Remember the 1955 movie “Marty”? It was a respected oldie when I was a kid (it’s one of only two films to win both the Best Picture Oscar and the Cannes Palme d’Or), but it’s now pretty obscure. I saw the movie in the 1980s as part of a screenwriting class. ((Actually, I’m not positive I’ve ever seen the movie – I may have seen the 1953 television play that the movie was based on.))
“Marty’s” title character, plain-faced, chubby, and not great at talking to women, despairs that no woman will ever love him. The screenwriter, Paddy Chayefsky, thought of the “Marty” story after he saw a sign posted in a ballroom, which said “Girls, Dance With the Man Who Asks You. Remember, Men Have Feelings, Too.”
Marty eventually meets a wonderful woman and begins a relationship, although he has to overcome the resistance of his jealous mother, and of friends who mock him for dating a “dogface.” ((Marty’s love interest, played by Betsy Blair, was too pretty to be plausible as someone men would label “dogface” at a glance. But nearly all “ugly” female characters are played by pretty actresses because Hollywood.)) In pop culture, everyone – or at least, everyone who isn’t a terrible human being – eventually meets someone wonderful and falls in love.
But in real life, that’s not how things always work. Some people don’t want romantic love at all. Others want romantic love but will never find it. That’s life. I’m beginning to accept, at age 45, that probably “true love” will never happen for me. I have a bunch of factors working against me – I’m physically conventionally unattractive, I badly lack confidence, I’m sort of a weirdo, as I get older I meet new people less often, etc..
To tell you the truth, I resent the situation. It’s not an all-consuming bitterness or anything – on the whole, I’m a happy guy ((Seriously, don’t worry about me, folks. I’m not lonely, I’ve got lots of good friends, I’ve got a great job. My life is good.)) – but I irrationally feel cheated of a fundamental human experience. ((What’s irrational about it is feeling “cheated,” rather than merely “lacking.”)) And although I’m happy for my friends who are in great relationships, there’s also some ugly jealousy in me on the subject. And I’m really fucking sick of movies and TV about the sad troubles of stunningly attractive people who somehow can’t find love until they meet some other stunningly attractive person, blah blah blah complications ensue and are overcome happy ending credits roll.
I don’t bring this up to ask people to feel sorry for me, or to ask for dating advice. (GOD NO!!! Please don’t give me any dating or romantic advice, folks; if I haven’t specifically asked you for it, I don’t want to hear it.) I bring this up because I feel my ability to enjoy complaining about my single state has been ruined by MRAs and anti-feminists.
Because in human culture, we do something called “signaling” a lot. And, on the internet, men complaining that they don’t have the romantic success they want, that they feel they should be more attractive to woman then they actually are in practice, etc., have all become signals used to indicate alliance with the manosphere.
When I read someone from the manosphere talking about their lack of dating success, I always emphasize empathize. How could I not? They’re pretty much describing my life story. Except then they keep on talking, and suddenly the repulsive bitterness towards women or feminists (or both) comes out. And the empathy is now accompanied by a strong desire for a shower.
I don’t want to be even momentarily mistaken for part of the manosphere. Because while not everyone in the manosphere is a bitter, angry woman-hater, lots of them are. And those who aren’t overtly woman-hating seem to find the misogyny among their comrades either invisible, unobjectionable, or excusable.
Those hatebags have directed abuse at me personally – fat jokes, “you’re just trying to get laid,” name-calling like “Mangina,” and so on. I’m not bothered by such insults, but it sure hasn’t endeared their community to me. ((Actually, one time my feelings were hurt. I attended a blogger dinner, where I was seated next to an anti-feminist who had clashed with me online. We had, I thought, a terrific conversation. He offered me a ride home after the dinner, and we agreed that we should meet again sometime. The next day, in a forum he didn’t know I read, he wrote that I clearly wasn’t into feminism to get laid, because I was (he said) so fat no woman would ever have sex with me. The insult was too pathetic to hurt, but that he was so extraordinarily two-faced stung.)) I get off relatively easily; the abuse directed at well-known female internet feminists (Amanda Marcotte, Jessica Valenti, and Anita Sarkeesian are the most obvious examples, but the ever-moving hatefest is always seeking new victims) is stunning in quantity and vileness.
Gore Vidal once groused that the once-useful word “turgid” now belongs to the porn writers, because it has become impossible to use the word without sounding like a porn writer. The manosphere has done something similar to unattractive men’s romantic problems. They’ve flooded the discourse with misogyny and anti-feminism, and it’s nearly impossible to rescue discussion of being male and unwanted from their bitter waters. ((Said waters are no doubt made up of male tears.
To tell you the truth, I don’t feel natural making that joke – see Ally Fogg – but I’m making it anyway, because I hope it’ll get the goats of people who had vapors over Jessica’s sweatshirt, while remaining silent about the immeasurably worse comments Jessica receives from anti-feminists on a daily basis.))
I know a few people in your situation. They are similarly bummed about it and it sounds pretty depressing. Can’t you still complain a bit, though? It can help, or at least feel satisfying, and stir sympathy and empathy where you might not otherwise find it.
The people who know you won’t think you are an MRA (one would hope!) and unless you target feminist blogs I think you are really overrating the %age of people who see complaining as a MRA signal–even generally, and even if you ignore the fact that I think you’re being overly concerned.
Mostly because, how to put it… you write very differently from an MRA. Signaling is a broad category and I think you’re wrong to conclude that it is “sadly talking about being single” rather than “whining about the fact that you’re single and demanding that the world provide a solution.”
When you say
you are signaling that you are NOT an MRA. I think you may be mistaking people’s ability to distinguish BS from reality, and whining from honesty.
Sure. There will be at least some person who won’t read past the first two lines before concluding you’re an MRA whiner. But really: fuck them, right?
I hadn’t thought about this perspective; I’m more familiar with the dangers of mentioning singlehood and listeners assuming it’s a coy way of asking to be set up (and more importantly, that your standards for appropriate partner aren’t any more rigorous than “still has a detectable pulse”).
But yeah….I can see not feeling comfortable randomly complaining about singlehood on the internet, where search engines may direct the “all-ate-up” set towards your blog. (in person, I still think the scenario above will be more operative). I would say the weather is still safe to complain about, but IME that isn’t necessarily true—complaining about the weather seems to be an invite for the climate change deniers to rant about Al Gore, et. al.
Dammit, what the hell can we complain about these days?!
Check your privilege, Ampersand.
You are not entitled to have some woman like you or otherwise behave like you want. If you realized your entitlement, you would not be “complaining” about a situation that you don’t have any right to at all.
Rbu2, I of course agree that I am not “entitled” to have anyone like me. But so what? My post never made or implied any such claim. I am frustrated that I don’t have X, but I’m not saying that therefore an injustice has been done to me.
People complain about things they have no right to all the time. I complain that the children are bad at cleaning up after themselves, but I have no right to a clean TV room; I complain that a client on an illustration job doesn’t appreciate how tight my schedule is, but I have no right to their understanding; etc etc etc.. I complain that the Republicans control the House, but I have no right to a Democratic-party-controlled House. If we all followed your implied rule here, then a huge majority of human complaints would have to be seen as illegitimate.
P.S. For the sake of honesty: I suspect you’re an MRA parroting the sort of critique feminists have made, but getting the imitation wrong because you don’t actually understand the critique you’re imitating. Hope I turn out to be mistaken about this.
I think it’s deeply worrying how trivial personal problems and insecurities are directing political action just because it’s something that mobilises support. Utimately I think it goes back to Carol Hanisch, but there’s just something about online activism which is just messed up. There are serious gender problems, but activism’s seems all about pandering to the grievances of guys frustrated they’re not getting laid enough or girls with body insecurities.
The way the post is centered around romantic love is totally in opposition to mainstream manosphere and feminist thought. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a MRA or feminist say anything positive about romantic love, whatever their differences they’re both united in viewing it as a form of false conciousness and oppression.
I don’t think feeling cheated is unreasonable … not feeling cheated by a specific person, sure, but your post clearly wasn’t about that.
Romantic fulfillment is one of the things that we’re told ‘comes standard’ from a really early age, and our society focuses a lot on romantic fulfillment as the end-all-be-all of life. And for some people it doesn’t work out. And that legitimately sucks.
Maybe the cheating was in selling you a bunk bill of expectations, you know?
—Myca
Hell, no.
I know LOTS of people for whom the failure to find and keep a long term partner (which is usually the same as romantic fulfillment, though more broad) is the single biggest gaping hole in their entire life. It’s on par with or even exceeds “never had kids” or “can’t have kids” thing, which can be a real psychological killer.
It’s just…. sad. Because it IS sad to feel like you have something to offer and that the other folks who might want or have wanted what you offer simply aren’t in your zone of connections. Or are taken. Or are damaged.
And like a lot of sadness, it sometimes manifests as anger, or a feeling of being cheated. That’s par for the course, because that loss is large enough for many people to really run through the stages of grief. And even at the acceptance point it’s still sad.
Franz, I know plenty of feminists. And we say all sorts of positive things about romantic love. We may say a lot of negative things about the culturally promoted set of expectations Myca refers to above, or about the way that the fulfillment of romantic love is hindered by media portrayals of beauty or of gender roles or of the (actually impossible IRL) way that finding romantic love will solve All The Problems or whatever. But about the real thing of romantic love, the experience itself, we’re a lot more positive than not.
ETA: Which, ya know, is why Amp cares. Although I am ashamed to admit to the feeling of kinship I felt on first reading the post: “Yeah, what good is it to feel bad about X if I don’t get to complain about it?” is part of my life, too. Though my X is different.
There are a certain number of men out there who just flat don’t like women. It’s not just a case of preferring the company of men to the company of women – they just don’t like women. I’ll pass on trying to figure out why. Yep, women are different than men, and that’s it. Whether it comes from a lack of ability to understand that difference, or whether it’s an issue of understanding that difference but being unable or unwilling to bridge it, or if there’s other factors involved I don’t know. Me, I like playing poker and drinking whiskey with the guys. I also like singing a Mozart Gloria next to the altos and sopranos instead of hiding in the middle of my section. My philosophy is mostly vive le difference. But my hypothesis is that said dislike is fairly apparent to any women they might approach, with the predictable result.
Hi Amp –
I think this is a thoughtful post, and I admire that you shared this information about yourself even though it can potentially be used against you (by MRAs and so forth, who may ridicule you further).
I’ve read a lot of MRAs and “manosphere” writings, and the content of your post is remarkably different. What I find troublesome about MRA-ish writings about their lack of romantic success is the maintext/subtext of: “The world promised me a woman of my own, I don’t have that, and so now women must pay/all women suck.”
I don’t see that in your post (and it does seem like commenter rbu2 is trolling or perhaps posing as a feminist, using what he/she thinks sounds like feminist lingo).
Franz – if you’ve never seen a feminist speak positively about romantic love, it seems you haven’t read many feminist writings or blogs.
Ampersand–thanks for sharing your experiences and for your thoughtful treatment of a complex topic.
One important difference between between your complaint and the MRA-style complaint is the desire for a relationship vs the desire for a woman. I don’t mean that this has to do with your sexual orientation; I mean that you plainly acknowledge that what you’d like is a connection with a fellow human, not a woman of your own (to paraphrase fannie). So when you feel cheated, it seems to me, you might feel cheated by a lot things–standards of attractiveness, social norms around the importance of romantic relationships, luck–but patently don’t feel cheated by women. Again echoing fannie, the distinguishing trait of MRA relationship rants is the bitterness/sense of being cheated/sense of entitlement towards Women (imagined as a borg-like monolith, of course). There’s a big difference between feeling sadness, grief, and/or anger about some aspect of one’s life and feeling sadness/grief/anger about some aspect of one’s life and believing some social group is directly to blame for one’s personal trials (be they women, immigrants, people of color, Jews…).
Gin-and-whiskey writes,
Yeah–to be honest the first thing that occurred to me when reading this is my current process around the fact that I will never be a biological parent. I see a lot of parallels, one of which is that complaining about that topic is also “ruined” in some circles because of the extremely problematic history of rich white people who feel they deserve a baby.
Finally, I agree with Myca–part of why it’s normal to feel cheated when missing out on one of these Essential Life Experiences is cuz we’ve been told they are all-important and practically guaranteed.
“I always emphasize.”
I think you meant empathize.
Something I can’t do for ya here, sorry. I can’t imagine complaining about being single–it’s the perfect life. (For me, anyway.) Have you ever run across childfree couples who are regularly told that they’re “missing out on an essential life experience?” Listen to some of their responses. Perspective is everything.
Copyleft, “childfree” doesn’t simply mean “without children”—it specifically refers to people who deliberately do not have children because they do not want to be parents. That’s not a good comparison—asking someone to pretend they have an orientation they do not have. Amp didn’t say, “I have zero desire for a romantic relationship, and I wish people didn’t have that expectation of me”, which is what childfree people face. He genuinely would like that type of relationship, and is irritated that he can’t express that publicly and possibly commiserate with others (because don’t forget, humans bond over struggles too, not just joy), because of how MRAs have co-opted social media to change the nature of the conversation. The conversation no longer has the same basic understandings or assumptions, and will no longer follow the same trajectory. What was once a standard-issue mundane human complaint has taken on sociopolitical baggage Amp wants no part of, and consequently he has one less common human experience he can discuss with others. With a career that requires a great deal of online presence and computer time (less opportunity than average for in-person communicating).
Shorter version: geez dude. Have a heart.
And one of the reasons cited was that he thinks he’s missing out on (what everyone SAYS is) an Essential Life Experience. Perhaps it’s appropriate to re-examine why you’re believing what everyone else says in the first place? That’s the point of the childfree comment.
I’m lucky enough to be married to someone I love (today’s our two-month anniversary, in fact) but up until I was 21 I had dated exactly one person, very briefly. So I empathize with that situation. Occasionally the mockery of MRAs borders on or outright goes into mocking them for lack of success with women, which makes me uncomfortable.
Franz: I basically agree with fannie and nm. I don’t think “Is romantic love great?” is something that’s discussed especially often in feminist circles–mostly because what’s likely to be discussed in feminist circles is where feminists have a problem with the dominant culture. (Granted, there’s a pretty high quantity of “kittens are great” discussions, but I think that’s an outlier. Probably due to the discussions taking place on the internet, because the internet loves cats.)
I guess if you aren’t reading closely you might interpret statements like “there’s more to life than romantic love” or “romantic love and having a family shouldn’t be portrayed as women’s only purpose in life” as “romantic love sucks!” But that’s not what they actually mean.
Copyleft: Perhaps you should re-examine the context, instead of assuming that I believe “what everyone else says”. Sure, I could be wrong—but based on my interactions with the author of this blog over the years, my feeling is that he has a pretty good handle on himself—and that he isn’t afraid to question his own assumptions. So, it’s reasonable to believe that the truth is a helluva lot closer to “Amp would like to have a romantic relationship, and barring that at least be able to bitch about its absence” than “Amp hasn’t realized his true calling as someone uninterested in that sort of relationship.” As far as coping mechanisms go, trying to convince yourself that you feel—or should feel—a way that you don’t isn’t very fruitful. Commiseration tends to work better (and is exactly the thing Amp is mourning in the post).
From a practical standpoint, most people are going to be pair-bonding. Perhaps you think this is just a ridiculous societal script that has nothing to do with actual sexual and emotional feelings; I disagree. In any case, people have circles of intimacy, and “just friends” are on the losing end of that equation. People prioritize partners/spouses and/or family ahead of those more distant in the circle of intimacy. Which is the long way of saying that if you don’t have a partner, your likelihood of having certain human emotional needs met on an operative basis goes way down. That lack increases exponentially with age. (perhaps you can go lecture the un-visited old folks in your nearest nursing home that they’re not really lonely, they’re just deluding themselves. Perspective is everything!)
Speaking of perspective, you could develop some.
La Lubu:
This is a perfect statement of what I was going for. Not for the first time, your restatement of what I wrote is way better and more concise than what I wrote. :-)
Copyleft:
Maybe the problem is that I used the word “Essential.” Obviously some people – myself included – can and do live well without things like romantic love, sex, and having children. So those experiences are not “essential” in the way that food and oxygen are. I should have said “important,” maybe?
I do think that experiences like cuddling, love, sex, etc, and – to use your example – children – are important and can bring a lot of joy and meaning to people’s lives. But they are not the exclusive source of joy and meaning – there are other ways to find joy and meaning. Nor are they guarantees of joy and meaning. I’ve known people who had long-term partners, a lot of sex, children, etc., who nonetheless seemed pretty miserable.
Closetpuritan:
Congratulations to you and your spouse! That’s wonderful.
Me too.
Perspective is everything.
Irony meter: blown.
Amp, I agree with g&w and La Lubu here. It’s not simply ‘complaining’ that has a lot of nasty baggage; it’s when that complaining is firmly hitched to a sense of entitlement. “I resent the situation” != “I resent other people who aren’t giving me what I deserve”.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=pCD9hp998JE
First off, I empathize. Being single when you don’t want to be single sucks, a lot. And feeling like you can’t complain about something that bothers you (whether because people want to jump in and “fix” it instead of commiserating or because people you *really* don’t want to be associated with make the same complaints) makes it worse.
That said, much like fannie and gin-and-whiskey and Myca said, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to feel cheated, as long as you’re not blaming particular women or women as a monolith. I don’t think the idea that “Everybody deserves to find love” (for the value of love that would make them happy, whether it’s platonic, romantic, parental, etc.) is equivalent to saying anyone *owes* anyone a relationship (or a “chance” or a date).
Since we’re relating it to not having children and wanting to, I think there’s a similar line. It’s totally reasonable (or at least I hope it is) to feel cheated when you want a child and your body just will not cooperate, and meanwhile you’re surrounded by people who get pregnant effortlessly. It’s totally *un*reasonable to think anybody owes you a baby (e.g., arguing that women shouldn’t have a right to abortion because you want to adopt).
I think the difference is that it’s fine to be upset that life isn’t fair, and not fine to feel like other people owe it to you to *make* it fair in a way that isn’t actually fair to them.
Or perhaps telling someone that they don’t or shouldn’t want what they just told you they *do* want is *exactly* what you were just criticizing when it happens to childfree people. And it doesn’t somehow become kinder or more appropriate to do to someone just because what they want is in line with the status quo.
For the love of god, rbu2, at least try to be less predictable and more on-topic.
—Myca
For decades I felt that way, and it made watching all sorts of pop culture very difficult. A very common trope in romantic comedies is the woman who is about to marry the man who seems perfect, but just isn’t quite as right for her as her true love. (See Sweet Home Alabama for the classic distillation, or actually if you somehow haven’t seen it, don’t).
All of my friends pictured themselves as either the woman or man discovering or rediscovering their true love. I worried that I was the not-quite-right groom-not-to-be.
Add being gay and Baptist to that, so essentially believing for years that I shouldn’t have love, and it wasn’t pretty.
Amp, have you seen this? You are extensively quoted in it.
Yup, I did see that! I sort of feel I should respond to it (and have left a couple of comments in the comments section), but the truth is, his post is so incredibly long that I get exhausted just thinking about putting together a response.
The idea that MRAs whine about not getting women and feel entitled to them, yeah, not exactly stated that way by the author but by some comments is utter tosh.
While all of them are to some degree redpillers and agree when it comes to the diagnosis of our society and male/female relationships, redpillers split into several factions, PUAs, MRAs and MGTOWs.
Now the PUAs dont gripe because their basic stance is “well, if its raining sluts I might as well get wet”. They sure as hell feel not entitled to anything or else they would not work hard to eventually bed women they dont even take seriously.
The MGTOWs stance is “fuck this, I am going to take my ball and go home”, a lot of them do not even want a woman.
The MRAs on the other hand are the only ones who take it to the political level, they are mostly interested in fathers rights, male reproductive rights (like in, it would be a good idea if we had them) and divorce rape and such stuff.
An MRA who bitches and moans about not getting a and feeling entitled to a woman is not acting in his capacity as an MRA.
Finally, while I have probably read all three of those subcategories major blogs thoroughly, I think I can count those who had that attitude on the fingers on one hand.
What I do find frequently is men wanting a family and bemoaning the fact that women you could marry with the laws being as they are, are rare to nonexistent, but that is not a sense of entitlement, that is a sense of loss.
So, I can only conclude that the posters trying to shove MRAs into the role of entitled crybabies by hook or by crook need to build a strawman they can easily dismiss, I do not dare to speculate what subjective psychological necessities compel them to do that.
Ampersand can get a girlfriend if he wants to.
Physically, he can do what he can, like going to a gym, running, changing his diet, going to the dentist and all the rest.
More importantly, he has to change his personality. Advice is out there. The idea is to be attractive to women. If he wants to claim that he is not going to change himself to attract women, OK. Remain on the level of complaining because women don’t want you. They don’t right now.
And some “game” is not treating women as objects, it is an acknowledgement of what attracts women.
There is a further aspect here – that I don’t really want to get into – of why Ampersand is ga-ga about putting women up on a pedestal, while maligning men to the extent possible. We got an honest answer out of Hugo Schwyzer, why can’t Ampersand give a reason for his unreasonable strong bias. Lots of women see through that transparency immediately and find it off-putting – I get these guys immediately, but not all women do.
Weak, dependant and supplicating is not a personality trait that will win over many women – even feminist women who claim that’s what they want.
Wow. Just wow, guys.
“More importantly, he has to change his personality. Advice is out there. The idea is to be attractive to women. If he wants to claim that he is not going to change himself to attract women, OK. Remain on the level of complaining because women don’t want you. They don’t right now.”
This is a roadblock for both men and women, the problem is, it is an inmature, narcissístic fantasy.
Everybody understands that you have to adjust your behavior in order to get a job, an education, play a teamsport or anything else really that involves other human being.
Alas, when it comes to relationships with the opposite sex we want to be “loved just for being ourselves”.
Well, the only person to ever do that is your mother, if you are lucky that is, and that is because she is genetically programmed to do so.
All other peoples cooperation is conditional and it can´t hurt to know what those conditions are.
“.. that women you could marry with the laws being as they are, are rare to nonexistent .. ”
I’m trying to imagine what laws you’re referring to here. What kind of women would solve the problem if not for “the laws being as they are”?
They sure as hell feel not entitled to anything or else they would not work hard to eventually bed women they dont even take seriously.
Orion, while I see the distinction you’re drawing, I’m not following this statement. Of course they would – if the point of bedding those women is to gain status with other men (which does, in fact, seem to be a major goal of PUAers) or because they see sex as an extension of the ‘war of the sexes’.
Duncan @30: presumably, laws that actually allow women to be autonomous and to decide whether or not they wish to remain in a marriage.
Mythago: “presumably, laws that actually allow women to be autonomous and to decide whether or not they wish to remain in a marriage.”
——————————
I know, Sweetie. That would be the only reason or the main reason because all men think that way. Don’t they. Sweetie.I’m starting to wonder what “marriage” really is, if women don’t have some kind of out-of-court devotion to the targeted man, but they enjoy all of the old traditions like permanent alimony (a bill to eliminate that was just vetoed in Florida). And where is this army of stupid men coming from who get exploited for money for their whole life? I’m also starting to wonder why there are so many men who have just enough brains to earn good money, but are stupid enough to open themselves up to exploitation. Bejeezus.But enough rambling. Mythago, you are sometimes mischaracterized as hating men, being a crusty old bitch, and doing all of your rhetorical tricks to promote your deep-seated hatred of men.Not at all! You are really a refreshing sea-breeze of information and insight, Mythago!In a shocking development that no one could have seen coming, rbu2 has been banned.
@ Duncan
Well, things like women get custody in 90% of all cases, alimony and child support can be crippling and since apparently not enough men are tying the knot anymore there is a push to hold men responsible for the well being of a women even if he is just living together with her, explicitly not wanting to be married to her.
Now, these laws are gender neutral but somehow, misteriously, usually men end up on the sharp end of the stick.
@ mythago
You have a point that they see it as an extension of the war of the sexes.
They usually do not spell it out, neither for themselves or others, but sexual strategies are in no way, shape or form complementary but deeply antagonistic.
Now, since our laws and sexual mores, as far as they still exist, are geared to prop up the female mating strategy I think the lack of love PUAs are experiencing on the interwebz is a bit like the US army calling guerilla insurgents cowards because they use “underhanded” methods.
Well, the advantage it has on a conventional battlefield is so great that it would be foolish to “man up” and “do the right thing”.
Is there status jockeying involved?
Sure, but no matter what the reward, they work for it, so no entitlement.
Finally, yes, exactly those laws.
You forgot to add, “and to get cash and prizes on top of it”.
That behavior is not only tolerated these days, add child support, alimony and divorce settlements and it is actually encouraged and rewarded.
I prefer the fucking of women that I do to be cooperative rather than antagonistic – I like to think that we’re fucking, and being fucked, by each other. Were the only way to fuck to be antagonistic – utilizing war metaphors – I’d be celibate. Fortunately for many, many, many men, cooperative fucking is plentiful under our laws and sexual mores, as far as they still exist.
@ Jake Squid
Yeah well, you prefer women to enjoy doing the deed while not investing that much.
Hell yeah, I enjoy that too, because it means I win.
As I said, antagonistic.
No relationship for thee, but sex for me.
Its all very uncivilized, thats what it is.
Wow. That’s, ummm, something you’ve got there orion. If you could just keep it away from me…. Uh, thanks?
orion @36: What do you win, exactly? Cash and prizes?
I’m being snarky, but from your previous comments it’s pretty obvious that what you’re “winning” is an imaginary war that exists in your own head. Seriously, the idea that there is a single ‘female mating strategy’, that every woman who wants sex secretly is trying to lure you into a relationship, that going out and picking up women for one-night stands makes one a Freedom Fighter, that the laws simultaneously have always been shaped to favor women and “nowadays” reward behavior that matches 1950s norms – none of this is reality-based.
After all, if you just want no-strings sex, there are plenty of women looking for the same thing, such that you or any other PUA doesn’t need to gird your loins against the fear of a relationship, or worry that you must use tricks to persuade an unwilling woman to give in to sex. But that’s not antagonistic, yes? It’s not fun.
That’s why people are creeped out by PUAs, really. Same reason a lot of people are creeped out by ambush porn.
Good move, Sweetie ;)
@ mythago
Well, first of all I am not a PUA.
I would not know how to pull a woman in a club or a bar if my life depended on it, however, I know enough not to fuck it up if a woman is interested in me and to recognize it when that happens.
Believe it or not, but that actually already puts me ahead of my competition.
Then, I do not really like the current climate when it comes to sexual strategy, I would have been perfectly content to marry my equivalent of a “high school sweetheart”, alas, that was not meant to be.
I think that antagonism sucks donkey balls, and your insinuation that I yearn for it is wrong, I despise it. I do however not want to be on the losing side of it.
As for how my interpretation of the laws are reality based, you are free to look up the statistics, to quote the one and only quote I will ever use from Rahm Emanuel, everybody is entitled to their own opinions but not to their own facts.
The median number of sexual partners for a woman between 15 and 45 is just under 4 the average number is around 9, which means some women work very hard to raise the average.
Due to sheer mathematical necessities you will mostly meet the latter.
Now, how much would you, as a man, invest in a woman that changes her man every 1- 1,5 years or so?
Some men do, because they believe they are super special….
I am under no such illusion and as long as I am confronted with women who would like a man to serve as their whatever as long and only as long as they see fit, I think I will keep a healthy emotional distance to women who would drop me at a moments notice if someone perceived as “better” comes along.
Which means, I win.
That may seem hollow, and it is, but I am not the one making the rules.
This has got to be one of the more bizarre conversations I’ve read. I cannot think of anybody I know who remotely resembles the women orion is describing.
Ruchama: bizarre but vaguely entertaining. It’s a window on a world. A dysfunctional, train-wreck of a world, that I’m so glad I’m no part of!
I just thank God for giving me the talent to be part of it, ruchama.
A certain type of person divides sexual partners into three basic categories:
1) Those who will happily fuck you, just as you are;
2) People who will happily fuck you only if you have some sort of usually-superficial quality. I.e. you “have a job,” or “are interested in a relationship,” or “are not a conservative” or “love my favorite movie.” To be in #2, it has to be something which these folks could functionally change, lie about, or duck.
3) People who won’t fuck you at all, or who demand something that can’t easily be lied about or altered short term, like height or boob size* or weight or having a ton of money and flying everyone to Paris for the weekend.
All of the fuss is about the #2 folks, who are most people in the dating pool.
The “game” for the ethical players seems to entirely revolve around identifying all of the #2 traits which you could theoretically demonstrate, and matching them with the goal of getting laid. Then your partner(s) will happily fuck you.
The “game” for the unethical players seems to entirely revolve around identifying all of the #2 traits which you could theoretically match, and appearing to match them whether or not you actually do, with the goal of getting laid. Then your partner will fuck you happily… but not really happily, as they will later find out, because you are lying.
I have a feeling Orion is one of those but I can’t tell whether orion is arguing for the first or second type of interaction.
*That was intentional. Folks in this category talk about “boob size.”
@ gin-and-whiskey
Wut !?!
I dont care aboot boob size, apparently I am an ass man.
And Canadian.
Except that I am not Canadian.
So, to these number 2 requirements.
Its all bullshit.
Ultimately, ze female homo sapienz, is a primate belonging to a speziez (th?) with a pronounced sexual dimorphism and a herd creature…..
(Its alive !!!)
Meaning, its not about her bullet point check list, it is about social dominance, social dominance and also social dominance, no matter where it is derived from.
Meaning, if you are standing on an elevated position and people are cheering you, it matters not whether you are a rockstar or a fascist dictator.
You will get laid.
Now, a lot of men get kind of butthurt when it comes to this, but dude (dudette?) , its all about youth and beauty for men and that is not really the pinnacle of appreciation of character either.
We are who we are, its all fucked up, and most people do not want to look into it too closely because it hurts.
You see, you think I am deluded, I think you are cowards, ignoring the self evident.
Alas, interesting conversation so far.
Sure, the guy who people are cheering for will get laid. But so will plenty of other guys. The guy who spends his whole life trying to get people to cheer for him, because he thinks that will get him laid? That guy comes off as kind of creepy and desperate, neither of which are qualities that will get him laid all that often.
@ Ruchama
Social dominance, no matter what .
Does not have to involve cheering, could involve the ability to dispense violence.
Now, maybe you go the official route and get official approval, rawwwrrr, men in uniform, or the unofficial route, rawwr, badoutlawbikerwitharepsheetaslongasmyforearm aka, AlphaharleyMcrockbanddrummer.
Its about social dominance no matter where you get it from, you can deride some sources, which is ultimately pointless, but even if you were succesful, they will get it from somewhere else.
I can’t begin to imagine how very deeply depressed and desperate I would be if I believed that the only way to get laid as a man is via social dominance.
I mean, short nerdy guy with common job doesn’t scream social dominance at me. Nor does several billion other guys who’ve gotten laid (and get laid) on a more or less regular basis give a mighty beast roar for the concept of social dominance being the only way to have an intimate physical and/or emotional relationship with a woman. (Although, to be fair, I don’t think orion is interested in an intimate emotional relationship with a woman)
I mean, sure, I get it. orion doesn’t believe that women are people in the same sense that men are people. That’s old, old, old news. We’ve seen it trumpeted here by various commenters for a decade or more. If I were a woman, I don’t think I’d be eager to have sex with, much less be in the same zip code as that worldview. Hell, as a man I don’t want to be near that worldview.
I’m not sure you could get a better example of the distorted lens through which denizens of the manosphere view human interaction more civilly than orion is giving us in this thread.
This is so wrong, I just don’t even have words.
In any reasonable measure of social dominance, I am not on top. My job pays me very little. I’m deep in debt. My car, which is a ~10 year old white Ford Taurus runs like crap. I’m overweight, balding, and have high blood pressure. I rent a house, and have 2 roommates. I’m pushing 40.
I have many romantic relationships, and have roughly as much sex as I’d like to have.
The ‘secret’, such as it is, has nothing to do with social dominance or playing some kind of bullshit ‘game.’ It has zero to do with tactics. Jesus, as soon as you’re thinking about ‘tactics’ you’re already doing it wrong.
It has to do with treating my partners and potential partners as people, and trying to be both interesting to them and considerate of them. It has to do with letting go of gender essentialist beliefs and language. It has to do with accepting my partners as they are. Believing in Feminism is part of all of that.
The thing is, it’s really hard for me to talk about this, because I don’t want it to sound like Feminism is a program for getting men laid … sweet Jesus, it’s really not. That having been said … for me, in my life, my being someone who believes in feminism is a big part of why my romantic life is as happily active as it is.
Hmm … maybe a better way of putting it is: Feminism allows me to have stronger, healthier relationships with women. If you happen to be a straight guy, stronger, healthier relationships with women can’t help but improve your love life.
Feminism isn’t all of it, of course … I’m poly, I’m kinky, I’m smart … there are a lot of things going on … but social dominance?!? That’s not on the list. That’s not in the same building as the list. That’s not in the same fucking language as the list.
Similarly, Orion, when you say:
You would be well served to not assume that ‘women want relationships and men want sex.’ Some women want sex, some men want relationships … I would imagine that the vast majority of both want both. Above, when I talked about letting go of gender essentialist ideas and approaching your partners as people, this is what I meant.
Similarly, the idea that ‘winning’ is “getting what you want while not giving your partner what she wants,” is flat-out lunacy. Why can’t both people involved get what they want? How is that less ‘winning’? Why isn’t that more winning?
—Myca
PS. After posting, I see that Mr. Squid, as usual, got there earlier and said it better. ;)
PPS. Also, I dress poorly.
Are the regular Alas comment-writers still feeling entertained by this exchange? Normally I’d cut it off, but I don’t want to do that if people are still finding this worthwhile.
Well, I’m mildly entertained by thinking about my friends’ husbands and trying to figure out how anyone could consider almost any of them socially dominant. Most of my female friends have tended to marry somewhat awkward introverted guys who work in academia and desperately need haircuts. Though, that actually describes most of my female friends, too.
I’ve heard from someone who tells me she doesn’t want the discussion cut off, so everyone feel free to keep it going for now. :-)
Hmmm… do I need a haircut? Is it a desperate need? I definitely need a shower, because Portland’s been icky hot lately.
Disclaimer: I’ve been happily and monogamously married for about 25 years, now. Also, prior to my marriage, there seemed to be a lot of people who regarded me as attractive (people still occasionally say as much, but they’re more circumspect about it).
That said, in the few years between becoming sexually active and getting married, I had a lot of sex. Pretty much as much sex as I wanted, and I was a horny teenager, so I wanted a lot. And I had as much sex as I wanted despite being a socially awkward, very shy introvert. I was not socially dominant in any way.
(Funny story: a girlfriend of mine decided to start birth control and went to the infirmary to get a prescription. They asked her how often she was having sex. She said, “Um… two or three times…” and the doctor said, “Two or three times a month? Okay, so…” and my girlfriend interrupted her to say, “OH! No, no. Two or three times a DAY.”)
And yet, every woman I had sex with I had gotten to know enough, through social contact on several occasions prior to the sex, to know that I liked her. And on every occasion, her pleasure was among my first considerations, because that’s what I really enjoyed: shared pleasure. (Good heavens, but it’s fun to watch someone squirm and pant with pleasure in direct response to something I’m doing.) Conversely, when I found that I was no longer interested in someone as a person, I no longer wanted to have sex with her.
I’m conscious that my experience is different from that of people who did not get as much sex as they want as teenagers or young adults, and that human beings often take credit for good outcomes and blame others for bad outcomes. But it does seem probable to me that my “success” at having as much sex as I wanted was heavily predicated on the fact that I was interested in my partners as people, and attracted to them as people. There were plenty of physically attractive people whom I did not seek to have sex with, because they didn’t interest me. (Note: I don’t say that people who aren’t having success are necessarily NOT interested in prospective partners as people, just that it seems to me to be a necessary precondition for having lots of duplicity-free sex, lots of sex without playing The Game, or whatever PUAs call it.)
I’m reminded of Richard Feynman’s quip: “Physics is like sex … it may give some practical results, but that’s not why we do it.”
Yeah, I liked the sex. Yeah, I sought the sex. But the only sex worth having was with people I liked or loved, and so in a sense it was a byproduct of a different process which one might call an appreciative process. It seems to me that someone who is seeking the sex by almost any means possible is creating a self-defeating situation. It’s about the people. Excellent sex is a byproduct of interest in people.
Grace
I think there’s the usual problem of self-segregation into groups of people who behave in similar ways to you. I remember vividly a conversation I had with a family member after I mentioned I knew polyamorous people, including poly women. She was stunned that this ever worked, because in her frame of reference, all the men she knew were a specific kind of macho type who would visit physical violence upon any person who slept with their romantic partners. It never occurred to her that (1) even quite “socially dominant” guys could be okay with this, and (2) not every relationship involved a man in charge. I think I got her to understand how poly relationships could work with (2), but she never did believe (1). Whereas for me, the kind of relationship that was familiar to her–a sometimes-egalitarian partnership, but with a specific-kind-of-macho guy who more or less controls certain aspects of the relationship–seems quite foreign and unlikely, even though I know she has one like that.
I would also point out that
which I would agree is true, is a statement that some women respond to this kind of power, and is hardly a statement that all women respond solely to social dominance. Unless, y’know, you think women don’t span the full range of human emotion and personality, but are instead interchangeable robots.
I’m reminded of the American Physical Society T-shirt that says, “I’m a physicist. Flirt harder.”
Someone I don’t know is posting abusive comments to me on this thread, which I’m putting in the trash rather than letting through.
It might be the person who I banned earlier this thread? I’m not sure, because I can’t be bothered to look upthread to see what that person’s name was. She or he’s going on and on how much s/he worships Hitler, and that her/his favorite hobby is kicking puppies and s/he does it all the time, when s/he’s not too busy eating snot out of buckets. Also, s/he has specifically requested that I let you all know that his/her parents were a pair of especially unattractive hyenas. She wants you all to know that s/he masturbates to pictures of adorable cartoon kittens, and s/he’s offering to share a photo of that with us. (Ew! No thanks.)
It’s weird. I wonder why s/he wants us all to know this stuff?
Heh. I’ve quite often thought, “Wait. Was that guy trying to flirt with me?” ten minutes after he’d already moved on to someone else, because he’d concluded that I wasn’t interested, since I had responded to him as if he were just engaging in small talk.
My reaction to polyamory has pretty much always been, “You went through all the flirting and dating and finding someone, and you actually found someone who you want to have a relationship with and who wants to have a relationship with you, and now you’re going back to the flirting and dating and finding someone part? Willingly?” (Which I suppose doesn’t apply so much to long-term polyamorous relationships, but most of the poly people I know have one or two long-term partners, and then also see other people short-term.)
@ Ampersand
Well, its your blog, you want me gone just say so and I am out of here.
@ Da rest.
TRIGGER WARNING, because I think they are so weak and stupid I always wanted to do a TRIGGER WARNING.
Red Pill ahead and we are the misoginay, we do.
So, what those comments above boil down to is generalizations are not okay, mmmkayyyy, and women are people too and special little snowflakes and whatnot.
Well….
Scap a large part of biology then, because, heaven forbid, biologists made generalizations about the behavior of deers, or racoons or fruit flies.
If you believe in the theory of evolution it stands to reason that we were endowed with instincts that facilitated procreation. Now, according to Sapolsky a common critique is that those are “just so” stories, but what he fails to mention is that if we believe that story to be true, they must exist.
So now, you use evolutionary psychology as a starting point, form a hypotheses and test it, which is scientific as it gets when it comes to psychology.
Onwards and upwards, “social dominance” and the problem people have with it, as far as being the primary mating cue for women goes.
Remember that trigger warning?
Here it comes.
Female mating strategy is dualistic, she wants a) to procure good genes and b) provisioning.
Not necessarily from the same person.
So, in the years where she is most attractive she will go for good genes, ie the top cheerleader will hump the quarterback and later on she might marry an accountant who is boring, but can provide.
In the manosphere this dynamic was coined “alpha fucks and beta bucks” by the immortal GBFM and in the years where women are most attractive, which is universally between 17-24, they go for alpha fucks.
Around 27- 28 or so they start going for beta bucks, often with a dose of alpha fucks on the side.
So, why are people having problems with this:
Men:
Because you are beta bucks dude and you will never, ever admit it to yourself or others that you pay a very, very high price for something she gave away for free in her prime to men she desired on a visceral level, because social dominance.
You want raw, unmitigated desire, the rip your clothes off because she is so horny sex? Social dominance.
You want negotiated mediocre sex? My, you have such a nice car, house and your friends are all so respectable.
I had both and the deciding factor was not my income situation but my behavior.
Women:
Because you are a special little snowflake that is very snowflaky in your special specialness and the fact that you most likely jousted for they same 20% of men in your teens and twenties and most likely settled for a provider type around the same time your female friends did in no way, shape or form detracts that you are speshul and generalizations regarding your behavior are ebul.
Well, take that up with Sheryl Sandberg who spelled out AFBB for all the world to see.
“Fuck the badboy, fuck the outlaw biker, fuck the quarterback, but when it is time to become a corporate drone, get a nice little sycophant pushover who serves you while you waste your life attempting to dominate the world”
There might have been some paraphrasing involved.
You might wonder why the manosphere is growing so fast, even though we dont advertise.
Well, we dont have to, she does it for us, no man wants to be BB.
I’ll just say that that is a terrible understanding of the science and leave it at that.
Ruchama:
I’m monogamous. But some of my best friends are poly! (Heh.)
Seems to me that you don’t much like the courtship part, and can forego the variety part; you like the stable relationship part. Which is fine; you’re you, and other people are them. But some people really, really like the courtship part and/or the variety part. And fully-informed poly is one way to get a lot of both, ethically. As contrasted with how PUAs apparently typically do it.
Some poly people I’ve talked to seem to have something you could argue is the best of both worlds: they get to crush on people and act on the crush in an open and honest way, and when that relationship comes to its natural end, or doesn’t work out, you’ve still got all of the benefits of your long-term love.
For me, in this life, so far, not my thing, but I can understand why it’s other people’s thing.
Grace
Status? Looks? Income?
If you look at the research into successful marriages/partnerships, what they tend to find is what we usually see around us. Most couples are quite similar in their educational backgrounds, their level of physical attractiveness (as assessed-by-others), and a range of other relevant attributes. Not that everyone marries or partners up only within a narrowly prescribed range, but the “exceptions to the rule” where the two parties of a couple are very different from each other really are exceptions.
It’s quite uncommon for people who know only one partner to be absolutely amazed when introduced to the other partner if they turn out to be unexpectedly attractive/ugly, intelligent/dopey, educated/uninformed. Most of the time we will be pleased but unsurprised to meet the partner because they’ll have many of the congenial attributes we are accustomed to (however unconsciously) in the one we already know.
After all, it’s generally true that a married/partnered person’s best friend is, more often than not, their partner. We’ve been married for over 35 years now. We’re not so inclined to the argue-all-night-until-this-desperately-important-point-in-politics/linguistics/sociology-is-settled aspect of the friendship we started out with. But we do still find each other to be among the most interesting and exciting people we know. (We absolutely refuse to accede to our children’s description of “soulmates”, even though we know what they mean.)
And I, at least, do know the difference – having been married before to someone whose idea of marriage was all about dominance both within the relationship and in relation to other men. Preening himself as he quoted other men who had remarked to him about his wife’s looks, cooking ability or other qualities that he seemed to take pride in.
For pity’s sake. Regardless of how old anyone is, they must surely have heard somewhere, some time, that women reach their sexual prime in their 30s. (I’m not convinced of this – I suspect that if there is such an effect it’s much smaller than the strictures of inexperience+reluctance imposed on too many girls and young women promoting refusal above sexual expression.) However, it’s entirely possible to have fantastic sex all the way through your 30s, 40s, 50s and beyond. I cannot see how whatever enjoyable sex a partner might have had with other people before you were ever on the scene can have any effect on what the two, or more, of you do together now.
(I can see that bad sexual experiences can impact on future sex life but that’s not what you’re talking about. You’re talking about it being a bad thing for a woman to have had a lot of good sexual experience. That’s upside down and inside out.)
Does anyone else just find Orion’s posts really really sad?
Like, I can’t even work up a good head of anger … the misplaced resentment and impotent rage is just so sad. It’s like someone said about Death Cab For Cutie: “We get it, man. A girl broke up with you once.”
Look, Orion … you have a lot of people here talking to you whose lives simply do not match the ‘universal schema’ you seem to have bought into. I’m one of them, but I’m certainly not the only one.
You don’t have to live in this world you have talked yourself into. It’s not a very nice world for either men or women. There are other options. These other options would almost certainly make you happier and healthier.
—Myca
Yes I do. That’s why I’ve been using words like “very deeply depressed and desperate” to describe how I’d feel if I had the viewpoint of orion’s posts.
I read orion’s posts as a cautionary tale. Although men of that opinion are thankfully in the minority, it’s a sizable enough minority to be a problem. These guys carry their hostility towards women far outside the dating field. Steer clear.
No, it’s very very unlikely. Whatever people here want to believe there are huge sexual differences between men and women, most importantly women have massive levels of sexual dysfunction.
mildlymagnificent:
Franz:
Franz, these two statements are not mutually exclusive.
Every last one of us? Wow. I had no idea. And here I am, in my forties and still having fantastic sex. I must be doing it wrong.
Grace
orion:
If you say so, but I have had sex like that, many times, without the social dominance part. Actually still do sometimes at over two decades of marriage. I know, you’re now going to say that makes me a …
Nice “No True Scotsman” argument you’ve got going there.
So… you’re asserting that women are not, in fact, people? We were wrong when we pointed that out?
Generalizations can be okay. They can also be so broad as to be worthless; that’s when we call them “overgeneralizations”. “Men are like X” is usually an overgeneralization. So is “Women are like X”. Because even if it’s 51% true, there are still plenty of individual men and women and other people for whom it isn’t true.
Perhaps you could cite some examples of evolutionary psychologists actually doing this and publishing the results through a peer review process. You may not be aware of this, but evo psych is famous for its lack of falsifiable hypotheses. “It all sounds so reasonable!” is not science; it’s just guesswork.
Where? There was nothing triggering in your post. I don’t think you know what “trigger warning” means.
This is proof by assertion, which is what that’s called when you say, “It is so because I say it is.”
Evolution is a lot more complex than you think it is. There are many, many organisms which cannot be explained by evo psych theory, and yet, there they are, obstinately existing via the process of evolution. Not even professional evolutionary biologists agree about many evolutionary mechanisms, even though they understand many of the mechanics better than you or I. For a start, I recommend reading Roughgarden’s Evolution’s Rainbow. There are more things in heaven and earth than exist in your understanding, or mine.
Grace
Myca:
Myca, today I was contemplating this very question: what is it that people get out of such a depressing, apparently self-defeating, world-view? Plainly they get something out of it, or they would not follow it.
Something about it was familiar, and then I realized where I had seen the pattern before: bullies.
One of the things we taught to our children, early on, was that we don’t make ourselves feel big by making other people feel small. That’s a cheat, and hurts people. We make ourselves feel big by working to be good people and hanging out with people who help us be good people.
We had to explain this because we had to explain why some kids were being mean to them, and what to do about it. We explained that lots of kids were insecure, they felt small, and some of those kids made themselves feel bigger by pretending that other kids were smaller, and by being nasty to the other kids so that they would feel small.
Seems to me the whole PUA thing is like that, and explicitly so: there are alpha males and beta males and gamma males, and if you’re not alpha, man, you’re a wuss / a faggot / rode the short bus / whatever. So you have to prove that you’re an alpha. How do you do that? Fuck a lot of women. How do you do that? Lots of ways. Not taking “no” for an answer. Pushing their personal space a bit or testing their boundaries in other ways. Putting more alcohol in their drink than they know about. Negging. There’s a whole playbook.
It’s all a way of building yourself up by pushing others down. And, bonus! You get to push down women and beta males and gamma males all at the same time, just by getting your rocks off in some woman you managed to trick or pressure into letting you stick your penis into her.
And yeah, it’s a sad way to live. The best way to live is by helping others up (as appropriate, of course). Turns out that if you do it right, a lot of the time, they appreciate it. And sometimes that appreciation leads to sex, and sometimes it’s mind-blowing, tear-the-clothes-off sex. But that’s a delightful byproduct; if that’s the reason you do it, then you’ve missed the point and you’re probably not helping them up after all.
I’m not Christian, but as a Catch-22 it rather reminds me of certain strands of Christian thought which were memorably skewered in the movie Constantine: if you do good works in order to get into Heaven, that’s selfish and won’t get you anywhere. But if you do good works out of love or other unselfish impulse, you get to go to Heaven.
In my personal experience, a good sex life is kinda like that.
But back to my original point: yeah, bullies need to tear others down in order to build themselves up. And that’s what they get out of this construction — they get to be on top, and they get to laugh at the people who aren’t.
Grace
Perhaps, just perhaps, it’s highly unlikely specifically *for* men who make sweeping generalizations about women and unilaterally decide that they’re all broken. “Let me tell you all about what’s wrong with you (which I know because you’re exactly like every other woman ever)” might not be a good mating call.
Yeah…I think you’ve nailed it.
Ampersand @50: I wouldn’t say entertained, but circling back, orion’s posts are a rather classic example of the point you were trying to make. If you assume all women are “ebul” and want to have sex purely to trick you out of your sperm and/or money, then you don’t ever need to take a chance on getting hurt by one; you’ve pre-emptively rejected them. And you certainly don’t need to fuss yourself with being nice or treating them decently. It puts me in mind of this (as usual NSFW) Oglaf cartoon. Stab the bitches before they break your heart and bank account!
Myca @61: actually, they probably wouldn’t. There are people who, in an unfunny version of Oscar the Grouch, simply love being miserable. It’s comfortable, safe, means they never ever have to risk getting hurt by putting their heart out where somebody else can hurt them, and as a side bonus, is a justification for being as awful as they like.
It’s odd, but I suppose everyone in an American high school learns the pecking order and hierarchies as a teenager, and how they correspond to one’s romantic fate 1:1, and then watches how the American university, office, and nightclub duplicate those power and romantic relationships ad infinitum, until one is 40 and who wants 40-yr olds anyway?
PUA didn’t explain as much as cement my worldview, and it’s half-digested Marcuse at best, but Marcuse was right about a few things.
Are you kidding me???? It’s feminists that ruined this by talking about ugly neckbeards all the time on tumblr.
By “dysfunction” do you mean “having lower levels of sexual desire than their partner?” Because while that seems to be what most people consider to be “dysfunction,” that is perfectly normal, so the word doesn’t apply.
I mean, sure: my wife wants to have sex less frequently than I do. So what? Why would that make her dysfunctionally non-sexual? Why wouldn’t you say that I’m dysfunctionally sexed up, instead?
The real issue isn’t whether a particular person wants to have sex more or less, it’s whether a particular RELATIONSHIP works or not. So long as we are happy (we are) there’s nothing dysfunctional about it.
Shorter version: When you say “all ___ are abnormal” you have a logic problem.
1. I’m amazed that all of the opponents of orion and the other people not in the clique all have fantastic marriages and fantastic sex lives going into the 30s, 40s, 50s and beyond. It would be interesting to know why these particular political convictions bring about this surprising pocket of adjustment and happiness.
2. Doesn’t it bother any of you that people who don’t hold your specific opinions are banned, mocked and suppressed here? A search for truth would not really thrive on that in my opinion.
3. What happened to orion? Was he double-secret banned or just driven away?
I see the point about differing or lower function, rather than dysfunction. Though, from the perspective of arguing with people committed to the idea that there are no sex differences in sexual response – that difference doesn’t matter.
I do think there are massive levels of dysfunction. Primary anorgasmia (have never orgasmed) runs at about 10% for women vs about 0% for men, then there’s stuff like trauma from sexual assault, diminished function from SSRI use, birthing injury, I can go on. The actual medical literature – as opposed to sex positive feminst screeds – is horrific and sobering. The “oh, women want the same things as men” line isn’t remotely credible.
Well, first, let us get out of the way that I am terribly, terribly lonely, extraordinairily sad, cannot get laid, possibly due due my penis size and that I cannot get laid is of course a foregone conclusion.
Sorry, forgot to mention my living arrangements, if you can call living in my mom´s basement “living arrangements”.
Now, on the post of substance, i.e. Grace´s:
Well, there is little I can say to this. I don´t know what we would both call earth shattering sex, also what kind of mate you have depends on your options, meaning on your attractiveness at the point of nailing him down, so without all those information I do not even want to have, what could I possibly say?
As, to “no true scotsman”, you have a point. That does not necessarily make us wrong, it just makes what we state impossible to falsify.
On the other hand this all started with game, game, rock solid game, i.e. with PUAs trying to bed women.
They simply kept ideas that worked and discarded what did not, so, while all models are wrong, some are more useful than others.
In the end, does it matter from our perspective that WE HAVE FOUND THE TRUTH (!!!), or do we just have to have a better model than that of the mainstream?
All men are pigs would be an overgeneralization. Men are more horny on average than women, that would be a generalization I think most men would agree with (there, two generalizations in a row.)
Usually, women have a problem with that, because, NAWALT.
Our answer is AWALT !, it is just that some women are more disciplined than others.
However, either there are some general rules regaring female atrtaction patters, female arousal and so on or you are indeed all special little snowflakes, you do not even belong to the same species then.
Not even the same species as us, the same species as all other women.
I do not know where you get it from that I think “women are not people”, I indeed think they are, which is why I think that they are by and large predictable.
As for peer reviewed studies, I would go with Buss and Baumeister, but you could also go with studies with social dominance hierarchies and mating success in Chimpanzee and Baboon troops, both primates with a distinctive sexual dimorphism that live in some sort of tribe and have a social hierarchy.
Also, and this is where I am not entirely sure, they have no, or at best a vestigial, vomeronasal system either.
Finally, there are studies that clearly demonstrate that womens standards go up for short term sexual encounters, he better be gorgeous !!!, swoons.
Ironically, for LTRs womens standards go down, or at least they shift.
So, now that the median age of marriage for women has risen from 20 in 1980 to 28-29 today, do we really need to go into hypergamy or AFBB or could we just state that if women “are just looking to have fun” they will look for different qualities they would look for if they were looking for marriage material and regard it as self evident.
What could the criteria for one juxtaposed to the other be?
@Franz
I dont think it is terribly important whether it is “different” or “dysfunctional”.
If one partner wants it daily and I will kinda, sorta generalize that this partner will have a penis and the other does not, there kinda, sorta, is a problem.
As for women are the same as men, no, they have between 1/15 to 1/17 the androgen levels as men, they will never, ever experience the horniez the same as men.
Interestingly enough, the comparatively mild testosterone spike close to ovulation will lead them to seek out square jawed, tatted out manly men who own a harley.
They would make terrible fathers, sure, but boy, those genes.
No pattern there, no Sir.
Since it warrants its own post:
I have dropped on the Redpill Reddit here and there that this obsession with being “alpha” is horseshit.
Be a man, have standards, learn to stand up for yourself, learn to say no to a woman even though she has amazing tits and a dazzling smile.
Now if you did that without even thinking about it, you would be kind of “alpha”, but as long as you need to put down other men for not being “alpha” enough, dude, if you were, you would not care.
The ones “bullying” are mostly projecting their own incecurities on others and are trying to root it out in them which is arguably easier than to weed it out in themselves.
Which, come to think of it, describes all kinds of bullying.
All part of the process, I suppose.
First off, diminished sexual function from SSRI use affects men and women both. See actual medical literature: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9934946
Secondly, I’ve got to love how you jump to women in general from a minority. Not terribly good use of statistics.
What, his hands don’t work? I’m pretty sure nobody ever died from not getting sex the minute they wanted it.
@KellyK
What, she cannot get her own money and call her friends when she has emotional needs?
I am sure nobody ever died from living frugally or not having her emotional needs met.
Don´t even try when it comes to the money bit, I know the statistics, google them and you will too.
Lets just ignore our partners biological imperatives, because fuck it, I will serve
my boss and my gaggle of friends, but the man I supposedly love, fuck no, because patriarchy.
If I am married to you and I have to strangle the snake myself you have failed as a woman.
Pretty much the same way as I would have failed as a man if we were living under a bridge.
Women are for Sex, Men are for Money.
I like my title better:
Men are Monsters, Women are Vaginas
It’s got better flow and riffs better off of that awful book and its associated publicity.
(Though, Men are Money, Women are Vaginas is a better match for that last comment.)
Why is that ironic? If I’m looking for someone to spend the night with, then once we get past “This person won’t kill me, right?” then pretty much all I’m looking for is someone pretty to look at and good in bed. Don’t need much more. For a long term relationship, I’m going to spend significantly more time out of bed than in bed with this person. I want someone I can talk to, someone who enjoys the same sort of stuff I enjoy, someone who shares my views on how to raise kids, and so on. That’s the important stuff, long-term. If I can find someone who looks just like Jensen Ackles AND fits all of those criteria, then awesome. Since I’m pretty sure Jensen doesn’t have a geeky homebody Jewish clone out there, then I know my best chance for long-term happiness is to go to a “Star Wars and Judaism” talk, find a guy who, like me, is kind of hanging on the edges of the crowd at the reception afterwards, and talk to him. (I’ve never actually seen a “Star Wars and Judaism” talk. But I’m nearly certain that someone somewhere has done it. Possibly even a whole series of talks.)
@ Jake Squid
I like Warren Farells take better, women are human beings, men are human doings.
Women are presented semi naked in advertising because youth and beauty, men are presented fully clothed because wealth and success, you can t see that if he is nekkid.
Women might be sex objects (and our brains are wired that way, looking at a nekkid woman the same brain areas light up, among others, that would appreciating a tool, so get over it you sexist bigot), but we are success objects,.
Men are objectified, oh noez….
@ Ruchama
Well, in and of itself it is not ironic, but if “irony” is when someone means the exact opposite of what he or she is saying, then it is plenty ironic what women say they want and what they select in a short term partner.
See, add little context —> irony.
So, while the wimmenz are totally preoccupied with their alpha fucks, what iz da beta bucks gonna do?
If I have learned anything from this thread, probably work hard and spank the monkey so that he can pay a high price for a woman that gave it away for free, so that can sexually ignore him so that he can spank his monkey even more.
Sounds awesome!
Where can I sign up for that !?!
Franz:
And impotence is 15-25% for 65-year-old men. But neither impotence nor anorgasmia actually tell you whether or not the person has a satisfying sex life, because there are lots of ways to have one, not all of which require orgasms or erections.
orion:
I’ll take option c), neither!
Some pairs of statements which are not equivalent:
– “Men on average are taller than women,” vs. “All women are 5’4″ and all men are 5’9.5″.”
– “Men on average do better on math IQ tests than women,” vs “All men are better than all women at math.”
What you’re doing is like the second statement there: you’re taking some sort of average characteristic, and saying that since it’s correlated with gender, then the only thing you need to know is gender in order to understand human beings. That is clearly untrue. And it’s
whyone reason you sound like you think women are interchangeable robots.EDIT: And I should say, I don’t necessarily buy that your average characteristics are correct, either. But they sound especially egregious because you don’t allow for any deviation from them.
Tüssi says:
I think rejecting gender essentialism and thinking that it’s wrong for either men or women to attempt to manipulate the other for gain makes having a fantastic marriage and sex life more likely.
And I think that having disappointing relationships and sex is more likely to make a person bitter and resentful.
Tüssi says:
That would bother me a lot, if it happened, which it doesn’t. The only person who was banned from this thread started off with insults and then got worse. The comments we’ve not let through have been similarly awful.
Drag your cross elsewhere. It’s cluttering up the room.
Case in point:
Tüssi says:
What happened? He didn’t post. OH THE DRAMA!
—Myca
If the only thing you want from a woman is sex, then why go through all this PUA stuff at all? Wouldn’t it be easier to just hire sex workers than to put yourself through all of this?
Well, not all of us do–indeed, the point of the original post was that it doesn’t always happen. But since the point of the PUAs seems to be “this is the only way to get good sex/relationships, or acceptable sex/relationships since good ones will never happen,” even some of us having good relationships and sex lives should be more than enough to disprove their theories.
And, as others have pointed out above, you shouldn’t believe the things we believe because it will give you a good relationship or sex life. You should do it because it will help you be a better human being.
@Tüssi
“What happened to orion!?!”
Nothing, he just found some interesting material and spent an evening reading it, he did.
He tends to get lost when he finds something fascinating.
He also seems to be referring to himself in the third person, which is usually not a good sign.
He was neither banned, nor suppressed, and, all in all, only slightly mocked.
So, mebbe, give credit, where credit is due?
@ Harlequin
Well, you have some model, and should you be a woman you have significantly more leeway when it comes to being just plain wrong than men.
“Just be nice, just be yourself”.
Yeah baby, ever tried that with a dick?
@ Ruchama
It would and I did.
Here is the thing, when it does come to that alone/lonely thing, though.
I have no problem with the being alone thing, but the only time I ever felt lonely in the last decade or so was when I felt like talking to a woman who I thought cared for me and left with the distinct feeling that I was just a means to and end.
Now there are a lot of angles to this and I dont feel like writing a novella, but beyond a certain age (30!) this outcome is more likely than not.
I have, and it’s what works. At least, for me.
BTW, just as a general thing, please don’t call other posters ‘baby’ or the like. It gives me rb2 “sweetie’ flashbacks. ;)
So first: I’m so sorry that you ended up in a situation where you felt used. That’s not awesome.
Second, I’m 39, and the best dating and sex I’ve had in my life has been in my 30’s. Part of the problem is that the generalizations in your head about women have their parallel in men, and it’s not true about either of them.
—Myca
I’m sorry, but “strangle the snake?” That metaphor alone reveals so much that is problematic in/with orion’s perspective.
But “baby” totally belongs into “yeah baby” !
Also, if “just being yourself” totally gets your dick wet, congratulations!
What if it does not, are you supposed to just lie there and take it for the rest of your life or will you take up arms against the slings and arrows of an outreagous fortune and, by opposing, end them !?!
@ Richard Jeffrey Newman
Yeah bebby!?!
There, better?
Analyze me with what little you have, please do.
At least I am referring to general patterns, but you had to drag it down to a personal level, did you not.
FYI, I not only strangled it, I also whipped it, spanked it, dressed it up as a Catholic Schoolgirl and made it say “Uncle”.
@ Myca
Of course you had your best sex in your 30s, because youth and beauty dont last forever.
30 for a man is, or can be, what 15 is for a girl.
The moment you had the upper hand, things got better, right?
I seriously have no idea what you’re talking about. There is no ‘upper hand’. The people I’m with want to be with me, and I want to be with them. We’ve both got the ‘upper hand,’ I suppose?
—Myca
The implication that 15-year-olds are at or near the peak of their sexual attractiveness is pretty gross.
To be fair, Harlequin, when I was 15, 15 year old girls were at the peak of their attractiveness. Perhaps Orion is 15 and, therefore, not as creepy as we might otherwise believe?
I think it’s clear that Orion lives in a different and much less pleasant world than most of the Alas community.
I am thankful that the world in which I live allows me to have close sexual & emotional relationships with women. It’s a world in which I can have actual friendships with women. Friendships that don’t involve some absurd contest in which only one of us wins at sex. It’s a world in which I don’t have to figure out what a woman’s angle is. Where I can accept her at face value. This is what I mean when I say that women are people. I don’t believe for a moment – based on his comments – that Orion thinks that women are people. I’m honestly not sure he thinks men are people, either.
Okay, which one of you guys opened a portal to the Elemental Plane of What Is This I Don’t Even?
Did you even read the original post? :-p