Category Archives: Sex/Gender

Unrealistic Expectations

Donal pointed out this comment by Elspeth:

Most people (men and women) have unrealistic expectations, about themselves, about what they are worth, about what they should be able to have. And those who know they can’t have what they want will go without. Especially men. I’ve heard a couple of young men actually say that.

He then defended those with reasonable, but possibly unrealistic requirements. (Read his post for definitions).

I’m going to go farther: as a man you should have unrealistic requirements for marriage. I’ve created my list for marriage and it’s reasonable, but possibly not realistic.

Based on previous analyses only about 40% of women are even worth considering for marriage looks-wise (ie. are not fat or actively ugly) and only about 30% of women would be in the 0-2 sexual partners category (although, that’s a bit higher if you go younger) and less than half have not had a one-night stand. Throw on top of that that you should almost never* marry a woman over 30 and be wary of those over 25, and your pickings are getting slim. That’s not even considering the much more important (for marriage) aspects of personality and inner beauty.

we can estimate that only about a fifth of eligible women would be even worth considering marrying. If we then look towards such things as religion, shared values, mutual compatibility, personality, and the like, the percentage of women that would make a decent wife for any particular man is shockingly low. (The only reprieve is a man only needs one reciprocating girl to meet those requirements).

If only 20% of women are worthy wives, then that means that 80% of men are not going to be able to find a worthy wife. Now, it should be noted that most men won’t meet the requirements a worthy wife should have and many men will choose unworthy wives, but still, if even a quarter of men are waiting for worthy wives that means that 20% of those men are simply going to have to do without.

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It is better to live in a corner of the housetop
than in a house shared with a quarrelsome wife. (Proverbs 25:24 ESV)

While a good marriage can be a great blessing, the consequences of choosing an unworthy wife are huge.

I remember reading somewhere (I can’t find the link) that 70% of marriages either end in divorce or perpetual unhappiness, which means that only 30% of marriages end up being happy and healthy. (That’s pretty close to my estimation that only 20% of women who are worthy wives, is it not?)

There is a 40% chance the marriage will end in divorce, the odds of which are strongly effected by how worthy the wife is. The cost of an average divorce to a man is about $150,000, the price of a smaller house. (This does not include child support, which will run an average man a pretty penny as well). The emotional costs of divorce are also huge: it is better to be single than divorced.

But even if the family stays together, there’s a chance the marriage will be miserable. Number I’ve read range all over the place. This study shows that 97% of marriages are ‘very’ or ‘pretty’ happy with their marriage, while this one shows 80% are satisfied with their relationship. I’ve seen lots of other numbers bandied around of anywhere from 20-60%, but most of these did not seem supported by anything. 80% satisfaction sounds right, which means 20% of marriages not ending in divorce are unhappy.

So, there’s a 50-70% chance that a marriage will be unhappy or end in divorce. If a man chooses a wife wrong, he will end up miserable.

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Men should have unrealistic (but no unreasonable) requirements for marriage. IF only a fifth of women display the qualities that make a good wife, not all men will be able to find a good wife. Going without is much superior to entering a marriage that will end in divorce or misery.

So hold those requirements high and be unrealistic if necessary to so.

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Before the accusations of misogyny start flying, know that I also advocate women demanding more from their relationships. Women should also hold high requirements for marriage and relationships.

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* I have talked with one girl approaching 30 whom, had circumstances been different, I may have considered, but she had been engaged in her mid-20s then the guy calling it off because she wouldn’t have sex with him until marriage. There are not many women out there with that level of virtue, but every rule has an exception.

Digging Deeper on Power

We come to a third edition of the topic of women and power. Both Donal and Chad have responded with criticisms, so I’ll respond.

Donal’s response is, as he admits, somewhat unordered and incoherent, but essentially he denies that men act as a class and states that modern weaponry has lowered the power differentials between men and women.

Chad’s response is wrapped in parable. I’ve never been too good with allegory and as of my writing this I don’t think he’s done yet, but from my understanding he’s likening men to land and women to water. The land shapes the environment and guides and controls the water, but the water flows where it flows within the framework the land has shaped and has the power to either destroy the land or make it bountiful.

From these, I don’t think we disagree as much as my critics think we do.

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First, on the nature of power:

The female, and indirect method, is to make the world desire to change and help it do so.

I think many of my critics are missing or misunderstanding a critical piece:

any power [women] may display is simply proxy power given them by men.

They can not, as a class, have power in the public sphere that is not given them by men.

So maybe I should restate a little: women as a class do not have any inherent public/political power.

Women do have political/public power but only that given them or supported by men. Indirect power, the power the make the world desire to change and to help change is only effective when men give them men’s power to effect that change.

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Second, we will go more into the nature of the public and private realms:

Oh, and another thing: the personal is the political, at least in the sense that political power is heavily influence by personal and private spheres of power. As anyone who has worked in the political field knows, politics is largely about managing personal connections and networks of like-minded people.

Donal seems to be misunderstanding what I meant, which is understandable as I didn’t explicitly state or link to some background assumptions:

In the public realm, where personal relationships are superseded by hierarchical and organizational ones, physical violence is power and power is physical violence,

The Way of Men has more on this, but men exist in a world of function-based, hierarchical organizations, ie. public organizations, while women exist in a world of one-on-one personal relationships. The former does not eliminate personal connections or friendships, but rather changes the nature of them: the personal relationships and networks exist in a framework where function, shared virtue, and ability towards a shared goal are the measures of judgment rather than emotional closeness, non-judgmentalism, and acceptance.

To explain what I mean, think of the playground. Boys generally self-organize into large group activities, such as soccer, where most other boys are allowed to join as they will (except maybe the occasional incompetent or nerd). Girls generally break up into pairs. This doesn’t mean the boys playing soccer don’t have personal relationships, but that the relationships exist in a public, hierarchical, function-based environment, the soccer team, and are superseded by a higher value, winning the game. Politics is playground soccer on a grand scale. The management of personal relationships and networks in such a public system is different than that in a private system, such as the family.

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Finally, on women and men as a class.

Speaking of unified displays of male strength, I think that it should be noted that men rarely act together as a “class.” It isn’t how we are wired. There isn’t really a Team Man counterpart to Team Woman. So any argument founded on a notion that men can overcome women “as a class” fails as a foundational matter.

This misses the entire point of my argument. There is no ‘overcoming women’. There is no war between men and women, to think there is a class war based on sex is to fully adopt the neo-marxist foundations of feminism. To think there is a power conflict between men and women is to lose the ideological war entirely before it even begins. If we accept a sexual class struggle exists, we might as well give up now and enjoy the decline because we’ve already accepted the enemy’s frame and joined him.

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Here we get to the main point I’m trying to make:

Men and women are not enemies and are not in competition, they are naturally made to complement each other. Women are naturally creatures of the private sphere, men are naturally creatures of the public sphere and the social arrangement of men and women, often referred to as patriarchy, of each tending to own their sphere works fantastically well for both men and women. Women have no inherent public political power because their inherent power rests in the private sphere, the sphere in which they are comfortable.

We do not have a competition between male power and female power, because the nature of their power is different. Rather we have a competition between one group of civilization-hating men and other groups of men, particularly white conservative males, in which women are but one group being used as weapons. Women are involved because the former group, using their control of cultural institutions, have managed to take the concerns of a small group of hurting, betrayed, broken, self-destructive, and/or high-testosterone women and elevate them to a class struggle in which most of the class does not share the small groups concerns and does not want to fight and most of those that do want to are primarily doing so because they have been lied to and the struggle is just the accepted environment in which they live.

The war is against that group of civilization-hating men. Feminists are the symptom of entropy not the disease. If we want to start winning we have to avoid mistaking the leaves for the roots.

Private and Public Spheres

Some have disagreed with my previous post, both in the comments and on their blogs. The jist of common objections are:

Women have the power of supplying willing, enthusiastic sex.

Only a Godly woman, submitted to a man with Godly masculinity, will be able to resist. His masculinity will appeal to her flesh, he will be put in authority by God, and hr will derive his direct power from God in the same way she will derive her indirect power from the same source. She will magnify everything in that household to be more as her husband and more as God, and the same in the community.

It overlooks the realm of indirect/private/influence power.

Now these are not wrong, a woman does have power in her private sphere: she has power to influence her husband, power to inculcate values in her children, and power to otherwise influence her local community and personal relationships.* I even briefly mentioned this in my original post: “Women do have a specific power: women are wonderful.” But this power is irrelevant to the discussion as women’s power lies in the realm of individual private relationships.

On the other hand, men’s power lies in the realm of hierarchical public organizations, although, they can bring their power to bear in the private sphere as well.

That is why I specified that women as a class are powerless. A class can only exist in the public realm and women’s power does not transfer into the public realm unless men allow it to and support it. (This does not mean that women’s power if meaningless or non-existent, only that it does not exist in the public realm).

In the private realm, emotions and personal relationships rule. Where harmonious relationships are paramount power can come in many forms as emotional and spiritual violence, the kinds of violence women excel at, are just as effective against individuals as physical violence and the use of physical violence is often destructive to harmonious personal relationships.

In the public realm, where personal relationships are superseded by hierarchical and organizational ones, physical violence is power and power is physical violence, however well-hidden the violence may be. Spiritual and emotional violence are useless as as they can only truly work against isolated individuals or family units, not tribes or thedes. In the public realm, even when public power may come from authority, legitimacy, expertise, tradition, at heart it still flows from physical violence or the implication thereof. Democracy is bloodless war, public policy is coercive confiscation, redistribution, and regulation, authority derives from implied violence, and legitimacy derives from being a part of a hierarchy backed by violence. In our modern society, violence is mostly implied and hidden behind many layers of bureaucracy, but the system still rests on it.**

And women, as a class, are not capable of violence. They can not, as a class, have power in the public sphere that is not given them by men.

In the public realm there is know balance of power between the patriarchy and the matriarchy, there is only a power balance between civilized men and uncivilized men, and the women belonging to either group.

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Why do you think feminists try to make the personal political?

If feminists could succeed at extending the personal realm into the public realm, to have it annex the public realm, women would be able to exert far more power over the public realm through their power in the private realm.

Of course, the personal can not be made political, you can not have individual private relationships with more than about 150 people, let alone millions. It is impossible for the private realm to conquer the public realm, but the public realm can conquer the private realm, so when trying to mix the two the public realm always comes out on top. This is why feminism always ends in bureaucracy. This is why leftism, however pro-anarchy it may be, always ends in bureaucracy.

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This separation of public and private power makes a case for extreme subsidiarity. If most political decision making is devolved to the Dunbar level, the private realm could conquer the public realm, and we could have a political structure that does not fundamentally rest on violence. This is called tribalism.

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As for sex explicitly, there is nothing women could do if men decided to take it forcefully. Thankfully, due to the Christian civilization feminists are intent on destroying, most men have been inculcated with values that are in opposition to rape. While women’s love might be a strong private force, I’m fairly sure that if civilized Christian values stopped being indoctrinated into children from a young age, most men would not be as adverse to rape as a few of the commenters think they are.

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As for female serial killers: as I said, “There is a .01% of women capable of physically matching the average man. This is not significant.” Some women are outside the norm, that doesn’t mean anything to women as a class.

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* I should mention that even here, those powers exist only because the stronger men in her life allow them to women. Men could easily take them away, making those powers dependent on men.

** This is not necessarily a moral judgment; morally legitimate violence is necessary for any polity. Also, for those wanting to get metaphysical on my use of morality here, God is good because God is powerful.

Women Have No Power

“Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.” – Chairman Mao

Donal wrote a post on patriarchy where he mentioned my previous post. He included graphs on the healthy balance of power between the sexes.

The graph is nonsense though, as it is based on a mistaken presupposition. Donal, and almost everybody, get the same thing wrong:

Women have no power. None.

Women as a class have are powerless. Any ‘power’ they have is simply proxy power given them by a group of men. This is nature, this is reality.

All power is, at base, violence. The iron fist may be wrapped in any number of velvet gloves, but at base the iron fist rules. Violence is power, power is violence.

Men, as a class, are the apex predator, the greatest enactors of violence our planet has ever seen. Women, as a class, are incapable of effective violence,* as women simply do not have the strength capabilities to enact effective violence, and therefore are at the mercy of men. This is reality; any system that doesn’t take into account women’s powerlessness is a denial of such.

Because women are incapable of effective violence, they have no power in their own right**, any power they may display is simply proxy power given them by men.

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This is important to know, because feminists are not the real enemy. Feminists are not the disease, they’re a symptom that would not have changed society at all if men did not change it for them.

It’s not the female judge or female bureaucrat booting you from your home and kidnapping your children, it’s the male cop (as for female cops, would a 5’4″ really be able to remove you from your home if she didn’t have men to call on?). It wasn’t women who decided Roe vs. Wade or gave women the vote. It wasn’t women who passed the Title IX, the Equal Pay Act, or the VAWA. It’s not feminists who own Jezebel, Gawker, Slate, or Salon. These things only happen because men do them.

We can and should fight against feminists, but feminism is only one aspect of the modern leftist project and subservient to them. (See how readily they are being pushed aside for transexual activists). Feminists are pawns that have been given power by men to serve the long march and destroy the traditional family.

Women only have the power that is given to them by one class of men who are using modern, feminist women as weapons against the rest of society. If they were not being used as tools, feminists would be powerless. If it were not for the men trying to destroy our society by female ’empowerment’, the modern women would be powerless.

There is no power balance between men and women. There is only a power balance between men who desire civilization and men who hate civilization (or at least love the pleasures of the flesh and harems more), the women follow the lead of whichever group of men they choose to follow. Sadly, the men who hate civilization offer temporarily pleasing but ultimately self-destructive gibmedats, while civilization can only offer a life of duty and future for civilization.

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* If you don’t believe me, try a test: if you are a man, the next time you shake a woman’s hand don’t hold back, if you are a woman, ask a man you know to shake your hand as he would shake a man’s hand (this won’t work with a limp-wristed mangina). There is a .01% of women capable of physically matching the average man. This is not significant.

** Women do have a specific power: women are wonderful. Men like women and will got to great lengths to protect, provide for, and please women they see as being in their care.

Motte & Bailey Example

To simplify, the Motte & Bailey (M&B) strategy consists of a group using a term or concept in an insane or despicable way among themselves (the bailey), but then, when attacked for their insanity retreating a position where the term or concept means something sane or reasonable (the motte). By this they hope to force aceptance of the term and thereby eventual acceptance of the insanity.

I’ve already shown how feminists use the motte-and-bailey strategy, although, without using the term, but we can see this in action right now, so another helpful little reminder can’t hurt.

Some women have taken taken to react against the excesses of modern feminism by creating the Women Against Feminism (WAF) movement. As with many modern female-controlled internet movements, it consists of taking selfies. Not that I’m complaining, as these selfies are much easier on the eyes than previous selfie campaigns.

Despite the positive aesthetics of the WAF and the generally positive tone of the messages, the WAF does have a problem, it was already entirely pwned before it even began, as this pretty young gal and this older wife well demonstrate:

The WAF are rejecting modern feminism while fully accepting the equality nonsense of first-wave feminism and the women-in-the-workforce concepts as givens, then thinking these are not a part of feminism. Sadly (and to their own detriment), the women are only rejecting contemporary feminism while accepting all of feminism’s original values and goals. If modern feminists weren’t so utterly stupid and evil they’d rejoice and call it a day, they won so very hard that even anti-feminists uphold feminist goals and values.

But of course, feminists are utterly corrupt and the ratchet never ends, so instead the feminists’ answer is, “how dare these ungrateful whores?

You think I’m exaggerating, don’t you? (h/t: VD)

Its tumblr is constructed of selfies of young women, dressed and posed like ads for DIY escort services, holding up bits of notebook paper on which they’ve scrawled screeds against feminism.

Everything about Women Against Feminism suggests it’s a sock puppet for the aggrieved misogynists and pedophiles of the anti-feminist men’s rights crowd. The main clue is that almost all the women on the site are nubile and posed in ways that fulfill dirty old men’s wildest dreams about pliant young things.

Remember, slut-shaming is only evil if it is men or non-feminists shaming actual sluts. It’s awesome when feminists are slut-shaming non-sluts.

I’ll note here that I didn’t see a single picture on on the WAF that would have been out of place walking our modern streets on a sunny afternoon and there was only one picture there that showed more cleavage than Nina Bureligh’s (the author) bio pic.

Of course, from her picture it’s fairly easy to see why Nina Burleigh is expressing hatred towards this pretty young woman:

I guess she never learned that jealousy just isn’t that attractive. But, maybe she can be forgiven, as getting old sucks, especially considering that even when she was younger Bill Clinton still chose this over her. Her calling other women sluts is especially funny given how this adulteress married a guy, then divorced him almost immediately to marry another guy. I guess projection is real.

But now I’m getting mean and off-topic. I still haven’t even started on my original point.

Feminists won, they won a while back and they won hard, but in their victory they’ve only won the original goal of ‘equality’, they have not yet gained what they truly desire: the complete destruction of any civilized restraints on women and the complete takeover of civil society by the state.

So, now they are in the difficult position of having achieved all their even remotely reasonable goals. You can hardly claim misogyny with a straight face when the state pays for your birth control and abortificants, when most employers give you special hiring privileges (affirmative action), when you consistently win in family court (and criminal court for that matter), when your partner can be removed from your home without cause or recourse at a single word from you, and you outnumber men in college by about 3:2, not that feminists don’t still try.

All they have left are their most unreasonable goals, like making it so that men can get jailed with no recourse and no trial simply because a women says rape or forcing men to sit down to pee by law or having all women treat all men like rapists by default.

Feminism itself has become bailey, as many women are beginning to realize contemporary feminism doesn’t actually benefit them.

Whenever anyone posts about how modern feminists, as represented by Jezebel, Feministing, Slate, Salon, Lindy West, Amanda Marcotte, etc., are generally bitter, anti-male, entitled, and looking for special privileges for women, they retreat to the motte.

“Feminism is about equality.”
“Feminism is simply acknowledging that women are people.”

Obviously, Nina above opted for slut-shaming and name-calling rather than the M&B approach, but some feminists aren’t quite so gracelessly, viciously stupid. This one highly linked article put M&B into play quite an entertaining manner.

Basically the article argues that sure, you young woman in North America have a great life free from misogyny and discrimination, but why don’t you think of the Muslim, Indian, and African women who are brutalized?* (Of course, actual feminists almost never talk about the brutalization of foreign women. In fact, they often support the Islamics wishing to bring that brutal behaviour to the West).

But she goes right from gang rapes and forced marriages in third world countries to “women still only fill 24% of senior management jobs”, “comedy panel shows usually only have one female panellist compared to 4-5 male ones”, and “almost every dieting product on the market is solely aimed at women”. (I’m being serious here, read the article if you don’t believe modern feminists are that narcissistically self-absorbed).

Here, she tries to get us to accept the motte of feminism is against horrific evils like mass rape, so we must accept the baileys of the wage gap (which anybody who is not ignorant or ideologically-blinded already knows is a myth) and government enforcement of quotas in comedy panels.

She doesn’t even do so gracefully: a straight jump from gang rape to comedy club panels.

The entire feminist response to WAF is the M&B in action. Pretend modern feminism is about ‘equality’ and ‘women are people too’ to try to convince the average, decent gal to be feminist, while taking a hardline vicious anti-male, anti-child, anti-freedom, anti-civilization elsewhere.

This is the M&B in action, don’t fall for it.

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* Also, of course, she ignores that the proscriptions against gang rape and forced marriage predated feminism by quite a bit and were actually products of Christian chivalry. I doubt she is going to be happy when she gets her goal and civilized, patriarchical Christian norms are replaced by more primitive and destructive norms.

Patriarchy = Civilization

I’ve implied this before, but now I will make it explicit:

Patriarchy is civilization. Civilization is patriarchy.

The two concepts are indistinguishable, differing only in emphasis.

Any time someone says patriarchy, they are, whether consciously or not, referring to civilization.

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Civilization is built when men produce more than they need to satiate their desires; civilization is the surplus value males create for the future, particularly their children.

Men will only produce surplus value if it will increase their returns in the marriage market (h/t:RPR). It is not that marriage itself is of value to men, rather marriage provides a means by which man can ensure paternity of his children. With the paternity of his children assured, man can invest invest in his children. Assured paternity binds father to children.

This binding of father to son and daughter is civilization, it may even be humanity itself.*

Patriarchy is a word encompassing all the mechanisms society has created so that man can be assured of the paternity of his children and will bind himself to them. It includes monogamy, pre-marital chastity, prohibitions on adultery, slut-shaming, the criminalization of prostitution, cad-shaming, father as the household head, proscriptions on divorce, patrilineality, and fatherhood itself.

These mechanisms are what create civilization.

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From the wiki for JD Unwin who completed a marriage study on civilization and marriage in the 1930s.

Unwin’s conclusions, which are based upon an enormous wealth of carefully sifted evidence, may be summed up as follows. All human societies are in one or another of four cultural conditions: zoistic, manistic, deistic, rationalistic. Of these societies the zoistic displays the least amount of mental and social energy, the rationalistic the most. Investigation shows that the societies exhibiting the least amount of energy are those where pre-nuptial continence is not imposed and where the opportunities for sexual indulgence after marriage are greatest. The cultural condition of a society rises in exact proportion as it imposes pre-nuptial and post-nuptial restraints upon sexual opportunity.

The whole of human history does not contain a single instance of a group becoming civilized unless it has been absolutely monogamous, nor is there any example of a group retaining its culture after it has adopted less rigorous customs.

Decadence leads to barbarism.

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The problem is free-riding. For both men and women, it is in an individual’s self-interest to get around the mechanisms of patriarchy. A man can have more darwinian success if he impregnates a woman and another man raises the child or if he impregnates many women. A woman can have more darwinian success if she has is impregnated by a fitter man than she can marry then has an attainable man raise the child. When free-riding becomes too common, the assurance of patriarchy weakens, then disappears.

What we experienced in the 20th century was the triumph of the free riders over civilization. The culture that was indispensable for suppressing the free riders was hijacked and turned on its head. Not only does culture now fail in its primary pro-civilizational mission, it actively discourages women from cooperation and makes it as easy as possible for them cheat their responsibilities… The cost of this failure is civilization itself and there can be no greater price to pay than Eden.

The bond between father and child is destroyed. Men lose their will to create a surplus and build for the future.

Civilization dies.

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Patriarchy is civilization.

Anybody opposing patriarchy is opposing civilization. The destruction of patriarchy is the destruction of civilization.

Whatever feminists and liberals may think of patriarchy, the violence and rapine of barbarism is far worse.

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* The binding of father to children has many benefits on an individual level as well.

The Rationalization of Effort

I got some pushback in the comments on my last post. FBNF thought that 100 times a year was a lot more than her experience. I responded that this was probably due to environment: I probably should have said she the 100 dates was probably average for her environment and lifestyle, but the general pattern would still hold.

I haven’t been able to find studies on how often women are asked out. I remember reading a number of threads on the issue, where women were asked how often they were asked out: answers for most were once a week to once a month. I can’t figure out where those threads were. So I did another search.

A quick google of various internet threads says it depends a lot on how one defines “asked out”; “real” asks are uncommon, a dozen or two a lifetime, but “random” ones are fairly common. This thread ranges from uncommonly to multiple times a day.

I turned to a quick search on /r/AskWomen. The answers across threads there were comparatively low to elsewhere. Never was common, a 6-12 in a lifetime was the plurality, a few times a year also common, while once a week or more was rarer. I think one guy from one of the threads had the right of it:

  • I’m seeing a lot of people distinguishing between a request to hang out that turns romantic and a request for a formal date, which is probably not a distinction the asker was making.
  • Redditors in general tend to identify themselves as introverted and/or shy, and shy people don’t get asked out nearly as often as outgoing people do.

Also, not to be an ass, but on the whole Redditors are probably far less social and far less attractive than average people and would be less likely to be asked out.

Here’s a thread where the bizarre top answer is “Have had 5 or 6 boyfriends in my life, but never actually been asked out on a date.”

It seems that it is common for women to only include explicit requests for a date. Being hit on doesn’t count, being asked for a number doesn’t count, being asked to ‘hang-out’ with romantic intentions doesn’t count, etc. Someone even being a relationship isn’t counted as being asked out. This is bizarre to me. As a man, I would (and did) count some lady on the street asking me to hang out as being asked out.

Anyway, it seems once a week to once every month or two would be “average” if you included hitting on and phone number asks, but a lot less, a few time a year or less, if it’s only for formal dates.

So, in my assessment we could say somewhere between 6-50 times a year would be normal for propositions of all types, but about a dozen “real” requests for formal dates a lifetime. This would of course vary a lot based on the women’s environment, attractiveness, and personality.

The bigger her social circle, the larger her city, the prettier she is (to a point), and the more outgoing a women is, the more she’ll get asked out.

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Which brings me to the point of my post: the rationalization of effort.

Unless you are a very experienced player or naturally very social, asking women out is a frightening and draining experience for most men; it has a fairly high mental cost. In addition, being rejected after asking a girl out is both painful and humiliating. Because of this men will often do a quick analysis of their odds of success combined with the ease with which they can ask a woman out and their level of motivation to ask that particular girl out. (This often leads to over-thinking, which is a major problem I struggle with).

This can lead to some weird outcomes. As Heartiste recently noted (NSFW) men will often not hit on the hottest girls, because the odds of success seem so slim. The prize may be great, but if the odds of success seem too low a man will not even try. It works the other way as well, a man may go after someone he might not otherwise chase simply if he thinks the odds of success are high.

What this means is that a man will only ask a woman out if he thinks he has a chance and the situation allows for an easy way to ask a girl out compared to the potential odds of success and his attraction.

He also needs motivation: most men see women around them all the time in their daily lives, including many attractive ones, but they rarely approach them. They will go out of their way to approach a particular women if he has some particular motivation to.

For one example, years ago there was a girl at my church who my mom would occasionally bring up as someone I should pursue. She seemed nice, she was attractive enough, and there was a decent chance she could have hit the points on my list but I never did approach her. There was nothing that really made her stand out to me. If happenstance had brought us into conversation together perhaps something might have happened, but there was nothing motivating me enough so I would put in the effort and take the risk of approaching her. (In retrospect, I probably should have).

As a contrasting example, there was a woman I was friends with for a while, she was attractive and fun to hang out with, but it didn’t even really cross my mind to think of her as a prospect. Then one day she was holding a friend’s baby and cooing over it; that display of maternal instinct peaked my attention and I started to entertain the prospect. I ended up asking her out a month or so later. (A mothering instinct is something I find incredibly attractive.).

One major factor in a man’s thinking is environment. Small, casual social environments (like house parties or games nights) are far more conducive to approaching for most men than most other environments. Church always has some formality, cold approaches are the most difficult ones, work comes with extra baggage, large parties/clubs/bars are good for certain personalities (ie. players and extroverts), but not for most men, etc.

There’s more to the sexual marketplace than a person’s raw SMV/MMV and displays thereof, there’s motivation and risk. A woman may be attractive, but she also needs to demonstrate something to motivate a man to approach (a particularly high level of beauty may be enough) and make it so that the type of man she wants to approach will think there is an ‘easy’ in.

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So, based on that here’s a few practical tips for women hoping to be approached more:

Be out in the world. Men can’t approach if they don’t see you.

Get in environments where approaching is easy. A casual, social environment is best.

Smile: A kind smile lowers the expected cost and raises the perceived odds of success, increasing the chances of being approached.

Signal availability: Look pretty, have an open demeanor, put yourself in a physical space where approaching is possible (ie. stand around other people, not on the other side of the room by yourself), walk casually instead of bee-lining: make it easy for a man to approach and it will be more likely.

Don’t signal unavailability: Don’t wear earphones, don’t wear a ring on your ring finger if you aren’t married, don’t stare at the ground, don’t walk around staring at your iPhone, etc., these will all discourage most men (players aside) from approaching. Most men don’t want to intrude on you when you are doing something. By doing this you are self-selecting for the kind of guy who interrupts busy people.

Signal something unique: Signal something that makes you stand out, particularly for the kind of man you are looking for. If you are looking for an physically active man, wear something that indicates you participate in a sport. If you are looking for a bookish man, carry a book. If you are looking for a traditional man, look traditional. If you are looking for a family man, coo over your friend’s baby. If you are looking for a player, show your cleavage. If a man sees you share something in common, something particular that interests hims, or that gives him an easy in to open, he will be more likely to approach you.

Do the opposite of all this if you want to be approached less.

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For Christians in particular:

When out of a church setting, it can often be difficult for a Christian man to tell if a woman is Christian or not, and if she isn’t he likely won’t be motivated to hit on her; hitting on a non-Christian would be a waste of time and effort. By displaying something obviously Christian, a Christian woman can give him that much more of a reason to talk to her, increasing her odds of meeting someone.

For Christian women, if you want more Christian men to hit on you, bring along something with you when you go out that makes it obvious you are Christian. Carry your Bible or a CS Lewis book or something else obvious; wear a Jesus fish necklace or a Bible camp t-shirt. (This is probably what the WWJD bracelets used to be for).

I know this from experience; there have been at least two cute girls I’ve cold approached because I overheard they were Christian, where if I hadn’t overheard them I probably would not have.

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For men, something similar probably applies. Make it easier for a woman to say yes when you approach. I don’t have a list of specific practical steps beyond what I’ve already thrown out in the Omega’s Guide (if you have one drop it below). Just keep in mind that if you reduce the cost/risk or increase the perceived benefits of saying yes, you’re more likely more likely to get a yes.

Don’t make it more difficult for her to say yes than you need to.

Sex Ed Hypocrisy

I found this both amusing and angering:

EDMONTON – An Edmonton teenager and her mother have successfully filed a complaint with the Alberta Human Rights Commission, alleging the Edmonton Public School District’s use of a Christian fundamentalist abstinence education program infringed upon their rights as non-Christians.

Dawson’s mother Kathy, an agnostic who supports sex education, signed the permission slip for Emily to attend CALM’s sexual education classes. She was shocked when Emily texted her to say the “sex ed” class was being taught by an anti-abortion activist, from the American-based Pregnancy Care Centre.

The leftist theocrats spent decades ramming “sexual education” into the public education system against the vocal opposition of Christians, the right, and anybody with any sanity because indoctrinating elementary-school children in the joys of sodomy and pedophilia is essential for the leftist goal of destroying the family.

One pro-life Christian group manages to infiltrate their sexual indoctrination sessions and make it vaguely pro-family and suddenly it becomes a human rights issue that must be dealt with in court.

It’s funny how suddenly teaching children about sex is wrong when it comes from a point of view of Christian morality rather than nihilistic hedonism.

Remember, its all about forcing their views and destroying traditional values, nothing more.

To add even more joy, this is how the article ends:

It’s absurd. CALM isn’t religion class. That’s not what parents sign up for. Sex education in our local public schools should be delivered in a scientific, non-judgmental way, by qualified professionals, not outsourced to an American-based pro-life lobby group.

Emily and Kathy Dawson have inspired an important public debate about the nature of our public schools. They deserve our thanks for their courage in speaking out.

This left-wing moralizing BS is a part of the news story. It’s not an editorial, it’s in the national news section. The priests of progressivism aren’t even trying to hide that the news is simply propaganda any more.

The gloves are coming off, they’re coming into the open, and they won’t stop until they’ve devoured your children’s souls and destroyed whatever is left of the family.

Men and Women’s Dating Markets

Here’s an article (H/T: RPR) of a woman whining about she hates dating because she wants an ‘organic’ relationship. The article is worthless, but there is something that I want to highlight:

I’d long been criticized for never having “officially dated.” In an attempt to put this argument to rest, I decided to say “yes” to any agreeable man who asked me out. I had 98 dates in nine months.

I’ve talked about this before but this is a good reason to reiterate. Over an extended period, this women had 11 “agreeable” men ask her out each month (I wonder how many ‘non-agreeable’ men she rejected).

And I doubt her 11 dates a month is abnormally high. From her photo, she’s rather attractive for her age, but when she’s 20-odd years past her prime, any average 20-25 year old gal who takes basic care of herself would be her match there, and, at least from her article, it doesn’t sound like she has all that dazzling a personality.

Despite this, she got almost 100 dates in less than year by simply not saying no to ‘agreeable’ men.

Compare this to Krauser, one of the masters of bedding women, who has spent years perfecting and writing about game and has bed more women than 99% men ever have or will. He opened 1000 women and got a grand total of 60 dates in a year.

Again, an average woman got 98 dates in 9 months for doing nothing, while a grand-master of game got 60 dates in a year after busting his hump.

That is how easy the dating market is for women. The vast majority of men will never get anywhere near as many opportunities for romance in their whole life no matter how much effort they put in as this average-looking woman got in 9 months of not saying no.

This is the difference between men and women in the dating market.

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This is also why advice of ‘just be yourself‘ and ‘you’ll find someone when you stop looking‘ is so common, yet so useless. For women it’s true: all a woman has to do is show up, not cripple herself and say yes and she has her pick of 100 guys a year. She doesn’t need to search and she can just be herself.

In fact, for a woman, ‘looking’ is probably counter-productive. Given the massive opportunities for romance that just come to her, she obviously does not mean looking in the sense most males do, ie. trying to find and ask out suitable members of the opposite sex. She means something totally different; when she’s looking she’s actively vetting men, ie. ruling men out, so when she stops looking she’s no longer ruling men out beforehand, giving one of those hundred guys a foot in the door.

Men though simply can’t do this. George Clooney maybe, but very few others. If you ‘just be yourself’ you’re one of the hundred faceless men boring her with your dog and pony show. If you stop looking, you’re not even one of those 100 men, you’re no one.

This is also why women are often devoid of sympathy/empathy for male dating problems. It’s not that they’re heartless, it’s that they simply can’t understand (unless they are unattractive): the concept of not having plenty of options is as alien to them as having a date fall into your lap every 3 days with no effort is to men.

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This came up briefly in my personal life; I was with my folks and we were talking about my sister. She went through a break-up and my mother was surprised that she hadn’t jumped back into a relationship within a month and she was proud that she didn’t just jump back into it. I dryly said, “A whole month”. Then she talked about how woman can usually have plenty of options after a break-up.

Little things like that really hammer home the point that women live in a whole different world.

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So, things to consider for men:

Every time you’re asking a woman out, you’re competing against the other 99 men who’ve asked her out that year. What makes you better than them? Why would she choose you when she rejected them?

If you want to win, you either need to find a girl who doesn’t get 100 offers a year  or you need to offer what those other 99 guys don’t.

Make it look “organic”. She has dozens of dog-and-pony shows she could could attend, make it seem like it just happened.

Practical things for women:

Be available, don’t say no, start saying yes.

That’s it. If you’re a decent person and moderately attractive, you’ll have a guy in no time.

Assertiveness, Leadership, and Bitchiness

Dalrock posted avideo. I had seen it earlier and was going to comment on it, but never got around to it, so I’ll comment on it now. Watch it:

Cane also had a good post on it, but I’m going to take this a bit of a different direction.

You’ve all heard feminists whine about how women are called bitchy where a man would be called assertive or women are called bossy, while men are called leaders. It’s one of those memes that seem to continually float around. (Any young women who may read my blog should take note of this post).

The reason women are called bitchy or bossy is because in general feminists, and many non-feminist women, do not seem to understand that there is a middle ground of assertiveness between being a pushover and being bitchy. Leadership exists in the space between passiveness and bossiness. This commercial illustrates that ignorance perfectly.

There are five mini-stories in the commercial, where there’s a before, where the woman is sorry and an after where the woman is “confident” (although, bitchy would be a better term in most cases).

In the first, the woman interrupts someone, probably her boss, in who’s making a public presentation. In that case, ‘sorry’ is only the minimal politeness. Now, they should have focused on her calling her own question ‘stupid’, that was the real problem with that example, and shows a basic lack of confidence. But in the second, instead of just having her show more confidence in her own ideas, they jump her straight to bitchy. She just flat out interrupts the guy making the presentation in mid-sentence. That’s not assertive, that’s just plain rude. The assertive way to pull this off, would have been ‘Excuse me, why don’t…?” When you are publicly interrupting someone in the middle of a presentation, ‘sorry’ is just plain common courtesy.

In the second one, the women barges into someone else’s office. For this one, there’s nothing particularly wrong in either example, both ‘sorry’ or a polite ‘do you got a minute?’ are basic courtesy when interrupting someone. There’s the small problem that the commercial paints the basic politeness of ‘sorry’ for interrupting someone busy, as being somehow weak when it is not.

The third one, illustrates a girl apologizing when she shouldn’t. The commercial is right here, if someone sits don’t beside you, apologizing is silly. But instead of simply having her simply not apologize and ignoring him, which would be the confident thing to do, she smirks at him like she’s purposely being an ass and winning some sort of non-existent competition. That is being passive-aggressively bitchy; between men, that kind of attitude at the wrong time could result in a fight.

The fourth and the fifth ones are the worst though. In the before skits, one woman passes a child to the husband and says sorry and the other takes part of a blanket her husband is hogging and says sorry. In either case, saying ‘sorry’ is rather silly. Nothing wrong is being done in the former and the husband is in the wrong in the latter; no apologies needed. In the former, just saying ‘take him’ or, in the latter, just taking the blanket without a word is perfectly fine. But again, instead of showing a confident woman doing what needs to be done, they jump straight to bitchy. Going out of your way to say ‘sorry, not sorry’ is not assertive, it is passive-aggressive bitchiness, as is taking the whole blanket on purpose.

This is why “assertive” women are called bossy or bitchy. It is not because of some sort of double-standard, it is because many of them don’t know the basic rules of assertiveness game.

Assertive men do what they need to do, but, as the situation calls for it, they either don’t mention it (such as in 3, 4, or 5) or show basic politeness when they do it (such as in 1 or 2). Only aggressive assholes, the male equivalent of bossy bitches, violate someone else’s space or speaking time or go out of there way to rub their “assertiveness” in someone else’s face.

Among men, that kind of behaviour is what starts fights, but men can’t/don’t generally verbally or physically attack women, so those kinds of women get away with the rather minor penalty of being labelleda bitch.

So, women, if you don’t want to be called bitchy or bossy, learn the rules of decorum game, because the kind of passive-aggressive jackassery shown in this commercial is not “assertive”, it’s just being a jerk.