Traditional Dating Advice: Theory and Practice.

The other day, Dalrock linked to a commentator at Zippy's blog who was taking the manosphere to task:

…the problem is that the roissysphere stands on the shoulders of giants and claims to feel the soil beneath it’s feet. These nonsense, sloppy terms like solipsism, feminine imperative, team woman, “game” are ideas with no rigor, as imprecise as the dull minds that conjure them up.

Yet all across the roissysphere no single red pill person ever recommends learning the precise terms of the great works of the ages, instead offering a bag of bullsh&t and telling you to read the rantings of a keyboard warrior from DC.

What a hollow existence it is to work oneself into a fey mood inventing tools (which they call game) to climb a mountain only to find the mountain was already home to greater men then they, and could have used tools of higher quality if they had bothered to look.

Comments like these give me a fair of hope since they indicate the beginnings of a shift in some of the traditionalist positions on Game.  As some wag once said, when a theory is first proposed, it is denied initially, accepted gradually and finally accepted as a self-evident truth. Now it appears that some of the traditionalists, whilst still shouting at the manosphere, are claiming that the knew about hypergamy all along. Implied in this position is that if only men read the "classics" they wouldn't have to go to places like Roissy's and the reason why men are in there current predicament is because they have forgotten their heritage.  To which I reply--- bullshit.

Literature is not my strong point and I have to defer to others on the subject, particularly commentator Thursday, who over at Roissy's, in replies to two posts,  gave a good explanation of why the classics are deficient in practical advice with regard to "woman management". (Some of the comments I've taken out of chronological order but not out of context.)
Thursday comments:

I’ve posted before on my own former blog about how game insights were few and far between in classic literature.

I think a lot of it came down to a couple facts:

1. Being a provider used to matter a lot.

2. Objective social status (king, nobleman, knight, yeoman, peasant) mattered a lot.

3. Basically everything was social circle game. You would know everybody in your local community (or in you social strata if you were a higher up).

Not that game didn’t matter, but more on the margins. Who needs game when you’re a nobleman and you want to bang one of your serfs? Who needs game when you are a middle class farmer and your only chance with a girl is to convince her father you’d be a good husband? So, the game insights remained fragmentary.

and responding to GBFM:

Keep on digging, little man. Game is more than just confidence, it’s a highly specific skill set. Saying, “Act like a Homeric hero” ain’t gonna cut it.

From personal experience, given the choice between The Mystery Method and the entire Western Canon, a man who wants a pretty wife or a girlfriend had best go for The Mystery Method. Even Robert Greene who found inspirtation for his power book in Machiavelli, and for his strategy book in Sun Tzu, said that he basically had to start from scratch with his seduction book.

A lot of the canon is actually counterproductive. Dante is the king of oneitis and he has had many, many followers.

Having read most of the Canon, the most helpful works would be Madame Bovary and Casanova’s Memoirs. A sprinkle of Byron doesn’t hurt. Even Ovid advocates a kind of provider game (lots of presents):
http://www.rooshv.com/more-book-reviews-9
But that’s what worked in those days. It used to be the most efficient way to get a pretty woman was to get rich or go into a prestigious profession, so that’s what people focussed on. Duh.

In reply to Hugh G Reaction:

I’d say the attitudes that allow you to succeed with women often will allow you to succeed in other pursuits as well.

Yes and no, we’ve all known successful men who underperform with or get taken to the cleaners by women. Doing well with women is, to a certain extent, a highly specific skill set.[Ed]

Finally, to quote Thursday again:

“Just read the classics” is the traditionalist version of “Just be yourself.”

A Superior Type, taking offence at Thursday's comments pushed back:

Philistine. You are a monkey with just enough knowledge to know which books in the library to smear feces over for maximum vandalism. Yes, there are manuals for every practical need, from dating in this modern age to fixing the leak in your toilet. But the prissy assumption that proles beneath you can only absorb bullet lists and abbreviated tips is a commentary on your inferior station. The human mind responds to challenge, especially men, when they are sufficiently motivated and properly educated.

Your Vo-Tech utilitarian approach dispenses with the idea of freedom itself, positive no one can handle it because you can’t handle it. An introduction to the deep concepts of human nature liberates men from the need for the step-by-step manuals to life that you are hawking. Those who look at The Divine Comedy and see more than “oneitis” are simply freer than you. They need less specific instruction and more general wisdom, because, as I said above, it’s not rocket science to translate that knowledge, once truly gained, into working tactics applicable to any social milieu. That’s the easiest part.

I want to make a couple of comments with regard to the highlighted bits in this last comment. Firstly, it's front loaded with the liberal idea that there really is no difference in intelligence and ability between men; all that you need to do is provide enough teaching and resources and even the most stupid man will divine what to do in an appropriate circumstance given a thorough and basic theoretical knowledge about women. It's the standard liberal cure for all ills. It is refuted by science and common sense. Secondly, this is a refutation of the Ancient Greek idea of praxis--experience matters, and there is a world of difference between booksmarts and streetsmarts. Thirdly, a lot of guys do have a problem translating booksmarts into streetsmarts and they need things like bullet lists, mentorship and experience to gain mastery of the Techne of love. From the Wiki entry on Techne:

Aristotle defines techne in the following manner:

[S]ince (e.g.) building is an art [techne] and is essentially a reasoned productive state, and since there is no art that is not a state of this kind, and no state of this kind that is not an art, it follows that art is the same as a productive state that is truly reasoned. Every art is concerned with bringing something into being, and the practice of an art is the study of how to bring into being something that is capable either of being or of not being ... For it is not with things that are or come to be of necessity that art is concerned [this is the domain of episteme] nor with natural objects (because these have their origin in themselves) ... Art ... operate[s] in the sphere of the variable.^[3]

As an activity, techne is concrete, variable, and context-dependent. As one observer has argued, techne "was not concerned with the necessity and eternal a priori truths of the cosmos, nor with the a posteriori contingencies and exigencies of ethics and politics. [...] Moreover, this was a kind of knowledge associated with people who were bound to necessity. That is, techne was chiefly operative in the domestic sphere, in farming and slavery, and not in the free realm of the Greek polis."

It appears that our Superior Type also needs to re-read his Aristotle. I also think it was Aquinas, in arguing the case for revelation, who stated explicit demonstration of divine truths (and for that matter other truths) was necessary since most men had neither the time nor intellectual capacity to discern these things for themselves. The idea that everyman can work these things out for himself is false. Game is not concerned with the theoretical knowledge of women but of practical aspects of dealing with them.

Thursday makes a strong case against this "traditional wisdom" type of approach.

I said it before in the other thread that while the classics have plenty to say about about how perfidious female nature can be, they have precious little insight into how to get and keep the girl. Dante famously didn’t get the girl and pined after her for 40 years. (He was also, like Plato, a fabulously inept politician.) He was also famously Milton’s first wife left him while his second was a holy terror. He also managed to thoroughly alienate his daughters. All of his vivid warnings about female malice and treachery were not enough to give him any insight as to how they should be handled in real life. So, two of the greatest writers in the Western tradition, writers steeped in the Shakespeare, the Bible and the classics were total betas in their love life.

A good analogy is politics. No doubt there is much wisdom in political writers from Plato to Aristotle to Hobbes and Burke and beyond. But all that doesn’t mean that reading those guys will make you into a good statesman. You fucking need practical knowledge on the ground on how to deal with people.[Ed] And in fact you might be a better statesman if you have some good instincts and read Steven Covey, Dale Carnegie, Robert Greene and Robert Cialdini.

Besides if reading the classics were enough, we’d see Classics majors and Shakespeare and Biblical scholars should be getting the hot chicks. I laugh at that to scorn.

Here are a few more thoughts:

1. In general, it is unwise to assume the ancients were fools and that we are so much better than them, but it is also untrue that we can never learn anything new about human nature.

2. The best game ideas come from relatively minor writers like Ovid (though he’s a bit beta), Castiglione, Casanova. The best of them are probably Byron and Flaubert.

3. I have a theory that patriarchal social structures were set up, at least in part, so that men wouldn’t have to learn game.

I don't agree with Thursday's last point but he's on the ball when it comes to understanding the problem with the Western Canon and intersexual relations. The ideas and insights from the great books were distilled in a time where a woman's ability to freely to chose a mate was severely restricted. As I have argued before on this blog, women were so disenfranchised in the past that all a man had to do was show up--and show that he was available--to have a very good chance at getting a mate. The whole culture was an affirimative action program for non-alpha males.

Thursday recognises the change that female emancipation has made, and of the increasing irrelevance the classics have with regard to practical advice on how to attract a mate.

The modern era is a kind of natural experiment to see how women behave when they don’t have to consider what kind of father/provider a man is when choosing who to mate with. It ain’t your father’s world. Sexual attraction is now the sole criteria. That is a radical change.

Here are some lyrics from Gracie Fields’ song Walter Walter to put this in perspective:[Ed: With regard to women's choices in the past]

Walter, Walter, lead me to the altar
I don’t cost much to keep in food
Walter-er, Walter, mother says you oughta
So take me while she’s in the mood

Walter, Walter, lead me to the altar
And make all me nightmares come true
Walter, Walter, lead me to the altar
It’s either the workhouse or you.

Personally, I think women evaluate there mate choices more holistically. I'd actually rephrase this by saying that the modern era is a time when "feelings" justify all actions and what we are seeing now is the raw expression of female sexuality, essentially unhindered by any type of social restraint.  What's changed now is that men have to work to be attractive because, unlike in the past, women today are free to pass over men whom they don't. It's a problem men haven't had to face before and one the Classics don't seem to give much practical advice on.

Marx and the Feminine Imperative.

Cultural Marxism is a term bandied about quite loosely in the manosphere and the imprecision in it's use causes much confusion. For some, Cultural Marxism is a term to describe the progressive leftward shift of culture, for others it's an analytic approach used to understand the world. In this latter instance, the term that really should be used is Conflict Theory (itself heavily influenced by Marxism). If you want to know why Feminists, Fat Advocates  and MRA's sound the same it's because they both explain the world with near identical variants of the same approach.

In essence, Conflict Theory posits the existence of identifiable groups who exist to exploit others for their own benefit. It's akin to the Marxist notion of the bourgeois setting up society in order to exploit the workers. Note, Conflict Theory doesn't admit the existence of any legitimate theory of social structures, seen also such structures as exploitative, hence the person who uses this approach will be profoundly anti-authoritative. Conflict theory can thus count on anyone who wants to push radical equality (Communists, Femminsts, Anarchaists, Libertarians etc) for a sympathetic hearing.

As a theory of social analysis, it's a tailor made cognitive solution for the simpleton common man in trying to understand his troubles. It absolves any responsibility for any problem because it's always someone else's fault. They after all are "oppressed." The solution to all problems involves getting rid of the oppressors and once that happens, a nirvana of happiness will ensure. When it doesn't, the task at hand is to find another group that is doing the oppressing, and thus the circle of conflict continues.

Now, the reason why I've bought this subject up, is because the term has been bandied about with respect to the phenomenon of the Feminine Imperative. Critics of the the concept of the Feminine Imperative have labeled it a product of Cultural Marxism, by which I think they mean Conflict Theory. Now, I've actually had  a hard time trying to grasp what exactly this Feminine Imperative is, so has SunshineMary, but I'm going to go with Rollo's definition of it;

For one gender to realize their sexual imperative the other must sacrifice their own [Ed] This is the root source of power the feminine imperative uses to establish its own reality as the normative one. From this flows the rules of engagement for dating / mating, operative social conventions used to maintain cognitive dominance, and laws and legalities that bind society to the benefit of the feminine. From this is derived men’s default status as the ‘disposable’ sex, while women are the protected sex. It’s this root that the imperative uses to excuse (not apologize for) the most blatant inconsistencies and atrocities of women.

In a nutshell, it's women getting what they want at the expense of men. Being an imperative, this desire for female dominance must originate from women themselves (Class Consciousness), even though women themselves may be unaware of process (False Consciousness). To quote Rollo once again:

One issue many of my critics have is that in exposing these inconsistencies, these operative social conventions and the latent purposes behind them, my writing (really most of the manosphere) seems to take on a conspiratorial tone. I can fully appreciate this, and it might shock a few readers to know that I reject much of the popularized MRA perspective in this respect. I agree with an MRA perspective in a rational analysis to a certain degree, but there is no grand conspiracy, no secret mysterious cabal pushing a negative perception of masculinity – and this is exactly why what I outline on this blog is so pervasive. There doesn’t need to be a unitary group of ‘anti-men’ bent on some melodramatic goal of world domination; because this feminized ideal is already embedded in our socialization. Fem-centrism IS our collective social consciousness.

I've got to admit, to me it appears a classic Marxist analysis of the situation and I reckon that the charge, that this understanding of the relationship between the sexes is classically Marxist in nature, stand.

The problem with this approach is that it intrinsically pits women against men and tars all women with the same brush. Now, I do think that the Feminine imperative holds true, especially for the avowed feminists, but for the average woman,  I don't think she wakes up in the morning desiring to consciously or unconsciously screw men over.

But..... Rollo and Dalrock's highlighting of the subject did get me thinking and I think something else is happening. I do think that the effects of the feminine imperative are real but what is enabling this is not some underlying power conflict but something more complex and therefore harder to understand and tackle.

Our current Western Culture is a product of many historical influences, influences which taken together absolve women of moral responsibility (and protect them) when they act badly. What women are doing at the moment is not imposing some sort of imperative, rather, the worst elements of female-kind (and there is a hell of a lot of them) are exploiting a sort of cultural loophole to their advantage and, as such, Dalrock  is more correct than Rollo when he says that the feminine imperative "just happens".

To keep this brief, I'll just go through a few of these influences in Western thought and how they help the worst elements of womanhood escape moral culpability.

• Classical Greek thought. It taught that women were inferior beings devoid of full moral agency and hence were little more than moral children.

• This synched with traditional Christianity with the husband being the moral head of the household and the woman under his control (and therefore by implication  not fully morally responsible.)

• Puritanical Christianity which taught that flesh was bad.

• The chivalric code. It's corruption resulted in the pedestalisation of women. More importantly, if a man compelled a woman to do anything it was seen as the moral fault of a man.

• Romanticism. The theory that feelings were justified moral ends in themselves.

• Atheism. Which stripped away any moral objectivity.

• Protestantism. This is a biggie and I know I'm going to get some heat on this one. When Catholic practice becomes corrupted it becomes superstitious and idolatrous. But when Protestant practice goes bad it becomes preoccupied with being nice and non-judgmental(tolerant) instead of being good. i.e Churchianity.

• Feminism. The theory that women are victims and can do whatever they like to obtain "justice" and that morality is an instrument of oppression.

• Modern psychiatry (especially the legacy of Freud), which taught that repression of feelings was bad and that self-esteem was good.

• Modern Medicine which tends push mechanistic explanations of human behaviour and therefore negates the concept of moral agency.

So let's take our Girl Scouts at the Christmas party who do nothing to reciprocate the boy's gentlemanly behaviour.  Let's look at the strains of thought in our current culture which provide unscrupulous women with ready made excuses (and allies)to evade any moral responsibility

Any question about reciprocal behaviour can be countered along the lines of:

1)Gentlemen expect nothing in reward(Chivalry).
2) We shouldn't have to do anything for you(Feminism).

Or let's say a woman who cheats on her husband. She can draw on a whole host of cultural memes to justify herself:

(1) We were  in love (Romanticisim).
(2) Don't judge me (Churchiantiy, Atheism).
(3) He seduced me (Churchiantiy, Puritancial Christianity, Chivalry, Feminism).
(4) I was depressed (Modern Psychiatry and Medicine).

Suffering the consequence of thug loving:

(1) Low self esteem (Modern Psychiatry and Medicine).
(2)) He abused me (Chivalry, Churchianity).
(3) I didn't know what I was getting into. (Denial of moral agency:Traditional Christianity, Classical Greek Thought.  Exploitation:Feminism).

Women who write love letters to serial killers.

(1) Low self Esteem (Modern Psychiatry, Medicine).
(2) I want to save him. ( Churchianity, Traditional Christianity).

The list could go on. I really don't think there is such a thing as the feminine imperative, what I do think though, is that Western Women are privileged to enjoy moral indulgence--it's their get out of jail free card, and currently, Western Women are exploiting this phenomenon en mass to avoid moral responsibility. When a woman does something consciously dumb, rude or evil, there are many resources in Western Culture she can draw on. Sure, men can access some of these resources, and criminals frequently do, but women have far deeper pool of cultural "treasure" to get out of jail.

The other interesting things to note is that jumping to defense are ideas which come from two totally different streams of thought. For example, Atheism, with its moral relativism "meshes" nicely with churchiantiy with it's imperative "not to judge". It's like fighting a hydra.

Here is an interesting cartoon from the 40's which illustrates the get out of jail free card. Bugs, a male, has to assume a female persona in order to obtain the help of chivalrous male. As a man he could never get the assistance.

Bugs Bunny - Mississippi Hare

Vezi mai multe video din animatie

Framing this advantage as an sexual imperative, slurs the women who would not dream of using it. The woman who loves her husband would be insulted at the notion that she is planning to screw him over, and I imagine the hostility many women have to this notion of an imperative stems from this. This cultural get-out-of-jail-free card is not omnipresent but is there if a woman decides to use it. There is nothing in Western Culture stopping a woman from assuming moral responsibility for their actions, it's just that in real life women, like all the male bankers involved in the GFC, want to evade responsibility.

Western Culture is largely a male product. The loopholes that have been created in it have been created by men who thought badly and are perpetuated now by men and women who don't want things to change. By chasing an imperative that is not really there, we fail to tackle the problem that is. Conservatives have got to stop treating women like moral saints(and therefore privileged) or moral idiots(and therefore excusable) and recognise them as moral equals. The solution to female bad behaviour lays not in searching for some imaginary imperative, or in trying to assert some male version of it, but in ensuring that we cut through the bullshit and ensure female moral accountability.

A tale of two massacres.

I was going to put down some thoughts on the Newtown school massacre but felt that the subject had been covered to death by the other bloggers and my contribution wouldn't add much to the subject. Still, it did pique my interest in the subject of school shootings and Wiki has a good entry on rampage killers.  Unfortunately, these events are not that uncommon and there appears to be a long history of them. Still, two cases caught my eye which seem to well illustrate the crisis of masculinity in our current culture.

The fist case is that of the Virginia Tech Massacre.  Roissy's comments at the time were, I felt, particularly pertinent.

The killer of 32 people at Virginia Tech used a .22 caliber and a 9mm pistol.
Why wasn’t this guy rushed by anyone?  He’s calmly picking people off.  Bloodshed all around.  Imagine you’re there, trapped in that classroom.  You know you’re as good as dead if you just sit immobile like a juicy target, so you may as well lunge for him and drive your thumbs in his eyes.  You might still die, but you’ve improved your odds dramatically, especially if you go at him during a reload.  He’ll maybe get off one or two shots at you but handguns are notoriously inaccurate, especially when a person is running into your face disturbing your zen-like aiming.  You’d stand a good chance of him missing or you incurring a non-fatal flesh wound.

So a rude thought intrudes.  Engineering campus.  Nerds.  A taxonomy of guys who’ve probably run from fights their whole lives.  Total inexperience with summoning the warrior animal spirits.
There are times of crisis when brainy deliberation or pavlovian avoidance response will do a man no good.

Maybe the bullets were flying so fast, the killer so accurate (from marathon sessions of video gaming I bet), the timeframe so compressed, that in the chaos no one had an opportunity to do anything.  Well, except for this guy.

But if that’s not the case, then I’ll be uncharitable and ask…
did nerdiness cost lives?

and;

yeah, i’ve changed my thinking on this. i think passivity is a systemic problem with men in the West, [ED]not just relegated to nerds. i’m pissed that one guy was able to calmly kill 30 people without anyone at least trying to subdue him, so that colored my reaction.

i talked to a guy recently who went through nyc police training and he told me that a certain percentage of people will go into shock and do nothing in the event of a crisis. the nypd trains their recruits by having them walk around corners and get “shot” unexpectedly with harmless plastic caps. the first few times it happens the recruits stand motionless in shock.

after a few rounds of this training the recruits are able to think better on their feet and react quickly.

Compare this with another school shooting, this time in Bremen, in 1913. From the Wiki Entry;

At approximately 11:00 a.m. Heinz Schmidt entered St. Mary's Catholic School, armed with six to ten revolvers or Browning pistols (depending on sources) and about 1000 rounds of ammunition, which he had bought several weeks prior to the shooting. Because of the large number of rounds, the owner of the gun-shop, where Schmidt had bought his arsenal, deemed it necessary to contact police, though the incident was not found to be important and thus not investigated any further.

In the hallway on the first floor Schmidt encountered Marie Pohl, a teacher at the school, who was just stepping out of classroom 8b, and, seeing his agitated appearance, questioned him about his business at school. Without answer, Schmidt proceeded to shoot at her, barely missing her head. While Miss Pohl fled into a classroom nearby Schmidt entered room 8b, which was occupied by 65 girls, most of them being 6 or 7 years old, and immediately began firing at them. Also shooting at the children after they hid under their tables the gunman instantly killed two of them and wounded another 15. When the girls fled out of the classroom, Schmidt followed them, still shooting. While trying to escape, one of the girls fell down the stairs, broke her neck and died.

The gunman then went back and unsuccessfully tried to enter another classroom that had been locked by a teacher who had realized what had been happening. Schmidt shot at the school janitor, Butz, who attempted to apprehend him, hitting him in the face, before going upstairs where he was tackled by teacher Hubert Möllmann. When Schmidt managed to break free from Möllmann's grip he shot the teacher twice, hitting him in the stomach and shoulder, whereupon he proceeded to shoot out of a window at the children on the schoolyard, injuring five boys. The shots also wounded a roofer working nearby, who, together with his colleagues and other people alarmed by the shooting, then rushed into the school building, though as they arrived on the first floor the gunman had already been subdued by janitor Butz and a teacher named Hartlage. When Schmidt was led away by police he was met by an angry crowd outside, which beat him up and attempted to lynch him, until the police officers managed to hold the mob at bay with their sabres.

In total, Schmidt had fired 35 rounds, three girls died instantly, while two more later succumbed to their wounds – the last victim dying some time in mid-July – and 18 children, as well as three other persons were injured

At Virginia Tech in 2007, the only people who seemed to offer any resistance to the shooter were an old Guy and middle aged female teacher. Where where the young men? (Apparently a student named Henry Lee was assisting the female teacher barricade the room but no one was rushing the shooter.)

On the other hand, back in 1913, the janitor, the teachers, even the roofer working next door and his mates--who had ample time and opportunity to run away--all rushed the bastard. Butz, the janitor, even went back for seconds after being shot in the face!!  Balls of steel I tell you.

(Picture of German Reservists from 1911. Pretty much the same type of guys who would have tackled the shooter.)

Somewhere between then and now, the manhood died.

The older I get, the more convinced I am that the First World War was the dividing line between the old and modern world. 

The Peter Pan Man Boy.

In a previous post, commentator Iangobard asked if I would make a comment on Dalrock's post about the Peter Pan Manboy.

Dalrock should be commended for putting up the data and the first thing that strikes me looking at it is just how badly the under thirties are faring in the U.S. economy. It certainly confirmed our observations from when we were there a year ago.  It's not just the home of the brave and free but also the poor. The overall impression I got from my visit to the U.S was that it was a failing nation composed of a mass of good-willed people who were being overworked and badly governed.

Be that as it may, this is not a post about economics but a post on on the existence of the manboy. From a female perspective, a manboy is a man who refuses to take on the responsibility of adulthood and engage in adult behaviour.  Now before the MRA's start invading the comment section, I want to make it perfectly clear that adult behaviour does not involve marrying some burnt-out carousel rider, rather, manning up in my lexicon means having your shit together.  For those who are retarded, start here for definitional understanding.

Dalrock's data certainly does show that, across the board, men moderately outperform women in earnings capacity.  But I think focusing on earnings capacity over simplifies things and I'd like to point readers back to Roissy's Dating Market Value Test for Men, which I think is an appropriate analytical tool to use when looking a sexual market analysis. Roissy's test is more appropriate since masculinity can't simply be reduced to one parameter.

Still, if we look at the income data, it does demonstrate that there is a severe mismatch for women of higher achievement when hypergamy is taken into account.  Now, the thing to remember is that hypergamy is relative to a woman's own status, therefore,  only the men earning the same amount or more are going to be of interest to her. (All other things being equal.)

I've pulled the following chart from Dalrock's post.

Let's assume that the median income for both sexes is somewhere between the 25-40 thousand band.

Under the influence of hypergamy, a woman from this band will find 58% of all single men (these are the men on her pay scale or above) attractive. On the other hand, the pool of available women is much larger for man since a woman's income is not as important in her attractiveness. That's almost a two to one ratio in favour of the man. The problem gets worse for women the more successful they are as there are progressively less men to satisfy their hypergamous instincts.

But income is only one of the parameters of attraction. A woman's judgement of a man is based on a multivariate analysis. Other parameters such as intelligence, status and physical attractiveness matter, and there is that intangible element of "style".

Now, let's look at educational qualification as education is a rough proxy for status and intelligence.

 Percent of U.S. Adults Ages 25-29 With a Bachelor's Degree or Higher, 1969-2009

What is there to say? There are roughly 1.5 times more bachelor qualified women to men in this age group. Now its true that men still outnumber women in the professions that require really hard thinking i.e Science and Engineering, but this is irrelevant when it comes to the dating game.  What matters in the dating game is which social class/group you belong to and an education is a qualification ticket into the middle and upper classes. An industrious redneck trucker is going to need an awful lot of money to appeal to a female sociology major, since the sociology major is going to feel that, intellectually, he is beneath her and will not appeal to her hypergamic instinct. Yeah, I know there may be exceptions but this is the rule.

Now one thing we notice from the graph is that the number of men attaining a bachelor's degree has remained approximately the same since the sixties. However, given the massive expansion in education over the last fifty years it seems that women have taken the opportunities presented to them whilst men haven't. This graph is a dreadful indictment of the modern American male. Perhaps one of the reasons that so many men are unemployed is because they're to dumb (and therefore unnatractive to women) to attain the qualifications that will give them a job.

I know many MRA types have tried to explain away the discrepancy of educational rates because of affirmative action policies by educational institutions.  And they are correct, there is discrimination, but it appears to be in favour of men. So great is the gender imbalance at some of the universities that they are now actively discriminating against women in favour of lesser qualified men.

But perhaps these men have decided to opt out of the materialist cubicle jockey lifestyle and pursue a life of travel and adventure.

Nope.

This graph shows the percentage of sexes living at home with mum.

Perhaps they're spending all their time at self improvement and doing things like hitting the gym?

Yeah, sure.

I know much is made of the fatification of womanhood by the manosphere but in the U.S. it's the men who actually have a slight edge in fatness during the mating years.

Now, for those who are retarded, pointing out male failure does not equal a support of feminism and those who can't see the distinction can simply bugger off. However, an objective man, looking at the data, can't but conclude that women have fully grasped the opportunities given to them whilst the men haven't.  The data does suggest that there are a significant group of men who fit the Manboy label.

I don't rejoice in these numbers, in fact they profoundly depress me, but what depresses me even more is the both the justification and victimhood mentality that has set in to explain this state of affairs.

Some Thoughts on Christmas.

 My view of Christmas has changed as I've gotten older. When I was a young child, Christmas truly was magical. However, as I've gotten older Christmas has become more and more a burden to cope with. People, instead of becoming happier and more friendly, actually become more agitated and angry as fight their way through mobs to get that last present or ingredient. Very few people wish each other a Merry Christmas anymore and I used to think it was sales staff not wanting to offend some politically correct bastard, but now I realise is because no one really cares and everyone is going through the motions and theirs no spirit in it.

When I used to work in the Emergency Dept Christmas day was always one of our busiest times of the year. Arguments, fights and stabbings amongst family members were quite common. But then again that's what happens when you bring together family members who otherwise go out of their way to avoid each other. The media like to constantly repeat that Christmas is about giving, about being with the family, about helping the poor and unfortunate and all that other shit. To a degree it is all these things and yet it isn't.

Because all that other stuff matters jack shit if you don't remember just why we celebrate it. And for you dumb bastards who want to forget I'm here to remind you that it is to celebrate the birth of Jesus. If you take this one trivial aspect away from the celebration then the day becomes another orgy of excess or sentimental banality. The Christmas magic come from the reason for the event. So instead of stuffing your face with food you don't need and giving presents to kids who have so much shit that they don't know what to do with it, how about you go to Church and bend your knee to the babe given to us by God and be thankful for His mercy. For the Master honours those who honour him.

And enough of the Seasons Greetings, Festive Tidings and especially Happy Holiday shit. All of which are an attempt to secularise an otherwise religious spirit. Grow a pair of balls and tell those who get offended by hearing Merry Christmas to fuck off. It's a time of peace and goodwill and if they can't get with the program then they can go to hell. I'm sick of the miserable bastards.

To the rest of you, a hearty Merry Christmas to you all.

The Slutification of Taylor Swift.

I suppose it was only a matter of time.

Regular readers might remember a post of mine I put up on Taylor Swift. Well, Taylor seems to have changed her image quite a bit.


Gone is the nice wholesome girl next door image that she cultivated before. She appears to want to appeal to the carousel riding crowd. I imagine that she will draw many of her fans along for the ride.

Christian men please note. Sweet Taylor is singing a song about a douchebag. Its a song about about alpha love. More precisely it's about 5 mins of alpha love.

Taylor Swifts transformation is a good example of how a man should not conflate beauty with goodness. Frequently, when it comes to women, beauty is conferred on those who are otherwise moral idiots. A good woman is not just pretty but has good character. Now go and read this post by Roosh V.

For Christian men, the pickings are mighty slim.

Morality and Economics.

Great article over at The Right Stuff by Matt Forney.  Too bad that mainstream economics, of both Left and Right persuasions, is quiet on the subject of personal morality and its link to economic prosperity. In Economics, as in personal salvation,  "Seek ye therefore first the kingdom of God, and his justice, and all these things shall be added unto you."

Economics is a subset of the cultural milleu. Bad culture, bad economics. It's as simple as that. 

An Officer and a Gentleman.

This week I manged to find two posts which intersected with each other quite nicely. The first, was this one over at the Daily Mail.  Now not many nice things get said about the behaviour of the Germans during WW2, and I've certainly got nothing nice to say about the Nazi's, but this story does show that honorable action was possible even in that bestial war. The Luftwaffe, at least in the early stages of the war, acted honourably. In many instances during the Battle of Britain, German pilots would circle around British airmen downed in the Channel where German rescue planes would pick them up. In other instances the British would circle. But as the war wore on, and every advantage was sought, the chivalry wore thin.

But what is interesting is looking at Stigler's motivations for not shooting down the aircraft. When joining his unit he was briefed by his commanding officer Lt Gustav Roedel,

Honour is everything here,' he had told a young Stigler before his first mission. The senior airman added: 'If I ever see or hear of you shooting at a man in a parachute, I will shoot you down myself. 'You follow the rules of war for you - not for your enemy. You fight by rules to keep your humanity. [Ed] ' His moral compass was more powerful than his need for glory. 

 'For me it would have been the same as shooting at a parachute, I just couldn't do it,' Stigler later said.

What is clear here is that his conception of honour is different to the mainstream conceptions of it. Honour, it appears to Roedel, was not a mark of social merit or standing but rather a practical code of action designed to avoid self corruption. This seems particularly relevant in light of one of Fred Reeds latest essays.

These are degenerate days. Once I breached the walls of Ilium or Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade and killed and looted and raped girls of seven in front of their parents—how they howled! Now perforce I say I do it for democracy, about which I don’t give a damn, or to end evil, though our allies are the worst tyrants we can find. Before, I could torture my captives between two slow fires, or by running a red-hot poker up their neither ends, and this in the public square for the amusement of a bored populace.

Now I water-board them, bringing them to the edge of drowning, screaming, begging, puking, yes, that does nicely, now a little more water as their minds break, and maybe I will masturbate over it later. For I am a soldier. I am dirt. I am the worst of a sorry species. ...........

For this we hold reunions. We get together in Wyoming and Tuscaloosa and Portland and remember when we were young and the war held off the boredom of life and the star shells flickered in the night sky over Happy Valley and life meant nothing but was at least intense. I hated the H&I fire over the dark forests of a puzzled Cambodia and I hate you cocksuckers living soft at home for sending us and I hate what I did and I hate what my friends did who were there, who are really my only friends. Aind I hope you one day pay, what we paid, what our victims paid and you pay it as we did. And this will bring me the only joy in my life.

Unlike most people, I regard soldiering as profession akin to the priesthood, for greater love than this no man hath. But just like the priesthood, when it goes bad, it goes bad horribly. And the problem for the soldier, particularly, is that his opprotunities to go bad mulitply in combat. Particularly, in drawn out, low grade guerrilla type of war. Which raises a particular question. How do you fight such a war and maintain your humanity? Personally, I think this is another one of the weak points in Western Culture. Our doctrine on the morality of war seems not to have moved much since the 19th Century and has created a situation where we are trying to fight guerrilla wars with battlefield assumptions that are rooted in traditional European history. This hamstrings our soldiers, who are always judged under the same conditions. On the other hand, this failure to develop a doctrine within the Christian tradition has left the door open to utilitarian modes of thinking which justify all actions in the pursuit of victory.

Dark Triads and Dark Knights: Another interesting study.

 Here is an very good and interesting article from The Scientific American.

Basically, it proves the premise of game. People with the Dark Triad are better able to present themselves in such a way to make themselves attractive. It's not their innate "Dark Triad-ness" that is attractive, in fact, the study mentions that many of these people are later avoided, rather it's their ability "to make themselves attractive" that makes them attractive.

As the authors cleverly demonstrate, it's not the ability to the those of the Dark Triad to learn modes of behaviour and dress that makes them attractive and not necessarily their innate qualities. Whilst the study did not look at it, it certainly hinted that many of those who possessed Dark Triad qualities had difficulties with long term relationships.

Which leads to another implication of the study. The reason why those of the dark triad have "success" is because their targets are predictably superficial in their assessments of them. Every time I see a Katie Piper taking some thug-luvin, I can't but help feel that there goes a woman without any long term sense or judgement.

Still, for the young Christian man looking for a mate, when you see a woman paired up with such a man, it is a sign, like a tattoo, that such a woman is not a good long term investment.  She who lives by the tingles shall die (or be disfigured) by them.  BTW, here is an example of a woman with an extraordinary good deal of common sense.

However, the research which I have presented in the last few posts demonstrates that it is difficult to have a good relationship with a woman if a man does not at least possess something which generates the "tingles" in his mate. In other words, a man needs to possess both alpha and beta qualities. But what would such a man be like? I imagine there are many permutations possible, but I've always liked Raymond Chandlers description of his ideal detective, since I believe it encapsulates the alpha/beta mix very well. I tend to think of it as the concept of the "Dark Knight": 

“In everything that can be called art there is a quality of redemption. It may be pure tragedy, if it is high tragedy, and it may be pity and irony, and it may be the raucous laughter of the strong man. But down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid.

The detective in this kind of story must be such a man. He is the hero; he is everything. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor -- by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world. I do not care much about his private life; he is neither a eunuch nor a satyr; I think he might seduce a duchess and I am quite sure he would not spoil a virgin; if he is a man of honor in one thing, he is that in all things.

He is a relatively poor man, or he would not be a detective at all. He is a common man or he could not go among common people. He has a sense of character, or he would not know his job. He will take no man's money dishonestly and no man's insolence without due and dispassionate revenge. He is a lonely man and his pride is that you will treat him as a proud man or be very sorry you ever saw him. He talks as the man of his age talks -- that is, with rude wit, a lively sense of the grotesque, a disgust for sham, and a contempt for pettiness.

The story is the man's adventure in search of a hidden truth, and it would be no adventure if it did not happen to a man fit for adventure. He has a range of awareness that startles you, but it belongs to him by right, because it belongs to the world he lives in. If there were enough like him, the world would be a very safe place to live in, without becoming too dull to be worth living in. ”

― Raymond Chandler, The Simple Art of Murder

Chandler really knows how to mix the alpha and beta just right.
 

You can lead a horse to water.*

A while ago, Roissy linked to a study which showed that disgust seems to be diminished when people are sexually aroused. The study was part authored by Charmaine Borg, who is a researcher with an interest in sexual dysfunction. Her main area of interest seems to be in trying to elucidate the mechanisms of vaginismus and dyspareunia in the hope of find an effective treatment for the conditions.  Her research findings suggest that these two conditions are strongly linked to the disgust response. Apparently, there has been very little research into the disgust mechanism, so she is really paving some new ground. However if some of her preliminary finds are anything to go by, I feel that her research will have profound implications in our understanding of intersexual dynamics. Particularly the traditionalist understanding of sexual interaction.

The traditonalist "romantic" model of sexual interaction saw sex activity as an endpoint after a period of escalating romantic involvement. Essentially, a man "niced" his way into a woman's pants. Having sex for purely "physical" reasons was seen as a form of debased behaviour and hence aspects the sexual dynamic which emphasised a partners physical characteristics were downplayed or censured amongst polite society. There was a strong anti-carnal nature to our understanding of sexual love. Keep that thought.

Back to Ms Borg's research.

More interesting than her disgust study is this one, which is hot of the presses (Only have the abstract). In this experiment, women were divided into two groups; those who had positive emotional associations with sex and those who didn't. Explicitly erotic images were then shown to both groups of women whilst they underwent functional MRI scanning. The interesting finding in this study was than in both groups of women, brain activation patterns akin to that seen in disgust were activated, with the strongest activation being in those who were sex negative. The authors felt that a woman's sexual memory modulated the disgust response. In other words, women with a good experience of sex were able to modulate their disgust response more effectively than those with negative memory.

This is actually a groundbreaking experiment on two levels. Firstly, it seems to demonstrate a  default disgust-mediated inhibitory mechanism to female sexuality. Unlike men, who are good-to-go,  women it appears are in a "switched-off " mode through a disgust mediated mechanism. It's this default hard-wired bias which probably explains why there is no equivalent to the raw-sex-gay-bar scene amongst women.  All other things being equal, women are wired to find raw-anonymous-sex disgusting.

Secondly, the research seems to provide evidence to support Baumeister's erotic plasticity hypothesis by demonstrating that modulation of disgust response is possible. In fact, Borg et al have done some research which hints at cultural factors also being able to modulate this response. In this small study, Borg was able to demonstrate a link between conservative moral values and sexual dysfunction. If you encourage prudery you're going to get asexual women, as sexual puritanism re-enforces the disgust response.


Now, this research is interesting in how it intersects with traditional conceptions of sexuality and marriage.

Traditional conceptions of love placed a strong emphasis on romantic love and de-emphasised the carnal nature of the sexual dynamic. Christian writers placed particular emphasis on duties towards each other and of the need to render the marital debt owed to each other. Wives were told to submit to their husbands.  Fair enough.

But what happens when a good Christian wife, out of wifely duty, has sex with a husband she finds unarousing? Her "hard wired" neural circuitry is bound to find the experience disgusting. (Aspergoids: she has no choice in the matter).  If she does it enough times, a conditioned response sets in and the wife is involuntarily put off sex. Add a puritanical cultural environment, and you have a great mechanism for killing off sexual intimacy and encouraging extra marital liaisons. Who would have thought?

For those who are interested, an appropriate Victorian cautionary tale.

*I know it's not a horse but I liked the picture.

I'm calling it Koreogamy.

As mentioned in my previous post, there really is no convenient term to describe object of male desire. Considering the suggestions made in the previous post, I've decided that Elusive Wapiti's suggestion is the most appropriate.  Hence, Koreogamy will be term I'll use to describe the quiddity of male sexual desire.  Kore being Ancient Greek for maiden (Young woman). If anyone has any objections speak up. Perhaps the Dark Lord will confer his blessing on the term.

Thanks to EW for the suggestion. BTW, he has a good essay on the topic over at The Spearhead.

Femogamy: A New Term for the Manosphere.

Everyone who has spent any time amongst the Manosphere blogs is by now familiar with the term hypergamy: the desire for women to marry up. Unfortunately, as far as I'm aware, there doesn't appear to be a similar term for the equivalent male urge: the desire to marry more attractive, feminine women, i.e. younger, hotter, tighter. This is an unfortunate omission which tends to stymy a good  understanding of the human libido and relationship dynamics. Many manosphere commentators, especially the MRA crowd, fail to understand that female hypergamy is a natural instinct and not some perverted moral choice.

The reason I bring this up is because there has been an interesting discussion going on over here which seems to illustrate quite clearly the categorical error made by many manosphere commentators. They can't seem to recognise that, when it comes to the human libido, the hypergamous impulse in women is equivalent to the (femogamous?)  impulse in men.  There may be better words to describe the impulse out there,  and I'm all open to suggestions, but I think this omission of a name for male-specific sexual desire confuses the situation, especially amongst weaker minds.

Weaker minds, I feel, make a category error when dealing with hypergamy, attributing to it a moral dimension which really isn't there.  Hypergamy is the natural object of female sexuality. It's not a choice, and therefore devoid of a moral dimension, but a hard wired instinct.  It's what women involuntarily feel in the presence of a suitable male. Women have about as much choice about their hypergamous natures as men do about their femogamous ones. It's a fact of life and getting angry about it is about as idiotic as getting angry about the orbital motion of the planets or the unfairness of Plank's constant. How a woman chooses to act on those feelings confer a moral dimension to them, but the fact of being attracted to alpha males is morally neutral.

In many ways the men complaining against hypergamy are akin to the "fat acceptance" crowd and their logic, when complaining about male femogamy.  The fatties are constantly harping on about how there is something wrong with men for preferring thinner women. The MRA/MGTOW crowd are constantly asserting that there is something wrong with women for preferring higher status males. Both loser groups, being the neglected victims of natural human desires, want to punish or constrain normal people from having them. Social engineering is the preferred vehicle.

One of the big tenets of conservative thought is of accepting the reality of human nature.  Conservatives believe that you can't socially engineer it to your pleasure; that intellectual error belongs to the Left.  And if you think about this a bit more deeply, you'll see then that the anti-hypergamy crowd aren't conservative in any sense at all, rather, their thought process is fundamentally radical, more akin to the left, in their understanding of human nature.  That's why there is an overlap between traditionalist "romantic" understandings of women and feminism.

If anyone has a better name for the concept I'd be glad to hear from them.

Hard Wired: Bonus Scientific Paper.

David Foster asked if the researchers investigating insula activation in women in the previous post looked at whether or not similar circuitry existed in men. Well, those particular researchers didn't but following paper demonstrated similar neural networks in men.

From, Distinguishing specific sexual and general emotional effects in fMRI—Subcortical and cortical arousal during erotic picture viewing, the authors state;

No differences were found in these effects when comparing females and males. Our findings demonstrate for the first time neural differentiation between emotional and sexual components in the neural network underlying sexual arousal.

Alpha Circuitry.

A while ago I put up a series of posts on the subject of female mate selection based upon my clinical and real life observations. It was my contention that in order for attraction to develop a man must stimulate certain "receptors" in a woman's brain in order to elicit reciprocal attraction. Now a "receptor" was a mental construct of mine meant to have some sort of analogy with a neuro-biological mechanism of the mind. To recap, I posited the existence of an alpha receptor--that is a mechanism which responds to stimuli signifying male sexuality, and beta receptor which responds to friendship and commitment like stimuli. It appears that science now has the data to back me up and analogous neuro-biological "circuity" actually exists in female brains.

From, Correlation of Insula Activation and Self-Reported Quality of Orgasm in Women; the authors, after analysing functional MRI data, conclude:

Neuroimaging data expanded these behavioral results by demonstrating the involvement of a specific left-lateralized insula focus of neural activity correlating with orgasm scores, irrespective of dimension (frequency, ease, satisfaction). In contrast, intensity of being in love was correlated with a network involving the angular gyrus.

These findings strongly suggest that intimate and sexual relationships are sustained by partly different mechanisms, even if they share some emotional-related mechanisms  [Ed]. The critical correlation between self-reports of orgasm quality and activation of the left anterior insula, a part of the partner-related neural network known to play a pivotal role in somatic processes, suggests the importance of somatic information in the integration of sexual experience. On the other hand, the correlation between activation of the angular gyrus and love intensity reinforces the assumption that the representation of love calls for higher order cognitive levels, such as those related to the generation of abstract concepts.

It would appear that when it comes to neural networks there appears a sexual network and a romantic network. But here is the real kicker from the study;

However, no relationship was found between intensity of love and partnered orgasm frequency.

What about the flowers, the roses, the dinners??

Clearly then, if romantic love does not necessarily fuel the sexual fire what does? Another study, however, did find something which modulated women's orgasm frequency. From, Men's masculinity and attractiveness predict their female partners' reported orgasm frequency and timing. The authors conclude:

We found that women reported more frequent and earlier-timed orgasms when mated to masculine and dominant men—those with high scores on a principal component characterized by high objectively-measured facial masculinity, observer-rated facial masculinity, partner-rated masculinity, and partner-rated dominance.

This was an interesting study since it demonstrated that orgasm frequency was contingent upon a male possessing objectively ascertainable characteristics. The relationship quality was an uncorrelated variable.

This fascinating study (abstract only) was able to decouple women's assessment of male facial attractiveness into sexual and non-sexual assessments (two separate circuits):

In the present study, while nonsexual judgments best explained facial attraction in whole-face images, a reversal occurred for split-face images such that sexual judgments best explained facial attraction, but only for mate-relevant faces (i.e., other-sex). These findings indicate that disrupting holistic processing can decouple sexual from nonsexual judgments of facial attraction, thereby establishing the presence of a dual-process.

And this study (abstract only) demonstrated that sexual arousal seems to activated by different set of of neurotransmitters when compared to romantic love:

The sexual arousal responses of women in the Lust group, but not in the Romantic group, were positively and significantly associated with elevated NE and DA. It is feasible that, when women are seeking a partner (Lust), NE and DA may facilitate attention toward sexually relevant stimuli

All in all, the research seems to point towards the existence of two separate neurological circuits. An alpha network; which is concerned with sexual desire, the activation of which is contingent upon men having certain objectively determined characteristics, and and a beta circuit concerned with asexual aspects of male/ female relationships.

Lemmings.

One of the hardest tasks I find, when dealing with my patients, is trying to "get inside their heads". Frequently, seemingly inexplicable actions are logically explained when you take the patient's "point of view" with regard to things. This does not mean that the patient was correct in what they said or did, rather, their actions were understandable with regard to forces and reasons operating in their head.

The inability to get into the opposite sex's heads, I think, is a real problem amongst many of the commentators in the manosphere, who seem to have a very hard time trying to understand female logic and motivations. Many men assume that women think like they do, and in trying to understand female action project male "logic" onto female minds. Unfortunately, this is wrong. The mounting evidence from neuroscience clearly demonstrates that men and women have different cognitive processes. I think that it is important to come to grasp with these differences in order to understand how we got into the current predicament and how to best combat it.

I have a lot of respect with regard to commentator Dalrock, and his rebuttal to me in the last post was intelligent and thought out. Still I think he errs in his understanding of female motivations.

This goes against what we know, both from a biological perspective and what the PUAs are telling us. Having sex makes babies, and it stands to reason that there is a strong biological drive to have sex with men the woman perceives (psychologically) as the fittest genetic donor. This is core to your (correct) point that it isn't reasonable for unattractive betas to demand that women become attracted to them. This is in fact what they are doing (having sex with the most attractive men they can get), and also what they tell you they are doing. Yet when these women have sex based on exactly these constraints, you attribute it to peer pressure. Biologically they should want to have sex with these men*, yet you are convinced that they really don't. 

Firstly, I'm not a big believer in evolutionary explanations of human behaviour. (No, I'm not a Creationist). The evolutionary crowd attribute too much to the genetic imperative and not enough to cognitive, social or emotional reasons.  David Buss recently wrote a book on women's sexual motivations and found a multitude of reasons why women have sex.  The take home message is that women's sexual motivations are complex and simple "genetic" imperatives are a worthless guide to understanding female motivations

The first mistake many in the androsphere make is in attributing male thought processes onto female minds--it just doesn't work that way: When you enter into a woman's brain it's a totally different world where different forces are at play. For example, it was often assumed in the earlier days of sexual research that female desire was a weaker version of the male type. However, recent psychological research backed up with functional MRI data has showed that this assumption is wrong.  Take this fascinating study by Laan.  She was able to demonstrate that women seem to be "less connected" to their genitals than men are. Whilst women were able to perceive a sexual stimulus they were less likely to be aware of it.  Likewise, compared to men, visual erotic stimuli are processed differently.

Gender is not a social construct but a biological reality resulting in a differential information processing system.   To use a crude analogy, men and women don't just differ in processors but in operating systems as well. 

Secondly,  manosphere commentators need to grasp the importance of social factors in influencing female thought and motivation. Numerous psychological studies have shown that women are more conformist than men. (Google Scholar it). It's not just that women consciously choose to conform, it's that their cognitive processes actually biases their thinking to conform.  Female cognitive processes are wired to make exclusion from the "in group" a stressful experience. When men want to punish they physically hurt, when women want to punish they exclude; the pain comes from the effect of group exclusion.

When the fat lard-arses whine about being pressured to conform to social expectation they are simply  illustrating this fact. All women want to be pretty and the constant display of beautiful women in the media makes every woman regularly aware of he deficiency with respect to the group ideal. The "pressure" thus felt is generated by her own neurobiology which recognises her "outgroup" status and attempts motivate her toward in-goup behaviours and ideals. Men too, feel this pressure but not to the degree that women do. Men might be horny all the time but women are always trying to stick with the herd.

It is this phenomenon which helps understand the phenomenon of "Erotic Plasticity". Roy Baumeister was the first to introduce the concept. While I think Roy Baumiester's current opinion piece is poorly argued, his papers on "erotic plasticity" are simply superb. Women's sexuality seems "plastic" to a degree that it just isn't in men. And as Baumeister hints in his papers, it is the social milleu in which females operate that strongly molds their erotic desires. From his 2000 paper;

Over half (55%) of women who had coital experience had peer groups who encouraged sexual activity, whereas almost none(3%) of the virgin women associated with such groups.

I would consider that statistically significant. But it would be a mistake to think that this social weighting to their cognition only applies to sexual domain. Fashion, for example, exerts a greater influence on women than men. And it need to be remembered that women frequently dress with regard to the opinion of other women in mind. Romantic trajectories, mothering styles, school and suburb choice are strongly influenced by the in group social script.

Not only is there a pressure to conform, but there seems to be some sort of cognitive mechanism which punishes the women for asserting their individuality. Women will frequently assert that there is something wrong with them if they find dissonance between group sanctioned behaviour and personal displeasure.  In Victorian ages, where sexuality purity was idealised, women thought there was something "wrong" with them if they enjoyed sex. Now they wonder if there is something wrong with them if they don't. The whole cognitive mechanism is weighted to bias the group above the individual. It's the cognition of individual subordination. 

What this means practically is, when compared to men, women suffer from more cognitive pressure to conform to group norms, and it is this mechanism that explains erotic plasticity. Women can literally be reprogrammed to whatever you want them to be. The secret is not to make it explicit or one on one but rather to highlight a woman's deviancy from the norm. If you want women to engage in any type of deviant sexual practice, then what you have to do is show that all of the girls, especially the popular ones are doing it, and its only the weird one's or the fundies that aren't. Once she has accepted that it is part of  "in group" practice, her own biology and cognitive processes will impel her toward the practice even though she might find it personally objectionable. But so strong is this imperative that she will question her own "normalcy" if she doesn't find practice enjoyable.

This is why Sex in the City and Cosmo are far greater moral solvents than hardcore porn. Porn has to appeal to the individual directly, whereas shows like SITC only have to give the appearance of upholding an "in-group" norm to influence female behaviour. In societies where rape is punishable, it is women who are the sexual gatekeepers and the level at which sexually permissibility is set is determined by group norms.

It's this propensity not to override their social imperative, even in the face of obvious self-interest, which I find so interesting in women.   Now,  I agree that women possess moral agency, and can override their emotions, but it appears that,when it comes to in-group norms, they have a far harder time doing it than men do. It's why I have some sympathy for their predicament. Dammed if they slut, dammed if they don't.

I'm not trying to excuse women for their behaviour, rather I'm trying to get a better understanding of what the motivating factors are. It really is hard for a woman to be good these days, given the current social climate which makes sexual restraint as an "out group" behaviour. Society is really rigged against the good girl.

Cigstachio

Firstly, I want to thank all the commentators to the previous posts, even those who disagreed with me I'm sorry I wasn't able to reply to everyone, but as usual, it's been a busy week.

My contention that the the success of women in contemporary society may be due to their superior character traits (at least when it comes to work and self organisation) seems to have struck a raw nerve with many commentators. Many commentators seem to want to explain away the phenomenon either as a product of affirmative action or as a result of deliberate discrimination against men.
Personally, I don't buy it.

One of the advantages of family medicine is that you get to see families dynamics in action over an extended period of time. Initial impressions are either refuted or strengthened by repeated observation and after a while you become a good judge of people's character.

Whilst I agree that the world has become progressively populated with feminist harridans, it has also become more populated with less masculine men. As far as I'm concerned, whilst many women may have unrealistic expectations of future mates, in my opinion, there is a degree of legitimacy to the claim that there is a dearth of good men.

Simon Grey disagreed with some bits of my previous post but I've got to agree with him when he says:

Here, I think, is the most important part:  most men simply do not deserve good wives, and thus good marriages.  Most men are not attractive.  And not simply in the looks department.  Most of the men I have met are weak, back-biting, narrow-minded losers.  Many of the young men I know have no goals or direction in life; they seem content with dead-end jobs, Xbox and porn.  I sincerely hope they avoid marriage.

Many of the older men I know are not much better.  A good number of them are gossipy, narrow-minded old fools who would rather engage in petty power struggles than work together in the best interest of others.  They seem like a bunch of bitter old bitches.

Even a good number of middle-aged guys that I know can be characterized as losers.  They are overly deferential to their wives, they don’t act as fathers to their children, they allow themselves to be disrespected by everyone.  They are losers, through and through.

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

Testify brother!

Simon is reporting from America what I see here in Australia.

Now, there seems to be this notion in the manosphere that women today are too choosy, and perhaps they are; but there never seems to be the recognition that a lot of men are no-damn-good. And perhaps, just perhaps, the reason why women are passing them over is simply because they are too repulsive to commit to.

The question I want to pose to the manosphere is, what constitutes a good man?  I mean, is a man deficient in sex appeal a good man? Is a man with sex appeal but no work ethic a good man? Is a cultureless man a good man?

Let's conduct an interesting thought experiment.

Take a look a Cigstache. (Hat tip Roissy)

Let us suppose that:

Cigstache is fertile.

She is committed to having a family.

She rejects feminism.

She goes to Church and believes in God.

She is a virgin.

She wants to be a stay at home mother.

She knows how to cook, clean and mend.

She is not a spendthrift.

She is happy to put out whenever.

She clearly possess all the moral virtues of a good wife. Would we consider any man that refuses to commit to her too choosy? Is Cigstache a good woman who has been passed over?

The problem is that many betas don't recognise that they are the male equivalent of Cigstache. Sure, they may posses many moral virtues and provider capability but what they lack is sex appeal. Is such a man a good man?

I suppose what I'm asking is what constitutes the minimum standard of masculinity; the point at which female rejection is justified. When does a man become a loser?