Category Archives: Sex/Gender

Guest Post from Euroland

Today, I have one of my first pieces of reader submitted content. I’m always open to letting other express themselves here (as long is it is as least tangentially related to the blog theme, is not repulsive to me, and is readable), so e-mail me if you ever have anything you’d like to be read. I get free content, you get a platform from which to have your say: win-win.

Today’s post comes from  a man in Europe; it’s a good reminder that we here in North America are not the only ones dealing with the scourge of modern feminism and progressivism. So, without further comment or any editing from me I present this to you:

Dear Sir/Madam,

1.01: In my view EQUALITY in “Family Court” is the best way to defend marriage and children. This EQUALITY all things being equal, (no abuse or violence or bits on the side etc.) will mean that the spouse who wants out, leaves NO children, NO money & NO house rendering the innocent spouse a widow or a widower almost as the case may be. But the deserting spouse will be required to tell the children, in COURT with a Judge listening when the youngest child is 25, why the children had NO mother or NO father as the case may be. Since walking out, the destering spouse would have been forbidden to contact the children directly or indirectly except through the INNOCENT spouse’s lawyer. If the divorce is mutual BOTH parents must be required to tell the children, in COURT with a Judge listening, (Ladies First) when the youngest child is 25, why the children had NO mother or NO father as the case may be. In an IDEAL world, Divorce would be scrapped, or modified so that ONLY the INNOCENT spouse can re-marry.

2.01: Until EQUALITY reigns men must under NO circumstances marry. Even though the statement “But Not All Women Are Like That” is valid & true, the statement “But ALL ‘Family’ Courts Are Like That” is even more true. Marriage THESE days is so emotionally, financially & legally dangerous for a man that not even a brain-dead gambling addict, having spent a week boozing would urge a man to take the chance. So WHEN Equality reigns men will AGAIN marry. After the US Civil War black men could not marry their ladies fast enough. I think that in some places the Courthouses had to be kept open late, to cope with the demand.

3.01: In my view the PARENT who walks out (unless there is Abuse or Cheating involved) in an UNFIT parent. Society in ALL Western countries is NEVER tired of bellowing “Be a good husband Joe and you will become a good father” AT a man as opposed to saying it TO a man. However Society tells a woman under the EXACT same circumstances that she can be a BAD wife and still a good mother.

4.01: I listened to The Communist Manifesto on Youtube in which we hear:
4.02: The “Children’s Rights” and the “Bad Parents” speeches,
4.03: The “State Education” speeches,
4.04: The “End of the Family” especially the Marriage Family speeches,
4.05: The “Abolish Countries and Nations” speeches.

How little things change!!!!

5.01: States turned against smoking when the cost of treating sick smokers exceeded the revenue from tobacco. The same will happen regarding the Liberal Agenda. Possibly the $1.5 BILLION that George W. Bush spent to promote the marriage family might be seen in 30 years time as the turning of the wheel.

6.01: I think that the ‘marriage strike’ by men in the USA and increasingly throughout Western countries MIGHT just be the beginning of the end for this toxic tsumanai known as ‘Family Law’ in the West.
6.02: Men must remain Chivalrous to tell those women who value marriage & men that it is now up to WOMEN to get the laws changed to achieve Equality. So a girl who experiences Decent, Dependable Dave who punctual, who is reliable, who holds the door for her, gives up his seat to her, gets her a chair, carries her bag, holds her coat for her, lets her before him in the queue, stands aside for her in the corridor or the street, is getting a POWERFUL message. Decent, Dependable Dave is showing the girls what THEY are missing and demonstarting to the girls that Chivalry is a TWO-WAY street. This message becomes even MORE powerful when Decent, Dependable Dave REFUSES to allow ANY female interaction go beyond casual social pleasantries. So if the girls want Scumbag Steve who treats girls like dirt, they are MOST welcome to him.
6.03: Lets us say here that Decent, Dependable Dave marries Maria from Manila as Dave has seen his uncles, brothers, cousins & buddies discarded like old shoes in ‘Family Court’ when the wife walked out on an INNOCENT spouse. Let us make Dave a truck driver who works day and night to provide for his wife & children. Let us say that after 7 years Maria is a stay-at-home Mom with 4 children. Let us further say that Dave did not abuse her, the children or anybody else. Nor did he have any affairs, in short he was a PERFECT husband. Maria has spent all her days at home listening to the Man/Husband- Hating message on Daytime TV. Maria walks out. She gets ABSOLUTELY everything. Suddenly, Dave discovers that it is “HER” children, “HER” house, “HER” pension scheme but HIS bills. Conclusion: It makes ABSOLUTELY NO difference for Decent, Dependable Dave to marry Maria from Manila or indeed Arlene from Alabama..

7.01: On a somewhat different note, I wonder if you have come across the following situation that I heard on Youtube.
7.02: A “loving same-sex couple” be it male or female or a rich single again be it male or female decides that they want to adopt a child.
7.03: They drive through a financially deprived area, where people tend to go to Church on Sunday. They will find a child whom they like and then find something wrong with the child’s situation, the parents are short of money, the child is wearing his brother’s cast-off clothes etc.
7.04: Our couple or rich single will then inform CPS/Human Services who then take the child from the parents. The child is then placed ‘on a temporary basis’ with the couple or the rich single.
7.05: By the time the parents who have no money can get to Court several months at least will have passed.
7.06: The Court will then decide that “the best interests of the child” require that the child be left with the couple or the rich single.
7.07: The parents are then called “Bad Parents” and sent the bills.

8.01: I have NO DOUBT but you will find these remarks in brackets {} from FDR by Ted Morgan, TOUCHSTONE BOOK published by Simon & Schuster New York p493 regarding Congressman Martin Dies of Texas MOST SINISTERLY interesting. In 1938, Dies had got a Committee on Un-American Activities underway in Congress. {He originated the techniques later brought into full bloom by Senator Joseph McCarthy — unfounded charges, lack of substantial evidence, use of guilt by association, denial of opportunity for the accused to answer the charges and repeated public assertions of the extreme danger of a largely imaginary threat.} I wonder why ‘Family’ Courts cross my mind?
8.02: I have no doubt but you have heard of Cronos, a mythical King in Ancient Greece. He overthrew and killed his father. After learning that he, Cronus, was destined to be overcome by his own sons, just as he had overthrown his father, he devoured all of his sons as soon as they were born, to pre-empt the prophecy. When the sixth child, Zeus, was born, Zeus was hidden and later fulfilled the prophecy. Conclusion; No matter how ALL-POWERFUL a Tyranny may appear to be it will EVENTUALLY be overthrown.
8.03: I have NO DOUBT but you heard of Icarus, the bird-man of Greek legend. His father, Daedalus made two pairs of wings out of wax and feathers for himself and his son Icarus so they could escape from Crete where they were held prisoner. Daedalus tried his wings first, but before taking off from the island, warned his son not to fly too close to the sun, nor too close to the sea, but to follow his father’s path of flight. Overcome by the giddiness that flying lent him, Icarus soared through the sky curiously, but in the process he came too close to the sun, which melted the wax. Icarus kept flapping his wings but soon realized that he had no feathers left and that he was only flapping his bare arms, and so Icarus fell into the sea and drowned.

9.01: We ignore the lessons of History at our peril. There is NO CASE known to History, REGARDLESS of the bona fides of those involved, of any Society that has survived an attack on the Married Hetrosexual family.
9.02: Before he invaded Russia, Napoleon said “After three months, Russia will ask me for peace” to one of his generals. In June 1941, as Germany prepared to invade Russia, German officers on the ground (as opposed to the Nazi leadership) told the troops that the serious fighting would last 4 weeks, that the Germans would be at the Urals in 14 weeks and that they would all be back home in Germany for Christmas.
9.03: In 1941, as Hitler’s armies were racing towards Moscow, Stalin summoned Ivan Stamenev, the Bulgarian Ambassador to Moscow to the Kremlin, and asked him to mediate with the Germans, as Bulgaria was neutral. Stamenev refused saying “Even if you have to retreat to the Urals, you will beat them in the end”,in reply to Stalin a prediction, that Time, proved correct. Men and families are now back at the Urals. However, do NOT worry as this toxic tsumanais called ‘Family Law’ & ‘Feminism’ in Western countries WILL come to an end. If you had said “This is the beginning of the end of the Soviet Union” on December 24, 1979, when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, you would have been the butt of EVERY joke as people rolled around the streets laughing at you. We all now KNOW that the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan WAS the beginning of the end of the Soviet Empire. Slowly, men and families are moving westward. We are NOT QUITE YET in the position of the Soviet trooper Sgt. Alyosha Kovalyov who on May 02, 1945, hoisted the Soviet flag over the Reichstag in the famous photograph. The day WILL come when Families hoist the Flag of Freedom over the TOXIC MT EVERSTS called ‘Family’ Law’ & ‘Feminism’ in Western countries. Within twenty years in Western countries, we will see some of the cheerleaders for the Feminist/Liberal/Child Abuse Agenda doing the General Deboi & Julius Streicher Act.

Julius Streicher

Julius Streicher 1885 – 1946 was a Nazi newspaper owner in post WW1 Germany. His racist newspaper even by Nazi standards spewed forth the most vile virulent hatred of Jews. He incited Germans to the persecution and to the extermination Jews. For “the persecution and the extermination Jews” you may read “the persecution and the extermination of the family & fathers” in Western countries. Hitler was NOT tough enough on the Jews for him. After WW2 he claimed to know NOTHING of any anti-Semitic campaigns NEVER MIND any Death Camps. He was tried at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trial and executed by hanging.

General Deboi

After Stalingrad, the Russians captured 22 four-star German generals. One of these generals, General Deboi was appointed group spokesman as he could speak French, Europe’s international language of that time. During the Russian-organized press conference Deboi stressed ‘Je suis autrichien, je ne suis pas allemand’ constantly, to anybody who would listen.

Yours sincerely,

XXXXXXXXXXX (Reader did not want to be identified).

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.

Financial Analysis of Sex: Relationship vs. Marriage

I previously did an economic comparison of obtaining casual sex through both prostitution and game. I said I would do the cost of sex in marriage and relationship game in the future, so, here it is (much later than I originally anticipated).

The following is a financial analysis of the costs of obtaining sex through a relationship or game. For simplicity’s sake, it ignores the greater economic costs beyond financial and benefits beyond the sexual (both material and immaterial). I will likely analyze these more in the future in their own posts.

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Relationship Game

If you convert game to a relationship, the cost per sexual encounter goes down.

The original 3 sexual encounters would be $460 each (as calculated in the game for casual sex post), but once the initial costs of picking-up a women have been met, converting a short-term fling from game to a relationship can change the costs of sex.

According to Roosh, each date costs about $35. We’ll assume you enjoy dating your partner for its own sake (hence why you’re in a relationship), so there’s no foregone cost. So, assuming each date leads to sex, each sexual encounter in the relationship past the first 3 would cost only $35 each. If you don’t enjoy dating your partner (for whatever reason), then you can add $20/date, if we assume 2 hours per date (at a foregone wage of $10).

We’ll assume a date/sex an average three times a week in a one-month relationship (for a total of 12 times, plus the 3 encounters he had in the fling), and two times a week in a 6-month (for a total of 48 times, plus 3) and 1-year relationship (for a total of 104, plus 3) (The same caveats would apply here as in Game for Sex).

Cost for Sex (1-month relationship): $120

Cost for Sex (6-month relationship): $60

Cost for Sex (1-year relationship): $47

This could, of course, be reduced by paying less for dates, or forgoing dates altogether in favour of less costly activities.

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Marriage

The average married man gets sex about once per week.

The average length of marriage prior to divorce is 8 years, but 60% of first marriages do not end in divorce. In the case of no divorce, we’ll assume the average marriage lasts 40 years (about 60-75 years old) until the male is either dead or are either incapable of or not desiring sex.

In that case, the average marriage lasts about 27 years.

Over that period, the average male can expect to get sex an average of about 1400 times. (1500 if he had sex in a 1-year relationship prior to marriage as per relationship game above).

The cost of dating and a one-year relationship prior to the marriage are almost $5000 (we’ll assume he enjoyed dating the person he chose to marry). The average cost of a wedding is about $27000.

We’ll also add in the 40% chance of $37,383 loss due to divorce (assuming the man will be the primary, but not sole breadwinner).

Cost for Sex (Marriage): $50 ($46 if you slept together before marriage)

This could of course be significantly reduced by not having a wedding that costs $27,000. It could also be reduced by minimizing chances of divorce. Only 1/5 of marriages have weddings that cost more than $30k, so it’s likely that really extravagant weddings are really pulling the average up, so it shouldn’t be impossible.

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This analysis assumes that your wife will be pulling her own weight in the marriage or relationship and is not being a freeloader. This can be by either earning her keep through paid employment, by raising your children (in which case the costs of supporting her would be added under the costs of raising a child), or providing companionship commiserate with your upkeep of her. If you are in a relationship or marriage with a women and supporting her solely for sex with no other gain for yourself, then the costs of sex would be much higher (but why on earth would you do this?).

This also ignores the many non-material and/or non-sexual benefits, costs, and risks for being in a relationship. This analysis assumes these are overall a wash in relation to material costs and the cost of sex.

I may try to economically analyze these factors more in-depth at another time.

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Conclusion

In the end, the final costs for sex are:

Prostitution: $300
Game: $460 ($200 if you enjoy clubbing and game for their own sakes)
Relationship (1 month): $120
Relationship (6 months): $60
Relationship (1 year): $47
Marriage: $50 ($46 if you slept together before marriage)

Overall, a long-term relationship and marriage are, financially-speaking, the cheapest methods of acquiring sex. Prostitution is the most expensive, but game without relationship costs more if you dislike clubbing.

Why Would Any Self-Respecting Male be an Ally?

Trigger Warning: Some mansplaining goin’ down here.

A couple weeks back, I read Occupy Misandry (h/t: Mojo). It’s about one guy’s experiences at the Occupy Wall Street kerfluffle. He was your typical left-wing rage against the machine type, who describes himself as a “one-time Marxist feminist”. Here’s his experience:

The progressive stack technique is a something that compels the rotationally appointed stack-keeper to move people forward (or backward) on the speaker list depending on several criteria – chiefly, whether or not you were deemed to belong to a minority group or, conversely, whether you were apprehended as being part of the dominating class. It was there and then that I was duly informed that, as a white heterosexual male, I was a member of this dominating privileged echelon and that if I wanted to address the assembly, I may have to forgo my place in the line a myriad of times, in order to let others, who have been ‘traditionally denied a voice,’ to scoot in ahead of me. Women (surprise, surprise!) were always escorted to the front of the queue because, although they were not a minority per se, they were ausländers – outliers in that political hinterland beyond the perimeter fence of the big, bad encampment of domination.

This was not the first time I had ever had my ostensible privilege stare me in the face – but this time it felt a little different: it was suddenly right the fuck up in my face. Being a one-time Marxist feminist, this perennial charge of patriarchal privilege was bitter medicine, yet one that I felt compelled to imbibe. I had been holding my nose and swallowing this tincture, ever since the mid 1980’s. It seemed a small price to pay for trying to make the world a fairer place for all. And like most medicine, you tend to ignore the rancid taste because you are led to believe it is good for you, that it is curative.

This blatant discrimination from those supposedly opposed to it, unsurprisingly angered our soon-to-be MRA. Another little incident cements this, and he becomes disillusioned with left-wing shibboleths (welcome to the club). He became an MRA.

My immediate advice to him is to dig further. The far left may be particularly repellent in their lies, but even the “centrist” and “conservative” progressivism that dominates modern society are the same pill with a lighter blue hue. The MRA still buys into the dominant progressivist paradigm.

But that’s not my point today, my point today is simply to ask, rather rhetorically, what possesses a man to sacrifice himself to become an “ally” in the first place?

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Sidenote: In left-wing sociological terminology, majority and minority are not numerative descriptors, it doesn’t matter which group there is more of or less of. It is a descriptor of power, whichever group is the most dominant (according to left-wing ideology) is the majority. For example, even though whites have only made up 10-20% of South Africans over the last few decades, they would be the “majority” simply because whites are dominant. So women, despite being half the population, would be a “minority” in sociological newspeak.

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First, the term ally. An ally is someone who supports the political activism of the grievance industry that purports to represent a “minority” group but is not of that minority group. (It should be noted, not every left-wing crusader agrees with the use of the term allies, while others think otherwise). Examples of allies could include a heterosexual who supports gay rights, a male who supports feminism, or a white person that supports affirmative action and “anti-racism”. John Scalzi, Tim Wise, and Hugo Schwyzer are a few allies those of the manosphere may be more familiar with (although, I do not know if they would self-describe thus). People in the manosphere would likely refer to them as manginas.

Anyway, why would any male with any amount of self-respect decide to become an ally to the grievance industries which hate and disrespect them so?

The examples of left-wing  disrespect and callousness for their allies abound. There’s a newborn MRA up there. There’s Hugo Shwyzer getting thrown under a bus, which happened after he threw the founder of the Good Men project under the bus. There are other examples, but even more convincing is the general undertone of disrespect leftists grievance groups, especially feminists, have for their allies. The amount of intense anger feminists display towards those trying to be their allies is crazy. Even the male allies get in on making demands males must follow.

Let’s say you’re sympathetic and want to learn how to be an ally or be a better one. Nope, educate yourself; no cookie for you.

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So people don’t think I’m cherry-picking certain posts or extremists, this kind of demanding, angry, condescending is steeped throughout the grievance industry; it even forms the very basis of a lot of their language.

I didn’t just use the phrase “no cookie for you”, the cookie concept is a part of the language. It’s used to mock men who try to get on activists’ good side by buying into their frame. (Although, from my understanding, it’s become somewhat more positive on occasion.  The condescension of the concept is (or at least should be) humiliating for those who seek or receive them. Now, I think men who suck up to left-wing activists deserve mockery and humiliation, but they’re not trying to be my ally.

Other concepts major concepts among feminists also reek of condescension and humiliation of their supposed allies.

Check your privilege – When an ally starts talking from a position of “privilege”, this is used to get them to rethink their privilege. Essentially, it’s used a weapon for silencing those whose opinions don’t matter as much (ie. anyone not in the victim group).  Even some feminists think that it’s overused as a silencing tactic.

(Man)splaining – When a “privileged” person tries to explain something to a “non-privileged” person. Essentially, as “Michael Hawkins” learned in the comments here, mansplaining is whenever a man tries to debate with a feminist. Remember, a feminist knows everything, and trying to be helpful or having your own opinion is sexist. (Hint: Never help a feminist).

Gaslighting – Gaslighting was actually a respectable word used in psychology used for when sociopaths abused someone into believing unreality (see: public education). Feminists got hold of the concept and now gaslighting means anytime you point out to a women she is getting overemotional or anytime a women gets offended and you argue there’s no need to be. Remember, feminists never personalize, never get overly emotional, and never overreact. So, if you criticize a women for threatening suicide because you did not buy her a coke, you’re gaslighting.

Pretty much, all of these are used to silence, intimidate, and marginalize the “privileged” who dare interact with a feminist.

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Of course, evil patriarchs like me don’t care and aren’t silenced. If logic, self-control, and reason are considered mansplaining and gaslighting, then I’ll cop to both. And, no, I won’t check my privilege and don’t care in the least about their cookies. (I only want cookies made out of love by someone feminine or mass-produced in a factory engineered, designed, and built by men).

Nope, those of us who think feminism is a load of crap, aren’t effected or silenced.

So who are marginalized?

Allies.

Those weak liberal suck-ups who try to get on feminists’ good side (good luck, you have a 1/360 chance). Those are the ones whose voices are silenced. Those are the ones are ostracized by those they try to please the unpleaseable.

They’re the ones who want the cookie, so they’re the ones who’ll try to earn it and will be disappointed when they realize they’re mansplaining out of their privilege and therefore, their opinion is worthless.

Some will realize this, like our newfound ally up there, but others, the manginas of the manginas, will continue to try to “check their privilege” and like good little doggies beg for their cookies.

But why?

Why would any man with even an ounce of self-respect put up this?

Why would any man accept being constantly condescended to and humiliated?

What do they get out of it?

Is it worth it?

What could possibly possess a man to prostrate himself before feminists and hand them his balls?

The Consequences of Sluttiness

I was gonna post this in tonight’s Lightning Round, but it took too much space, so it gets its own short post.

This is what happens when a women is slutty prior to marriage. Be warned:

Q. Disconnected From Husband After Orgasm: Please help. I love my husband. He is affectionate, interesting, smart, and even does his share of the housework. The only problem is in bed. Although I usually orgasm during sex with him, instead of feeling emotional satisfaction and closeness afterward, I feel sad and disconnected. With past boyfriends, I always felt the rush of “bonding” chemicals, even when I didn’t want to. What could be going wrong now? And please, don’t bother to suggest couples counseling. My husband would be crushed if he knew.

A: Fake it. Not your orgasm, because you’re fortunate to have one, fake those bonding feelings. Reach out to your husband, hug and stroke him. Engaging in this ritual could reorient your feelings and lift you out of your temporary sadness. What you’re experiencing is not at all unusual. The French call it “la petite mort,” describing the feeling of melancholy that sometimes descends post-orgasm. Just knowing you are not alone, and that you can act close even if you don’t feel it, might be enough to get you past this.

Social Pathologist has some stats/science here, here, here, and here.

Edit: Highlighting something I almost missed, but should really emphasize: “What you’re experiencing is not at all unusual.” This is not just one women, this is a pattern.

Feminism and Housing Costs

Today I read this (h/t: BitterBabe) and this one quote really stood out:

Commentators said yesterday that pressures on women to work and pay mortgages mean that many do not have the same choice over having families that their mothers did.

I’ve discussed feminism and choice before, and I’ve discussed how feminists are in opposition to the wants of most women before, but now I’m going to focus on something specific: housing.

I’m going to explain exactly where the “pressures on women to pay mortgages” comes from.

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Housing is the single largest expense most people have (other than possibly taxes), taking up almost 35% of their income. Unlike most goods, which have gotten cheaper over time due to technology improvements, housing costs as a percentage of income has remained stable over time (with the possible exception of fluctuations due to the housing bubble and crash).

Why is that?

The primary reason is that housing is mostly a positional good.* The price of a house has less to do with the actual materials making the house and more with the desirability of the land the house resides on. This is why a house in New York costs so much more than the cost of a similar house in, say, Detroit.

The other reason is that people are using extra income buying larger homes.

For both these reasons, as people’s incomes grow higher they will generally increase their housing costs to match a proportion of their income. You see this all the time, where people will buy bigger and better houses even if their old houses were perfectly livable and they do not require more space for the kids they are not having.

As people buy more housing the price of housing goes up. So, over time, as people’s incomes go up, they will buy more housing, which will increase the price of housing, increasing the absolute amount spent on housing.

Because of this mechanic, the proportion of income spent on housing remains stable even as incomes go up.

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So, what does this have to do with feminism and choice?

As more women have entered the workforce, they have contributed their income to their households. Because of this household incomes have increased, but, because of the primarily positional nature of housing, the proportion of income spent on housing by households has stayed the same.

So,to now purchase the same amount of housing you could purchase on a single income prior to women entering the workforce en masse you need the equivalent income of a two-income household.

Because of this, families are now in a position, where two incomes are required for sufficient housing space for a family in many areas.

Households wanting to live in certain areas are now required to have the women work rather than stay home simply to afford housing.

As more women enter the workforce, the viability of women choosing to stay home decreases.

Most women desire to stay home with their children, if they could afford it, and the feminist desire to have women be economically independent is removing that choice from them.

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Of course, I have completely ignored the impacts of divorce on housing costs for former households and the impacts of increased demand. You should be able to figure them out yourselves (hint: they increase housing prices and costs).

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Combine this with the unfeasible daycare costs I previously pointed, and you being to wonder if women moving into the working world has provided any benefits to most women.

Most women desire to stay home, but many are forced to work because they can’t afford not to.

But their biggest expense is only that big because women are working and one of their next biggest expenses only exists because they are working.

Is this what most women want? To be forced to work for little real benefit.

Question for women: Do you enjoy spending your days at work rather than with your children knowing that most of what you earn is not actually providing any real benefit to your or your children?

If not, maybe you should think about what you support.

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Now, for budding patriarchs, this doesn’t mean your (future) wife has to work. What it does mean is that it will require sacrifices and good planning.

You will have to limit your desire for a bigger home (even as you need a bigger home than most, because you’re filling your quiver instead of vacationing in Mexico). You may have to commute longer or find a job away from the urban core. You will likely have to forgo other luxuries.

If you and your wife plan on having her be a homemaker, you will have to discuss this with her. You will have much less house than your peers, and this could lead to envy for you and your wife. You will not be able to afford yearly vacations to distant lands. There are numerous luxuries and status symbols you will have to give up.

You have to make this clear to both yourself and her that this lifestyle is a sacrifice and that both are willing to accept it.

In the long-run, which is more important to you though?

Your child being raised by his mother rather than strangers and the educational system. Or the status symbol of a bigger house and your children being forced to share a room.

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* It is only primarily a positional good, not totally. Housing does have a certain intrinsic worth and the materials in housing have a certain intrinsic cost, but, by comparing housing prices in high- and low-demand areas we can easily see that the costs of housing are primarily due to the comparative value of the land on which they are built, than the homes themselves. Of course, it can be argued that the value of the land is not exactly positional, in that being in geographic proximity to certain locations has its own intrinsic value, but this does not effect my point. My point only requires that the value of land is due to competition between potential buyers, for whatever reason, rather than for any immediate practical effect the land has on the utility of the home itself.

Demanding More

There’s been a little bit of debate on the infantalization of men within the alt-right/manosphere, so I decided to weigh in. (I have a companion piece to this post here, read it to give more context to this post).

The Social Pathologist wrote:

The manosphere rightly criticizes women for their diminishing femininity, but what the manosphere does not do so well is criticize the increasing infantisation of men.  When Roosh and his followers point out that quality women are only to be found outside the U.S. he is giving the masculine version of the modern feminist lament that there are no good men at home. What many manosphere commentators fail to recognize is that the nice computer nerd is the male equivalent of the nice fat chick. The manosphere demands thinness  but criticizes women for wanting its feminine equivalent. Mote, beam, eye. It’s all a bit of hypocrisy.

There are two problems with his argument here.

The first problem is the difference between the manosphere and modern feminism. The manosphere is actively trying to improve men; they are encouraging men to become better, more masculine players, or better, more masculine patriarchs. They are actively trying to move away from being the nice computer nerds and become better at being a man. (Whether that’s better or not for women is debatable).

(The other section of the manosphere, the MGTOW, may not advocate self-improvement as much, but they are not hypocritical because they are also no longer calling for women to improve. They’ve simply decided to take their ball and go home and have given the reasons why).

Modern feminism on the other hand is actively trying to make women less feminine. They are actively encouraging women to be fat (fat acceptance), to be “outspoken” (read: bitchy), and to discard their traditional societal roles. They are actively trying to make woman worse. They are encouraging women to become bitchy (not nice) fat chicks.

The second problem with his argument is the underlying social context. The problem the manosphere has is not, so much, about women preferring alpha men to beta men, it is that women and society lie about it.

Men are honest about what they want. Most men (lying manginas and fat fetishists, aside) are honest about their preferences and are quite willing to say “I want a thin, feminine women with a nice chest.” Women are told and know exactly what men want. Some women lie to themselves that fat is beautiful (Rubens like fat women… dur), but even then their complaints are that men do not appreciate their “beauty”, not that men are actually lying to them about it.

On the other hand, women lie (or genuinely don’t know) about their preferences. If you ask women (be they your mother, sisters, female friends, whomever) what women want, the answer will usually be something similar to “a nice, loving man in touch with his emotion who wants to settle down and share the housework equally.” The problem being something any nice young man looking to settle down realizes quite quickly: women’s actual choices in men are something else entirely.

If women just came out and said that they were attracted to aloof, dominant, irresponsible, alpha bad boys, there would be no problem. (There would also be no problem if women found betas attractive like they said). Men would have the honest truth and could live their life accordingly. The problem is that men are sucking up the lies about women’s desire for a loving beta, are having these lies dashed around them, and, when they wonder why, are lied to even more. It is not the preferences that are the problem, it is the lies surrounding the preferences that are the problem.

The difference is that men are honest about what attracts them, but women are dishonest (or mistaken) about what they are attracted to. These are what separate the “why are there no good men?” feminists and the manosphere.

In a later post he wrote:

The manosphere has quite rightly denounced the corruption of women by feminism but what it has been unable see is the failure in modern masculinity. Roosh and Roissy may get lots of lays but they would have hardly been though of examples of masculinity either in Roman, Greek or Victorian times. Hedonism was always the “soft” option of manhood. And the reality today is that many men are soft. Not so much physically as in character. Women are far “harder” today and more self disciplined. Making women “softer” may restore some of their femininity but it no way guarantees the masculinity of men.  Taking away a woman’s rights does not give a man alpha qualities.

Simon Grey responded:

And so, while I agree with the MRA crowd that most women would make for terrible wives, I also agree with Slumlord that most men make for terrible husbands.  Quite simply, most people in this world are self-absorbed cowards, too afraid to live up to their potential, and too weak to suppress their self-destructive tendencies.  No wonder their marriages and relationships turn cancerous.

I agree, most young men today would make terrible husbands, but they both stop there. They do not ask why, and that is the important question.

Why are most young men today living as “Peter Pan” manboys?

(We could ask the same about why most women would make poor wives, but the manosphere has covered that fairly extensively already; the answer boils down to feminism).

Dalrock has already has partially answered the question and has hit a key point:

While we might argue about the speed and magnitude of men’s reaction to such a shift, as well as the specific mechanism we might observe (marriage strike vs weakened signal, etc), I don’t see how one could argue that an overall decline in men’s eagerness to work hard in preparation to lead families is surprising.

We wanted non threatening men, and now we have them.

But I don’t think he spells it out clearly enough, so I’m going to.

The reason there are so many losers, manboys, men without chests, or whatever you wish to call them, comes down to one, solitary word. This word is probably the single most important word when it comes to any social pheonomenum. This word is:

Incentives

This is the centre-piece of economics. This is the single most explanatory concept in all the social sciences. Incentives.

People respond to incentives. If there are positive incentives for a behaviour, there will be more of that behaviour. If there are negative incentives for a behaviour, there will be less of that behaviour.

No matter how much cajoling is done, no matter how much people are shamed, no matter how many laws are written, the incentive structure of society (of which cajoling, shaming, and laws are all a part) will override them all.

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So, what are the incentives of the young man today?

I was originally going to write a short narrative, but it turned long, too long for this post. You can read it here, it provides more context.

The young man today is put in 13 years of public school and university, where people are judged primarily by their ability tosit still and parrot what their teachers say. Where masculine behaviours, such as risk-taking, dominance, and rough-housing are discouraged, banned, and punished. Sometimes these behaviours even result in a regime of drugging. The entire system is as structured as a tightly run concentration camp.

On the other hand, young males are taught that their natural desires are destructive and to be controlled, but are not taught the discipline necessary to control them. They are taught to get in touch with their emotions, except those school administration think are dangerous. They are taught self-esteem, where no matter what they accomplish (or don’t accomplish) they are special and deserving. They are not taught self-control, they are taught hedonism.

This produces a horrible dichotomy of a lack of freedom and a lack of discipline. The entire school system is geared towards teaching young boys subservience and dependence (beta traits) and to destroy their in-born initiative, risk-taking, and ambition (alpha traits).

Right from the get go, authorities teach young boys that traditional masculine behaviours are punished, while weakness and beta traits (not always the same) are rewarded.

In university, the incentive structure is much the same. Obey and parrot and be rewarded.

Men are taught, while young, that the authorities will reward for being weak and punish for being strong. They are also taught an entitlement mentality.

This is the incentive structure the primary authorities in their life (children spend as much or more time being instructed by the school system than their parents) ingrain in them from a young age.

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On the other hand, the social system of both school and university naturally coalesces into an opposing dynamic. Children are socialized through other children than through other adults. They pick up natural, feral attitudes towards interpersonal relations rather than a more mature civilized attitude to social relations.

In this social system, the alphas are socially and sexually rewarded, while the more awkward betas are not. Young men learn that sex, social status, and relationships can be obtained without work. In fact, men are taught that the irresponsible “cool” kids are more likely to be socially and sexually rewarded than the more responsible “nerds”.

In other words, they know they can satiate their primary genetic drive without having to contribute to society, as long as they act “like jerks.”

Young men are taught that irresponsibility pays now.

The only threat we have against this the long term: responsibility pays in the long run.

This worked until the last decade or so, until long-term incentives began to collapse.

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What are the long-term incentives for your young adult male, so he is responsible?

A good-paying, worthwhile job, a house, a loving wife, social status, and a family.

The good-paying job is dying in the current economic corruption. 50% of our young people are either under- or unemployed. Their college degrees are worthless. They are shackled with near unmanageable student debt. Self-employment is a no-go. Government regulations strangle most industries and are especially painful to small businesses. (Not to mention, the initiative and ambition necessary for self-employment were beat out of him by the school system). Those who do get jobs are usually suffering in useless government busywork or brutally impersonal corporate work.

Simply put, there are no longer any guarantees that hard-work and responsibility will lead to a worthwhile job. But even if he eventually gets a job, he is punished by having half his income is taken by the state and given to the irresponsible.

He can still get a home, but not without the job. That, and the young man doesn’t want a home for himself; he wants it so he can raise a family. This incentive is more an ancillary option to the other incentives.

The primary incentive is a wife and family, but that incentive is becoming meaningless.

The average age of marriage for is 28 (in Canada it’s 31). Think about that. Your average man will not find a wife until a full decade after he graduates from high school and about 15 years after he hits puberty.

During this 15 years of either loneliness and sexual frustration for betas or, for the alphas, hedonism and sexual license, what lessons are being learned by men?

Irresponsibility.

Men are learning to get used to irresponsibility. How the hell can you expect most men to be prepared for the responsibility of a wife and family after he has had a full decade of getting acquainted to irresponsibility?

You can’t.

But lets say he’s prepared for marriage. It’s highly unlikely his wife is a virgin: his dating pool probably has more single mothers than virgins. She’s not going to bond to him.

There’s a 50% chance that he will lose his family. When he loses his family, there is a good chance he will be subjected to alimony slavery and have his family kidnapped from him. I’m not going into detail here, because other’s have wrote much more comprehensive articles on the risks of marriage, but marriage is becoming and increasingly bad option.

Social status? Hahaha… Being a responsible person no longer create social status. “Office drones” are looked down upon. The rich and successful are castigated and punished. Everybody is equal now. There is no more of the base respect and social status given to a man who quietly works hard to provide for his family.

So, where are his incentives to be responsible?

When having a family is a decade away and is likely to be punished with divorce, alimony theft, and having his children ripped from him? When hard work and an education no longer means a job, let alone a meaningful one? When he’s grown accustomed to the freedom of singledom? When he is punished for career success? When the lazy and irresponsible are rewarded with his hard-earned income?

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Overall, the entire incentive structure of society is biased towards men being irresponsible.

If a man is irresponsible, he gets to play video games now. He gets sex now. He gets to hang out with his friends now.

If a man is responsible, there is no immediate gain. When there were long-term incentives, this was fine, but the long term incentives are breaking down.

Why should men act responsibly, when the incentives are towards irresponsibility?

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Pathologist illustrated his point about weak men with a story about a “responsible” young women with an irresponsible young man for a boyfriend.

Many in the manosphere would view this woman as a demanding bitch. I don’t. She would be a good modern fit for Proverbs 31:10-31. She has independently, on a low income, saved money and bought herself a house, put tenants in it and has a long term plan for the future. She is keeping down a job and has been able to organise her own affairs. She wants a stable future and does not want to live in poverty. By the way, I’d estimate her BMI at about 22. Such a woman is percieved as a threat to Western Civilisation by the manosphere. Facepalm.

She is a threat to Western Civilization, not because she is a “demanding bitch”, but because she is not demanding enough. If she was a Proverbs 31 women she would not be shacking up with an irresponsible man. She would have demanded marriage to a man “known in the gates when he sits among the elders of the land.” ie. She would have married a responsible and respected man. Instead, she is giving herself to an worthless man without any demands of responsibility from him.

She is the one creating perverse incentives.

By herself, her actions don’t matter. But if you multiply her by a few million women, all demanding nothing out of the men they bed, then you have a threat to civilization.

She made her choice to date a loser, to be irresponsible, and to reward irresponsible behaviour. She now has to face the consequences of her choices. Society now has to face the consequences of her actions.

When love is free, most men won’t pay for it.

If men aren’t paying, civilization is threatened.

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The manosphere is right to demand more from women, but there is also a corollary. Women need to demand more from men.

We need a society that demands more from everybody and rewards those, and only those, who meet those demands. People will only rise to the level that societal incentives reward.

Everything in life comes down to incentives. Right now, the incentive structure for men is built so that irresponsibility is rewarded, while responsibility is punished. When the incentives for men are structured this way you will get irresponsible men.

If women, conservatives, and the Social Pathologist want responsible men, they should help restructure society so that the incentives of society, particularly, in this case, those related to sex and relationships, reward responsible men, and punish irresponsible men.

Feminism and Homemaking are not Compatible

TC linked to this article in the Atlantic on feminism and homemakers by Wurtzel.

While the original article has its inaccuracies and slip-shod thinking, it is absolutely correct in its main point:

Let’s please be serious grown-ups: real feminists don’t depend on men. Real feminists earn a living, have money and means of their own.

A women can not be both a feminist and a stay-at-home mother; the two are mutually exclusive.

And there really is only one kind of equality — it precedes all the emotional hullabaloo — and it’s economic.

Modern feminism (with the possible exception of certain forms of liberal feminism which I am going to ignore for this post, but would probably be easier categorized as libertarianism rather than a form of feminism) is based on the application of marxian methodology to sexual relations. In marxian analysis, all power is, at base, economic power and varying groups are in competition with each other for this power. When marxian analysis is applied to sexual relations, the inevitable conclusion is that women and men are in a power conflict and women are economically oppressed. Only by by gaining economic power can women no longer be oppressed. Hence feminism.

Women are oppressed because they are not financially independent; only the financially independent woman can be free of oppression.

The traditional home-maker and the stay-at-home mother is economically dependent on the male breadwinner and is therefore oppressed.

Economic self-sufficiency is feminism.

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The augmentation of her main point is dead on as well:

Being a mother isn’t a real job
…
something becomes a job when you are paid for it — and until then, it’s just a part of life.

A job is a relationship where money is exchanged for labour. If you are not getting paid, you do not have a job.

Homemaking is not a job because the homemaker is not being paid.

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There is one specific way in which being a homemaker can be a job.

If there is a written contract between the homemaker and the breadwinner, in which the breadwinner is contractually obligated to pay the homemaker a clearly defined sum for clearly defined, contractually obligated childcare duties independently of the state of the marriage and marriage contract, the homemaker can be said to have a job.

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Some guy named Friedersdorf had a response to the original article.

When questioning the main point of the original argument, that being a mother is a job, he pisses all over such petty things as logic. (On the other hand, his destruction of Wurtzel’s analysis of electoral politics is not bad, but her analysis was rather shoddy, so that’s not exactly something to brag about).

His argument essentially boils down to: being a homemaker is a job because it costs a lot to hire a caregiver and because raising children is both important and somewhat difficult.

Just because something requires effort, costs a lot to replace, and is important does not make it a job.

The fallacy of this is obvious. It is important that I fry myself a sausage and the alternative of eating out can be costly, that does not mean I have a job as a chef. Under his argument almost any activity can be considered a job, making the whole concept of a job meaningless.

Something is only a job if you get paid. Homemaking is not a job.

He then goes on with a tale about his mother, of which I’ll only quote a portion:

To describe her as dependent on my father for income is accurate only insofar as my parents decided together that she’d forgo working, plus the wage premium she’d gain from those lost years of work experience, to raise my sister and me, and to do other uncompensated labor

In other words, it’s entirely accurate. That’s very much being dependent; she voluntarily chose to be dependent, but she’s still dependent on a man to provide for her.

One other thing. Contrary to his assertions, his mother was not acting like a feminist. She may have had all the right cant, but she did not live them.

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As a side note, he then makes this asinine assertion:

The legal recognition of community property was a major, rightfully celebrated feminist victory.

It was not a feminist victory. It was a form of marital law developed from civil law (as opposed to common law) and Catholic social teaching so that children were provided for if the husband died, not because of what it did for women. It preceded feminism by centuries and has only been adopted in less than a dozen states. It was, at most, a partial victory of civil law over common law in some jurisdictions (which is still not good, but that’s currently irrelevant). It was neither feminist, nor anything resembling a victory.

****

Of course, near the end of the article he actually almost begins to stumble upon the reality of the situation, seemingly by pure accident:

GDP is evidently her bottom line.

Ding, ding, ding. We have a winner.

Although,not GDP per se, economics is feminism’s bottom line. The economic power and independence of women is the central point of feminism. (Other forms of power/independence, such as political power, which are critical to feminism would flow from naturally from economic independence/power).

The notion, implicit in Wurzel’s piece, that men and women should set aside the work arrangements that best suit their families in order to further an ideological agenda

He hits the nail on the head. Feminism is an ideological agenda. It requires that men and women set aside “best suited” work arrangements in favour of the women being economically independent.

That’s exactly the damn point Wurzel was making.

If a family is not willing to do this, they are not feminist.

Feminism may require sacrifice so that a women can be economically independent.

****

The paragraph before that he stumbles upon another truth. Friedersdorf states this:

If anything, society benefits from a diversity of arrangements being tried all at once, both because variety is more conducive to fulfilling diverse individuals, and because stay-at-home parents and working parents can likely learn something from their analogs using a somewhat different model.

He is right, society does benefit from a diversity of family arrangements.

****

So, if he understands both that Wurzel is arguing that feminism requires women be economically independent and he understands that society may benefit if not every women is economically independent, what’s his problem?

His problem is that he is unable to connect the two ideas. That is why he makes up all sorts of half-baked justifications for why a homemaker somehow has a job, even though she is not getting paid, and is somehow independent, even though she depends entirely on someone else’s income for sustenance.

He is not able to connect the two ideas because he wants to be labelled a feminist (or supporter of feminism, it’s unclear which from the article and the difference is irrelevant for our purpose) without actually adhering to feminism.

As soon as he connects the two ideas his thinking will become clear and he wouldn’t have to make such logical contortions to continue to hold his own ideas, but then he would have to make a choice.

He would have to choose between feminism and his support for multiple family arrangements, because homemaking and feminism are mutually exclusive. This, of course, presents a dilemma.

If he chose feminism he would have to *shudder* judge other people’s decisions.

If he chose the acceptance of multiple family arrangements, he would *gasp* no longer be supporting feminism.

He is like the liberal Christian deciding whether he wants to follow the Bible or follow worldly wisdom. The “Christian” can’t make choice, so instead he decides to contort the Bible to fit worldly wisdom. Friedersdorf can’t make a decision so he contorts the English language and logic so that independence means dependence and a job includes any activity that requires some skill, effort, and someone somewhere gets paid for.

****

Friedersdorf’s confusion is not solely his own. Many seem to have this confusion; it is often called choice feminism.

Feminism has become very popular; most women want to be identified as strong and independent feminists. Most liberal men want to be seen as supporting female equality and feminism (which are not necessarily the same thing).

Yet, most women do not actually want what feminism is selling. They want to be dependent and have a man upon whom they can depend, they want to stay at home with their children, they don’t want to have to work at a job. Even when they work, a significant number of women choose to work in fields no different from what they would be doing as a homemaker anyway (ie. teaching, non-registered nursing, child care, etc.)

They don’t want feminism, but they want the label of feminism. So, what do they do?

They contort. They twist feminism, the English language, and logic so that they can somehow define themselves as feminist while doing things that are a denial of feminism.

They contort until somehow they have convinced themselves that being a homemaker, totally dependent on a man for income and devoted entirely to children and the home, is somehow a feminist act.

But it can not be. A women can be a homemaker or she can be a feminist. She can not be both.

Trying to be both is nothing more than self-delusion.

Choice feminism isn’t.

****

All this isn’t to say homemaking is a bad thing. In fact, I am opposed to feminism and I am in favour of woman staying home as homemakers and, if I marry, I will marry someone who wants to be a homemaker.

I support families who decide the wife should be a homemaker. I’m not going to say that it’s the hardest job in the world, because it isn’t particularly hard and it’s not a job, but I will say it’s a respectable and worthwhile life path.

But there has to be a choice: feminism or homemaking.

If homemaking is your thing, repudiate feminism. If feminism is your thing, then live it and be economically independent.

If you don’t like that feminism requires economic independence, perhaps you may want to reconsider your attachment to it.

Evolutionary Psychology, Politics, and Bad Science

Came across a Slate XX article from last week on evolutionary psychology.

The article essentially boils down to: evolutionary psychology research that supports my preconceived biases is good, evolutionary psychology that argues against my ideology is bad.

The article starts with the author complaining about evo-psych, leading into this:

There’s nothing inherently wrong with evolutionary psychology—our thoughts and behaviors have been shaped by millions of years of hominid evolutionary history, and it’s worth studying how natural selection acted on traits that we still express today. But too often, evolutionary psychology is a force for social conservatism.

The reason evolutionary psychology is usually a force for social conservatism, is because social conservatism is the inherited wisdom of thousands of years of adaptation by human society to biological reality.

Evolutionary psychology will inherently be socially conservative, because (true*) social conservatism is inherently about man controlling its biological nature so society can function. (Religious conservatives will refer to man’s “fallen nature” and political philosophers will refer to the “state of nature”, which are the same thing for all practical purposes).

Left-liberalism (from which most of feminism springs) is not about managing the biology of man, it is about using reason and/or morality to overcome the “state of nature” for the benefit of all.

Left-liberalism usually derives from either (or a combination of) Rousseau’s amoral, self-interested, animal-like state of nature or from Marxian ideology where human nature does not exist as a fundamental concept, but comes from social relations and man’s relations to his work. (Conservatives usually work off Hobbes’ violent and warlike state of nature; libertarians and classical liberals generally work off Locke’s  anarchic, fully free state of nature and of war.)

From the Rousseauian state of nature, men come together in cooperation and submit to the general will as designed through a social contract for mutual benefit. By uniting under the social contract a man can be ennobled, and his corruption comes only through failures of the social contract. By bettering the social contract, man may be further ennobled. Under a human nature based on social relations, the improvement of social and economic conditions will lead to an improvement in human nature and behaviour.

Left-liberal thought is essentially about the perfectibility of man through changing social conditions so he can better himself beyond the limitations of human nature.

In social conservative thought man cannot be perfected and will always be controlled by his human nature. His nature can only be constrained by social instructions, but never altered.

This is the essential and primary difference between the two ideologies.

This is political theory 101. If our education system even remotely resembled a traditional classical liberal education, the author would know this.

If she knew this, she would not be arguing against evolutionary psychology (when it supports social conservatism) or for it (when it supports feminist ideology). She would know that her ideology is one where social and economic relations are shaped through cooperation (the general will ) to create a society based on the common good, overcoming the limitations of man in a state of nature.

Know this: evolutionary psychology will always support (true*) social conservatism, because social conservatism is simply the attempt to control the state of nature so society can function.

To the liberal or leftist, this should not matter. Whatever evolutionary psychology will say, it can neither support nor discredit left-liberalism, because left-liberal ideology exists independently of human nature. It exists as an ideology of social relationships overcoming the limitations of human nature (or it simply rejects human nature, and therefore evolutionary psychology outright).

The only way evolutionary psychology can matter, at all, to left-liberal ideology is if it eliminates the possibility that changing social relations can possibly be used to improve mankind’s lot. If this occurs, the entirety of liberal-leftism will be intellectually unsustainable and void of any claim to truth.

In other words, the only way evolutionary psychology can have any impact on the truth claims of left-liberalism is to entirely overthrow it.

By even considering evolutionary psychology’s impact on the truth of ideology, the author is fundamentally undermining her own.

****

Researchers identify a pattern of behavior, usually some stereotypical sex difference (in part because it’s easy to measure whether men and women score differently on a standardized test), construct a scenario in which that behavior would have been adaptive in the distant past, and say the behavior is therefore evolutionarily selected and encoded in our genes.
…
It’s tricky to disprove the notion that some human trait is the result of evolution. The logic is circular: if some trait exists, it must not have been fatal to our ancestors and it may have helped them reproduce. To critique a claim of evolutionary privilege, you have to show that the trait has no genetic component and therefore can’t be inherited, or demonstrate that the trait is instilled by culture, not necessarily biology.

Partially correct: it’s impossible to disprove the notion that some human trait is the result of evolution (if it’s genetic in origin).

To show that a trait is not a result of evolution requires that the trait is not genetically based.

If a behaviour is genetic in origin (and is not a random mutation or transcription error, such as Down’s Syndrome, or exceedingly rare/recessive, such as Tay–Sachs) it must have not have been fatal to humans prior to reproduction and, in highest likelihood, either is beneficial to reproduction or is linked to a trait that is beneficial to reproduction.

Any genetic trait is a product of evolution and therefore, evolution must have produced said genetic trait. Any genetic trait evolution produces must have been adaptive; the explanatory reason of why it is adaptive may not be correct, but it is impossible that the trait was not adaptive (or at least not harmful).

It may be somewhat circular, but, if you hold to Darwinian evolution, it is logically necessary. The only way to not accept evolutionary psychology is to deny Darwinian evolution.

****

You’re supposed to want someone stronger, smarter, and richer than you. Someone who would sire healthy offspring and protect them from saber-toothed cats on the Pleistocene Epoch savanna.

Not “are supposed to”: “do”.

Evolution (and evolutionary psychology) is not prescriptive, it is descriptive of the large statistical trends of human society.

Just because evolutionary psychology says that something evolved in most humans does not mean you have to follow it (although, you statistically will) and it does not mean it applies in every case (some individuals will always be genetically aberrant and display behaviours and traits outside of what is statistically normal).

This is the kind of logic used by fourth-tier intellects arguing creationism in Youtube comments (IF EVALUTIAN IS RONG, Y U NOT SUPPORT HITLER AND SURVIAL OF TEH FITIST!?! HIPOCRIT!!!… durr). How a middle-brow publication like Slate allows this kind of stupidity through is beyond me. If it was somebody from the Discovery Institute arguing like this, he’d be laughed out of the room.

****

The first few paragraphs of her post are complaints about what she believes to be “bad” science in evolutionary psychology. So, what does she list as the study that redeems evolutionary psychology:

And that’s why my favorite paper of the week is “Stepping Out of the Caveman’s Shadow: Nations’ Gender Gap Predicts Degree of Sex Differentiation in Mate Preferences.” Marcel Zentner and Klaudia Mitura of the University of York, U.K., asked more than 3,000 people in 10 countries what they valued in a mate. On a four-point scale, people rated the importance of various qualities: chastity, ambition, financial prospects, good looks, etc.—all identified by Buss and his likeminded peers as being qualities that only men or only women are evolutionarily predisposed to seek out.

Wonderful. A self-selected internet survey based on self-identified preferences somehow overturns all the carefully designed studies using brain scans, monitoring of biological functions, priming, and so on that support the conclusions of evolutionary psychology. That’s some good science.

The researchers used a World Economic Forum measure of gender equality to rank the 10 countries as (a) relatively gender-equal, (b) backwards but improving, or (c) screamingly sexist (my  terms, not theirs). And the results were clear: The more egalitarian the country, the less likely men and women were to value traditional qualities that Buss and co. believe to be innate. In Germany, women said they’d very much like a man who is a good housekeeper. In Finland, men were more likely than women to prefer a mate a bit smarter than themselves. In the United States, women ranked chastity as more important than men did. At the other end of the scale, in Turkey and South Korea, women wanted mates with good financial prospects and men valued good cooks.

Essentially, the survey finds that when asked about sensitive and potentially controversial topics over the internet, a self-selected group of people will give strangers the socially-approved answer. Thank you Slate for pointing out this stunning observation.

In case your sarcasm detector is malfunctioning, the study is complete and utter crap and drawing any conclusions about evolutionary biology from it is idiotic.

As the manosphere says repeatedly and consistently, look at what people do, not what they say.

****

So, in conclusion, this article is mostly bunk. It’s a mishmash of a person’s ignorance of her own ideological underpinnings, wishful thinking, fourth-rate logic, and a person determining “good” science based on her own ideological biases.

In other words, it’s typical feminism.

****

* I say true social conservatism, because a fair amount of what we call social conservatism now, is simply the repackaged liberalism of the last century. Actual social conservatives would generally be called paleo-conservatives. ie: Being against gay marriage, but believing in marriage for love does not a social conservative make, it only makes a liberal who doesn’t like homosexual marriage; to be a social conservative requires a traditional view of marriage as an economic, sexual, and (possibly) religious relationship based around the creation and raising of children.

Hanna Rosin: Feminists and the Hook-up Culture

Hanna Rosin, author of The End of Men, commented on Ann Romney’s speech at Slate. Her article ends with this:

But it’s not her particular marriage that gets in the way of reaching certain women, it’s her entire worldview. In Ann Romney’s world, high-school sweethearts are to be trusted, and women should give in and trust them. They do not fail women and they do not let women down, as she said of Mitt. It’s a little bit like Paul Ryan’s imaginary world where men trek off to the tire plant every day and come home and fix the screen door.

But this is not a world that Obama negated with his economic policies; it’s a world that has been slowly disappearing for decades. Most children born to women under 30 now are born to single mothers and in their world, the men are not really to be trusted and they do let people down.

Compare that to her recent article Boys on the Side, which extolled the hook-up culture as liberating for women.

There is no retreating from the hookup culture to an earlier age, when a young man showed up at the front door with a box of chocolates for his sweetheart, and her father eyed him warily. Even the women most frustrated by the hookup culture don’t really want that. The hookup culture is too bound up with everything that’s fabulous about being a young woman in 2012—the freedom, the confidence, the knowledge that you can always depend on yourself. The only option is what Hannah’s friends always tell her—stop doing what feels awful, and figure out what doesn’t.

Young men and women have discovered a sexual freedom unbridled by the conventions of marriage, or any conventions. But that’s not how the story ends. They will need time, as one young woman at Yale told me, to figure out what they want and how to ask for it. Ultimately, the desire for a deeper human connection always wins out, for both men and women. Even for those business-school women, their hookup years are likely to end up as a series of photographs, buried somewhere on their Facebook page, that they do or don’t share with their husband—a memory that they recall fondly or sourly, but that hardly defines them.

How she can not see the contradiction between these two modes of thinking is beyond me, especially given how these two articles were published only about a week apart.

How can the hook-up culture be both something that is liberating to females and supported by females, yet at the same time be something in which women are let down by men?

It can’t.

****

As one commenter at Slate named TheDude commented:

“Most children born to women under 30 now are born to single mothers and in their world, the men are not really to be trusted and they do let people down.”

I don’t sweat this. Double X has taught me that single motherhood is a fine lifestyle to choose, many women choose to do it voluntarily, and that women don’t need men anymore. Who exactly are these guys letting down?

I’ve also learned from Double X that it is in fact men who need women, so the question should be, why are these women letting down the men who need them?

****

The hook-up culture is bad for women (and for men for that matter) but it is a necessary implication of the feminism. Women do not really want the hook-up culture. In fact, except for a minority of high testosterone women, most women do not want most of what feminism is selling.

But the hook-up culture is the natural end-game of feminism. Once traditional marriage, an “oppressive patriarchal” family system, declines, men, no longer constrained by patriarchy, revert to their more primitive instincts. One of the of these instincts is consequence-free sex, the hook-up culture.

The hook-up culture leaves women unable to commit and leaves men unwilling to commit. Given that most women want commitment, at some point, this hurts women.

So, feminists like Rosen know the hook-up culture is the necessary consequence of feminism and is necessary to feminism, but they also know it hurts women. So what do they do, they try to pretend that women like the hook-up culture. Some do, ie. high testosterone feminists, but the rest have to be convinced. So, you speak out of both sides of your mouth: you poison gender relations by blaming men for being unreliable while supporting the very system that makes men unreliable, then tell women that they actually like the system that’s destroying their ability to gain what they actually desire: love, a husband, motherhood, and family.

****

So you get this:

But then, sometime during sophomore year, her feelings changed. She got tired of relation­ships that just faded away, “no end, no beginning.” Like many of the other college women I talked with, Tali and her friends seemed much more sexually experienced and knowing than my friends at college. They were as blasé about blow jobs and anal sex as the one girl I remember from my junior year whom we all considered destined for a tragic early marriage or an asylum. But they were also more innocent. When I asked Tali what she really wanted, she didn’t say anything about commitment or marriage or a return to a more chival­rous age. “Some guy to ask me out on a date to the frozen-­yogurt place,” she said. That’s it. A $3 date.

But the soda-fountain nostalgia of this answer quickly dissipated when I asked Tali and her peers a related question: Did they want the hookup culture to go away—might they prefer the mores of an earlier age, with formal dating and slightly more obvious rules? This question, each time, prompted a look of horror. Reform the culture, maybe, teach women to “advocate for themselves”—a phrase I heard many times—but end it? Never. Even one of the women who had initiated the Title IX complaint, Alexandra Brodsky, felt this way. “I would never come down on the hookup culture,” she said. “Plenty of women enjoy having casual sex.”

Women whose emotional being has been so warped that she wants more emotionally but can’t conceive of an emotional connection beyond going for yogurt. These emotionally scarred women then turn around and defend the system that withered their emotional being because “plenty of women” enjoy it. Note, not because she personally enjoyed it, but because “plenty of women” enjoyed it. Most of these “plenty of women” didn’t really enjoy it themselves, but acted as if they did, because who wants to be the weird person out who don’t enjoy it.

Now some women probably do like the hook-up lifestyle, and some more women probably enjoy it in the moment, but most do not, simply defending it because it is expected of them because others enjoyed it. In the long-term most women suffer the female version of the player’s curse.

Then, instead of blaming the feminism-created system that has left women alone, divorced, and emotionally-scarred, feminists blame men for being unreliable, poisoning gender relations further.

****

The old family system is dying, purposefully killed by minority ideologies of progressivism and feminism. The right knows what is missing and rages at what it is losing, while not being able to free itself from the symptoms of the sickness. The left can not acknowledge that it is sick, because doing so would shatter their ideological myths.

But the left see some who have not been inflicted, and they rage against them, seething at what what they are missing and rage at having it shoved in their face by those like Ann Romney and Sarah Palin, who have and are everything they can not acknowledge they desire.

Meanwhile, the average women laments how she can’t find a good man, while the average man laments how he can’t find a good women. Both emotionally scarred, with their ability to have a loving marriage crippled by the system they support (because its the politically correct thing to support) but don’t understand. They wonder why they just can’t find the love they so desperately want, not being able to see the system that is taking it away for what it is.

They exchange love for pleasure, but in their deepest being they know the pleasure always leaves them feeling hollow. They yearn for love, but are unable to find it because the continual quest for the pleasure necessary to stave of the void in their heart destroys their very ability to experience that love.

The “gender war” continues, pushed by the hurting and the ideologues who need someone to blame for their loneliness and emptiness, but either can not see or can not acknowledge the system that is doing this to them.

Is it any wonder why women’s happiness has been steadily declining?