Susan Walsh of Hooking Up Smart took a high volume of aimed fire in the comments section of my post All the lonely feminist spinsters. I’m still working on my take on the 80/20 question the dogpile discussion was about. To Susan’s great credit she hung in there and defended her own point of view. Following that she even had some fun with it in her own post titled Dating Back in the Day:
Yesterday commenters on another blog described Hooking Up Smart as a finishing school for hos, and me the headmistress who hasn’t been on a date since the Eisenhower era.
I’m about to turn 55 – there’s no question that my knowledge of hookup culture is entirely second hand, thankfully. Just for fun I’ve put together some images that describe my prime dating years.
In the discussion on that post the conversation turned to the topic of men refusing to date women they haven’t already had sex with. I summarized my argument from my recent post SMP searching costs and the unmourned death of courtship. After reading this, commenter Megaman galloped in to the conversation:
Very romantic. This seems ideal for a demanding boyfriend who wants a desperate girlfriend 🙂
Seriously though, if the woman gives the man what he wants first, what guarantee does she have that there will be any dates? This sounds more like dangling a carrot, so to speak. A pretense to get her into bed, nothing more. I can understand feeling resentful for being strung along (never had that experience), but to assume every woman will act that way seems extremely paranoid. It’s seems doubtful that guys who use this method actually want a serious relationship. I’ve never met one who did.
I reiterated my basic point, explaining that past a certain age the women who are likely to form lasting commitments have generally already done so:
Many women are looking to swing from man to man in “serial monogamy”, which is the female preferred form of promiscuity. Plus you have women abusing the courtship tradition. Susan referenced a woman in a post a while back who had been on 87 first dates in two years. Men don’t do that, because they foot the bill both financially and emotionally in that situation. Smart men will get wise to this and not waste their time with this sort of woman. The best way to manage this is to make sure she is taking some of the risk. Sex in the uncommitted market (which is what we are talking about, these aren’t Amish women choosing a husband) works as a sort of relationship earnest money. It separates the serious buyers from the lookiloos, and proves the woman has some skin in the game before the man invests in her emotionally and financially.
Susan replied with an excellent question:
Do you think that a man will ever invest in her emotionally? Will he not hold that easy access against her, earnest or no, because it looks like (maybe is) promiscuity?
This really is an excellent question. My best guess is emotional investment from men is highly unlikely. I base this on the woman in question’s past history. After divorcing at 45, Ginger Emas tells us on her Huffington Post profile that she went on a manhunt:
In the years since her divorce she’s been called a muse, a MILF and a cougar; she’s sped through speed dating and been unlocked at lock-and-key parties. She went on 87 first dates in two years, joined half a dozen dating websites and received 48,000 views on Match.com –- the groundwork for Back on Top.
After failing to make a committed connection with nearly 50,000 men (nearly a hundred of whom she went on dates with), Ms. Emas felt like she had become an expert on women finding commitment after divorce; so she wrote a book. To be fair, she had even more experience than the quote above references. She also had a great deal of previous experience:
Ginger left her corporate job to move to Atlanta, telling everyone she wanted to go out on her own, but the truth is she had dated all of the eligible men in the tri-city Mecklenburg area and needed a larger pool. She met and married her husband in Atlanta, but after thirteen years of marriage (and 14 years of couples counseling) they divorced, and Ginger lost a husband but created a divorce so friendly that her dad often forgets she’s no longer married.
This isn’t dating, this is an industrial scale mining operation.
So this brings us back to Susan’s question; how likely is a lasting emotional attachment? Based on the sheer numbers of men this woman doesn’t connect with, I would say for any given man the likelihood is vanishingly small. Granted not all women operate on this scale. But if you are a man in this kind of dating environment, the sheer numbers of dates women like this rack up means they are the ones men are most likely to encounter. We’ve seen this before with the dater from More judging the performance. She went on over 100 dates in just one year, and is still at it. Blogger Big Little Wolf doesn’t tell us in her post Page 19 how many men she has dated looking for one she can have a connection with, but she does tell us that it is enough to leave her exhausted.
The other part of the equation is who will form an emotional attachment first, thereby taking on the emotional risk? Women who are waiting for emotional attachment before offering sex are requiring the man to prove his emotional investment upfront. This is the whole point. But these same women are going through large (sometimes massive) numbers of men in the process. They expect each man to try to develop an emotional connection with her so she can determine if she wants to have sex with them and/or form some sort of uncommitted relationship. From her point of view, this is rational. Moving the risk to another party makes sense, especially in such an incredibly low yield activity. But it is just as rational for men in this scenario to want to do the same.
Whether a man will have any emotional attachment (or will develop any over time) after sex depends more on the woman than the man.
They are also called professional daters and they are very mercenary. They never have any intention of making a commitment to men but if they can get a man on the hook she will milk it out for all it’s worth. When men return the favor by playing women this way they are called jerks. One professional dater can turn alot of men into jerks.
I can remember when I realized how much I was spending on first dates that never went anywhere. Looking back on the interactions, there was that sense of entitlement on the part of many of my dates. I got exactly one offer to split the check out of all those dates. Such a nice supplicating man I was. So very ripe to be taken advantage of. Then I started hearing stories of women snickering to each other over how many free dinners and drinks they can get. Oh that’s a bitter pill.
Ever since I took that pill, I am so done spending money before sex. Now I refer to cheap date ideas for the first few dates. No real dinner dates with wine and possibly a show until after we’ve had sex. If that rules out the truly low sex partner count women, well you know what? I can’t tell very well if she’s telling the truth about that.
Susan Walsh of Hooking Up Smart took a high volume of aimed fire in the comments section of my post All the lonely feminist spinsters. I’m still working on my take on the 80/20 question the dogpile discussion was about. To Susan’s great credit she hung in there and defended her own point of view.
Unfortunately a key part of her “hanging in there” consisted of simply ignoring facts that did not agree with her pre-determined conclusion. This is part of a pattern with Walsh; she makes some sweeping generalization, men provide examples that disprove it, she ignores them or even belittles them with some feeble snark, then she goes on to repeat the same false claim again in some other venue. In the case of surveys, there are some major issues with truthfulness of women that Walsh refuses to discuss. Basil posted a small study that clearly demonstrated that women will lie about number of sexual partners except when they believe that they are certain to be caught. This doesn’t surprise me as a man, but apparently it doesn’t fit in well with Walsh’s view of women – so she ignores it. I’m not impressed when someone claims to be ‘open minded’ one minute and then demonstrates obvious close-mindedness the next. Actions speaking louder than words, once again. I bet that even if someone went to Walsh’s own blog and posted links to the study, or even the study itself, she’d continue to ignore it.
And yes, I’m going to bring up her claim that she can spot entitled women just by looking at them from time to time. Because it is a claim that is testable, but she refuses to test it. It is a claim that flies right in the face of some men I know, and she refuses to acknowledge that. Her arrogant ignorance in this matter doesn’t give me any confidence at all in anything else Walsh has to say, frankly.
This matters because Walsh on the one hand is presenting herself as an honest debater, and an honest researcher. But honest debate means putting claims to the test, testing hypotheses and admitting if they cannot pass muster. Honest research means following evidence wherever it leads, not starting with a preconceived idea and only accepting data that supports it.
Based on what I’ve here and elsewhere:
Susan Walsh says she looks at all the data, but her actions are those of someone who is cherry picking surveys to support a predetermined conclusion.
Susan Walsh says she’s willing to learn from men and admit when she’s wrong, but her actions to me are those of someone who has zero interest in men’s real experience and an arrogant refusal to admit any error.
So as far as I’m concerned, she appears to be just another “Team Women!” player, and nothing more.
The other part of the equation is who will form an emotional attachment first, thereby taking on the emotional risk? Women who are waiting for emotional attachment before offering sex are requiring the man to prove his emotional investment upfront. This is the whole point. But these same women are going through large (sometimes massive) numbers of men in the process. They expect each man to try to develop an emotional connection with her so she can determine if she wants to have sex with them and/or form some sort of uncommitted relationship.
This is the front-end danger that apparently goes un-noticed. Couple that with the back-end risk of divorce theft, and it appears that a lot of women want a totally one-sided committment: from men (plural) to them, with minimal risk for them and maximal risk for men. And when men respond to this, whose fault is it?
First Law of Women:
It’s All Men’s Fault, All The Time.
And…
… on your topic of selling divorce to middle aged women, when I clicked on the link to her profile, two of the three “related content” links were –
“Why Divorce May Not Be ‘The End’ ”
“The 5 Best Times To Call It Quits”
What did roissy say: Before sex women try to find reasons to disqualify you from her love, afterwards she tries to find reasons for the exact opposite.
A.R. and Hoellenhund: If you don’t agree with me you are just entrenched MRAs not worthy of persuasion.
The main message I’m getting from this is: Date younger women who haven’t been hardened by the sexual marketplace if you are looking for some sort of LTR.
Not that any method is surefire. However, just as it’s irrational to ‘save’ a single mom, it makes no sense for a man to choose a serial monogamist when younger and somewhat innocent is an option. And women are looking for the men that have options.
RL
What did roissy say: Before sex women try to find reasons to disqualify you from her love, afterwards she tries to find reasons for the exact opposite.
Yes, that’s true. So? What’s your point?
A.R. and Hoellenhund: If you don’t agree with me you are just entrenched MRAs not worthy of persuasion.
Nice example of a logical fallacy. Do you have a point to make at all?
It’s rational to try and shift the risk to the other party, sure, but… the other party isn’t likely to take on the risk unless they stand to gain something of signficant value if the risk pays off. In other words, the partner with the lowest SMV is the one who is going to need to take on the risk, because they have the most to gain. A woman who’s a 6 dating a man who’s a 5 might convince the guy to take on the emotional risk, but if she’s dating a 7, he’s not going to.
A 45 year old woman who’s already train-wrecked multple relationships is not going to have a very high SMV, so if she’s going for force the guy to take the risk, she’s limiting herself to the shallow end of the dating pool. Which seems to be what most of these women are complaining about.
My husband has a name for women that date this way: Food-whores.
While we were dating we pretty much alternated on who would pay–we both had few responsibilities and plenty of money (relative to that lack of responsibility). We also spent a ridiculous amount of money on eating out because neither of us had access to a kitchen (unless we wanted to spend two hours cleaning up after his eight room mates).
In retrospect, my tactic of paying for myself or going dutch when I was dating helped me distance myself from feeling obliged towards my date–that way, I thought, if I wanted to pursue the relationship it wasn’t because I felt obligated by their investment. I don’t know if this was altogether a good idea or even an accurate summation of it. The rationalization hamster was strong in this one.
How the hell did my name end up getting brought up here?
Arual
My husband has a name for women that date this way: Food-whores.
That’s an accurate label, although so harsh I’m sure teh wimmenz would object strongly. I have known a couple of women who pretty much could be described that way; one made it clear to me that she expected a meal every time she had sex. A friend of mine, who fed her a few times, said that she was pretty skilled in the sack but rather detached from it all. From that statement and from observing her at social gatherings, I came to the conclusion that she had been pretty badly damaged emotionally in some way when she was younger.
One thing that I don’t see being discussed much in the endless wrangles over the current SMP and MMP is the simple fact that some number of men and women grew up in single parent homes, with no father present or allowed around. In a lot of different areas of life it’s an axiom that in a crisis, we will react as we have been trained – we’ll default to some way of thinking that is deeply ingrained. A 20-something man or woman who grew up with a 2nd wave feminist mother constantly carping about how all men are bad, is not going to react to bad behavior by someone of the opposite sex in nearly the same way as a 20-something man or woman who grew up in an intact family with a not-too-excessively feminist mother. Just for one example.
We all carry around inside us little templates, or programs, on “how to behave” based on what we saw at certain ages. Given what mens’s-fault divorce has done to families over the last 30 or so years, it should be no surprise that a lot of people aged 35-40 and under are conflicted and confused about relating to the opposite sex.
Another win for 2nd wave feminists. You go, grrls!
Höllenhund says:
How the hell did my name end up getting brought up here?
Someone with an empty weblog could be trolling for flames. That’s my guess. We’ll see if there’s any followup.
And I have been banned from Susan Walsh’s blog for what was effectively realizing this and pointing it out.
She’s actually worse than this. When I pointed out that people like on surveys like this, she tried to claim that the surveys were anonymous and untraceable because they were linked to IP address and not to names. Anyone with at least nine brain cells knows why this is wrong. This is the type of con that Susan Walsh tries to pull.
You have realized the same thing I have discovered a long time ago. The only difference between her and Amanda Marcotte is that Susan Walsh is running a better con. It’s telling that Susan Walsh’s only opposition to feminism is the part of feminism she perceives as harming women. She agrees with every other part of feminism. For example, she is against men going expat to find wives/form families (not to mention men going ghost). This shows that Susan Walsh wants to keep men in the marriage 2.0 system. This is one of a thousand examples.
Her attempt to redefine the 80/20 rule is another example of how Susan Walsh is playing for Team Woman and nothing more. She is trying to claim that women are suffering the same lack of sex men are. We know this is not true. Walsh’s subtle redefinition of the 80/20 rule is similar to duplicitous Middle Eastern leaders who say one thing in English for American/Western consumption and another thing in Arabic for local consumption.
Put all of this together, and it becomes clear that Susan Walsh is all about trying to keep men locked in to the feminist system here in the West. Just because she disagrees with (or is willing to sacrifice) some transgender sex-positive lesbians does not mean that Susan Walsh isn’t playing for Team Woman.
Haha, A.R. I forgot to write I referred to SW: http://www.hookingupsmart.com/2011/10/16/tidbits/dating-back-in-the-day/#comment-66587 you entrenched MRA! 😀
@Dalrock:
I think you just need to realize you’ve run into *exactly* why every society, that survives very long, produces a fairly strict social interaction order: it’s the only way to equalize the risks in relationships.
For a society to work, you need a rough set of “rules” for the interactions between the sexes to work. Since the rules have been 1/2 blown up but not allowed to realign themselves, we’re currently in a state where “woman who would make a good LTR” is damn hard to pick out from the “abusing you for money”. There is no “go to” set of signals to discern among each other, anymore, leaving everyone in a state of apprehension about the situations. This allows the unscrupulous to feast on the ones (male & female) that aren’t up to speed with the mess. It’s just a bad system all around.
Ah. Interesting RL. Let me take a look at the comment in question. Hmm. Thanks for that pointer, and for clearing up what you were trying to say.
So from that comment, it appears that Ms Walsh has difficulty in telling the difference between a criticism of her method and a personal attack upon her. Maybe she personalizes everything, I can’t tell and I sure as heck am not going to expend time reading that entire stack of comments in an effort to find out – I already clicked on Dalrock’s comment, and saw the two adjacent ones, that’s enough for one day. But that kind of comment isn’t one that an honest researcher would make. It is more in keeping with someone cherry-picking data to support a previously reached conclusion.
PMAFT, it’s worse than the IP issue, although that is significant. It’s the small study cited where women and men were divided into three groups for a survey that included “number of sex partners”. One group had no anonymity, the second group was provided with an anonymous form and the third group had fake electrodes fastened to them that they were told were connected to a lie detector. Women in the first group reported fewest number of partners, in the second reported more, and reported a still higher number in the third group. So even anonymity is not enough to convince young women to accurately report the number of sex partners. Only a “lie detector”, implying that they will be caught if they lie, leads to honesty.
It’s a small study, to be sure, and one could criticize it on those grounds in terms of statistical significance. But Ms Walsh didn’t do that, she totally ignored it. Now, some may ask “AR, PMAFT, who cares?” We all should care, because Walsh’s claims aboubt the 80/20 ratio of sex activity in women/men in college rests upon one or two surveys. Therefore, the accuracy of such surveys matters. If those surveys are not accurate, then her conclusion is junk. Therefore, any study that demonstrates women lie about their number of partners even on anonymous tests is a serious blow to the underpinning of her entire 80/20 argument.
An honest researcher / debater would at least discuss the “lie detector” experiment, not ignore it. And that’s why this matters, because it has to do with the integrity of the data in question.
Oh, and on the argument that took place in the original thread this was about, an important point:
– If the sociological data uses self-reported survey data, it’s pretty much worthless. It’ll only give you a “ballpark” figure.
Since most data she was talking about was College students, and since you can’t independently verify most of it, the only way to get a rough idea is to figure out a middle ground between the Survey results “per person” and the Survey results of their “impressions” of the local SMP. Somewhere in the middle is the answer.
Just the truth of dealing with sociological data. Oh, and never trust education statistics either. They’re worse.
Susan is comepletely lost on this one. She is still talking investment in a woman stuff. Look, guys know what women have to offer. Sex and only sex that is it. Courting and emotional investment is for women that really have something to give that is soothing and enriching. Women don’t do that anymore. (all women don’t) Men are reminded of this from day one. Every day in all levels and places in society men are liars, perverts,rapist,pedophiles,thieves,deadbeats,immature, oppressors,cowards,adulterers, abusers,sexist, achohalics etc. etc. add as needed to get it all in. To even with all of that come up with a premise like she has as a basis of this relationship blogging is pure madness for any normal thinker. This is an example of solipsism of a female mind. Completely lacking in anything but self. There is no reason to discuss anything with this lady.
I know I’m not the only one that has noticed this. I need to read other comments,this comment I posted come after getting a little more than 3 quarters through the article.
Dalrock, don’t you consider it significant that Ms Walsh chose to ask this question:
Do you think that a man will ever invest in her emotionally? Will he not hold that easy access against her, earnest or no, because it looks like (maybe is) promiscuity?
Why didn’t she ask of the 87 first dates woman “Do you think that she will ever invest in a man emotionally? Will she not be unable to overcome all that previous experience?”
Do you see any bias in Ms Walsh’s perspective, that could lead to significant blind spots in her ability to even look at certain data?
@anonymous x
Yeah, that is a bitter pill: I remember the point when I reached the exact same conclusion. The reasons for it aren’t obvious until you experience it yourself and figure it out for yourself. I buy drinks or do cheap/fun dates before sex, period. No dinner dates until after sex.
The of the things that was particularly hard for me to swallow was that women size you up quickly and react differently based on the result of their evaluation. If they perceive you as beta, you play by one set of rules with them. If they perceive you as alpha, you play by a different set of rules with them. The irony of dropping the “nice guy who takes girls on nice dates” frame and adopting the “I am the catch here, and I don’t pay for crap unless you prove yourself worthy of my attention” frame is that it’s actually far more successful. One must just keep that frame and not pursue any girl who doesn’t step into it. When I first started reading game writing, the true players would rip on guys who had what was called a “Madonna-whore complex.” (i.e. separating girls into “good girls” and “bad girls” buckets.) I really wanted to hang onto my own Madonna-whore complex until my own life experience contradicted it too much. Women really are on a bell-curve continuum in terms of their sexual inclinations.
There are a few girls who really are “good girls,” who we might define as outliers on this bell curve. The problem is that it really takes time and effort to find them. Women are incredibly good as masking their intentions, and so it’s difficult to distinguish actual “good girls” from girls on the middle of the curve who just get off on stringing along a beta for awhile while being pounded on the side by more alpha guys who she can get sexual attention but not commitment from. With more life experience and more experience with women in general, now I can do a much better job of sorting out those two groups. However, my 25-year-old former self couldn’t, and the number of “fakers” vastly outnumbers the number of genuine good girls. It’s easy to see why twentysomething betas are just dropping out of the dating market.
That’s why the behavior of men is starting to become bimodal (dropouts vs. players): because the results are self-reinforcing. The guys that drop out become even bigger losers once they drop out, and the guys who are somewhat successful figure out what makes them successful with women and hone it. The only way to make the flip to being successful is to seduce a bunch of women (and in the process contaminating the pool and making them less suitable partners) and by the time a guy gets good at it, why would he settle for one woman just to enter Marriage 2.0?
Some have pointed out that this creates a problem for actual “good girls,” but I think a lot of the girls who are doing the complaining (like the participants on HUS) aren’t the good girls they think themselves to be. My characterization of HUS as “a finishing school for hos” is perhaps backhandedly harsh but still more true than not. Susan’s proposed dating strategy of serial monogamy (which I call “carousel-riding light”) until marriage probably is the actual best strategy for most women in this absurd SMP, but many women execute that strategy poorly and end up at the end of the ride without a mate for a variety of reasons which are often discussed on these fora.
For the actual good girls, the right strategy seems simple: just choose a more beta guy. The problem that good girls of marriageable age don’t have the life experience to choose a guy who will actually invest in her rather than to just offer to donate sperm. She may figure that out with age and sexual experience, but then she’s no longer a good girl. So, that’s why women were actually better off while their choices were more constrained by society. Young women are just drunk on their own sexual power in a way even they don’t understand themselves until they reach their thirties.
This stuff really is tearing our culture apart. Despite the BS of feminism, men really are better at solving most real-world issues. Women are often competent but almost never exceptional, and the average man is still going to be better than the average woman at virtually everything except reading people, raising infants or influencing groups of people with emotional arguments. Women are good at jumping-through-the-hoops sorts of tasks (like school). However, real-world problems are often best solved by abstract “thinking outside the box“ solutions that men are better at. Even when our social and legal frameworks are slanted so heavily in favor of women, they still don’t get ahead of men by most adult, real-world metrics. The cost of all these frameworks is high since it causes betas to lose incentive to invest, and therefore the “pie of wealth” in our culture is getting smaller. Everyone knows the pie is getting smaller and are freaked out by it: look at all the protests across the western world. When everything is getting progressively better every year (like 1940-2000), everyone is happier because the pie is growing. Now the pie is shrinking, and people are scared. Very few can connect the dots and understand the root causes, and so the reaction of most people is toward interventionist government policies that just redistribute the pie to the complainers, but they don’t see (or don’t care) that the disincentives this creates will cause the pie to be smaller in the future. As more people drop out this process reinforces itself. We are all Greece now.
I did get quite a rise out of Susan. “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.”
I did get quite a rise out of Susan. “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.”
Great comment, Greenlander.
It’s always bothered me that Walsh’s blog is called Hooking Up Smart. It seems to imply, You can slut it up and ride the carousel as much as you want– as long as you do it the smart way. You go girl!” I always assumed this was just her playing to an audience and trying to be hip, but now I wonder.
@Anonymous Reader
Yes. But I don’t see it as malicious. We have different perspectives, and honest people will at times disagree in good faith. Susan’s question comes from a frame that probably 99.9% of men and women today have. We need to break this frame so that people can look at it from a broader perspective. Once you do this, I think the second part of your question is very obvious. Of course people should be asking what is going on with women who need huge numbers of men to find one worth even a LTR (with no term and no commitment).
You are forcing my hand a bit here as I’m working on a post on that question. My basic take is that:
1) The data on hookups/partner counts for women is a disaster. All of the issues with the data you and others have brought up strike me as correct. Not having reliable data cuts both ways though. I don’t see anyone in a position to prove that the 80/20 rule is correct with data.
2) There probably are more than 20% of college women who aren’t actively or passively riding the carousel. Unlike Susan however I think these women aren’t really on the sidelines. I strongly suspect that they are quietly pairing up with high quality betas and getting on with their lives. They don’t tear up the dating scene, probably aren’t at the keg parties. They most definitely aren’t writing blogs (or commenting on blogs) about the challenges of being a single woman.
3) The 80/20 stat while not provable and probably not accurate numerically, gives a more accurate perspective of the reality of the college hookup scene than Susan’s 20/20 80/80 figures. The women I mentioned in point 2 are moving silently through the process, and the average beta guy won’t have a shot with them unless she basically picks him. The women he meets when searching for one are almost certainly heavily tilted towards actual or passive carousel riders. It doesn’t matter to him whether she is holding out for alphas she is having sex with, or alphas she isn’t having sex with.
>”Seriously though, if the woman gives the man
>what he wants first, what guarantee does she
>have that there will be any dates?”
There is none — only the guarantee that if she DOESN’T give him what he wants first, she will never get any dates at all.
>”Will he not hold that easy access against her,
>earnest or no, because it looks like (maybe is)
>promiscuity?”
Perhaps he will. If you put out, he’ll think you’re a slut. If you don’t, he’ll leave you for a woman who does. That’s the new reality of the dating world for women. Either embrace their inner slut or embrace their dozen cats.
Note the frame doesn’t really match the message.
What is really going on here is selling the message the reader wants to hear and cutting it with some other stuff they don’t. Its our old friends, the ‘perfect’ divorce and the fantasy of endless choice.
If I told you I’d spent two years trying on shoes before I found a pair that fit, you could be forgiven for suspecting that my grumble was the shoe industry was letting me down. So I have a pair of shoes, and they look dorky, they aren’t that comfortable, but hey, you know with my dreadful feet I had no alternative so you’ll be polite I hope.
However, look carefully at how Ginger has written her blurb. Big figures, positive ‘reviews’. Nicely done, the absence of alternatives has become a profusion of choice, job done. Get divorced at 45? 40,000 men want to get to know you better. You go girlfriend. Thats what readers want to hear, that part. It isn’t about ‘fearless dating’, or as such abusing the courtship idea, its about fearlessly keeping the choice fantasy alive. Perversely, its the absence of commitment that makes the choice fantasy more and more important. Vicious circle really.
Taking out the point about risk there’s an even bigger flaw to this strategy: Game (and near all experiences from men and former players) teaches that if a man shows feelings or emotional attachment too early it turns a woman off yet that’s precisely what women want you to do. Granted, in theory it’s a good plan, but in reality it’s exactly what kills the attraction and without attraction there can be no progress.
Dalrock:
If you remember, a few blogs ago, you mentioned the lack of value that women in our culture place on men. In light of that devaluation, attitudes like Susan Walsh’s are understandable. Since women see all men as pigs, it shouldn’t be surprising that they treat us like we are, regardless.
Last week on the subway, I overheard two Amerobitches talking. One invited the other to a favorite nightclub, but the other said that she didn’t have any money. ‘Oh, that’s no problem.’ the other said. “I just show up and men buy men drinks all night. I’ve never paid for one that I can remember!’
And women wonder why more and more men are abandoning them for other options.
Dalrock
Susan’s question comes from a frame that probably 99.9% of men and women today have. We need to break this frame so that people can look at it from a broader perspective.
I’d find that easier to accept if she had not gone out of her way to insult me on Badger’s blog for daring to question a claim I found (and find) absurd. In my experience, people who can’t stand up to a pretty straightforward question are often holding weak premises they are afraid to reveal, or even examine privately. So maybe she’s not malicious, but she seems mendacious to me because of the repeated poor, even bad, behavior. I’m reaching the point where not only do I not trust her conclusions, I am going to have to check any facts she posts to see if she got them correct or not.
There seem to be a couple of unstated premises lurking in that question, along the lines of “He must commit, and she must have some choice”. Maybe I’m reading too much into it.
Once you do this, I think the second part of your question is very obvious. Of course people should be asking what is going on with women who need huge numbers of men to find one worth even a LTR (with no term and no commitment).
My questiion should be painfullly obvious. Good grief! Just how much of a narcissist does one have to be to go on 87 first dates, or screen thousands of men in search of Mister RIght? It’s like some sort of insane-clown-four-ring-circus of entitlement. And yet, so far as I can tell, no one even questions the idea, because It’s Her Choice, etc. But there’s more. We can agree that these women represent an extreme, yes, but if that’s the extreme, 2 or even 3 Sigma out, what does that tell us about the much more abundant 1 Sigma women? Are they the “normal” ones who only screen 1,000 men? What does that tell us about the median, for that matter? It tells me that “self esteem” is vastly overrated, for a start.
I did not intend to force your hand on the data. Frankly, I don’t trust any of it now, the methodology for surveying is too questionable just for a start. I can’t support the 80/20 number, heck, I can’s support any number due to the problems that have shown up. Furthermore, given what genetics tell us about men and women who succeeded in having children in the past (see Roy Baumeister’s work), I find the 20/20 80/80 idea to be little more than a Just So story. It’s too pat, far too pat. More likely some minority set of the men are having sex with a larger subset of the women, and I won’t even speculate what that is. Anecdotes aside, it’s very likely that a substantial majority of the men don’t have sex, and some plurality of the women do, and that’s based on Baumeister. I suspect that any data gathered in this area is going to have a pretty ugly Confidence Interval for obvious reasons. If the CI is too out of hand, then the data is essentially worthless.
Your point #2 and the similar assumption in #3 are likely. I see anecdotes to support that. In order to put some meat on that data skeleton a multi-year survey study would have to be done on some number of college campuses, at a guess. Because teasing that subset of women you describe out of the larger body of women would not be easy. It would be interesting to compare and contrast them with their classmates; what beliefs do they hold in common, what are different? One thing for sure, such women could be considered to be “countercultural” in a literal sense of the word. Because they are in multiple ways ignoring or even flouting the currently established social norms. Therefore, if there are any commonalities within that subgroup of women that can be determined, that would tell young Beta men who are mate-minded where they should concentrate their efforts.
In closing I want to thank you for the work that you put into this blog. I can’t think of anyone else who even attempts to perform even the most cursory of analysis of real data, and you do it in a way that is understandable to a wide range of readers. Plus you don’t talk down to readers. Good job.
The women I mentioned in point 2 are moving silently through the process, and the average beta guy won’t have a shot with them unless she basically picks him. The women he meets when searching for one are almost certainly heavily tilted towards actual or passive carousel riders. It doesn’t matter to him whether she is holding out for alphas she is having sex with, or alphas she isn’t having sex with.
This is my impression as well. It’s true that a certain % of women are finding their higher betas and pairing off with them, but that doesn’t help young men who are searching for mates, because the kinds of women who are in the “searchable” part of the marketplace are very much either carousel riders or carousel watchers — whichever they are, both are bad for most men.
This stuff really is tearing our culture apart. Despite the BS of feminism, men really are better at solving most real-world issues. Women are often competent but almost never exceptional, and the average man is still going to be better than the average woman at virtually everything except reading people, raising infants or influencing groups of people with emotional arguments. Women are good at jumping-through-the-hoops sorts of tasks (like school). However, real-world problems are often best solved by abstract “thinking outside the box“ solutions that men are better at. Even when our social and legal frameworks are slanted so heavily in favor of women, they still don’t get ahead of men by most adult, real-world metrics. The cost of all these frameworks is high since it causes betas to lose incentive to invest, and therefore the “pie of wealth” in our culture is getting smaller. Everyone knows the pie is getting smaller and are freaked out by it: look at all the protests across the western world.
This is more or less correct. I do think that it is not completely irrational for many men to drop out under the current circumstances, because the games (education, corporate promotions through middle management, relationships) are all decisively stacked against most men. Warcraft looks more interesting to many guys than playing real-world games that are stacked against them.
My questiion should be painfullly obvious. Good grief! Just how much of a narcissist does one have to be to go on 87 first dates, or screen thousands of men in search of Mister RIght? It’s like some sort of insane-clown-four-ring-circus of entitlement. And yet, so far as I can tell, no one even questions the idea, because It’s Her Choice, etc.
I think the main reason is that the “frame”, as Dalrock points out, is that the reason for this is that men are almost universally poor mate choices, and that only a small minority of men is really suitable to be a mate for even the average woman. It’s a deep misandry in the culture. And men participate in it as well because it is used by men, either directly or indirectly (i.e., to make themselves feel better psychologically) as a way to one-up other men by effectively negging most men (other than themselves, of course).
For the actual good girls, the right strategy seems simple: just choose a more beta guy. The problem that good girls of marriageable age don’t have the life experience to choose a guy who will actually invest in her rather than to just offer to donate sperm. She may figure that out with age and sexual experience, but then she’s no longer a good girl. So, that’s why women were actually better off while their choices were more constrained by society. Young women are just drunk on their own sexual power in a way even they don’t understand themselves until they reach their thirties.
That is another disconnect in the culture, mothers and grandmothers used to do that job, help to them to recognize good bets and dads used to also be scary and command enough respect to filter them out. Mothers are afraid to tell their daughters they are wrong nowadays. Is very funny in my country women prefer girls to boys because they are easier to raise, in here around 10 women I know prefer boys. I guess that is another sing to what gender is the feral one or not depending on culture, YMMV.
Dalrock is right, the data around sex is highly unreliable and always has been. Both sexes fudge the numbers, in different directions. I am familiar with the lie detector study, and do not dispute it, or the fact that women lie to avoid appearing promiscuous. In that particular study of only 100 college women, the women were split into three groups. Women who thought they were attached by electrode claimed 4.4 partners, and the other two groups reported 3.4 and 2.6 partners. None of these groups demonstrate frequent hooking up behavior, according to these numbers. So the study doesn’t really tell us anything new or very significant, which is why I chose not to engage Basil, especially since he was using shaming language.
On the other hand, I provided links to three posts with far more robust data supporting my argument, and no one apparently bothered to read them. The Dept. of Justice study on sexual assault puts the number of college virgins at 37% for women and 43% for men. It was aweb-based survey that students accessed with a link, and no identifying information was provided. The study has been considered highly credible by academics, who are well aware of the difficulty in getting sex data.
http://www.hookingupsmart.com/2011/04/28/hookinguprealities/whos-really-having-sex-in-college/
So these claims that I cherry pick data and ignore the arguments of others are pure hypocrisy. Those posts all generated significant discussion on my own blog, which is available for anyone interested in getting to the truth, or at least an honest attempt to derive it. Again, with all due respect to Dalrock, I have seen no data analysis that contradicts my own. Until I see insights based on more than intuition or personal observation of the SMP, that’s my position and I’m sticking to it.
As for why PMAFT wore out his welcome at HUS:
For the record, I am not opposed to men finding wives overseas, I think that’s a personal choice. I just won’t have HUS used as a platform for pushing that agenda, which always involves talking about how terrible American women are.
Since it’s my blog it will naturally reflect my own political agenda, though I am happy to debate and do so quite actively. As much as I respect Dalrock, it’s not feasible for me to spend a lot of time on other blogs. If I fail to respond to any particular comment it’s either because I believe it’s not made in good faith, I’ve already addressed the issue at length at HUS, I don’t have free time at that moment or I’ve provided links that were subsequently ignored.
In retrospect, my tactic of paying for myself or going dutch when I was dating helped me distance myself from feeling obliged towards my date–that way, I thought, if I wanted to pursue the relationship it wasn’t because I felt obligated by their investment.
This sort of thing is brought up all the time. I call BS. I don’t believe that in all of recorded history, any woman has ever felt obligated to continue dating/be nice to/put out for a guy because he ponied up for food and drinks. Sure, some women may have done so out of calculation in order to keep the flow of goodies coming (whores), but that’s very different from feeling obligated to do so. This hypothesized feeling strikes me as completely incompatible with the observed characteristics of the female mind.
My husband is one of the guys that left and married overseas and Susan has been nothing but supportive of us, so she is of Hope another foreigner wife so really, no to mention that now that I live here I do want the women of USA to behave better for the sake of the culture I’m going to raise my son and daughter into and the culture that influences everyone’s else in the continent, so I don’t find anything wrong with her making sure that what happens in American SMP stays in American SMP, fix this one and the rest will follow IMO.
@Susan
The funny thing is that you are doing a lot of good work for getting the word out and they decide to nitpick/purists (only certain arguments should be accepted as manosphere friendly,the rest is crap!), instead of seeing the big picture. The maxim of the manosphere is that women are self interested creatures so of course anyone wanting to bring women to see how terrible men are doing needs to appeal to their interest first, that is a no brainer.
Men doing it can fall into one extreme being too lenient to women and lose the respect of the other men (manginas and all that) or become angry posters that insist in communicate in masculine ways to appeal to women in mass, useless strategy, and become easy target for feminists (Marcotte Nice Guys TM and the likes) to keep scaring the other women into supporting an institution that is only destructive and utterly based in fear of the men bugeyman, so it has to be a woman and obviously that is you so far (of course they can maybe suggest another female poster that has managed to achieve your level of success into making people notice that men are not happy and the equality camp is a sham, I’m all ears) then after they are paying attention we can start discussing things like family court, alimony laws and job discrimination… Baby steps and all that.
There is no such thing as “hooking up smart” for a woman. Any time a woman gives sex without it leading to an LTR, she loses out, due to decreased reputation amongst her friends, in her community, and psychological baggage she accrues.
Why I have no time for Susan Walsh:
For the record, I am not opposed to men finding wives overseas, I think that’s a personal choice. I just won’t have HUS used as a platform for pushing that agenda …*
That’s a … peculiar definition of “not opposed to” you’ve got there, sugartits. “I’m not opposed to it, but if you advocate it, I’ll ban you.” Drop dead.
To explain why I hate this perspective: Family law in the US is fuX0red. If you’re a man, your choices are:
a.) Take your chances in a rigged game that was designed by feminists to turn you into a pack mule for women who hate and despise you.
b.) Remain single, childless, and doomed to evolutionary death.
c.) Expat.
(c.) is the only course of action that can be recommended in good faith to a man. (Either of the other two are fine if they appeal to you, but to sell them to another man is morally suspect at best.) Therefore, anyone who’s on the warpath against expatting is a de facto enemy of men.
* Walsh’s quote is truncated. It ends with: “… which always involves talking about how terrible American women are.” This is a lie. The problem with the US marriage market is not primarily the women, it is the laws.
The use of data from college students is distortive in itself, if used as a method of divining conditions for wider society. College students are generally in the upper half of the cognitive hierarchy, with the often requisite different behaviours to match their generally superior f.t.o, which would lead to a moderate skewing effect for any data collected. A significant proportion of them also could not be said to be part of mainstream US culture (strangely, one sub-group that here actually works to improve the general public facade of female behaviour is the same group regularly disparaged by Susan and her ilk, when they threaten the trade union’s ‘turf’). This, as well as the many other factors raised by some commentators here, combine to render Susan’s theories at best unproven, and more likely, not remotely representative of reality.
Herewith four brief observations on the data —
Point the first: Should the real partner number for college women indeed be around the 4.4 mark, I say with a degree of certainty that your typical marriage-minded man would not regard that figure as particularly low.
Point the second: 4.4 represents a nearly 70 percent increase over 2.6. It is, in fact, a hair’s breadth away from the rule of thumb that one should double whatever number a woman reports. The corresponding rule of thumb for men is to halve the reported number. Thus a man and a woman who both report 4 partners are conventionally estimated as having 2 partners in the male case, and 8 in the female. Modifying those numbers by 70% yields corrected estimates of 3 partners for the male and 7 for the female. It strikes me as eminently reasonable to look at these numbers and see in them an embodiment of the spirit of that now-infamous 80/20 rule, if not its specific numerical prophecy.
Point the third: A woman with 4 partners has twice as many as a man with 2 partners. Why is this significant? Because the tables I have seen from the Dept. o’ J. study do not allow one to determine the percentage of college men with 2 partners vis-a-vis their female counterparts with 4 partners. I imagine this data would be enlightening, but it is unavailable, because anyone in that range is dropped in the same “1 to 5 partners” bucket.
Point the fourth: By game standards, a man who can bed a new woman every month is considered to be quite accomplished. A new woman every 2-3 months is intermediate results, and every 6-12 months is the type of work turned in by a man who is new to the game. I counsel a reflective pause, and then this: if a neophyte practitioner of gamecan expect a handful of new conquests a year in the early goings, what does that imply about his results pre-game? Not to put to fine a point on it, I would say the implication is crushing loneliness – the emasculating type that a man would not want to admit to anyone. Not to himself – not even to an anonymous internet survey. Which would quite possibly explain why nearly four times as many women as men responded to said survey.
I hate to say it, but I can’t take the women bloggers seriously. There have been to many studies, and too much anecdotal experience, that women will always seek to manipulate perceptions for their own self-benefit. For instance, I’m sure you all know of the one study where pre-menopausal women uniformly said that an older woman was more attractive than a clearly more attractive younger woman. How can you read something like that, and then expect women to seriously analyze these issues?
For instance, many of these women offer advice on dating, in the guise of helping younger women. But even encouraging them to date in the first place is hurting them.
Remain single, childless, and doomed to evolutionary death.
You could go the single father surrogacy route, though. Some MRAs, most notably TFH, if I recall correctly, are quite enthusiastic about things like the Rotunda Clinic in India.
You could go the single father surrogacy route, though.
You are correct that this is an option that I overlooked. It strikes me as a bad idea, for many of the same reasons that single motherhood is a bad idea. I strongly suspect that the intersection of militant anti-expatters and single-father-surrogate advocates is the null set.
Well, it depends. It’s commonly held among MRAs that single fathers aren’t as bad as single mothers (the stats I’ve seen *kind of* support this, but those stats consist of an image I once found on 4chan, so I obviously take it with a grain of salt), and there are plenty of guys who’ve done this, the most prominent being celebrities (Cristiano Ronaldo is the one TFH brings up).
Now, I’m not a ‘father through surrogacy’ m’self, just saying it’s an option, and if TFH and other MRAs are any indication, one which could be offered “in good faith” to a man.
I’m pretty sure a detailed scientific survey of STD rates, broken down by sex and age cohort, would prove the 20/80 rule (or 20/60 rule).
Sugartits? Nice bunch of guys you’ve got here Dalrock. They really know how to debate in good faith with an open mind. Are men this offensive when they argue among themselves?
@twenty
One of my most loyal commenters is Abbot, a man who expatted to Mexico to marry. I give him nearly free reign but delete about 1 in 25 comments or so. The ones where he says American women are disgusting, ruined, etc. It’s not a message I approve for my young American female readers. And Abbot is cool with that.
@Anonymous
Making out is hooking up. The term can mean any degree of physical contact from kissing to intercourse. The only constant is that there is no expectation of further contact between the parties – it is strictly no strings. Hooking up smart means doing more kissing and less banging, as a rule.
@tspoon
I study hookup culture. That is a specific aspect of the SMP practiced primarily by college students and recent graduates. I am not trying to extrapolate to the larger SMP, although much of it is applicable, particularly as college graduates increasingly bring those norms into their 20s and forego dating altogether.
@Mencken
According to the data I linked above:
Females:
37% of college women are virgins
Two-third of virgins have been in relationships.
54% have had 1-5 sexual partners ( oral, P in V, or anal)
69% have been in 1-5 relationships. By definition, relationship sex is not hooking up because there is an agreement of exclusivity.
3% have had 11+ partners.
Males:
43% are virgins
Over half of those have been In relationships.
49% have had 1-5 sexual partners.
68% have been in 1-5 relationships.
2% have had 11+ partners.
Clearly, the data portrays very similar sexual and relationship experiences for men and women in college.
If you have data that contradicts this, I would be very interested to see it.
As to your points, men may indeed turn out to consider most women too sexually experienced to be good candidates for marriage, which is their right. I believe there are as many sexually inexperienced women as men, so there is a pool from which they can select.
Second, as casual sex becomes increasingly common and the culture continues to promote it heavily, there is some evidence that women are more open and less ashamed about their sexual experience. You may have seen Kate Bolick mention that she was surprised how open the women in my focus group were about their experiences. I was too, frankly, especially since they can all be easily identified by some readers. If anything, at HUS the women who express the most unwillingness to share their number are virgins, sadly.
In general, talking about 70% increases or 100% differential is not useful when you’re working off a very small base. This is one of the ways people deceive with statistics. The point is that the data clearly disproves any notion that 80% of women are having sex, period. It also disproves the idea that any but a tiny percentage of men are having even three different partners per year. this is a far cry from what the media portrays, and indeed college students regularly estimate that 75-85% of students on campus had sex in a given weekend, when the real number is 5-10%.
@hollenhund
I am curious as to the evolution of your thinking. You were insistent that the 80/20 rule applied to the incidence of sexual intercourse, not the number of women that have sex with men. That was your hypothesis and you requested many times that I examine the data to prove it, which I did. Now you assume a completely different position? What made you change your mind? Have you seen another analysis or learned of some new information that nullifies the previous findings?
Of all the people to be taking fire in the manosphere, Susan Walsh seems a strange target. The flaws of her blog are myriad and documented, but I’m surprised at the intensity of the anti-HUS fervor here.
I don’t understand why it’s such a point of contention that she won’t allow her blog to be a platform for bashing American women/promoting expat marriages—after all her blog is trying to help young American women pair up. No she doesn’t spend loads of time railing against the divorce industry, but she has addressed the topic and we know where she stands. And I don’t know any woman blogger who has been more willing to actually dig into the data, do actual analysis, and put aside a fair number of her own initial biases and misandry to get to a more fair and balanced place.
The anger, the frothing at the mouth, personal attacks and desperate need for her to respond to comments—all sound like a need for validation. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think all these angry guys were being gamed by Ms. Walsh.
This isn’t to say I think her blog is without reproach. It is, in large part, a finishing school for hos. What she is doing on her blog is, effectively, promoting serial monogamy. Some of her commentariat is callow and annoying. But she’s not really to blame for most of that, as that’s what our culture is churning out. That women don’t learn until after they’ve been encouraged to take a battalion of cock is not something to be laid at her feet. Her blog is a single step in the right direction.
At the risk of white knighting for Susan Walsh, I’ll say this: question her flaws and biases, but I think it’s safe to say at this point her motivations are fairly pristine. Yes, some of her opinions are somewhat heterodox…but it would be even weirder if she adopted MRA positions of maximalist purity. Even most MRAs depart from orthodoxy at times.
Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
I am reminded of Doctor Johnson , (in response to Boswell) who when asked whether there were fifty women for any man, replied that there were fifty thousand. He also said that after due consideration of the character of the parties the choice of spouse should be left to the decision of the Lord Chancellor. Clearly America needs a Lord Chancellor. Ms Emas would however be wise to consider Johnson’s other advice – concerning re-marraige – that it was a triumph of hope over experience.
@ Susan Walsh
I am grateful for the definition of Hooking Up Smart (now I know) : As you write above ‘More kissing: Less banging’. I remember when girls were like that, and it was what we would call Prick-Tease (it would leave the boys hot and panting which is not really a good idea, and of course the girls too would too often lose control). I think that needs a rethink.
So… kissing is smart and banging is not? 😉
I seriously doubt that any research on people’s sexual behaviors will be very credible as long as that definition is widely accepted.
And I also seriously doubt that much progress will be made toward improving the relations between men and women as long as so many people are invested in perpetuating the denial that some women actually like sex. The strategy of blaming all sexual desire on men and forcing them to purchase intimacy with women rewards those who don’t deserve to be rewarded and punishes those who don’t deserve to be punished.
@ dragnet
She claims shes a part of the solution, when in reality shes a part of the problem. Its another form of feminism in disguise. Men are sick of it. That’s why shes taking fire.
Twenty says:
October 23, 2011 at 2:18 am
“* Walsh’s quote is truncated. It ends with: “… which always involves talking about how terrible American women are.” This is a lie. The problem with the US marriage market is not primarily the women, it is the laws…” and how women abuse those laws.
There, fixed it for you. If women did not use those laws so brutally against men, particularly the fathers of their child(ren), then the laws would not matter.
“Insistent” is too strong a word, Ms. Walsh. There’s not much to insist on with regard to the 80/20 rule since there’s no scientific research to back it up other than voluntary surveys, which are notoriously unreliable. In fact, there’s not much at all to base an opinion on. The personal testimonies of men are pretty much the only thing we can go on. I stand by my theory that 20% of men are engaged in 80% of all sexual intercourse. It’s probably also true that 20% of men and 80% of women are participants in the hookup culture. The figure for women may be lower, i.e. 60% or 40%, but I’m sure it’s not 20%. We must factor in the existence of “carousel watchers” (brilliant term btw), i.e. the women who refuse to have casual sex with alphas but nevertheless refuse to consider betas as mates.
And yes, communication between men can easily get pretty ugly and blunt.
The flipside, of course, is that a small minority of women are probably receiving a vastly disproportionate amount of male resources (money, time etc.)
H,
“And yes, communication between men can easily get pretty ugly and blunt.”
Mutual insults between men are how we communicate that things are good between us. It’s like young bucks bashing horns for fun. Bluntness is valued on several levels.
“Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good”
I do believe this is a persistant male trait. In the same way that women are brutal with sexual partners that are not attractive (nuclear rejecting, creep labeling and name calling) men are socially brutal with anyone that might want to join their group. If we go to evo-bio might be because they only want to stronger allies and are filtering out weakest links to be able to only have the better men for the job.
I have a similar experience with my first literary circle in which I was one of the few women, the guys were brutal with the newbies no matter how young insulting their efforts and telling them that their work only deserved the trash can and things like that. I was very hard on them telling them to not be that “elitists” and allow the new guys to enter the group so they could learn better writing and they were very death set in only having the best of the best, as a result once we all moved on into publishing or/and other projects there was no new blood left for the circle to continue and it died. General’s know that an army needs all types of soldier trying to make an army out of the only ones that will do their best is very likely to end up in disaster, cannon fodder exist for a reason, YMMV.
@SW wait what? Hookup culture primarily occurs on campus? This phenomenon has spread from campus to society at large? This is instructive for me as I here observe you informing us that college is where all the casual sex is (but it’s not really happening at all…). Surely casual sex on campus is either more prevalent or less (or even just comparable), but not all of those options simultaneously within any given argument…
@Susan
Let us start off with something we certainly agree on: that an epithet along the lines of “sugartits” has nothing more than a corrosive impact on a spirited debate, at best. To be honest, I think this is more a phenomenon of internet anonymity than anything else. Witness, “John Gabriel’s Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory”: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/3/19/
Now, in the interest of concision, I will focus the balance of this comment on addressing your rejoinder to what strikes me as the meatiest of topics – in brief, the notion that the data presented invalidates the 80/20 role. Before proceeding, allow me to precisely express my claim: that the data presented neither confirms nor invalidates the 80/20 rule.
For context, let us define said rule. I will not pretend to speak for all players across space and time, but I am reasonably confident that the received wisdom regarding the 80/20 rule is not that exactly 80% of women are sleeping with exactly 20% of men. The true spirit of the principle, in my eyes, is that a minority of men are having sex with a majority of the women *who are having sex.* Thus, if 50% of women are sleeping with 5% of men, that would be an example of the 80/20 rule in action. And the reason such a situation may merit consternation is that, if 5% of the men have claimed 50% of the women, the remaining 95% of men are left to compete over the remaining 50% of women. Quite the killjoy, that.
For all intents and purposes, then, the 80/20 rule represents the concept of soft polygamy being sufficiently prevalent so as to cause the lives of the monogamy minded men to suck. And it is this notion that I think the data neither confirms nor invalidates. I have distilled this rationale into three points.
First, the 1 to 5 bucket provides insufficient granularity. Let us focus solely on the population of men and women who reported to the survey that they had sex with 1 to 5 partners. Within this population, how many men have 1 partner, and how many women? 2 partners? 4 partners? It well could be that the majority of men in the 1 to 5 bucket only have one or two partners, and the majority of women in that same bucket have four to five partners. Or the opposite. Or maybe it all is a wash. Trouble is, we cannot tell – and because a majority of respondents rated themselves as members of the 1 to 5 bucket, this information is important. (Couple this with the self-evident ramifications of the ‘+’ in the ’11+’ bucket and the point becomes starker.)
Second, the greater percentage of male virgins should give one pause for consideration, especially considering that college campuses are now female dominated. And when one considers that, yes, men are more likely to artificially inflate their numbers, and women are more likely to artificially deflate their numbers, the difference between reported male and female virginity rates starts to look less like noise.
Third – and most importantly – that nearly four times as many women as men responded to the survey indicates that there are a lot of guys who did not feel like engaging in what is one of the favorite past times of the sexually successful male: bragging. Such is the male ego that a discrepancy of that magnitude would suggest a prevalence of sexual losers among the male population.
Now, I do not pretend to claim that, in light of the above, the data actually proves the 80/20 rule. Obviously, I take stock in the 80/20 rule, and I do not see the data as conflicting with that view. But the reason is because of my own personal experience and testimonial evidence, which I readily admit is hardly worthy of consideration as rigorous science. Still, if the data is a wash, but my own experience and the testimony of those I trust inclines me to believe the 80/20 rule, well, can I really be faulted for such belief? This, I believe, is the position from which most men here operate. “Perhaps the data is not there, but acting has if it were has been immensely profitable for my sex life. Does that not lend credence to the prospect of verity?”
As an aside, I do indeed think there are quality girls out there. I have a sister who serves as an example of exactly the perspective Dalrock delineates on this matter: to wit, that the quality girls are quietly pairing off with the guys they want. Trouble is, for every 1 of these girls, there are 2 corresponding guys. Half of those guys are lucky enough to be selected by such a girl. The other half? Destined for interesting times, to say the least.
87 first dates? In two years?
So I’m a man. I’m looking back on my entire dating life pre-marriage which consists of about 12 years, more or less.
I think I went on about 100 dates. Not first dates. Dates. In 12 years. With about, oh, around 25 to 30 women. About half of those resulted in any sexual contact.
Women just have no clue at all what it’s like to try to date them. No idea at all.
On the subject of women meeting and rejecting large numbers of men, I think that’s quite prevalent on internet dating sites. When I started on Match, I assumed that any woman meeting me was potentially interested. I soon found, though, that a lot of them just wanted to look me over and then go on to the next guy. At first I thought there was something wrong with me but after being on there a couple years I’ve noticed that a lot of the women who rejected me are still out there. So it isn’t that they are passing me over and getting a better guy. They are passing me and other guys like me over and ending up in a relationship with nobody. From the number of female profiles complaining about guys playing games or wanting just sex, I’m also guessing that there’s a small number of alpha males who are willing to date down to get more sexual variety and some of these women are getting involved with them and end up angry when those guys don’t commit to them and continue to play the field. I read a news story one time about a rich handsome lawyer who slept with 55 women from internet dating sites and never married any of them. That’s the kind of guy women are passing me over for on internet dating sites. When they get angry and frustrated it’s kind of karma in a way and they are getting what they deserve. They reject so many guys and end up getting used and then rejected themselves.
Online dating sites really do just let hypergamy run amok.
LOL
In my many years of dating – punctuated by but a few relationships – I’ve had well over 50 first dates. Yeah, I’m THAT guy.
My takeaway after all those dates?
Before a woman is intimate with a man (emotionally or physically), she’s looking for a reason to reject him. Roissy nailed it.
http://theprivateman.wordpress.com/2011/02/18/rules-for-single-women/
I agree. I make note of the IP issue because the group of invisible beta young men suffering with no attention from women are going to be the group most likely to know that such a promise of anonymity from this kind of a survey can’t be guaranteed. As someone who knows this stuff, I would never have participated in such a survey in college, and I can think of hundreds of similar guys when I was in college who wouldn’t have either. It’s not just women lying on the surveys. Men are too just in the other direction if they don’t avoid the surveys in the first place.
I’m not sure what’s wrong with communicating in masculine ways….
Yes, I can name a woman who has “managed to achieve your level of success into making people notice that men are not happy and the equality camp is a sham”. In fact, I can name a woman who is even more successful at it and is more well known than Susan Walsh: Helen Smith. Helen Smith is not in 100% agreement with MRAs nor even close. Despite this Helen Smith has never gotten anywhere near the same reaction that Susan Walsh is getting now. This shows that what is going on isn’t a problem of MRAs letting “perfect be the enemy of the good”. One difference between Helen Smith and Susan Walsh is that Helen Smith has taken a stand on issues like, “family court, alimony laws and [anti-male] job discrimination”. Susan Walsh has either downplayed the prevalence those issues or outright refused to talk about them.
If you think that MRAs are demanding “maximalist purity” then take a look at why, Helen Smith, who isn’t “maximalist pure” to mens rights, doesn’t get anything like the reaction Susan Walsh is getting here.
Susan Walsh is fluff blogger. A dating advice type. MRA type issues are just coincidental. She will adress mens issues only in so far as it inline with getting a girl a committed chump. Her audience is women and so the default will always be team woman. Helen Smith is also it seems interested in female relationships but sees the issue is based in law. Both seem to take care of team woman which is normal. Only one can see that misandry is a factor and the other just glosses over to not offend her audience. We MRA types are just letting it be known.
@dragnet
Of all the people to be taking fire in the manosphere, Susan Walsh seems a strange target.
Let me help you out with your perplexity by quoting and annotating your own post:
“[H]er blog is trying to help young American women pair up” in a SMP/MMP that’s tilted ludicrously in their favor at the expense of men.
“[S]he doesn’t spend loads of time railing against the divorce industry[.]”
“[H]er blog is … in large part, a finishing school for hos. What she is doing on her blog is, effectively, promoting serial monogamy[,]”, the female-preferred form of promiscuity which is destructive to society and opposed to the interests of men.
“[H]er commentariat is callow and annoying.”
H2H.
@Mencken
“Let us start off with something we certainly agree on: that an epithet along the lines of “sugartits” has nothing more than a corrosive impact on a spirited debate, at best.”
I’m not debating SW. I’m explaining why I hold her in contempt, and why you should too.
Ah, yes, looking back, it was Ray Manta who mentioned Mr. Ronaldo, not you. My apologies for my poor memory. Still, I was just saying that it was an option one could raise to a man in good faith, and you do mention it in the Misandry Bubble, so I hope that’s proof my mistake was not malicious 🙂
Susan walsh
I am familiar with the lie detector study, and do not dispute it, or the fact that women lie to avoid appearing promiscuous. In that particular study of only 100 college women, the women were split into three groups. Women who thought they were attached by electrode claimed 4.4 partners, and the other two groups reported 3.4 and 2.6 partners. None of these groups demonstrate frequent hooking up behavior, according to these numbers. So the study doesn’t really tell us anything new or very significant,
Excuse me, you are wrong. The study makes it clear that even with anonymity, women do not report number of sex partners accurately. Therefore any study that relies solely on anonymity will underreport the number of female sex partners and therefore the numbers will be wrong. I’m not aware of any study that attempts to correct this deliberate under-reporting. Therefore, any study that purports to have accurate estimates of the number of sex partners women have in the aggregate that does not control for the deliberate under-reporting is not worth the paper it is printed on. Your entire argument regarding 80/20 reiles on flawed studies that do not reflect reality. Your data is no good.
The Dept. of Justice study on sexual assault puts the number of college virgins at 37% for women and 43% for men. It was aweb-based survey that students accessed with a link, and no identifying information was provided.
And as has been pointed out to you before, because the Internet Protocol address is known, and the time of day the survey was taken is known, the claim of “no identifying information” is bunk. Given an IP address, I know the computer that the survey was taken on. Given the time of day, I can find out who was using that given computer to fill out the survey, and therefore anonymity is imaginary. Anyone who knows anything about how computer networks operate would know this. That means a whole lot of men, and some number of women. Correct me if I’m wrong, but the data set was taken from self selected people, i.e. those who chose to take the survey. If that is true, then it can not be considered a representative cross section of the cohort in question, because self-selected surveys are by definition skewed in favor of the subgroup willing to engage in being surveyed. This is elementary survey information, it’s why political pollsters go to such great trouble to call up a cross section of people within a given Congresional district, or state -because they want an accurate cross section.
The study has been considered highly credible by academics, who are well aware of the difficulty in getting sex data.
Appeal to authority is a fallacy. Either list off the academics and their credentials, or drop this.
So these claims that I cherry pick data and ignore the arguments of others are pure hypocrisy.
So far your defense appears to rest on ignorance of IP addresses, ignorance of basic polling requirements, deliberately ignoring the implications of the “lie detector” study and now an insult. Could you, Ms Walsh, please try using logic and reason some time? It would be more useful than this other stuff.
If I fail to respond to any particular comment it’s either because I believe it’s not made in good faith, I’ve already addressed the issue at length at HUS, I don’t have free time at that moment or I’ve provided links that were subsequently ignored.
You made a claim on Badger’s blog that you don’t see entitled women in your neighborhood. I call that bunk, and I pointed out how you can’t know that. You chose to resort to mid-school insults (and oh, the irony of whining about comments here when you are free with insults on Badger’s blog) and have refused to admit error.
Walsh, you claim to be able to spot entitled women just by looking at them. I’ve given you multiple opportunities to either admit that you can’t do that, or to prove just how you do it. I’ve pointed out that your claim flies in the face of many men who live with entitled women but who wear the mask in public. I’ve provided an opportunity for you do explain how your ability works. You have continued to dodge and avoid the adult responsibility to support your claim or withdraw it.
Frankly, I think that you are too proud of yourself, too arrogant, to admit to me that you are wrong. That’s why I see no reason to trust anything that you write, because you have refused to act like an adult over a simple thing. If you can’t be honest in a little thing “I don’t see entitled women in my neighborhood”, then it calls into question your honesty on every other issue. Every single one.
You started that fight at Badger’s blog, and when I didn’t back down from your bluster, you ran away. That speaks volumes to me about your honesty. You have plenty of time on your hands to post here, and other places when it pleases you to do so, therefore “I don’t have time” is a nonsense argument. You clearly don’t want to reply to me, perhaps because you can’t bring yourself to admit error to me. That’s your privilege but don’t expect me, or many other men, to have any respect for you when you pull such a stunt.
In closing, I wish to point out that in every interaction with Ms Walsh I have not one time used any foul language, nor have I dealt in insults. Ms holier-than-any-man Walsh, who is so upset by one word on this blog can not say the same, she has chosen to deliberately insult me more than once, and chosen to use childish, mid-school locker room words at least once. So who is the hypocrite in this case, eh? Who complains of foul language one time, and uses it another time? Who likes to dish it out, but can’t take it?
I believe the answers to my last three questions are obvious.
All due respect to everyone, Anon Reader, Hollenhund, PMAFT, all: Susan Walsh’s blog is marketed to young women seeking advice on relationships. One of her basic premises is that young women should avoid promiscuity because it’s not conducive to relationships. I don’t think Walsh claims to be an expert in gathering, reviewing or interpreting social science data, despite her having ventured into it on occasion. And I agree Walsh’s take on social science data hasn’t always been correct. And I don’t agree with her on everything.
She’s an ally. She’s not a perfect ally, but she’s one nonetheless. Walsh is one of the only women out there stumping in the manosphere. Frankly, any voice out there telling young women to stop being so stupid is better than none at all. We need all the help we can get.
Twenty:
Those are all good points on three of your comments to the Walsh-girl. In fact, I’ve been scratching my head here wondering where this blog has been going on this subject of ‘courtship’ and ‘dating’ and ‘hookups’. Any decent or intelligent American man would move as far out of the US relationship scene as possible.
Honestly, I couldn’t care less about what these bitches do. If they want to chase thugs and slut around with lowlifes—let them go, and avoid them like the plague afterwards, I say. Men don’t need to waste their lives on these parasitic bitches anymore. There are traditional, non-American women out there who are worth pursuing; and there’s MGTOW which is good too. But trying to give American women any credence—like this blog has been doing lately—is counterproductive to men’s welfare. Until they change their own attitudes, nothing will change; so it’s up to men to move out and move onwards.
@Mencken
Thanks for your thoughtful and measured reply. You may be surprised to learn that I don’t disagree with a single thing you’ve said. I have frequently written about female hypergamy and the loss of assortative mating after the Sexual Revolution. I credit Brendan with opening my eyes to this, FWIW.
In fact, I’ll go a step further. In today’s SMP most women – probably 90% – are attracted to the top 10% of men. I think it’s worse than you do! However, I know that there is some settling that goes on – college girls have a saying: “Boyfriends are ugly.” And of course many women understand that they don’t stand a chance against those slutty sorority girls. Finally, many women are not slutty, and not willing to act slutty, period. The prevalence of virgins proves that.
The real problem in this SMP is double edged:
1. Most men are invisible to women.
2. The total unleashing of female sexuality has resulted in women zeroing in on a few men with laser intensity.
This is the reason I am vociferously pro-Game and anti-feminism. I seek to redress the balance.
Well, well, well. So the “too busy” Susan Walsh somehow finds the time to read a blog that isn’t hers, and even comment there. So much for that flimsy, dishonest, mendacious excuse.
Susan Walsh, you have claimed that you can spot an entitled woman by just looking at her. I call that bunk, and I challenge you again to prove your ability, or admit that you were wrong to claim it. I challenge you again to admit that you have chosen insult rather than reason and debate on Badger’s blog.
I challenge you to prove that you are an adult, capable of admitting error. If you cannot be honest in a little thing, I challenge your honesty in every single thing. I say that you are an entitled female who is too arrogant, too proud, to admit to error.
Prove me wrong. Go ahead, if you have the guts. I don’t think you do.
deti
All due respect to everyone, Anon Reader, Hollenhund, PMAFT, all: Susan Walsh’s blog is marketed to young women seeking advice on relationships.
Understood. However, I question the motivation. I suspect that the blog is marketed to young women who want to “hook a man” for their own benefit. I further suspect that if there was some way to make it easier for young women to “hook a man” even if all the misandry remained in US culture, that would suit Walsh just fine. Because I suspect that all Walsh cares about is women – men are merely beasts of burden, walking wallets and sperm vending machines to her.
One of her basic premises is that young women should avoid promiscuity because it’s not conducive to relationships.
Good. But that doesn’t address any of the objections I raise just above.
I don’t think Walsh claims to be an expert in gathering, reviewing or interpreting social science data, despite her having ventured into it on occasion. And I agree Walsh’s take on social science data hasn’t always been correct. And I don’t agree with her on everything.
Walsh needs to learn what she should have learned in college: if you don’t know something, be mighty careful how you talk about it. If you don’t understand something, be careful how you use it. All I’ve seen from her has been arrogance and an utter refusal to admit any error, any time, in any way. Not impressive. I can find plenty of undergrads with that attitude, until the F shows up on their work.
She’s an ally.
I see no evidence of that, and I see evidence contradicting this claim. My ally would not engage in mendacious non-debate with me, for a start. Denying the direct experience that men who have entitled wives is not something an ally would do. Namecalling in lieu of debate is not something an ally would do. Refusal to admit error is not something a thinking ally would do. Deliberately trolling for flames in a thread where the site mod has said “no flames against Susan Walsh” is very much not something an ally would do. It now appears that she’s trying to pit Dalrock and the regular commentors against each other, a classic form of female treachery known as “Let’s You And Him Fight”.
Some ally.
She’s not a perfect ally, but she’s one nonetheless. Walsh is one of the only women out there stumping in the manosphere. Frankly, any voice out there telling young women to stop being so stupid is better than none at all. We need all the help we can get.
I question her status as an ally. She may have some interests in common with men, but it does not follow that makes her an ally. Her “stumping” of the manosphere that I’ve seen features falsehoods, insults, logical fallacies, arrogant displays of ignorance and now flame-trolling.
I don’t see how this is helpful to anyone except Ms Susan Walsh, an aging, menopausal second wave feminist who apparently has second thoughts after 30 years of benefiting from misandry, now that she would like to have some grandchildren. It certainly doesn’t help the beta men one damned bit and it is my beta brothers that I care about more than any feminist on the planet.
[D: Enough already. You have said your piece, now please leave it be.]
“Pro-Game” and “Anti-feminism” ignores the fact that a society full of game is unsustainable.
And not many men want to participate in playing musical chairs when their present is a girl who’s simply with them because she has no other choices to keep her in the style she is accustomed to.
Some of the most entitled women I’ve had chance to lay eyes on have been the ones who make a great show of their “charity to old people” but have no trouble engaging in relational aggression, premarital sex and drunkenness … all the while claiming to be religious.
@AR
“It now appears that she’s trying to pit Dalrock and the regular commentors against each other, a classic form of female treachery known as “Let’s You And Him Fight”. ”
Nailed it.
@ deti
No shes not an ally. Your judgement has been clouded man.
Where are all the trolls coming in from? Dalrock, do you think Omega Virgin Revolt has colonized your blog? I also wonder how many of these guys have been here before. Admittedly I’ve not read this blog much the past few weeks , but I don’t recognize half the names who are complaining about Ms Walsh.
Quiz:
“And as has been pointed out to you before, because the Internet Protocol address is known, and the time of day the survey was taken is known, the claim of “no identifying information” is bunk. Given an IP address, I know the computer that the survey was taken on. Given the time of day, I can find out who was using that given computer to fill out the survey, and therefore anonymity is imaginary. Anyone who knows anything about how computer networks operate would know this. That means a whole lot of men, and some number of women.”
Can anyone spot the half assed assumptions hidden in this snippet by someone who pretends to have a technical education?
Gee, clarence, why don’t you just tell me where I’m wrong. Be detailed. Don’t hold back. Well?
Ok well commentator clarence at 9:50 pm fell right into the “let’s you and him fight” attempt and dived right into calling anyone who disagrees with Walsh’s flawed assertions Omega Virgins (I had to look the blog up because I had never heard of it, I came here from Roissy). I’m not going to fan any flames, this will be my only foray into what I’m sure will be a lively and heavily moderated next few days.
See you on the other side 🙂
clarence, please articulate what you find to be “half assed assumptions”, in detail, regarding my statement about IP addresses.
As an administrator, if you know the time the machine was accessed along with the IP, you can find the username and from there the person who is said to have used it.
I say “said to have used it” because some users have either shared their username-password combination, or had it stolen from them.
clarence says others pretend to have a technical education … while he has not volunteered his own qualifications. How interesting.
Well Anon, unless you know the protocol they used too hook up the survey students or get their results (or hell, whether they connected any kind of network at all) you can’t claim that IP address equals computer. Hell, depending on how the survey was set up, you can’t even necessarily link a private computer to a student. As it is I have four different computers. They are all private computers and while you could conceivably link them to me via sales receipts there’s no way to match the IP address by itself to me if I’m hooking up to a public internet or private but unsecure network.
Here are are your assumptions. I don’t know how they got the survey data but for your little screed to be correct:
A. The computers whether public or private have to be hooked up to the schools intranet.
B. The students have to be required to sign in with their campus network ID. If that is not required you need a list of the computers that belong to each student and the IP address assigned to each.
C. No student or survey participant ever hooks up an “unknown” computer to the network.
D. If students were assigned computers, the particular student that was assigned a computer was actually sitting at that computer.
And that’s just off the top of my head. I haven’t read the study, but I don’t see why they would have to use the schools intranet at all in the first place.
Facepalm @ clarence. Epic facepalm. Followed by mangina alert. Danger to anyone who gets to close.
Hi, I’m Joshua.
I don’t have any real arguments so I’ll throw insults.
It’s ok, Josh. I know you are slow. Gives you a lollipop.
Not to be a contrarian devil’s advocate misandrist mangina white knight troll, but on the subject of IP addresses, I think there may be another reason the study was more “anonymous” than some folks are making it out to be. According to Susan’s post,
“The most common approach is to ask students to fill out a survey online after generating a random ID number that is not connected to their name, but to their IP address.”
For emphasis:
“generating a random ID number that is not connected to their name, but to their IP address.”
The researchers *aren’t* being given the actual IP address of the students, they’re being given an ID number *based* on the IP address. It’s theoretically possible to figure out what the IP address was based on that number, but unless I’m misunderstandestimating something here, you’re at least somewhat more anonymous if you’re identified by only a string of generated numbers as opposed to your IP address directly. It seems to me PMAFT and others are attacking a straw man (sort of) when they say that “surveys were anonymous and untraceable because they were linked to IP address and not to names.” They were linked to *generated numbers* based on the IP address, not the direct IP address itself.
My own take, is that Ms. Walsh generates a LOT of anger, because well, guys in the out-group (not getting much sex) are angry. We can argue all day about the break-down, but my view is that the anger in and of itself shows there is significant amounts of guys just priced out of the sex/relationship (they are the same thing) market. Facing for any potential relationship, basically carousel riders.
Feminism, being basically nothing more than removing all sexual constraints on Alphas and women (no one wants or cares about Beta males, having little value and no female desire for them, their constraints remain whatever woman will “settle” for sleeping with them by “mistake”) guarantees a bunch of male losers in the marketplace, and a few male winners. To the extent that Ms. Walsh embraces feminism, she embraces “You LOSE BETA MALE! and I Win HAHAHAHAH!” Perhaps an exaggeration but there you go, losers who are permanent losers don’t embrace the permanent winners.
Who wins: most all women (sex with Alphas, unrestrained). Most Alpha men (same). Who loses: most beta males. Ms Walsh has to deal with the anger because in advising younger women, accurately or not, she draws the ire of the losers. Greenlander is right btw, loss of investment by betas generates a terrible cost to society. I can’t peer into Ms. Walsh’s mind. And wouldn’t want to anyway — I have enough on my own plate and life. I don’t take anything personally.
BUT — and this is a big BUT — Ms. Walsh has IMHO a massive blind spot on the issue of the losers (men) in the SMP and MMP. Their grandfathers certainly and maybe fathers got nice girls with maybe only two sex partners and a lifetime bond. Maybe not all, but most. Being cooperative, affectionate, loving, smart, and decent were not seen as handicaps, but advantages. At best they can put on Player masks, and get sex/love/affection (for the few who are natural actors, not many) for a fake performance until the mask slips. Most cannot even do that. So they are angry, getting angrier, while reproduction is falling increasingly to the Levi Johnsons and Kevin Federlines.
And, again blind spot, Ms. Walsh is unable to see that while no one cares (and it matters little) what an individual woman does (smoke, drink to excess, screw lots of bad boys), society pays the cost directly for the aggregate of bad choices. I’m not advocating the Handmaid’s Tale. But much of the anger IMHO is directed on perceived failure (I don’t read much of her site, can’t really say much) to dish out advice that is different from the rest of the Alpha-chasing stuff. If you’re Federline, the Situation, or Johnson, you’re in clover. Life is good! But the losers are not happy and Walsh IMHO has not really grasped the depth or the source of the anger. Would she be addressed in the manner she is if most guys were in a happy relationship with a girl they’d bonded to, and expected to marry, one with a minimum of partners? I submit not. I’ll further submit that the future is quite ugly, the logical endpoint is Chav Britain of Harry Brown.
I don’t take anything she says personally, I think she is far too sanguine on the society-wide aspects to it, but I’m glad she’s writing something critical of the current situation. Women are not going to listen to men, period. [Unless they are Alphas like Ashton Kutcher or Russell Brand.] Certainly not beta males, those guys are “icky.”
clarence
Well Anon, unless you know the protocol they used too hook up the survey students or get their results (or hell, whether they connected any kind of network at all) you can’t claim that IP address equals computer.
I’m currently reading the DOJ study. I have not yet seen any mention of protocols used, it could be http or it could be https. Since the survey was web-based and used a web-based incentive, they clearly used a network.
Hell, depending on how the survey was set up, you can’t even necessarily link a private computer to a student.
The survey was conducted at two different universities, it is not clear if it was limited to on campus only students or not. I have assumed on campus students, and therefore mostly static IP’s assigned by campus IT. If you have information to the contrary, please share it.
As it is I have four different computers. They are all private computers and while you could conceivably link them to me via sales receipts there’s no way to match the IP address by itself to me if I’m hooking up to a public internet or private but unsecure network.
That depends on how IP’s are served out by your network. The old modem pools reserved a block of IP’s and served them out on demand, via an algorithm. The modern wired campus reserves blocks of static IP’s for departmental use, for administrative use, for dorm rooms, for labs, and so forth. Wireless was not nearly as common in 2005-2006 as it is now, so most on campus users would have an IP assigned to a given machine by the campus IT, so far as I know.
Here are are your assumptions. I don’t know how they got the survey data but for your little screed to be correct:
I suggest you read the DOJ report for yourself with particular attention to section 3.1.2, which I have discussed on the thread “Thoughts on the 80/20 college hookup question”, I am not going to replicate that here.
A. The computers whether public or private have to be hooked up to the schools intranet.
Correct, that is one of my premises.
B. The students have to be required to sign in with their campus network ID. If that is not required you need a list of the computers that belong to each student and the IP address assigned to each.
This is a reasonable assumption, however given static IP’s in the dorms it is not unreasonable to be able to find who allegedly is using a given computer. As was pointed out above, students can be sloppy with campus login/password pairs.
C. No student or survey participant ever hooks up an “unknown” computer to the network.
This doesn’t make sense. Suppose Harry the Hacker drags in his Llinux box to his dorm room and connects it to the network, if his dorm has static IP’s uniquely assigned to each room what difference does it make if he uses a different box on his IP?
D. If students were assigned computers, the particular student that was assigned a computer was actually sitting at that computer.
That’s a feasible objection, however even in 2005 computer access wasn’t all that wide open, for security reasons.
And that’s just off the top of my head. I haven’t read the study, but I don’t see why they would have to use the schools intranet at all in the first place.
Anyone living on campus would almost certainly do so. You should read the study, and pay particular attention to the use of unique ID’s issued to each student who was invited to take the survey, and the completion code issued to enable them to achieve a redemption.
However, the larger issue hinges on the definition of “anonymity” which I also covered in the other thread, and therefore don’t care to discuss here.
So tell me, do you believe that any woman has the ability to detect an entitled snowflake princess just by looking at her?
Where are all the trolls coming in from? Dalrock, do you think Omega Virgin Revolt has colonized your blog?
Nice conspiracy theory there. I also am ROTFLAMO at the concept of “blog colonization”. I had no idea this was even going on until someone wrote a comment about it on my blog. I am happy to see that Susan Walsh is being held to account for what she has said and done. All of you gentlemen doing this are doing excellent work.
This shows that Susan Walsh and her sycophants have no real defense against valid criticism of their words and actions. They have to manufacture a conspiracy theory about an uninvolved third party, me, architecting a massive conspiracy against them. I’m sure that PMAFT will be the next to be accused of this since he holds Susan Walsh to account for her words and actions followed by even more ludicrous conspiracy theories involving Tony Soprano, Dick Cheney, and/or E.T.
Keep on exposing the truth about Susan Walsh. Her defenders have no argument so they will just come up with more and more ludicrous conspiracy theories.
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hurpadurp
Not to be a contrarian devil’s advocate misandrist mangina white knight troll, but on the subject of IP addresses, I think there may be another reason the study was more “anonymous” than some folks are making it out to be. According to Susan’s post,
“The most common approach is to ask students to fill out a survey online after generating a random ID number that is not connected to their name, but to their IP address.”
In all research it is always best to stick with a primary source. I believe the report Walsh is referring to is here:
http://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/221153.pdf
Note this is a pdf, it may take a while to load over a slow link.
In section 3.1.2 we learn that the survey team obtained email addresses for students at two univerities. They took a subset of those students and sent emails to them with an invitation to participate in the survey, and a hyperlink to the survey web site. Each email included a unique ID number. In order to take the survey, the students had to enter the unique ID number on the web page. Upon completing the survey, a “completion code” was issued.
Thus the survey team knew:
1. The email addresses of every single student invited to participate
2. The email addresses of every single student who started the survey, but did not finish.
3. The email addresses of every single student who completed the survey.
The IP issue is moot, because the survey team assigned a unique ID code to every student they invited. They had the student email address, and thus the identity, of every single student involved in the survey.
The paper authors stress the efforts made to guarantee anonymity, and i think that by this they mean “there’s no way to link a single survey form to a given person”, rather than “no one knows who did and did not take the survey”. However, I do not see any recognition of how the survey would be perceived by a student. From the student point of view, the survey team already knows your email address, and the code given is clearly unique. So a perception of no anonymity at all can be argued.
Furthermore, the data collection via website could be done with a database back end connected to the web interface as a front end. It would be straightforward to collect each survey form as a unique record, since the total number of students involved is under 15,000 it would not tax off the shelf software. In fact, by doing it that way one might guarantee data integrity better, by being able to cull any records with bad data due to corruption in transit across the network – flattening the records to a single record would anonymize the results while preserving the source. Of course each record would have a unique ID# issued by the survey team, so in this method there would be no real anonymity at all.
Note: I’m not saying the survey team did this. It could well be they used a simpler web based application and just summed numbers in one single record as they came in. But the survey could have been set up to create a full database keyed by unique ID #’s, and the students taking the survey would have no way to know that was done at all.
Therefore, I cannot help but question the perception of anonymity on this survey. Since we know from the “lie detector” example that women will under-report their number of sexual partners even on an anonymous survey, the conclusion is obvious: this DOJ report surely under reports the number of sexual partners the college women had. And therefore it cannot be used to support Walsh’s 20/20 80/80 Just So story.
Back to you, clarence.
Overnight (here) I was thinking about the ‘industrial mining’ of 87 first dates. It seems to me that there must be an inverse rule here. That is to say, in much the same way that when you go travelling, pretty much any part of the world loses its exoticism and begins to look much the same, then dating one guy after another, ensures that most men are going to begin to look fairly identikit. After all a Prostitute who may service say twenty clients a day, is unlikely to find much difference between one man and another and she of course does not bond with any of them. Even if Ms Emas does not sleep with her dates, a certain boredom will I would suggest result.
In this respect an anecdote might be worthwhile. A friend of mine, a decade back, quit his job and travelled to Mexico to find both love and enlightenment. He found neither and dejectedly returned home and sought out a new job. One day, shortly thereafter, walking out from his house he bumped into a woman he vaguely knew. They have been together ever since (LTR). The harder Ms Emas searches for Mr Right, the less likely, I would say, is she to succeed in her quest.
Good insight Opus. I was afraid the industrial mining metaphor had gotten lost in the scuffle. Einstein’s definition of insanity comes to mind. It is strange that the women who are least able to succeed in the SMP are the most likely to see themselves as authorities on the topic. Even worse, other women seem to view them as authorities as well, as their books seem to be quite popular. I’ve never seen this called out before.
She’s an ally. She’s not a perfect ally, but she’s one nonetheless. Walsh is one of the only women out there stumping in the manosphere. Frankly, any voice out there telling young women to stop being so stupid is better than none at all. We need all the help we can get.
This is my perspective on this as well.
Unless her quest is not looking for “Mr Right”, but instead to get as many free dinners as possible and come up with fodder for writing her emotional porn. I think there is a lot of Munchausen by proxy going on here.
She strikes me as the type of person (HPD or something like that) who gets a lot more emotional mileage out of telling her tales of woe to an appreciative female audience than she would ever get out of a relationship with an ordinary human being.
Something I read quite a few years ago has stuck with me. A woman who goes by the appellation “The Chick” wrote that “Dating is Sport.”
Someone who tends to be goal oriented, and particularly one of the sex who bears all the cost of dating and finds the process unpleasant, is likely to make the same mistake that Opus does – projecting his own motivations and POV onto someone else’s actions.
A woman who goes on 87 “first dates” has a lot more in common with a man who goes Moto-x racing or mountain climbing or whitewater rafting every weekend – the activity itself gives her the thrill she is seeking. Finding someone is the last thing she wants, because all the fun would end for her.
Zed
A woman who goes on 87 “first dates” has a lot more in common with a man who goes Moto-x racing or mountain climbing or whitewater rafting every weekend – the activity itself gives her the thrill she is seeking. Finding someone is the last thing she wants, because all the fun would end for her.
87 first “first dates” also looks almost exactly like “endless courtship”, too. So we could both be right: a floor wax and a dessert topping! But as Zed clarifies, it’s not like doesn’t enjoy this.
To put it another way: if Ms. 87 didn’t enjoy what she was doing, she’d stop doing it. She didn’t stop doing it, in fact her “marriage” included 13 years of couples therapy, so it’s pretty clear what she really wanted isn’t the same thing as what she says she wanted. C’mon, we all know that what women say they want is not necessarily what the pleasure center in their brain wants.
Again, this woman is surely way off of the median. Maybe 4 Sigma out, even. But once again, what does this shift of standards – no one outside of men’s websites seems to criticize her – imply for women closer to the median? When women like this are covered in the media in uncritical or even fawning fashion, a clear message is sent: “This is good behavior”.
Rewarding bad behavior by any human has what effect?
Zed
Someone who tends to be goal oriented, and particularly one of the sex who bears all the cost of dating and finds the process unpleasant, is likely to make the same mistake that Opus does – projecting his own motivations and POV onto someone else’s actions.
One of the most difficult things about “putting on the glasses” is realizing how many ways women differ from men regardless of cultural conditioning. I know that in my own life, for many years I carried around the idea of “women as men who can have babies” in the back of my head. It colored my relationships in unconscious ways. Projecting my male motivations onto women resulted in some conflicts that I did not understand at the time. Projection of female motivations onto me also resulted in some other conflicts. It is not at all easy or trivial to come to grips with some of the deeper differences at all, and frankly outside of Game I don’t see any source that even tries to do so.
Turning back to Ms. 87, let’s all pretend that she is a he. A man who goes on 87 first dates, who screens tens of thousands of women, who claims he just can’t find the woman who is his “soulmate” — anyone here going to find that convincing? Or are we all going to tend to scoff, and suggest that he’s just a player who’s playing the field for all it’s worth? C’mon, this is the behavior of a con artist, not a “sensitive seeker looking for twue wuv”.
Yup, again when you reverse the genders it’s amazing how many accept the conditioning that a woman is entitled to be picky … but a picky man is a player.
Which completely ignores the risks a man faces when he is in a relationship with a woman who is only interested until the Bigger Better Deal comes along.
@Anonymous Reader
I see game as a disruptive technology in this sense. The immediate implications are helping men be more successful in the dating/mating/marriage realm. But the more profound implications are how this insight can help us better understand the world around us and the implications this will necessarily have as those who have learned game eventually become members of the powerful institutions in our society (judges, jury members, lawmakers, editors, screenwriters, etc).
Relating this back to the first quote of yours I shared above, what strikes me is that I don’t see anyone else even in the manosphere addressing this question. Others have accurately identified the “never settle” meme, but I don’t recall anyone else addressing the abuse of courtship rituals by women, and the underlying choice addiction. I also don’t recall seeing the concepts I have been sharing around women’s counterintuitive desire for the status of marriage despite their rampant destruction of both the institution as a whole and quite often their own marriages. I think this shows how deeply embedded the underlying feminist assumptions are in all of us. Some of these ideas are painfully obvious once you think of them, yet largely remain unconsidered. What remains to be seen is if these ideas will spread virally now that they have been spoken, or if the power of the conditioning will snuff them out before they can widely spread.
@Zed
I am not sure that I have projected anything, but merely observed. So, I had a further look at the link. Ms Emas is a journalist, and of course with journalists one always has to wonder whether any of it is true (and I say that having known a couple), but, in post-divorce spinsterhood she has been speed dating, to lock-and-key- parties [I have no idea what they are] had 48,000 hits on Match.com, joined half-a-dozen dating sites and (either as a result of, or in addition to – that is not made clear) had eighty-seven first dates. Is that I wonder a euphemism for having sex with eighty-seven different men? Again, that is left dangling.
I deduce that what we are supposed to observe is that she is utterly desirable to men, and that her age, divorce staus, or the fact that she is a mother does not in any way deter men from desiring her. As I say, however, it may all be nonsense, but what I have observed with women is that the more unstable (i.e. promiscuous and usually drinkers too) they are, and the more they give the impression of the perfect life, the more likely they are to be in some way disturbed and disfunctional. A woman who claims to have 300 friends in reality has none (although possibly a lot of indifferent acquaintances too polite to tell her to buzz-off) and eighty-seven first dates (with no follow-up?) suggests, as I suggested serious promiscuity, or possibly she is just trying to make a brave front of it, in front of her married friends. I suppose all those dates also reassure her (like that mirror) that she truly is the fairest of them all.
Having myself (last weekend but one) had the privilege of an aging cougar throwing a tantrum in public (I was not interested – especially after she told me of her bastard offspring) and then twice coming round the next day and knocking on my door (I told her to go away) you may see that I am not exactly convinced by the public bravado of Ms Emas. Perhaps, however Zed, you are right after all, as I must confess I find it hard to see what the pleasure a date with a stranger every other week might be.
And, I am sure that a trip to buy shoes which takes over 20 minutes isn’t your cup of tea, either.
Your characterization of the woman’s activity as a “quest”, when I would suspect that she saw it as a way to pass time, shows your male POV.
Women love to be courted and “wooed” – we have already established that. They love to get their fingernails dirty dissecting relationships. And, they love to play “make believe.”
Every date is an opportunity to pretend that she is a fairy princess. What’s not to love for her in that scenario?
zed
Every date is an opportunity to pretend that she is a fairy princess. What’s not to love for her in that scenario?
Indeed. View it as zed lays out above. It’s her own private play, she wrote her own script, she’s the producer & she’s always center stage. Insert zed’s question here.
Really, Opus, don’t underestimate the power of serious, deep narcicissm.
How the fuck is this Ginger Emas getting so much male attention? She’s a 2/10 FFS. Is the market place this askew? I wouldn’t look twice at her, and I’m only 5 years younger, but next to her I look in my early 30s. Fuck me.
I find it rather disgusting that women will go out on dates with men they have absolutely no interest in order to receive a hot meal. How hungry can one really be? I’m pretty sure the majority of them can afford to keep themselves well-fed, so this is really an awful incentive for going out with someone. Perhaps it’s also the ego boost that women of poor value get when a guy spends a fucking dollar on them.
Personally, I turn down all dinner dates with guys I have zero interest in. Free food is not incentive enough for me to make out time in my schedule in order to sit through an awkward date with a guy I couldn’t care less for. How much will my food and drinks cost anyway, $50 – $100? That is nothing. He’d have to come much harder than that.
I won’t go out on dinners with guys I’m not interested in/men of lower SMV, but I have no problem going on trips financed by them and receiving gifts with absolutely plans of reciprocity in terms of sexual intimacy.
But with guys I am interested in, I have no set time schedule. I will have sex with them when the feeling should strike me, whenever it is that I want to have it. I don’t believe in leveraging sex in order to gain emotional intimacy or a commitment, that’s essentially prostitution. Not saying prostitution is inherently evil, just not my thing. From my experiences, men who are interested in a woman don’t mind if a woman has sex with them fairly soon, it won’t hurt their chances. What may hurt their chances is how they behave afterwards.
@ Zed
Well, maybe you are right but if so I blame Dalrock, because re-reading the blog entry it does rather give the impression (filtered through Susan Walsh) that this woman is looking for some sort of committment and failing to find it (which thus enables her to enjoy even more dates). My point is that if she is looking for committment then she is surely going about it the wrong way. If not, she is just a food-whore who likes attention or she is sleeping with quite a lot of guys. Her Huffington C.V., is however so hyperbolically fantastic that I must say I have never met or heard of any one like her (other than in the pages of magazines) – so I don’t really believe any of it. I take your point about buying shoes, and I fully accept that she wants attention but her action are so extreme and her life is so perfect that (if any of it is true) I predict a follow-up book slagging-off men for failure to commit. We’ll have to wait and see. 😉
I am reminded again of Doctor Johnson, who when told by Boswell, of a wife who felt that as her husband was unfaithful that she had the right to be unfaithful too, Johnson commented, that in those circumstances, the wife would be better off in a brothel. I sort of feel the same about Ms Emas.
I won’t go out on dinners with guys I’m not interested in/men of lower SMV, but I have no problem going on trips financed by them and receiving gifts with absolutely plans of reciprocity in terms of sexual intimacy.
So you’re not desperate enough to string along guys for food, but you are desperate enough to string them along for gifts and trips?
XiOmara you are a bad troll
hurpadurp
“So you’re not desperate enough to string along guys for food, but you are desperate enough to string them along for gifts and trips? :/”
No. I’m not exactly sure what this has to do with desperation. I think it has more to do with the fact that I’m a self-serving human being like most human beings are. What I do is immoral to the extent of men stringing women along for sex with no plans of emotional reciprocity. In short, I see them equally valid and quite necessary so to speak.
Yes, I do not perceive $50-$100 spent on a dinner date as enough of an investment from a guy I’m not interested in/Lower SMV or me to make out time to go out with him. In fact, I would have made it clear upon asking me to dinner that I’m not interested in pursuing anything with him at all. If he chooses to expend (relatively) large amounts of money in determination to break my resistance via gifts or trips, I will not stand in opposition of that. There’s a big difference between a $50 dinner and a $600 iPad, is there not?
I will have sex with them when the feeling should strike me, whenever it is that I want to have it.
Not saying prostitution is inherently evil, just not my thing
There’s a big difference between a $50 dinner and a $600 iPad, is there not?
lololol Nope, there isn’t, a whore is still a whore, you just have a higher price to engage in prostitution, so stop trying to make you feel better.
“lololol Nope, there isn’t, a whore is still a whore, you just have a higher price to engage in prostitution, so stop trying to make you feel better.”
Cosign that. I love how she tries to paint it as better than cheap whoring herself out. The hamster is strong in this one.
I personally hated any kind of material investment from guys that I was not attracted to. The only men I took things from were my family members and friends I knew for years because we were at one point interchanging if they gave me a present for my birthday I would give them one too. There was not whoring around. I allowed my husband to buy me stuff because he can ask for anything he wants from me and have it, we are tied physically, emotionally and then financially. And really the point of dating is to spent time with a person, the meal could be the more expensive but if I wasn’t enjoying the company it was not going to be enjoyable with a person you love even Ramen taste better, YMMV.
Opus
Well, maybe you are right but if so I blame Dalrock, because re-reading the blog entry it does rather give the impression (filtered through Susan Walsh) that this woman is looking for some sort of committment and failing to find it (which thus enables her to enjoy even more dates).
Yes, that is what she says she is doing…
My point is that if she is looking for committment then she is surely going about it the wrong way.
…but she clearly is doing something different than what she says, agreed? Game teaches us the women’s words and women’s actual desires can be totally opposite, and so we are to focus on which?
If not, she is just a food-whore who likes attention or she is sleeping with quite a lot of guys.
You might just be on to something, there.
I take your point about buying shoes, and I fully accept that she wants attention but her action are so extreme and her life is so perfect that (if any of it is true) I predict a follow-up book slagging-off men for failure to commit.
Hah! Maybe not a book, maybe just a magazine article in some glossy monthly followed by some TV face time? Either way, you are correct we shall wait and almost surely see it.
Excuse my typo previously, but I typed and did not include the “no”
“I won’t go out on dinners with guys I’m not interested in/men of lower SMV, but I have no problem going on trips financed by them and receiving gifts with absolutely *NO* plans of reciprocity in terms of sexual intimacy.”
In short, these men are not men I am interested in anyway and do not and will not have sex with them. So in these instances I am not reciprocating in anyway, but essentially existing. Certainly not by physical intimacy. So if I’m not engaging in a sexual relationship, what is your operating definition of “whore?”
Also, if you don’t mind, do explain how a woman stringing a man along in order to attain material item, even emotional intimacy perhaps, LJBFs, with no plans of sexual reciprocity more or less legitimate than a man stringing a woman along in order to attain sexual favors with no plans of emotional reciprocity. I see them as analogous and if my reasoning is wrong, please point out where my logic fails. Finding this information is an essential part of being right the next time.
My reference to prostitution was limited solely to women leveraging sex in order to manipulate a man who they are actually interested in, into a committed relationship. Note that I did not call women going out with men they don’t even like in order to receive hot meals whores, I just don’t understand how free food is a large enough incentive for them because it certainly isn’t a large enough incentive for me. However, there are incentives large enough and I’ve stated them.
I personally hated any kind of material investment from guys that I was not attracted to. The only men I took things from were my family members and friends I knew for years because we were at one point interchanging if they gave me a present for my birthday I would give them one too. There was not whoring around. I allowed my husband to buy me stuff because he can ask for anything he wants from me and have it, we are tied physically, emotionally and then financially. And really the point of dating is to spent time with a person, the meal could be the more expensive but if I wasn’t enjoying the company it was not going to be enjoyable with a person you love even Ramen taste better, YMMV.
Cosign here 🙂 The date that most stands out in my mind was when he took me to chinatown and bought me a 4$ bubble tea; we had such a fantastic time! I *hate* going to fancy places, my ideal kind of date is at home, chatting and getting comfy 😉
Xiomara: Exhibit A for why a man should never spend money on a woman before sex.
Xiomara, even if you’re not a whore, you’re still a lowlife for taking advantage of a person, solely for the purpose of getting gifts. How about you work and buy them yourself? If a measly 600$ gift is large enough to sell yourself, I’m wondering how desperate you must be :s Personally, even the thought is revolting and makes me want to throw up.
And yeah, there’s no difference between a man or a woman doing it.
I’m a self-serving human being like most human beings are.
Well, at least you admit it. For your own sake, though, you might meet a guy someday who’s even more “self-serving” than you…and a natural outgrowth of that would be his lack of any “moral” compunction to prevent him from doing something…unpleasant, shall we say, when he finds out you’re just stringing him along. Since our gracious host prefers us commentators to maintain at least a semblance of class, out of respect for him, I won’t bother to spell out just what I mean by “unpleasant.” The nice thing about amoral people such as yourself is that you prey on each other as much as the undeserving.
Chels + Anacaona,
I agree that a date needn’t be expensive in order for it to be enjoyable. One of the funnest/best dates I’ve been on was bike riding and a picnic at prospect park. So I certainly agree with you ladies on that. When I like a guy, I’m more so concerned with what I can do for him rather what he can do for me. A couple of dollars spent is nothing compared to how much that person means to me.
This of course only applies to men I like. A completely different set of rules apply to men I do not.
Deti,
I see you’re using that SW logic in reverse.
“Xiomara, even if you’re not a whore, you’re still a lowlife for taking advantage of a person, solely for the purpose of getting gifts. ”
Well that is your opinion and I have no interests in contending with that however I hope you equally display the same righteous indignation, disparagement and employ the same shaming tactics on men who essentially do the same.
I previously stated that I do warn them and if they do not heed my warnings and insist on gifting me, I will not refuse the gifts. I’ve already acknowledged that I’m a self-serving human being just as most human beings are.
The $600 iPad vs $50 dinner statement was simply drawn to illustrate the disparity in investments, I’m sorry if you took it rather too literally. Whether I work or not is a red herring that is apart from the discussion. To somehow imply that someone who enjoys receiving gifts mus therefore automatically not earn an income is simply dishonest at best.
Try not to pretend that you don’t have a price, my dear, we all do.
I *hate* going to fancy places
I actually quite enjoy fancy dates with my husband, but I also enjoy buying burgers in Eat and Out and eating them at the car or watching the last showing with a movie or just playing WoW or watching Einstein’s Big idea at home cozy with hot chocolate… Is all in the company really. I don’t care about the place, unless is eating a dog or something like it, call me picky.
Try not to pretend that you don’t have a price, my dear, we all do.
Yes, I do, my “price” for going out with a guy is him being serious and willing to commit to me, but there’s nothing material on this planet that would make me demean myself like that.
And to the rest of your comment, what hurpadurp said.
“Try not to pretend that you don’t have a price, my dear, we all do.”
Actually I do have a price: a time machine or a space ship that can travel fast enough to take hubby and family in a tour to the Milky Way and more, or immortality and eternal youth anything else TOO CHEAP!. So you are right I do have a price, but given that you disdain women that sell themselves for mere 100 dollars then I have all the right to disdain anyone else that doesn’t do it for a time machine.What is good for the goose… 😉
dalrock says: ‘the implications this will necessarily have as those who have learned game eventually become members of the powerful institutions in our society (judges, jury members, lawmakers, editors, screenwriters, etc).’
I have some doubts about this statement. Free range men need much less resources than married men with children. And if you are good at game then there is not much incentive to work your ass off in long-hour and possibly influential professions either. I am wondering about the amount of men interested in a high powered career who are not applying wallet game. And those wallet gamers seem to be more likely to be mangining/whiteknighting their way all along so I am wondering about the impact of those implications.
“there’s nothing material on this planet that would make me demean myself like that.”
lol. You call it demeaning, I call it being self serving. Agree to disagree.
Chances are though, you’re likely incapable of stringing any man along even if you wanted to, so I genuinely don’t think you ought to worry about it, madam. Leave the “demeaning” to those of us who at least have the capacity and smv to pull it off. Cheers.
Anacaona,
That was addressed to Chels. But otherwise, touche.
Hurpadurp
“Well, at least you admit it. For your own sake, though, you might meet a guy someday who’s even more “self-serving” than you…and a natural outgrowth of that would be his lack of any “moral” compunction to prevent him from doing something…unpleasant, shall we say, when he finds out you’re just stringing him along”
This is all very true and I completely agree that there is a risk one must assume. Just as one assumes a risk when driving in their car, crossing the road, going on a date with someone for the first time, having sex, etc. There is a risk factor in almost everything we do that to completely avoid assumptions of risk would be to avoid actually living life.
@xiomara
I think you are fundamentally correct in this. The ambiguity of modern uncommitted relationships is a feature, not a bug with each side hoping to use the ambiguity to gain the upper hand.
Everyone takes risks, but some risks are bigger or more worth it than others. Is it worth not driving at all to avoid the chance of a car crash? Considering the limitations it imposes, not really. Is it worth passing up on an extra “gift” you assumedly could have earned honestly anyways to avoid the risk of getting shanked? That’s another question.
In any case, though, you obviously take pride in your amorality. Why are you even here, then? What do you hope to accomplish? If human beings are as sociopathic–whoops, I mean “self-serving” as you say, what are you gaining from your presence here? Far be it from me to tell Dalrock who he should ban, but if you were to excuse yourself I doubt it would be much of a loss on either your part or ours, since, being all amoral socio–I mean, “self-serving,” we’re just gonna do whatever we perceive to be in our self-interest anyways.
[D: She is entertaining for the moment, but I don’t see that lasting. Don’t tell her though and we can string her along for a while.]
Xiomara:
Any man who gives you anything deserves to be deprived of his money and his dignity. Just remember that what goes around comes around.
Hurp,
I’ve gained quite a bit by reading Dalrock’s blog which I generally do via my Google reader. The information here is invaluable to say the least and this has easily become one of my favorite sites. I find Dalrock thoughtful, level-headed, and insightful. If you’d like for me to list all of the knowledge and insights I’ve gained from the male/game blogosphere, just let me know.
Today was my first time ever commenting and apparently I didn’t do it right, seeing as I’ve elicited quite a bit of indignation, which is fine. Reading back what I wrote, I can see where the cause for provocation might be.
All in all, I was only being honest about my own experiences and viewpoints. I suppose it comes off as “socipathic” when one is fully aware of their actions and isn’t feigning naivete as so many women and men tend to in similar circumstances.
sociopathic*
I’ve gained quite a bit by reading Dalrock’s blog
Commenting isn’t as productive as reading, it seems. One might thus surmise that a sociop–I mean, “self-aware and not-naive” person such as yourself will return to the latter and abjure the former. Gotta look out for number one and all.
Ah, whoops, I’ve given it away. Sorry, Dalrock. It’ll be tough to live without her, but somehow, I think we’ll manage.
And, I consider it somewhat likely that she is lying through her teeth. Or, she is in the clutches of the Were-Hamster. 😉
Chances are though, you’re likely incapable of stringing any man along even if you wanted to, so I genuinely don’t think you ought to worry about it, madam. Leave the “demeaning” to those of us who at least have the capacity and smv to pull it off. Cheers.
Well this comment is just something else. Yes, you’re right that I’m incapable of taking advantage of a man because I would just be guilt ridden, I’d feel dirty and I’d be perpetually ashamed of myself, but not because I don’t have the smv. And oh yeah, another reason I couldn’t do it is because it’s wrong, wrong, wrong.
@xiomara
Personally, I turn down all dinner dates with guys I have zero interest in. Free food is not incentive enough for me to make out time in my schedule in order to sit through an awkward date with a guy I couldn’t care less for. How much will my food and drinks cost anyway, $50 – $100? That is nothing. He’d have to come much harder than that.
I won’t go out on dinners with guys I’m not interested in/men of lower SMV, but I have no problem going on trips financed by them and receiving gifts with absolutely plans of reciprocity in terms of sexual intimacy.
… I don’t believe in leveraging sex in order to gain emotional intimacy or a commitment, that’s essentially prostitution.
I assume this is a put-up job, but well done. A hilarious parody of the entitled gold-digger/North American tan-bellied cock-hopper/nth-wave feminist mindset.
@xiomara
Excuse my typo previously, but I typed and did not include the “no”
Oh, you tease you!
Oh Dalrock I wanted to mention that 50 first dates also has another feminist dream of “using violence” on a guy for hilarity purposes when Lucy beats the living daylight of Rob’s Schneider character, reverse the genders? Do you find it funny?
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Hurpadurp wrote:
In any case, though, you obviously take pride in your amorality. Why are you even here, then? What do you hope to accomplish? If human beings are as sociopathic–whoops, I mean “self-serving” as you say, what are you gaining from your presence here?
A common trait in sociopaths is braggadocio. There’s also a firm conviction that they’re a special snowflake, no matter what the reality on the ground is.
What if the woman honestly, seriously, just doesn’t like any of the guys she dates? Hence the high number of dates?
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@greenlander October 22, 2011 at 5:01 pm
“Women are incredibly good as masking their intentions, and so it’s difficult to distinguish actual “good girls” from girls on the middle of the curve who just get off on stringing along a beta for awhile while being pounded on the side by more alpha guys who she can get sexual attention but not commitment from. With more life experience and more experience with women in general, now I can do a much better job of sorting out those two groups. However, my 25-year-old former self couldn’t, and the number of “fakers” vastly outnumbers the number of genuine good girls.”
Instead of rambling on, you could have given out practical advice on how to distinguish between the two groups of real ‘good girls’ and ‘fakers.’
Oh and sorry you bought into the whole ‘alpha’ vs ‘beta’ paradigm. True we’re driven largely by biological impulses, but humans are more complicated than to simply be labeled as “X” or “y”.
@ RonanJackson – What if the woman honestly, seriously, just doesn’t like any of the guys she dates? Hence the high number of dates?
The good thing is she has the option to go on that many dates, meanwhile a guy struggles to get one or two in a year.