abstaining is more attainable, though not necessarily easier, than 3+ partners a year.

Let me go back to the religious guys for a minute. They will often talk about dating as courting and using this model that comes to us from the 1950s: you met someone you were interested in, you asked them out on a first date and then a second date, and there was this fairly clear understanding of what type of physical behavior was supposed to happen.
…But what most young men and young women are experiencing today is that we’ve gotten away from that script.

I will insert here a sad lament for the good ol’ days.

What most guys seek, and this seems to be regardless of sexual orientation or age, they’re looking for people whose company they enjoy. People who appreciate them for who they are. We know that a couple tends to be similar in age. More often than not folks match on ethnicity, political orientation and religiosity. The thing that ultimate grounds it are personality match, similar sense of humor, similar tastes in music, TV and movies, similar activities, because you want to be able to do things with your sweetie and you want someone who gets you.

What does this have to do with sex though?

There is a distinction between a man’s lust drive and his love drive. All these are what a man looks for in love; none have to do with sex.

What we know is that most guys do get into relationships, they enjoy relationships, they do a lot of things in relationships that are not about sex and they’re not doing them just to put up with them in order to get sex. Guys get something out of relationships; they like relationships. If you add in the fact that average age of first marriage is something like 28 for guys, a lot of guys have the sense that this girl they’re starting to date at 17 or 19 or 21 probably isn’t going to be the one — and yet they are choosing to date. They could easily choose to just hook up — or instead of spending that money in a bar you could get a prostitute — but they’re consistently choosing to be in relationships.

Again, I ask, what does that have to do with sex?

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From this interview we can see his reasoning is based aroundthree major mistakes:

1) He assumes that men are getting exactly as much sex as they desire in the way they desire. He completely discounts that for most men, they do not get anywhere near the amount of sex they desire in the way they desire it. This false assumption is especially bitter given M3’s confession earlier this week.

Men are not women. We can not just walk into a bar, say “let’s have sex” and receive it. I can understand this kind of solipsism from females and feminists, but Smiler should know better.

2) He incorrectly implies that sex drives and relationship drives are the same in some parts of the interview, but, somehow, at the same time implies an artificial dichotomy a man’s desire for sex and his desire for a relationship. Somehow he jumps between these two mutually contradictory unspoken pre-suppositions.

They are two are different desires and can not be mistaken for each other, but at the same same time they are not mutually exclusive. Just because a man desires a relationship does not mean that he does not desire meaningless sex at the same time. As well, a desire for sex is an intrinsic part of a desire for a relationship.

3) He does not seem to recognize the distinction between a man’s “desires” and his “wants”. A healthy young man typically “desires” to sex anything youngish within proximity having two legs, two breasts, a vagina, and a decent hip-to-waist ratio.

He does not always “want” to sex said young thing because of the potential consequences. He could go to jail for rape if he followed his desire through without consent (or if she was a little too young), he could be charged with sexual harassment if he expressed said desire inappropriately, the maxim “don’t stick your dick in crazy” always applies, he could have a fear of knocking her up or STD’s, he could have religious or moral objections, he could just decide it’s not worth the effort, etc. The reasons he may not want what he desires are endless. Men don’t always “want” what they “desire” because often the cost of what they desire is higher than the benefits.

Evolutionary psychology explanations would typically deal primarily with desires. Freudian psychology (id, ego, & superego), sociology, and economics would handle how “desire” is is expressed in “want”. You can not apply the superego outcomes to determine the full range of the desires of the id.

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Now, there is some interesting information in all this and there are probably some interesting conclusions that can be drawn.

But what it does not show is that “Guys don’t want casual sex!” or “Men Want Sex with Girlfriends, Not Randoms“.

All it shows is that a lot of people do not understand the difference between what someone may want and what someone actually receives.

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So, for all those who are confused I’ll explain what men want:

Men desire both relationships and sex at the same time concurrently. The exact amount of each desired will differ between individual men, but what most men would ideally desire is both, but not with the same people.

The ideal sexual situation for most males (morality/religion aside) would be a single life partner to love, make home with, and, possibly, sire children with and a side harem of dozens of women for sex and fun.

Obviously, this is impossible for all but the most sought after men. We can’t all be King Solomon.

We can’t all have both a doting wife and a string of sexy, low-maintenance mistresses, the wife would get upset and the mistresses would demand more.

So we compromise.

Being unable to fulfill the mating strategies of both promiscuity and marriage, each individual man will choose a strategy based on their personal preferences between the two mating strategies and their perceived value on the sexual marketplace.

Some men on one moral extreme (the “religious guys”) will go for the best women they think they can get, scoop her up, and marry her. Some men of high sexual value and the other moral extreme (the “Casanova Stereotype”) will sleep around with as many gals as they can (some men of low sexual value will try to be Casanova’s and fail). Some men (the “losers”) will never find a woman and will masturbate in their Real Doll.

Most men do not belong to one of these extremes of sexual morality and value, but rather are somewhere in the middle. In our current mating market, they will adopt a middling strategy. They will go through a number of relationships (based on their market value and preferences) which provide sex and companionship without commitment so they can still try diversity if/when they get bored of their current partner. Between these relationships, they will try to get occasionally lucky with casual hook-ups. Then at some point, they will decide they can’t get better than what they have and marry off. After marrying, depending on their morality, they may get some casual sex on the side.

Men desire both casual sex and relationship concurrently. It is not a dichotomy and they are not mutually exclusive.