In a comment below last Thursday’s post on the myth of male inflexibility, SamSeaborn wrote:
…mating, at least in the early stages, is dominated by female choice, and women do have a tendency to prefer doers, not feelers as partners. Sure masculinity and feminity are ever-adjusting, but the problem at this point is, it seems to me, that masculinity is squeezed between an expanding concept of feminity (the best man for the job may be the woman) and the reality “on the ground” that forces most men to compete more intensely for the fewer places “in the sun” because, put in overly simplified terms, it’s those men most women seem to be interested in. I’m not saying men have no power in sexual negotiations, but those who have tend to be the ones who are in scarce supply, and that’s those who managed to get through the fiercer competition.
Again, I’m all *for* changing that, but I don’t see female CEOs being interested in male kindergarten teachers. This is the crux of the problem, and feminism isn’t really offering any advice.
He got a number of replies, of which La Lubu’s was both typical and cogent:
Where I come from, teaching and nursing do not take a man out of the “wanted” pool—it’s the polar opposite. Those are considered decent jobs. Are female CEOs (yeah, there sure are a lot of those) dating those men? No. But are women of the same social class dating and/or marrying them? Hell, yes. People—men and women both—date within their social class. Men of high socioeconomic status might recreationally fuck a woman of lower status, but they sure the hell don’t marry them (or even introduce them to their country-club friends).
Who do you know, in your life, that has rejected a man with a decent paying but below six-figure job because of his earning power? If you don’t have any anecdata, what statistical evidence can you show me that states this? I have never seen that—ever. I see the opposite—heterosexual men who hold those jobs that you (as a male) regard as unmasculine, are almost always married. Evidently, women have a different measure of what constitutes masculinity. We don’t really give a hot damn who is King of the Mountain.
The argument that SamSeaborn advances is basically this one: “Men don’t like wearing the straitjacket of masculinity, true. But women want us to. In fact, the only way we get laid is when we engage in stereotypical male behavior. Therefore, it’s women’s fault that we’re suffering from the constraints of manhood, and women have only themselves to blame that they cannot find the male partners they claim to want. If women would only change their sexual decision-making, then men would behave better. But as long as women reward hyper-masculine asshole-dom with sex, then men have no incentive to change.”
I hear this argument frequently from anti-feminists of both sexes.
Stay with me for a second: I’m old enough to have gone to elementary school when they still showed movies in class: proper films, the sort that came on reels. Students fought for the privilege to “thread the projector”, a term that will be meaningless to anyone under thirty. And many of the films I remember best came from Disney’s “Trure Life Adventures” series. These had been filmed in the 1950s, but they didn’t seem dated in mid-1970s classrooms. I remember film after film exploring the wonder of mating. Everything was G-rated, of course, but the basic idea was obvious: males in the animal kingdom do all that they can to put on impressive displays in order to attract a female. The latter had all the power when it came to sex selection. Reading Sam’s comment, I can’t help but wonder if his sexual worldview owes more to Disney nature films than to 21st century human reality.
I hear from a great many young men the familiar complaint that “girls just want bad boys”. There are lots of reasons why we socialize young women to want disaffected, hostile, and brooding young men. Mostly it has to do with the “my love can change him” notion I wrote about in this post. It’s a phenomenon of the very young, however; relatively few adult women continue to buy into the delusion that they have the capacity to love a violent and unreliable man into compassionate responsibility. The point is, a great many young men oversell the “good girls only want bad boys” trope because they sense the obvious benefit: if they then themselves mistreat women, they are not doing it out of any defect in their natures, but out of a rational strategy for improving their mating odds. It is women themselves who have made these rules, these boys and young men say (often with sincerity); we fellas just have to adapt as best we can. It’s yet another corollary to the myth of male weakness: bad male behavior gets cunningly reframed as an evolutionary adaptation demanded by women, and the blame for everything falls nicely once again on the shoulders and hearts and libidos of the be-uterused.
Sam is talking about the grown-up version of this. In a world which is still in some sense a jungle, he argues, even the most well-educated and successful woman wants a man who can take care of her. This may be more likely to mean “make lots of money” than “beat up creepers who ogle me”, but it’s still the lament that women’s hearts and sex drives don’t really match up with feminist politics. Though all of the evidence suggests that more men don’t seek out nurturing professions because of a combination of socialization and fear of ridicule by other men, many anti-feminists suggest that women’s refusal to take male nurses or kindergarten teachers seriously as potential mates is the primary force driving men away. When real-life women like La Lubu and Mythago and the others in the comment thread suggest that this is just so much pap, their experiences and desires are dismissed as anecdotes that are entirely unrepresentative of the mass of “real women” about whom the likes of SamS apparently know so much.
It is axiomatic that heterosexual men and women regularly misunderstand what the other sex wants. These misunderstandings are reinforced by a media that hypes absurd caricatures of masculinity and femininity, leading young boys to imagine that without an eight-pack on their tummies, they are destined for lonely celibacy — and leading girls to believe that all young men insist on being partnered with those who have bodies like Khloe Kardashian’s. These misperceptions are excusable in adolescents, less so in adults a decade or two (or three, or four) removed from puberty. Too many men and women assume that their acquaintances of the other sex are lying when they say things that deviate from culturally-imposed expectations. So when a man hears a woman say, “No, I really do want a partner who will be an equal rather than a non-communicative workaholic”, he may tell himself, “Bullshit. She’s just saying that. I know what women really want.” This “knowledge” is often rooted in random anecdote, or his own imagination, or some slick purveyor of misogyny masquerading as common sense like Tom Leykis or Laura Schlessinger. (To be fair, many women have a hard time believing that male weakness really is a myth rather than a biological reality. When a man says to his partner, “Honey, I only want you”, she may have been so conditioned to believe in the impossibility of male fidelity that she too thinks her own quiet “bullshit.”)
To the extent that men really are being “left behind” in the new economic and educational paradigm, it is because of the inability of so many men to slip the surly bonds of traditional masculinity. The problem isn’t female teachers who “don’t understand boys”, the problem isn’t “feminism”, and the problem isn’t the imagined disconnect between heterosexual women’s politics and their libidos. The problem is a hopelessly constrained vision of what it means to be a man, a vision largely created and maintained and passed on by men. Fathers and brothers and peers; rappers and ballers and professional pugilists; these are the all-too-faithful perpetuators of the myth that women will only accept “sturdy oaks” who “give ‘em hell” and never, ever, display grief or vulnerability.
Individual men suffer from what is, in the end, a collective masculine crime; we are, to paraphrase an old AA saying, the architects of our own adversity. The relentless attempt to shift the blame to women’s irrationality or inconsistency cannot long obscure that hard and heartbreaking truth.
Quick typo: `There are lots of reasons why we socialize young women to want disaffected, hostile, and brooding young women.’ Since the rest of the post seems to presuppose heterosexuality, I assume you meant disaffected, hostile, and brooding young *men*.
Yes, thanks! Corrected as of now!
Life is SO much easier, post divorce and no longer interested in marriage (unless it’s a fabulously wealthy old codger with no kids about to kick the bucket). Been there, done that, the T-shirt’s long gone to Value Village.
Amen, Hugo.
We’re short-changing our sons by keeping them in the “MAN box” just like we’re short-changing our daughters with the “female box”.
Perhaps this was brought up in the earlier thread, but I find SamSeaborn’s talk of `sexual negotiations’ interesting. A negotiation is one stage of a commercial exchange: Person A has some stock of a commodity that person B wants, and person B has some stock of a commodity (possibly money) that person A wants; they negotiate how much of each commodity will be changing hands. (In)famously, A and B are each doing what they can to benefit themselves as individuals, even if this comes at some expense to the other person. This doesn’t imply that A and B are trying to cheat each other, or even trying to strike an unfair deal. My point is that there’s no collective good being aimed at or achieved in a commercial exchange, just mutual benefit to two individuals.
Now, certainly some sexual relationships are like this — prostitution, one-night stands, hookups. But not all. And, what’s more, not even the paradigm of a healthy sexual relationship — a long-term, monogamous relationship that exemplifies several other virtues — is about mutual benefit to the two (or more) individuals involved. Instead, it’s about creating and maintaining collective goods, such as the good of a close-knit and loving family.
Further, the things that make a good partner in the first kind of sexual relationships are very different from the things that make a good partner in the second kind. An aggressive, bottled-up, domineering man might make a good partner for a one-night stand (at least for some people), but he probably would *not* make a good husband and father. A caring, emotionally expressive, and egalitarian man, by contrast, probably would.
Someone who treats all sexual relationships as negotiations is thus quite likely to overlook just how sexually desirable a caring, expressive, egalitarian man can be.
This- the post and earlier comments- strikes me as incredibly sad- thank you for this. I’ve never really empathised with the mindset you describe here before- never cared to, if I’m being honest. However, I think it must be an incredibly lonely way to live, to go through life seeing one’s closest (potential) relationships characterised by both stereotyping and a zero-sum calculation of benefits.
Dan- I think that last line of your comment really clicked with me. The idea of treating all sexual relationships as ‘negotiations’, as opposed to the opportunity to become closer, experience intimacy, deepen relationships, or just have a whole lot of fun times. I feel sorry for people, of all genders, who see sexuality that way.
Hugo, I definitely agree with you that the constraints of media-portrayed masculinity and femininity are not the fault of feminism, and that (hopefully) as straight men and women get older, they learn how to toss out the messages they get about how they are supposed to act or behave that are patently ridiculous.
On the other hand, especially for young people (don’t know if I still fit in that category anymore or not), I feel like there are definite social sanctions for not acting in accordance to gender norms. Now, those norms do change a little based on class, geography, and ethnic communities, but the sanctions are still there. They may come in the form of jokes and barbs from friends, to scorn from potential sexual partners.
The problem for me, and perhaps other young folks who are exploring feminism and gender justice is how to deal with those social sanctions while looking for a more genuine way of existing in the world, and making/meeting new friends who have a similar outlook on life.
Thanks for this–very cogent, truthful observations…
As a feminist I’ve always been blessed with feeling equal to men–{and if I’m being honest, very often superior on an intellectual level}
Because I’m lucky enough to have been raised by a feminist mother and father, I branched out into tacking all sorts causes as an activist, especially helping those that are voiceless, non-human animals. I also had the time and luxury of getting an obscene amount of education,(both formal and self-taught) which I loved…
All that being said, I definitely view men on an individual basis, and judge them individually, and by their brains more than anything…and *that* being said, the only place I want them to exercise those dom/manly qualities, is in the bedroom. I think a lot of women are like like that, very aggressive and in charge in real life and day to day, and therefore like the male to be aggressive etc *just* in the bedroom…
Dan, I liked your comment also. I’ve always hated the “commodity” analogy with human relationships; it has glaring flaws that don’t translate. Human beings aren’t “stuff”—we aren’t mere “things”, and even the most shallow folks don’t have the same relationship to their “stuff” that they do to other humans. We aren’t inanimate objects, static in who we are or what we can become—unlike that shovel hanging in the garage. We change over time in reaction to our experiences. The best one can hope for a favorite belonging is that it stay in the shape it had when one first obtained it—that it doesn’t get worse, as “stuff” inevitably does. In contrast, good human relationships get better over time, despite the storms and winds life brings.
Hugo,
I don’t really understand why you have to create caricatures of arguments and have to use cheap shots like “When real-life women like La Lubu and Mythago and the others in the comment thread suggest that this is just so much pap, their experiences and desires are dismissed as anecdotes that are entirely unrepresentative of the mass of “real women” about whom the likes of SamS apparently know so much.”
*All* our experiences are anecdotes, and my anecdotes are just as real and right or wrong as La Lubu’s and Mythago’s. What makes their experiences more real than mine, apart from your desire to blame my experiences on my alleged inability to discern the desires of “real women” from those allegedly falsely presented by “the media”?
Please don’t go overboard in your desire to define a conceptual chasm to protect your own convictions when the state of the dialogue was merely approaching the point of understanding each other’s terminology.
So basically, you say that what you allege to be my simplistic structure for blaming women or feminism for the straightjacket of masculinity (and, well, I *DID* say that my comment was *overly simplified*), and you create an equally simplistic counterargument in which women have nothing to do with how men decide to define masculinity for themselves.
So I’m not really sure what the point of that is when the aim is to actually understand the nature of the problem and not merely to assign blame.
Dan,
I have never referred to “negotiations” in this respect, but I’m happy to talk about this in transaction cost terminology.
“Someone who treats all sexual relationships as negotiations is thus quite likely to overlook just how sexually desirable a caring, expressive, egalitarian man can be.”
The only thing that, in economic terms, is different about those kinds of negotiation is the role of uncertainty and the difficulty in “pricing”. Everyone knows that people are looking for different qualities in partners for different things - it’s just a different kind of negotiation.
I don’t want to add another nice guy element to this discussion, because that’s not really what this question is about, but have a look at this thread for a feminist woman’s relatively honest take.
LaLubu,
I agree, good human relationships get better over time, and - in many ways - it’s completely wrong to look at them in economic terms. But in other respects it’s not wrong, and, I’d say, probably one of the best ways to actually understand where interests of individual people - closed systems each and every one of them - do meet. And I’m well aware of the immense amount of conceptual problems that still entails.
the aim is to actually understand the nature of the problem and not merely to assign blame.
But I think that’s a false dichotomy, Sam. The nature of the problem is inextricably tied up in something that has very little to do with women, but which is invariably presented as having everything to do with women. Helping both sexes to see that — and helping men take responsibility for extricating themselves from the system (rather than waiting for women to come along and do it for them) requires this approach. At least as far as I can see.
Sam, are you experiences that female CEOs sniff and turn up their noses at blue-collar men, but male CEOs happily marry working-class women in the knowledge that their golf and business buddies won’t give the match a second thought? Really?
Saying that women’s preferences affect how men act is kind of a no-brainer. But you keep putting it all on women while pretending you’re not - insisting that men only gender-police in the absence of cues from women.
Hugo,
“The nature of the problem is inextricably tied up in something that has very little to do with women, but which is invariably presented as having everything to do with women.”
I disagree with that presentation. To be honest, I’m thinking you’re having difficulties to see the kind of pressure that men are experiencing with respect to performing themselves in a sexually attractive way.
I can even understand that you wouldn’t be able to see that as a problem, given that you’ve always been very successful with women (as you said repeatedly). I mean, my success is much more recent and there are occasions when I’m out with a friend and he’s complaining about this and that and women and pressure that I find myself thinking - “just go and talk to her, she’ll like you, seriously”. But then I do remember how painful it was on the “other side” that you may just not be able to understand because you never felt that pain… possible?
Come on, Sam. I’ll be the first person to admit that a lot of my sexual acting out was related to feelings of deep insecurity. As I’ve written before, I was an awkward teen, never having much success at getting into any kind of a relationship until my senior year of high school. Of course I experienced pressure to perform in a sexually attractive way — but the demands of sexual attractiveness from women weren’t unreasonable, mysterious, or oppressive. Bathe. Make eye contact. As La Lubu says, listen attentively and really hear what a woman is saying. I was never a star athlete nor stunningly handsome. But I learned how to listen, really listen And jeepers, if that wasn’t an excellent start.
Mythago,
“But you keep putting it all on women while pretending you’re not”
well, I *am* not - but what in what I say makes you say that again? Maybe it’s a terminology problem.
“but male CEOs happily marry working-class women in the knowledge that their golf and business buddies won’t give the match a second thought? Really?”
I know male doctors and female nurses, but female doctors and managers who married. I know male pilots and female flight attendants who married. I know male professors and female assistants. I know politicians and CEOs who married their secretaries. I know male corporate lawyers and female freelance journalists. The female management consultants and lawyers I know have a tendency to be attracted to their or some other company’s company’s partners. This is a snapshot, but yes, seeing women marry men with an at least slightly higher social status attribution/men marry women with an at least slightly lower social status attribution is the most common marriage constellation in my experience.
Heather H … your idea of feminism is very different from my idea of feminism.
considertheteacosy and La Lubu - I’m glad my comment rang a bell (or some more appropriate metaphor). I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how so many human relationships are misrepresented using language or models from economics and business; it’s nice to see a little confirmation that I’m not barking up the wrong tree (or some more appropriate metaphor). :-)
Sam - I was quoting you quoting Hugo; if you want to call it just a bad choice of phrasing, that’s fine. My point can just be a tangent inspired by your phrasing, not a criticism of you in particular.
Hugo,
ok, fair enough -
“but the demands of sexual attractiveness from women weren’t unreasonable, mysterious, or oppressive. ”
Yeah, using soap is what we’re talking about… ;)
Well, I’m not saying women are behaving unreasonable, mysterious, or (consciously) oppressive. But if you’re accepting that women and their mating decisions are *one* route via which gender stereotypes are reconstructed then what do we disagree about? I’m saying more power to every man who can say “screw that”. But I’m not going to blame a guy who believes he has to perform in a particualar way because he believes that’s what women want from him. I think that’s unfair, and you seem to think that it’s “tough love”.
Yes, but the real demands from women I’m talking about (the sort that any person makes as a prelude to intimacy) generally undermine rather than reinforce the masculinity structure — it is men’s inability or unwillingness to defy other men (or to articulate an alternative vision) that leaves them unwilling to extricate themselves from a straitjacket that does do them a disservice.
Hugo,
“the real demands from women I’m talking about (the sort that any person makes as a prelude to intimacy) generally undermine rather than reinforce the masculinity structure — it is men’s inability or unwillingness to defy other men (or to articulate an alternative vision) that leaves them unwilling to extricate themselves from a straitjacket that does do them a disservice.”
I think we may have come to the core of our disagreements. I think the real demands from women generally reinforce the masculinity structure rather than undermine it. And I don’t think men care that much about other men if they are in a happy relationship, but they care about male hierarchies when they believe that’s they way to get into one.
So. Assuming for the moment that what men identify as women’s revealed preferences (and what serves as foundation of the criticism you lined out in the post) aren’t actually their *real* preferences, I’d say we’d need to get to a communication structure that gives women an understanding of how their choices are perceived and gives men an understanding that there are alternative interpretations…
I think that empowering women to articulate their “choices” without shame or judgment would go a long, long way to improving the situation for everyone. And encouraging men to hear what’s being said (rather than listening to their own tapes about what they think women are really saying) would help too. We may be close to an agreement here!
I think we may have come to the core of our disagreements. I think the real demands from women generally reinforce the masculinity structure rather than undermine it.
How so? Masculinity has various constructs. If you’re performing masculinity to an audience that has different standards for that performance, your performance will not be well received (and vice versa).
What I’m getting at is whose masculinity? There isn’t just one expression.
Hugo, you’d agree with Sam that “we’d need to get to a communication structure that gives women an understanding of how their choices are perceived”? For real? You agree that women just don’t understand how men think about them, and that this is a problem that could use correction?
There may be men in this world who ‘perceive women’s choices’ and do not proceed to tell those women and any other woman they can corner about their perceptions, on and on until their voice boxes and/or their keyboards give out. There may be a few. I even think their numbers may be growing. But there aren’t many.
No, I wasn’t clear. What I wanted to do was reframe what Sam said. The two biggest reasons men don’t understand women is that a) the men aren’t really hearing what women are saying and b) many women still aren’t safe to speak. Of course, even when women do speak the truth and the men do hear, there’s still c) the socially constructed straitjacket that makes it difficult for some men (certainly not all) to respond appropriately.
I wanted to add another piece of anecdata to counteract Sam’s examples:
I know of female professors who marry small town business owners (male)
A prominent female doctor who married a very sensitive nature loving artist who cried when he accidentally ran over a worm and wanted to help it. The list could go on, but frankly it is getting late and I need to get some sleep.
Hugo,
ah, well, so close. But no cigar for us yet.
“a) the men aren’t really hearing what women are saying”
What does that even mean? Does that mean anything? This sounds like politicians going on about “the people have spoken, we just don’t know what they’re saying”. Do you sometimes wonder whether people may consider your rhetoric as condescending? And whether that may be a reason of unnecessary conflict? Just a thought.
“and b) many women still aren’t safe to speak.”
What is that supposed to mean in this context? We’re talking about *mate choice* as an act of communication, and you say women aren’t safe to choose their mates? Oh well.
You know, it was close. But no cigar.
LaLubu,
“How so? Masculinity has various constructs. If you’re performing masculinity to an audience that has different standards for that performance, your performance will not be well received (and vice versa).
What I’m getting at is whose masculinity? There isn’t just one expression.”
Sure, but within each audience the demands of women (who are that audience) will tend to reinforce rather than dismantle the structure that is a reaction to the perceptions of their own demands, inadvertendly, perhaps, but still. Segmenting the term will offer various options, and certainly gender is a more varied construct today than it was a couple decades ago, at least in many parts of the world, but the core mechanism of institutionalisation is unlikely to change, in my opinion.
1. The visitors to http://www.hugoschwyzer.com are not necessarily representative of women or men in general. This is true with all themed blogs. The visitors to EDSBS.com tend to be Florida Gator fans . . . etc. The women who post here may be real, but not necessarily in the majority with regard to beliefs and opinions . Heck, 1-4 percent of women are exclusively lesbian in their orientation. Visit a lesbian blog and it seems like the whole world is lesbian. The sample size on here is simply not large enough or diverse enough to analyze what the average woman wants.
2. Habits and ingrained beliefs are formed in adolescence. After adolescence it takes work to restructure those beliefs. It can be done, but it is HARD work. When high school girls stop crushing on muscular athletes (who are often older and frequently in college) and start lusting en masse for sensitive poet types, the revolution will be upon us. :)
3. Sadly, many older women “like” jerks. The women at my church have lots of stories about women who keep showing up at shelters and clinics with their faces beaten in by new boyfriends.
Sure, but within each audience the demands of women (who are that audience) will tend to reinforce rather than dismantle the structure that is a reaction to the perceptions of their own demands, inadvertendly, perhaps, but still.
Sam. Communication is a two-way street. Women aren’t the only ones with “demands”, or as I prefer to phrase it, preferences. (I phrase it that way because I don’t “demand” that anyone change to suit me. If you need to change that much in order for me to have a relationship with you, it means you’re not the right person for me! Merely not pursuing a relationship is not indicative of a “demand”, but I digress).
It would be most helpful if you could bring the high-flying rhetoric down a few notches with concrete examples. What I am apparently having difficulty communicating is that some men seem determined to follow a script, rather than realize they are in the wrong play, on the wrong stage. Instead of trying to tweak the existing script, they need to change which play they’re in.
I mean it about the “script”. You can’t read Hamlet during a production of “American Idiot”. And if you’re a heterosexual man looking for the attention of women, you have to stop playing to a male audience and worrying about the guys’ assessment of your masculinity. They don’t count. I know so many white anglo (or anglo-type) men who won’t dance, because they interpret the fluid moves that compose good dancing as effeminate. Women, on the other hand, interpret those so-called effeminate moves as drop-dead sexy. A man who can move like that on the dance floor probably isn’t afraid to demonstrate some of those same snaky, full-body contact moves in bed (or so we think! :D). Once those men get over their fear of how other men are interpreting their masculinity, they “magically” find they have more success with women. Imagine that.
Now, dancing isn’t for everybody. Neither is anything else. I’m just using that particular example because I see it often—that relevatory response in men who actually do enjoy that kind of thing in private (think: the “Risky Business” dance scene!) when they break out of their shell and start enjoying it publically.
(There is something fundamentally wrong with a masculinity that eschews sensuality. Or, there is if there is any concern about sex. Sex is sensual.)
What feminism brought to women is the dissolving of barriers. We’ve been all over that—diving over the front lines and breaking down the previous barriers put before us. Women are going places and doing things that we weren’t in my grandmother’s day, because we can. We can. We can explore. That’s no small thing.
My question is: why aren’t more men doing the same thing? Why don’t more men find those broader parameters liberating? Why are you waiting for us to hold your hand, for crying out loud! I didn’t wait for male approval in order to join the building trades. I know there are some men who find that a barrier, but so what? Plenty of fish in this sea. I’m not going to set artificial limits in my own path in the hopes that Some Man, Somewhere, is going to appreciate my sacrifice.
Sam, I sure wish you’d define your terms. What are you talking about when you refer to your changed performance of masculinity? Did your audience change independently, or did you consciously start playing to a different audience?
The women who post here may be real, but not necessarily in the majority with regard to beliefs and opinions.
Another way of saying, “I don’t agree with you, and the Majority™ supports me.” There are a variety of folks who post on threads here, believe it or not. My own views on masculinity are very representative of my demographic—working-class, rust-belt, urban, what-is-called-in-Chicago “ethnic” folks. I take issue with your use of the term “majority” to specifically exclude entire demographics (like mine) that disagree with you.
When high school girls stop crushing on muscular athletes (who are often older and frequently in college) and start lusting en masse for sensitive poet types, the revolution will be upon us.
When have high school girls stopped crushing on sensitive poet types? Someone’s listening to all that emo, after all. Poetry slams have audiences filled with women. There’s still women out there screaming at rock concerts led by sensitive poet types. I think you aren’t paying attention.
Sadly, many older women “like” jerks.
Empahatically, NO. You need to get better information on the dynamics of domestic violence. Your response here is supportive of the continuance of DV (”whaddya do? some women just like that kinda thing.”) You can start here.
Yes, as La Lubu said, anyone who thinks that high school girls only like muscular athletes (anyone, in other words, who think that adolescent female desire is universally aimed towards a certain subset of highly popular and athletic males) really doesn’t know many teens, or doesn’t know them well. The number of young women who will enthusiastically agree with the statement “nerds can be hot” (note the qualifier) is very high. But the fact that female desire is incredibly diverse and multivalent doesn’t mean that particular women have an obligation to be attracted to any one particular group (or one particular individual).
I think we may have come to the core of our disagreements. I think the real demands from women generally reinforce the masculinity structure rather than undermine it.
Even qualified (`generally’), this is a strong statement, and one that needs empirical support. The same, of course, goes for the opposite claim, that the real demands from women generally undermine the masculinity structure. Part of the problem, clearly and as a few others have pointed out, is that we’ve been trading (or flinging) anecdotes rather than giving genuine empirical support for either claim.
But there’s a deeper problem. Both claims are strong because they make sweeping, gender-wide claims about heterosexual desires. Haven’t we — at least, the feminists and pro-feminists here — long since learned how problematic these sweeping claims are? Shouldn’t our initial reaction to either claim be that women (and men) are a pretty diverse group, and hence unlikely to all (or `generally’) be masculinity-reinforcing or masculinity-undermining?
In the absence of empirical support, in other words, I suggest we assume that some (straight or bisexual) women will sometimes act in ways that reinforce masculinity and some (straight or bisexual) women (possibly even the same ones!) will sometimes act in ways that undermine masculinity. A similar assumption about homosocial men would also be appropriate.
Dan, LaLubu,
sure, but I’m always assuming a distribution of preferences and behaviour, and, across a population, even small shifts of mean and shape of the distribution can have important consequences - quoting from this (http://www.economist.com/node/15867956?story_id=15867956&source=most_commented) article in the Economist -
“IMAGINE that the world consists of 20 men and 20 women, all of them heterosexual and in search of a mate. Since the numbers are even, everyone can find a partner. But what happens if you take away one man? You might not think this would make much difference. You would be wrong, argues Tim Harford, a British economist, in a book called “The Logic of Life”. With 20 women pursuing 19 men, one woman faces the prospect of spinsterhood. So she ups her game. Perhaps she dresses more seductively. Perhaps she makes an extra effort to be obliging. Somehow or other, she “steals” a man from one of her fellow women. That newly single woman then ups her game, too, to steal a man from someone else. A chain reaction ensues. Before long, every woman has to try harder, and every man can relax a little.”
The thing is, the same is true about expectations that form the basis for everyone’s individual response to perceived environmental challenges (like what it means, to *up* the game, in the scenario above).
La Lubu, as for this -
“What I am apparently having difficulty communicating is that some men seem determined to follow a script, rather than realize they are in the wrong play, on the wrong stage. Instead of trying to tweak the existing script, they need to change which play they’re in. … My question is: why aren’t more men doing the same thing? Why don’t more men find those broader parameters liberating? Why are you waiting for us to hold your hand, for crying out loud!”
on a fundamental level, I think it’s because - in a very abstract way - we don’t like ourselves very much. We cannot imagine being wanted without being needed, hence masculinity is about being needed and not about being wanted. Look at this, for example -
http://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/08/20/is-there-anything-good-about-men-and-other-tricky-questions/
and I think it becomes immediately apparent why men, more so than women, are afraid of breaking up gender structures that have ensured their being needed, in the terms of the one paper I quoted in the other thread a “Victorian” style mating/marriage pattern rather than a “Sex and the City” style mating/marriage pattern. While historically it was only about half of the men who seem to have reproduced, while in the post war economic structure there seems to be no markable difference between women and men in that respect, even allowing for female cheating before DNA-analyses.
Add to that most men’s experiences with - as Hugo called it last year - invisibility and lack of experiencing sexual wantedness due to a variety of factors, not least slut shaming, of course, that make it hard for men to believe that they can be enough in their own right, just being themselves.
So this is the setup in which you, as an individual guy have to make decisions about what to do in your life, about competing to have the potential to become a potential provider, have the capacity to be needed instead of having to rely on being wanted, that is what many men choose - and, again, their individual experiences do make it a rational strategy.
And again, as a reminder, I’m talking about distributions and the potential for a shift in their shape - not about *all* women and *all* men.
“(There is something fundamentally wrong with a masculinity that eschews sensuality. Or, there is if there is any concern about sex. Sex is sensual.)”
Very much so. But I think considering male sexuality as borderline sociopathic and in need of social control is proababy one of the cornerstones of social organisation since humans started talking. Male sexuality is always portrayed as taking, hardly ever as giving. Taking usually isn’t seen as particularly sensual. Feminism is not really challenging that notion, if only inadvertendly, by mostly dealing with issues of male sexual violence. It’s a bit of a dilemma, as rightly dealing with those problems will (contribute to - this is *not*, I suppose I have to emphasize that part in particular, just a matter of feminist discourse, this is much, much older) recreate a discourse of male sexual sociopathy, prevent men from embracing a concept of their own sexuality in which sex doesn’t include a value transger from the women to them, and in which they are thus able to conceive themselves as *wanted* instead of needed.
That’s with reference to the macro-level. Now for the micro-level -
“What are you talking about when you refer to your changed performance of masculinity? Did your audience change independently, or did you consciously start playing to a different audience?”
No, it was really largely about my self-concept and my presentation. You intuitively got a lot about that right in the last thread. What definitely changed was my ability to present me as a sexual being, not be ashamed of my sexual interest without putting it front and center in the interaction, and *lead* an interaction.
When I’m referring to women reinforcing the structure of the masculine in their demands on this level, it’s mostly my experience with women who are demanding the man (me, friends) to be in constant control of and lead the (mating) dance. Sure, some women will (thankfully!) at some point break out of the script, but most won’t. If you’re asking me for percentages, in *my* personal experience, I’d say, as a generous guess, there are about 15-20% of women who are willing to go beyond the script on some level (like, say, merely saying “hi” themselves), and thus *not* reinforce notions of the “masculine structure” on the micro level.
Another weird thing about this discussion is that it treats quantity as quality. For example, if my SO has not been particularly successful with women during his life if you count by numbers this can be interpreted several different ways. What if you add that I’m engaged to him and have had easy success with men my entire life? Am pretty enough and am quite successful professionally. What if you add that his lack of ’success’ was mostly due to his lack of interest and refusal to stay in relationships where he was not sufficiently interested?
You could say that his mating strategy was bad if his goal was to ‘get laid a lot’ but excellent for netting a woman who is willing and capable of being a breadwinner, is “traditionally attractive” and is incredibly delighted to commit the rest of her life. Is that a win or loss?
Okay, I feel like a douche talking like that about myself but I also have annecdota from others. From my personal experience men value loving long term relationships that make them happy over getting laid a lot and rejecting toxic masculinity is a big plus in achieving the first.
Victoria,
there is no algorhythm, of course, but I’d say that, generally, finding the right person to be with is, at least to a significant degree, a numbers game (which is actually incredibly hard to model rationally). So, “getting laid” may not necessarily be the only measure of success, but, depending on an individual’s mating strategy, is a potentially useful indicator of having choice among potential mates, as not everyone is as lucky as you two have apparently been when you met.
Basically maybe it’s men’s turn to look at that often worn advice to women. Look not at what kind of men women sleep with look at what kind of men the women you want marries.
The truth is most men get married and most women get married in American society. So obviously men who do not perform masculinity in the socially prescribed way get married. And so do feminists and women who don’t perform femininity.
SamSeaborn,
I disagree because my strategy for having fun is very different from any strategy for finding a relationship. That is there are a lot of men who I’d go out with (if not otherwise committed of course) that I know from the get go wouldn’t work as long term partners. For example, I loved extravagantly complimentary men for a good night out - I always knew I’d never have a real relationship with one because I am incapable of believing a word they say. Yes absolutely one night stands not infrequently end in happily ever after but most don’t.
Oh and also (I promise I will stop posting soon).
My whole point is that I don’t think he ‘got lucky’ (except insofar as anybody who finds love gets lucky). It’s not like I discovered a gem that everyone else had overlooked or something, plenty of people were interested in him and my interest and our eventual coupledom was a natural outflow of his ‘mating strategy’.
“on a fundamental level, I think it’s because - in a very abstract way - we don’t like ourselves very much. We cannot imagine being wanted without being needed, hence masculinity is about being needed and not about being wanted. Look at this, for example”
I can assure you that not liking ourselves very much is a problem that both men and women grapple with, whether they will openly and honestly admit it or NOT. Women also find gender roles far from liberating. As far as I’m concerned we have a long ways to go.
As for the comment about being needed and not being wanted—don’t think for a moment that both sexes don’t grapple with these issues as well. I don’t think this problem is limited to just gender roles or even in the sexual context that it is used here. I believe it cultural and a constant message heard that it is what we do, rather than who we are that is valued. I see examples of this type of conduct every day and no it doesn’t feel good to feel valued for what we do for others. For what possible reason would hearing that type of message feel good to anyone. I picked up on that comment because I can relate to it on a very fundamental level.
As for the example about high school girls crushing on muscled athletes—people grow up and their preferences change and that can take some people a very long time. As to preferences some people don’t even know why they have them—they don’t even bother to think about why they feel as they do. I guess I’m not even following why you would bring up the high school girl example. Likewise, I cannot speak for others, however I was always attracted to people who found me attractive and interesting, whether that was wise or not, and believe it or not, some of those guys who I was interested in would have been viewed by others as geeks. Yes, it’s true I confess I had a fondness and still do for nerdy science guys, however I don’t feel disdain towards muscles either. My personal preference is for a nice, fine balance of both intelligence and muscles.
“When I’m referring to women reinforcing the structure of the masculine in their demands on this level, it’s mostly my experience with women who are demanding the man (me, friends) to be in constant control of and lead the (mating) dance.”
Sam, you state that you changed your self-concept and your presentation. I gather that it took you some time before you changed your self-concept and thus your presentation. Maybe this is what is driving the behaviors of the women you seek out. I’ll bet that they are not even aware of that you would like to see this change—that they would take the lead. I’ll bet many of them don’t even think about it in much the same way that a lot of people don’t think much about why they have the particular preferences that they do or even why they behave or feel as they do. A lot of familiar and habitual behaviors are hard to break, even if one is aware and desires too and even if othes would like us better. Frustration towards others behaviors is a pretty common complaint I hear and I’m even prone to making them myself, which again both sexes tend to grapple with.
Sam, I sure hope you aren’t taking any of that evo-psych to heart. I don’t think there’s been any dramatic evolutionary change in the bodies or minds of human beings between my great-grandmothers’ generation and mine—but there have been tremendous changes in the parameters of what is thought to be “women’s capabilities” or talents, capacities, however you want to put it. My explanation is that like men, women are also hard-wired to be go-getters, that this is critical to human evolution and survival, and that once let out of a cage, we—ka-boom! go for broke. There really aren’t very many people around these days claiming that an education is going to damage the uterus.
Also, while you mention slut-shaming as having a damaging effect on human sexual relations (I agree; this is classic “the patriarchy hurts men too”), you don’t seem to extend this to its natural conclusion—that nonpatriarchy is the solution. I take issue with your cites as they contain far to much essentialism for my taste; and essentialism that when I object, tends to be met with my “othering”—the center holds; I’m just an outlier. Even though I come from a background of outliers (I’m not just an outlier by myself, y’know). Like this:
If you’re asking me for percentages, in *my* personal experience, I’d say, as a generous guess, there are about 15-20% of women who are willing to go beyond the script on some level (like, say, merely saying “hi” themselves), and thus *not* reinforce notions of the “masculine structure” on the micro level.
Ok, fair enough. But that is absolutely not how the mating dance goes in my slice of the world. It’s more of a tango. I chalk it up to something not mentioned in the typical feminist history textbooks (just like the contributions of labor union women are overlooked)—the immigrant experience. Part of the immigrant experience for many people is the separation of the family for years at a time; that threw a real wrench into authoritarian patriarchy (which in itself was imposed on the peasantry; the type of sexism practicable by the wealthy was not accessible to peasants. That isn’t to say there wasn’t any sexism, just that peasant women always had more latitude in certain arenas than women chained to the pedestal. Necessity being the mother of invention and all….besides, patriarchy (like racism) has to be taught and enforced; it doesn’t come naturally to humans.)
Anyway. I reject essentialist notions of masculinity and femininity precisely because it took so little overturning of the apple cart to create new, lasting social paradigms. You’re mentioning 15-20% of women who take some aggression into their own hands? I’d say at face value, damn, Sam, how often do you leave the house? It isn’t uncommon for women in my world to initiate contact. And if a woman isn’t stepping up to the plate and taking some control of the situation (a la the tango), that’s a clear sign that she is not interested in you. Maybe that’s not what it means in your world, but geez….didn’t Margaret Mead have something to say about the variety of attitudes towards sex? My interpretation is that the less patriarchy, the healthier and more expressive the sexuality.
The whole needed/wanted thing….I don’t get it. I would hate to think that someone was with me only because they needed me for utilitarian purposes. Good Maude, how depressing. I couldn’t imagine living my life like that—making myself needed in order to be “wanted”. In fact, I’ll go ahead and say I think I can only feel “wanted” in a situation where I am not “needed.” I don’t want to be a human appliance or ATM.
Karen,
Absolutely. I’m really not blaming anyone for their preferences, or the way they came about. And I’m really not frustrated…
Sam,
“When I’m referring to women reinforcing the structure of the masculine in their demands on this level, it’s mostly my experience with women who are demanding the man (me, friends) to be in constant control of and lead the (mating) dance. Sure, some women will (thankfully!) at some point break out of the script, but most won’t.”
Well, that’s all well and good, although when someone writes what you do above it does sound like you would like seeing behavioral changes or would feel happier with more women taking the lead–you did write thankfully. And for further clarification I wasn’t using the term frustrated in a sexual context.
LaLubu,
“Sam, I sure hope you aren’t taking any of that evo-psych to heart.”
I’m not sure what exactly you’re referring to, but I’m rather eclectic when it comes to looking at these things. When there’s something that seems to make sense, I’m not rejecting it for ideological reasons, whether it comes from Simone de Beauvoir or Richard Dawkins. I think an open mind is what is most important on these matters, although it is, alas, exceedingly rare.
“There really aren’t very many people around these days claiming that an education is going to damage the uterus.”
I completely agree that changes in human behaviour are far to important for simple biological explanations. But that certainly doesn’t mean biology doesn’t play a part, as is often suggested by blank slate proponents.
“you don’t seem to extend this to its natural conclusion—that nonpatriarchy is the solution. … My interpretation is that the less patriarchy, the healthier and more expressive the sexuality.”
Well, I assume we’d have slightly different definitions of patriarchy, but I thought that your statement was basically agreed on by everyone, and that the question was why/how it’s so difficult for men to accept more freedom as a positive rather than a negative element. Then we put forth theses about why/how, particularly with respect to fear of lack of sexual opportunities, which is why Hugo wrote this post.
Masculinity is the social practice of being a man, in my opinion. It is logically non-essential, in my opinion. I do, however, believe that whatever practice there is, is influenced by a biological element. Culture is built upon biology, and it’s hard to say whether we’ll ever be able to disentangle the two, as it’s all embodied.
“Ok, fair enough. But that is absolutely not how the mating dance goes in my slice of the world. It’s more of a tango. … You’re mentioning 15-20% of women who take some aggression into their own hands? I’d say at face value, damn, Sam, how often do you leave the house? It isn’t uncommon for women in my world to initiate contact. And if a woman isn’t stepping up to the plate and taking some control of the situation (a la the tango), that’s a clear sign that she is not interested in you. Maybe that’s not what it means in your world, but geez…”
I do get around quite a bit…
Well, I suppose we have different interpretations of what we mean by stepping up to the plate. My best female friend always tells me to be more assertive “when it comes to it”. So, yeah, as far as most women’s assertion strategies go, they “do step up to the plate”. Yet most women still won’t initiate. I mean, really, if I’d get a dollar for every time a woman has complained to me or some friend of mine behind my back that I just wouldn’t “push her against a wall and kiss her” I’d get myself a fine bottle of wine now… There *are* women who do that, as I say. But they are a definite minority in my world.
“The whole needed/wanted thing….I don’t get it. I would hate to think that someone was with me only because they needed me for utilitarian purposes. Good Maude, how depressing. I couldn’t imagine living my life like that—making myself needed in order to be “wanted”. In fact, I’ll go ahead and say I think I can only feel “wanted” in a situation where I am not “needed.” I don’t want to be a human appliance or ATM.”
I do understand that. The point is, if you feel that the only options are “nothing” and “being needed”, then “being needed” suddenly doesn’t sound so bad. And that is, I would say, how a majority of men still see their position in the mating market. We do have the plentiful reproductive resource, we are the expendable sex. And on some level, we know that we are not as central to a community, any community, as women are. We’re peripheral, and if we’re not “needed”, we’re some kind of a “luxury good”.
Some indigenous societies come up with magic stuff to offset that and socially create male centrality - think didgeridoo. But in enlightened societies that’s not possible. So I tend to see patriarchy as affirmative action for men gone over the top. Luckily, the importance of reproduction is lower today than it was before, so the female centrality advantage is lower than it was before. But it’s still there, and we really don’t know how to deal with it yet, I’m afraid.
Karen,
“you did write thankfully.”
I would be glad if more women did. But that doesn’t mean I blame them for not doing so. Does that make sense for you?
La Lubu,
longer reply in spam queue…
Yes, it does Sam and thanks for clarifying. A lot of what people discuss here with regard to gender I see in the broader context of culture, family and demographics, and dare I say religious influences as well. I think La Lubu is on to something I tend to agree with her observations.
I mean, really, if I’d get a dollar for every time a woman has complained to me or some friend of mine behind my back that I just wouldn’t “push her against a wall and kiss her” I’d get myself a fine bottle of wine now…
I love that a woman demanding to your face that you perform for her sexually counts, for you, as her not initiating. I mean you can’t make this stuff up. I am — I can’t even. I just love it.
Also: you are reaping the rewards of what we like to call “playing hard to get,” and you’re being damned ungrateful for it. You withhold, you tease, you keep yourself away, you tell women wordlessly to look-but-don’t-touch, and lo and behold, they want to touch.
That’s how it works. And if you think that by grabbing them whenever you felt like it you’d have more success, you’re dreaming. They want you to grab them because you didn’t. Feminine wiles don’t only work for girls.
When there’s something that seems to make sense, I’m not rejecting it for ideological reasons, whether it comes from Simone de Beauvoir or Richard Dawkins. I think an open mind is what is most important on these matters, although it is, alas, exceedingly rare.
Nice cheap shot. Look, it’s prima facie evident to me as a woman that this garbage is exactly that—garbage—and not for ideological reasons. Before I could accurately define “ideology”, I sure the hell knew what sexism was as a child—it was the act of folks thinking women are lesser beings in any number of ways. It was the act of putting us into a box and saying, “stay” like we were dogs. I have had a lifelong experience of observing, living with and among, talking to, and cherishing women in my life who don’t fit into the evopsych box—the vast, overwhelming majority of us. And for what it’s worth, I don’t live in Berkeley, California or any of those other ground-zeros for feminism. I’m a working-class woman in central Illinois. Ever hear the term, “yeah, but will it play in Peoria?” That’s supposed to refer to the standard, average “norm”. I don’t live in Peoria either, but it’s a fairly easy drive. If the women in this part of the country, who decidedly do not identify as feminist for the most part (”I’m not a feminist, but…” is a popular refrain), yet aren’t even close enough for horseshoes or hand grenades to fitting the evo-psych template…..it sure the hell is not because of “ideology”. Quit trying to erase my experience. You are more of an outlier to the average USian life than I am. Capisce?
Not that there’s anything wrong with that, of course.
Some indigenous societies come up with magic stuff to offset that and socially create male centrality - think didgeridoo. But in enlightened societies that’s not possible.
That statement really offends me. Why not mention the indigenous people of Europe coming up with “magic stuff” to create male centrality–think, “Vatican”. Enlightened? Bullshit. This is racist, full stop.
sophonisba,
no so quickly. They rarely *ask* (or demand, in your terminology) when they are waiting for me to do it. They mention it later, at some point, rarely to my face, often when they talk to my best female friend and wonder why I didn’t do it then… I wish they would ask more often.
LaLubu,
“Nice cheap shot.”
Crazy thing is, this really wasn’t about you, but a general statement about the sad state of dialogue on these matters, that is dominated by people who usually demand axiomatical deference as a precondition for dialogue. On both sides. I’m unwilling to let presumed answers dictate my questions. I am willing to accept good arguments and the possibility of being wrong. I’m trying to limit the influence of my own experiences when I’m making general arguments, since you’re possibly right that I’m more of an outlier than you are. Basically, I am surprised you’d feel this as being about you (erasing your experience, I mean, seriously?) since you were certainly the most open minded in this discussion… and by the way, I know that I’m more of an outlier, but, to be honest, that’s also a pretty cheap shot..
As for the other part, wow, so hard to give people the benefit of the doubt, isn’t it? Yeah, you could say the magic thing about a number of religions. I just really didn’t include religion in “enlightened” in my mind. And the indigenous example was because of this - http://www.reclusiveleftist.com/2006/05/07/the-origin-of-male-dominance/ - thread (by a radical feminist evolutionary biologist…)
Well good lord, unless it’s post-breakup (and it doesn’t sound like these are women who got to the breakup stage in the first place) they are telling your best friend so that she will go and tell you. Otherwise, they’d be saying it to their own best friends.
It really does sound like you are or were trying to use a socially feminine seduction style without wanting to dirty your hands by learning any of the socially feminine attentiveness and effort that is required to make it succeed. Letting yourself be seduced is one hell of a lot more work than seducing somebody, as you clearly figured out.
(if that is obscure — what I mean is just that if you’re going to sit back and let them come to you, you have to pay minute and obsessive attention to their moods and gestures and how they look at you and how close they stand and on and on and on. I hope this doesn’t come across like dating lessons because I am not at all trying to give you advice, I’m trying to point out how much very real and very difficult work “passive” women do to get laid and how dismissive and ignorant it is to wave that away as them not ‘initiating.’ There’s a ton of subtle work that takes the place of pushing someone against the wall, and women who don’t want to play the wall-pushing role know this, and take the responsibility for doing it. It sounds like you didn’t.)
I think we may have come to the core of our disagreements. I think the real demands from women generally reinforce the masculinity structure rather than undermine it.
I’m only half-way through, but I have to respond to this, Sam…you might be half-right. Certainly our sons, having married go-getters, are obliged to contribute more to the homefront scutwork and hands on childcare than what was modeled for them. In that sense, influence from women is shaping masculine ideals…heavily involved family men are “hot!”
Sophonisba,
I think this is getting progressively off-topic.
“Letting yourself be seduced is one hell of a lot more work than seducing somebody, as you clearly figured out.”
Certainly so when women are expecting you to be the seducer. I cannot comment about “the other side”, but I can tell you that knowing when to push a woman against a wall because she wants it is certainly not easy either, particularly for someone who is afraid of being wrong about this even when most other people say “go for it” (*partly* because of feminist education induced sexual shame issues).
“I’m trying to point out how much very real and very difficult work “passive” women do to get laid and how dismissive and ignorant it is to wave that away as them not ‘initiating.”
That is a fair point, and I should qualify it with - women rarely initiate actual physical contact that goes beyond touching hands or caressing the face. You’re right to say that this can be seen as initiating - just not on the level they later say they expected me to initiate.
Teaching a guy that it’s probably not a good idea to push a woman against a wall unless she’s clearly communicated to you she wants that is ’shaming’? By the way, I don’t personally count a friend saying ‘here’s what she said to me’ as clear communication. For one, the friend could be full of shit. For another, it’s assuming that the friend is conveying the literal intent: perhaps what the woman actually meant and/or said was “I wish he wouldn’t act like he was afraid to touch me; I wish he would be more assertive”.
And, tip here from somebody who has in fact dated women who are literally into being thrown up against a wall and kissed (among other things), you don’t want to try the Manly Aggression thing with somebody who isn’t willing to tell you that’s what they want. Because if they have mixed feelings or freak out at their own reaction, guess who they’re going to blame?
As for evo-psych, there’s no reason to reject it on ideological grounds; it’s perfectly sufficient to reject it on the grounds that it’s bad science.
Mythago,
“Teaching a guy that it’s probably not a good idea to push a woman against a wall unless she’s clearly communicated to you she wants that is ’shaming’?”
lol. No, that’s completely reasonable. But my sexual shame issues show up even when things are clearly communicated… and thanks for the tip - I appreciate it. But seriously, my “problem” is that, at some point, I’m not doing the “manly aggression” thing rather than the other way around (as per the thread’s topic). But I clearly missed the point where personal examples were useful to illustrate points instead of becoming the main thing. I apologize for that.
As for evo-psych - exactly how I see it. When it is bad science, reject it. Much of it is.
One good sociopath of either sex can usually figure out what the opposite sex is after. We call them ‘gold-digger’ or ‘player’. Both are derogatory terms, but in my life span, very real.
The sexiest men, to me, are strong men that have passion.
And really, I have yet to meet the man who says “No” when I ask if he wants to meet a famous model, because she is a friend. I have yet to meet the man who gets a hard on because I tell him I have a Harvard educated feminist doctor to line him up with. 99% of the men I know laugh when I ask them why their brains are wired that way.
I don’t want to date, or marry, the pool boy. After sex, we would have nothing to talk about. (Unless his life experience was akin to mine, but I highly doubt it.) I want a man who strived for what he wanted/wants. Not interested in the whiners.
It’s rather simple, at least to me. I ‘get’ men. I know what men like. Men like me for it. I’m all about the win/win.
For a great read on ‘nice’ guys, I suggest going to a blog called hearlessbitches.com.
Katy, dunno which guys you hang out with, but I know plenty who would perk right up (in more ways than one) if you offered to introduce them to a brilliant M.D. And plenty of women who don’t give a shit if a man works as a pool cleaner if he’s smoking hot.
Of course physical attraction is important, for both sexes, but having something to talk about after you roll over is also important for both sexes.
Sam, would you be offended if I asked you how old you are and in what region of the U.S. you live? I’m trying to reconcile your experiences with mine, and I am wondering if perhaps demographics play a part (and I think we are both caucasian and middle class-ish, correct me if I’m wrong).
@Sophonisba:
To my way of thinking, this “initiation” is likely to end as soon as it starts. It could as easily be translated as “figure out what I want, dummy!” A guy could as easily respond to that either by (if internalizing) figuring that he’d be completely lost as to what she wants or (if externalizing) figuring that she’s an unpredictable nut whose going to call him up short whenever he doesn’t “perform” as demanded.
Eh, I think for Sam if a girl in a club stares intently at a guy till he meets her eyes, catches his eyes several more times and smiles meaningfully and then he comes over and they dance - he initiated. Wouldn’t be my take on the situation but YMMV.
With 20 women pursuing 19 men, one woman faces the prospect of spinsterhood. So she ups her game. Perhaps she dresses more seductively. Perhaps she makes an extra effort to be obliging. Somehow or other, she “steals” a man from one of her fellow women. That newly single woman then ups her game, too, to steal a man from someone else. A chain reaction ensues. Before long, every woman has to try harder, and every man can relax a little.”
Of course, it’s absolutely inconceivable that a woman could sleep with more than one man, or that two women could happily share one guy, or that the whole colony could couple and de-couple over time with regard to *gasp* who they like best as they live their lives and grow as human beings.
Sheesh.
Sam, I have a suggestion: Get out more and find other friends. It’s a big world out there. You’ll find a mate if you want one, but you’ll have a better chance if you’ll quit trying to play a game (thereby proving how clever you are to the other guys) and just live your life and relate to human beings as individuals.
It really isn’t that hard. But you have to learn to let go of these adolescent ideas about one-upmanship.
“on a fundamental level, I think it’s because - in a very abstract way - we don’t like ourselves very much. We cannot imagine being wanted without being needed, hence masculinity is about being needed and not about being wanted.
Sam, if you don’t like yourself, maybe you should ask yourself why.
There might be room for actual growth and self-improvement.
This is not intended to be an insult, I promise you. It’s Relationship 101 stuff. A fearless personal inventory is not a bad thing for a human being to undertake at any time, especially if they’re not getting positive reactions when they’re interacting with people.
But it’s not feminism’s fault you don’t like yourself, unless “yourself” happens to be a sexist jerk. If that’s the case, you can change that if you want to. If not, then you can still figure out whether the things you don’t like about yourself are true faults or some kind of old tapes playing.
Blaming feminism for your troubles would just make it look like you’re lazy and/or spoiled.
Masculinity can be trap, and it is up to men to break free from it, but to deny the influence of female choice is to go all black and white on things, and the world just ain’t black and white.
Habits and attitudes are often shaped in adolescence. That’s why Hugo’s mentoring is SO important. Many of my friends teach high school in inner city areas of Chicago, and they all believe that it is unfortunate that many of the chess club type boys don’t have girlfriends, but it seems like all the athletes (and unfortunately all the gangsters) do. It’s doesn’t seem to be anything like those Michael Cera movies. :)
That’s why I say that when 14-17 year old girls overwhelmingly prefer the chess club boys and not the star athletes/members of the Conservative Vice Lords, Mickey Cobras, or Gangster Disciples etc., the revolution will be upon us. By the way, a lot of the gang members that these girls get involved with are in their early to mid twenties.
to deny the influence of female choice is to go all black and white on things, and the world just ain’t black and white.
Hint: women are not the The Borg. Those chess club guys you’re rooting for? Many of them are currently and conveniently ignoring the chess club (library club, drama club, various language clubs, etc.) young women so they can moan about not getting the attention of the head cheerleader or whatever. This is not a tragedy. It is a self-created problem.
I’d also like to mention that the “inner city” has a whole spectrum of dynamics in the dating game. Don’t write about the city like it’s some exotic, ready-for-safari land where the People Are Different and Not Like Us. Who’s ‘us’? I have relatives in the inner city of Chicago. I have friends there. I live in the inner city of my city. My daughter attends an inner city school. Believe it or not, we aren’t all gang members, nor are we all attracted to gang members. Hell, it’s probably also worth a mention that “nerd” and “athlete” aren’t exclusive descriptors; there are more than a few athletes that have their noses in a book when not on the court or field.
(confession: I didn’t catch the Michael Cera reference. “Who the hell is that?” So, I googled the name. The only thing I’ve seen him in is Juno. He gets the girl in that one, no? Only she’s not the stereotypical ‘hot babe’, so maybe that doesn’t count—is that it? Bedda matri.)
Victoria,
yes. That would be my definition in this case.
Cara,
I’m not sure you’re getting my point. I’m not blaming feminism in particular for “men not liking themselves”. Someone at a blog that I’m not sure can be linked here because of potential nsfw content explicitly makes “anti feminists” responsible for the same thing, saying “anti-feminists have far more contempt for men than feminists ever have, and certainly more than feminists ever will.” It’s much older than feminism, but it’s certainly something feminism (some strands more than others) have bought into in practice.
“Blaming feminism for your troubles would just make it look like you’re lazy and/or spoiled.”
What? I’m blaming my mother’s feminism for telling me that my touch is toxic, but that wasn’t the only thing causing my issues, most of which I have luckily been able to deal with (and, again, I don’t know which of my comments you actually read, since I specifically referred to my “success” with women above - I’m not really sure what your point is).
LaLubu,
“Many of them are currently and conveniently ignoring the chess club (library club, drama club, various language clubs, etc.) young women so they can moan about not getting the attention of the head cheerleader or whatever. This is not a tragedy. It is a self-created problem.”
I’m not sure that’s convenient, I’d say it’s a convenient protection mechanism. I think - as far as I remember school - you’re about the phenomenon. But I think this is really more about these guy’s lack of actual interactional skills and fear of actually being in the position to *have* to do something that could work out. They (generalizing wildly, here, of course) desperately want and are equally afraid of a relationship, so it becomes a protection mechanism to not consider themselves in the position of actually being able to do something about it and thus feeling forced to so something they’re apparently not able to do. Does that makes sense?`I guess what I’m saying is basically that they don’t feel they’re up to what they believe their behaviour has to be to “deserve” a woman. And you could also frame the problem from the other side: Why aren’t the girls/women who feel overlooked aren’t usually explaining this by asking the guys out or kissing the guys themselves?
I think that kind of misunderstanding is conceivable - and not just in High School, but on a larger, social level, as I mentioned above, in direct reply to Hugo.
“Assuming for the moment that what men identify as women’s revealed preferences (and what serves as foundation of the criticism you lined out in the post) aren’t actually their *real* preferences, I’d say we’d need to get to a communication structure that gives women an understanding of how their choices are perceived and gives men an understanding that there are alternative interpretations…”
I stick with that as a possibility. But I don’t know how to change it, because - using the chess club example - for two people to go eat ice cream together *one* has to make a move and ask the other out, for two people to kiss, one has to move in first. If the girls expect the guys to do that, and the guys are afraid of doing it because they are too scared of not being appropriately manly, and no one tells them differently, then nothing will ever happen.
Because those guys that actually do it will be the ones who will get the girls, and their “doing” will have paid off. Even assuming there’s a difference between revealed and actual real female preferences, and the revealed ones create an incentive structure that reinforces male behaviour that doesn’t conform to girl’s/women’s actual real preferences, “the system” will still be reconstructed on the micro level by every girl/woman *expecting* a man to ask her out and every man doing it because it’s *expected*. This is about both female, and male, choice, of course. But since we’re stuck in this together, I don’t know how to change things. I’m not enough of a collectivist to blame individual people to do what they believe is advancing their personal happiness best.
For example, if my SO has not been particularly successful with women during his life if you count by numbers this can be interpreted several different ways.
Victoria, I’m a little confused here. You said he’s not particularly successful but you also said that plenty of people were interested. If you mean his numbers are low but he tends to have long term relationships rather than short term ones I do not think that is “unsuccessful” and I don’t think a lot of people would say that either.
what I mean is just that if you’re going to sit back and let them come to you, you have to pay minute and obsessive attention to their moods and gestures and how they look at you and how close they stand and on and on and on.
A lot of the women I knew, and the ones I dated, didn’t really use a totally passive approach. At least I wouldn’t call it one. My first girlfriend practically stuck to me (without explicitly saying anything) when we first met - that’s actually fairly risky, now that I think about it. Some others created “coincidences”.
But I can’t disagree with the part about being attentive when using a passive approach, since it requires a lot of prediction.
for two people to go eat ice cream together *one* has to make a move and ask the other out, for two people to kiss, one has to move in first. If the girls expect the guys to do that, and the guys are afraid of doing it because they are too scared of not being appropriately manly, and no one tells them differently, then nothing will ever happen.
*sigh. Sam, I’m afraid I can’t contribute much, if anything, to your understanding as our worlds are so different. It’s been awhile since I went to high school (class of ‘84, tho’ I graduated early), but back then the “dating” resembled what I observe now—a lot of hanging out together that eventually morphs into “dating.” There wasn’t then, and isn’t now, any formal Ozzie-and-Harriet era “asking out” (and showing up on the doorstep, getting grilled by the father, etc.). I only saw that in films, never in real life.
So, if in your world, the guys from the chess club aren’t getting dates because they aren’t performing the socially-required formal or semi-formal rituals….ehh. In my world, if the guys from the chess club aren’t getting dates, it’s because they are socially isolating themselves from young women. There isn’t any hurdle of formality to cross. Teenagers in my world usually hang out in groups—there’s a circle of friends. Sometimes those circles pair off; sometimes the pairing off comes from folks in the circle introducing their friends to their friends outside the circle. But there is no high-stakes Big Question of dating.
I’ll agree that there aren’t many social frameworks for dating to take place in the adult world (unlike the teen world). Church? Not for everyone. Bars and/or clubs? Again, not for everyone. There’s a reason internet dating is popular. There are different rituals for different locales and groups of people. If you aren’t playing to your audience, you’re not going to have success no matter who you are. I think that’s a pretty good explanation of why the girls aren’t going after the chess-club guys—femininity is performed differently in different cultures and subcultures.
Again—another reason for the rise of internet dating. It provides breathing room from the different expectations of gender performance.
LaLubu,
‘84… Breakfast Club, right?
“There isn’t any hurdle of formality to cross. … I think that’s a pretty good explanation of why the girls aren’t going after the chess-club guys—femininity is performed differently in different cultures and subcultures. ”
Hmm, maybe I’m not expressing myself sufficiently clearly. I’m not necessarily talking about formal hurdles, but usually merely the courage to actually *ask her out* and be willing to deal with the *assumed* rejection and consequent public ridicule. That’s the manliness test they (again generalizing wildly) don’t believe they can pass. They’re only aware of their assumed own position in the assumed mating hierarchy and without any additional hint likely aren’t aware that their approach may actually be welcomed at all - as they think they don’t “deserve” a girl friend. And without the apparently overlooked girls helping them out by not actually making them pass the manliness test I don’t see how all this could not be contributing to reinforcing standard notions of masculinity and femininity… and I don’t really understand your explanation with respect to the chess club girls, to be honest. I believe they will also have good reason to behave as they appear to behave, but I can’t really understand what in your argument explaines their behaviour. (btw, I *was* asked out by a “chess club girl” I was in an acting class with who was two years older than I was, she took care of pretty much everything and I still wasn’t able to deal with it, because I was stuck between my belief in having to perform manly, and my feminist and Catholic sexual shame issues.)
I think internet dating is a great way for modern societies to deal with added search costs, but, interestingly, if you check the statistical data of, say, okcupid.com (as they’re blogging about it), you’ll see how (I think) a lot of assumed “prejudices” and behaviours in the “real” world seem to be replicated in the virtual world. It’s certainly a bit less stereotypical, but it’s not going to change people’s preferences - for example with respect to asking out or being asked out, and thus replicating the notion of masculinity as “doing” and men as “doers”. I think this is where it starts.
La Lubu
If dating isn’t a negotiation, where has all this talk about league originated from.
Victoria, I’m sure the socially awkward 19 year old virgin will be thrilled beyond belief that when he turns 30 he will maybe have a shot at marriage.
If dating isn’t a negotiation, where has all this talk about league originated from.
My take? It’s a male homosocial competition thing. Another in-house way for men to compete with one another, in this instance, “who can score the hottest chick.” C’mon, Ok, it’s disingenuous to think women had anything to do with the sports analogies—especially considering the sports analogies werre around a helluva lot longer than Title IX. This is all about one-up-manship.
‘84… Breakfast Club, right?
Heh. Not exactly. While my high school was that size, I’d say about 65-70% of the folks resembled Judd Nelson’s character. My high school also had a 30-35% African American student body, while African Americans apparently didn’t exist in John Hughes’ world. But anyway…
What I’m trying to explain is that sexism is to blame, and not feminism. Sexual shame didn’t come about because of feminism (although individual influential feminists can be a part of supporting the pre-existing sexual shame rather than being agents of its erosion). The more sexism, the less social change. In more “traditional” cultures and subcultures (”traditional” in quotes because all this stuff is relatively fluid, even if that isn’t acknowledged), women get more social approbation than men for bucking the system. Which isn’t to say men don’t get any blowback—just that they don’t receive anywhere near the blowback that women do. When women buck the system, we abandon “traditional” notions of femininity as well as whatever we’re doing the makes us iconoclasts—a double whammy. Men have the single-whammy, so to speak.
And it’s been my observation that middle-class white women have a much skinnier tightrope to walk in regards to notions of femininity than I do. At least, that’s what it looks like to me, from the outside looking in. It looks like an impossible, contradictory act to me.
In my background, prior to feminism as a bona-fide, organized political movement, some of that ground was already broken. Broken by anti-serfdom and socialist movement in Europe, broken by the labor movement in both Europe and the Americas, and especially broken by the immigrant experience in the movement to the Americas (and elsewhere). Add in the vestiges of matriarchal cultural mores that contrary to popular belief, were not destroyed (check out Barbara Ehrenreich’s “Dancing in the Streets” and Lucia Chiavola Birnbaum’s “Black Madonnas” for how the Church and other powers-that-be co-opted some practices and drove others underground for an idea of what I’m talking about). So. More actual latitude for women, in spite of the verbalized sexism. In my world, women weren’t (and aren’t) on pedestals. We never have been. Our labor was essential to the family, and yes—that means we hold economic power.
So, that’s why I can readily break with mainstream (read: middle-class) femininity without having an identity crisis. We all bring ourselves and our backgrounds into any of our interpersonal transactions. If women from your background are finding it hard to approach men, you can blame sexism. Maybe they don’t want to be “butch” (I’m already “butch” by middle-class standards by default. I didn’t have a character in the “Breakfast Club.” Try, “My Cousin Vinny”—and I mean that with tongue half-in-cheek). Maybe they don’t want to be “emasculating”. Maybe they don’t want to be Slutty McSlut. Stepping outside the comfort bounds is fraught with more import to them. The guy just might get rejected—but no one will think he’s less of a man, or subhuman (like The Slut) for asking out a woman.
LaLubu,
“It’s a male homosocial competition thing.”
Sure. Also. But it’s not like women don’t get competitive over desired mates. Scarcity of desired features is the key to unlock the “currencies” in which these negotiations are carried out and who will have negotiation power and when this power is relevant - I call social mediation of such negotiations what is commonly referred to as “power” in feminist discourse.
“What I’m trying to explain is that sexism is to blame, and not feminism.”
I think the term sexism is too imprecise, and, in my opinion, perceived as too focused on one side to be useful. But I think we’re talking about the same thing. I just don’t think “sexism” cuts it with respect to the appropriate terminology. Again, I agree that feminism / feminist shame is only a part of a much older social script blaming male sexuality (Look at the old testament, for example, or Greek mythology - it’s amazing how much of it is about the consequences of male pathological sexual desire and and the social need to control it - usually by setting up rules that control access to female sexuality). I don’t think “sexism” really is that comprehensive a term. Maybe we can agree that the shaming potential of important feminists and their ideologies is not usually recognized within feminism, because usually the term feminism is only used in the plural form or with a qualifier (my/your/his/her) feminism when the term is attacked as a whole and the attack is valid to the degree that it refers to the problematic elements. Sadly, that kind of careful wording is not usually done prior to a confrontation.
“If women from your background are finding it hard to approach men, you can blame sexism.”
Or whatever would be a better word, in my opinion. But yeah.
“The guy just might get rejected—but no one will think he’s less of a man, or subhuman (like The Slut) for asking out a woman.”
I’m sorry, but the amount of assumed rejection and ridicule is involved for most men in approaching women, particularly as a teenager, even without added shame issues, is probably not easy to understand for most women (just like the “slut shaming” issue isn’t that easy to understand for many men, the slut is, after all, getting what they want… with respect to guys, the problem is that the perception is the social risk associated with people thinking you’re less of a man both when you *not* approach, and when you approach generally *unsuccessfully*. I think about 80%-90% of guys suffer from some kind of approach anxiety (well, 80%-90% of the men I’ve met in my life that I have come to know in a way that would allow me to comment on such a matter, suffer from some kind of approach anxiety.)
Sam:
Women approach men all the time. Men only pay attention when the woman is attractive to him. Meaning, if an overweight, poorly dressed but obviously wealthy woman offered to buy said man a drink, he would say “no”, and not think about it. Women? If we say “No”, said man has a melt-down over our ‘bitchiness’ and total lack of respect for what that poor man must have felt over the obvious rejection. It must be that he is a male, and NOTHING to do with the fact he is not sexy, charming, handsome or fun. Right? Maybe, he is just….ugly. Inside, OR out. How dare a ’sexy’ woman reject? Ugly or boring men, for whatever reason, given a little money, feel ‘entitled’. Handsome and charming men don’t seem to have this problem. (In general. I am not speaking about the Ted Bundy sociopathic types.)
There IS a gender difference. It will go away when men stop being so attracted to lovely breasts. Or legs. Or…whatever. And women will always be attracted to hot sexy men who make loads of money who want to spend it on….women.
At least, in OUR fantasy life!
La Lubu
“My take? It’s a male homosocial competition thing. Another in-house way for men to compete with one another, in this instance, “who can score the hottest chick.” C’mon, Ok, it’s disingenuous to think women had anything to do with the sports analogies—especially considering the sports analogies werre around a helluva lot longer than Title IX. This is all about one-up-manship.”
Here are some examples of women using leauge speak.
http://restructure.wordpress.com/2010/05/11/women-prefer-attractive-men-to-high-status-men/#comment-4101
http://thehathorlegacy.com/men-are-too-picky-about-dating/#comment-92593
Scarcity of desired features is the key to unlock the “currencies” in which these negotiations are carried out….
Sam, my eyes are glazing over. I don’t like the sports analogies, but I loathe the mercantile ones. They are even more ill-fitting. (and really, a part of my resistance to the mercantile analogy is coming from a background–hell, a present day—in which (as Hugo would say) “my kind of people” are taken to be mere tools—if one breaks, bah. Pitch it, throw it away, grab another one. I have no guarantee that my humanity is going to be recognized outside my utility as a tool.)
I like that you brought up the term “negotiations”. It sounds so open, so inclusive. ….sound of record skipping…. Except, in the dating scene, it often amounts to “I’m going to pester the shit out of you until you relent, or until I feel I’ve gotten the requisite amount of getback.” It’s really ugly. I don’t think “negotiations” describes what actually happens. When a dating approach works, it doesn’t involve all this intricate two-stepping. Two people are attracted to one another, and the dance just happens. If only one of those parties is attracted to the other, that’s where all the (mis)negotiations occur.
people thinking you’re less of a man both when you *not* approach, and when you approach generally *unsuccessfully*.
People? Which people? Male people? I ask because the average woman’s reaction to a non-approach by a man is (a)he’s married, (b)he’s in a relationship, (c)he’s gay, (d)he isn’t physically attracted to me, (e)I’m not his “type”, etc. etc. etc. I have yet to meet a woman who thinks a man is “less of a man” because he hasn’t asked her out. If you are speaking of young women who….haven’t yet had the time to take a few spins around the block (talking life experience here, not specifically sexual experience), the first reaction is to assume something must be wrong with her.
The “unsuccessful” part really jabs me. Ok…not everybody likes everyone else. This is where it’s time not to take it personally—and really, that can only come with experience. That’s my main rub with the PUA systems. To use the marketing terminology you’re so fond of, if I don’t want what you’re selling, no amount and no technique of selling is going to get me to “buy”. Full stop. Hell, the feminist blogosphere is alive with praising the virtues of Lady Gaga; I still think her music sucks. Rotten eggs. All the fancy costuming and provocative statements can’t erase that. So, PUA systems that emphasize just finding the right language to speak to that inscrutable computer that is “woman”—smack to me of entitlement and not taking no for an answer.
And I think it’s that way because dating is seen as a competition for men, and because men get higher status by having “trophy” women on their arm. Another way to arm-wrestle. Decouple status points from dating, and you’ll see a lot of these behaviors disappear. But again—that’s an in-house male thing. Women don’t get that status from having a trophy date—not in my observation (but my world has a demographic different from yours). In my world, women are pushed to achieve for themselves because men can’t be counted on (sorry. I was told in exactly that manner, repeatedly, while growing up. I remember arguing with Hugo on a post to that effect.)
Ok, I know some women use the sports analogy for dating. That doesn’t alter the fact that men created, and men remain the prime users of, sports analogies for dating. Women don’t use those analogies as often because in sports, there are “winners” and “losers”. In the misogynist version of dating, women fill the “losers” role. Go to about any PUA board and read how what Sam would like to term “negotiations” plays out in that arena. Thankfully, this doesn’t represent a majority of men—but they are a significant minority, and they do poison the well. I don’t use that terminology because it doesn’t reflect my view; I don’t see dating or relationships as a competition. It’s more like….art. Everybody likes what they like, and the challenge is in finding a collaborator. You can’t really do that without having common ground first.
Jay,
They were interested, he wasn’t, so there weren’t any long term relationships. So is that successful or not?
Ok,
Well, he should be. Certainly the virgin 19 year olds I hung out with when I was 19 were smart enough to value a happy decades long marriage over whether they had a date Friday night at 19 - though obviously both would be nice. Several of them very much and fairly explicitly wanted a loving family. Though… actually several of them showed very little interest in dating at that time being more focused on academics. Who would have thought it? Actual real life men not obsessed with getting dates or sex? It does happen.
“Who would have thought it? Actual real life men not obsessed with getting dates or sex? It does happen.”
You don’t say? Who would have known.
And how excelent that when the woman has had her fun and is ready to settle down, then always rejected 19 year old is suddenly not third tier anymore.
LaLubu,
“Sam, my eyes are glazing over. I don’t like the sports analogies, but I loathe the mercantile ones. They are even more ill-fitting.”
Hmm, I’m from an economics background, so that sort of analogy usually comes naturally and usually without any particular agenda. I probably have to be even more careful about using that kind of language because resistance to the terminology often causes resistance to even a good argument.
“Except, in the dating scene, … It’s really ugly. … When a dating approach works, it doesn’t involve all this intricate two-stepping. Two people are attracted to one another, and the dance just happens. If only one of those parties is attracted to the other, that’s where all the (mis)negotiations occur.”
I agree and disagree. I agree because I believe I call “negotiation” what you call “just happening”. Because nothing “just happens” - someone has to say hi, someone has to order the drinks, someone has start the dance, and so on. Nothing *just* happens.
“People? Which people? Male people? I ask because the average woman’s reaction to a non-approach by a man is (a)he’s married, (b)he’s in a relationship, (c)he’s gay, (d)he isn’t physically attracted to me, (e)I’m not his “type”, etc. etc. etc.”
Ah, I said *perceived* when I referred to the fear. The fear is likely not based upon *real* but *imagined* reactions. You are describing real reactions, but without experience those matter far less than the imagined ones.
“I have yet to meet a woman who thinks a man is “less of a man” because he hasn’t asked her out.”
If you’re accepting second hand evidence, not just a few women thought that about me.
“The “unsuccessful” part really jabs me. Ok…not everybody likes everyone else. This is where it’s time not to take it personally—and really, that can only come with experience.”
That *was* my point.
“… the feminist blogosphere is alive with praising the virtues of Lady Gaga; I still think her music sucks.”
Hmm, i can see that… I started to appreciate her more after seeing this - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSO27ZqpM0Y
Decouple status points from dating, and you’ll see a lot of these behaviors disappear.
I agree. I just don’t believe that is possible on a larger scale.
“Women don’t get that status from having a trophy date—not in my observation (but my world has a demographic different from yours).”
Well, in my world they do. But again, the scarcity factor applies. It’s considered harder for most men than for most women to get “trophies” in this respect, and only few men would be considered actual trophies by most women, so the potential for trophy points for women is smaller than for men.
“Go to about any PUA board and read how what Sam would like to term “negotiations” plays out in that arena. Thankfully, this doesn’t represent a majority of men—but they are a significant minority, and they do poison the well.”
As said above, I think you read my “negotiations” wrong. I don’t disagree with you on this matter.
“You can’t really do that without having common ground first.”
True, but still, it may take time to discover that common ground because you describe it differently because of different experiences…
Hmm, I’m from an economics background,….
Ahh. Okay. Well, I can understand why you wouldn’t necessarily think that sentence carried a lot of freight, then. I still think it’s not a good analogy because…most people’s economic decisions are a helluva lot more rational than their mating decisions (again, that’s colored by my background—people have little disposable income where I come from; spending it is highly planned and rationed, when indeed it isn’t siphoned off by some emergency necessity). That, and economic behavior seems to be more malleable (as the economy changes, technology changes, etc.). Dating and mating are intimately tied to culture in a way that purchases aren’t—especially for folks seeking a LTR or children. So, even setting aside the (super)loaded issue of personal “value”, there’s still more room for misunderstanding than understanding. There isn’t an objective balance sheet for humans. But I’ll take you at your word you didn’t have an agenda.
Nothing *just* happens
You’re right. It just seems that way when attraction is mutual. The actions seems to “take care of themselves”, because when attraction is mutual, both people are simulataneously taking action. But again…that’s been my experience (and probably mostly because I don’t date outside my class background).
The fear is likely not based upon *real* but *imagined* reactions.
Point taken. The imagination is a powerful thing. Where does that imagined reaction come from? Why does it take that shape? What causes that?
They were interested, he wasn’t, so there weren’t any long term relationships. So is that successful or not?
Um, can I duck the question by saying he’s more successful that men who aren’t able to attract any women at all, and less successful than men who are able to attract the types of women they like?
By his own personal measure of success, he probably wasn’t successful. But I think there is a measure of people who do get dates and then deciding that the relationship won’t work out, versus the people who don’t.
And how excelent that when the woman has had her fun and is ready to settle down, then always rejected 19 year old is suddenly not third tier anymore.
You think every single woman goes through this? That does explain a lot.
My first girlfriend practically stuck to me (without explicitly saying anything) when we first met - that’s actually fairly risky, now that I think about it.
That was actually my most common approach, back when I was single (and occasionally I escalated to explicitly saying something).
It’s definitely not an approach that avoids the risk of rejection, though I do remember that the one time I got teasing from a bystander (that went on for months) was one of the times I’d gone for the more explicit approach, while when I used the stick to the guy without saying anything explicit approach the bystander feedback was more friendly (asides from the guy’s friends to him saying, hey, she likes you).
Despite everything that people say about guys wanting to be the one to make a move, I never found the guys themselves to react worse to being explicitly approached than to being approached without saying anything explicit. Then again, despite everything guys say about not having a clue when women are interested in them, they rarely failed to figure out that my rushing to their side at every opportunity meant I was interested.
So the main risk to a more explicit approach was really just a higher risk of ridicule if I did it while people were looking (get the guy alone, and that risk disappears).
Jay
You think every single woman goes through this? That does explain a lot.
I have seen a lot of women do this, yes. Suddenly when they start hitting family age they start the double talk about being tired of playing around, and that they want something stable.
Viktoria
Oh and yes I was that way when I was 19 as well. I focused a lot more on my studies than on getting it on. And now when I am 27 I suddenly have discovered that a prevalent female attitude is that I must be defective since I have not had any success at all with the opposite sex, and that it’s a lot better to pick the more experienced guys since they are a better lay.
Followed a referrer link to my site back to here, and found Ok has deliberately misclassified my post at The Hathor Legacy to suit his/her argument.
That post uses “league talk” not because that’s how *I* think - the post is demonstrating that even by the dating rules men have created, men are exercising discrimination every time they look someone over and decide not to hit on her. It was in response to myriad whiny comments from men who think they are so willing to date absolutely any woman, but none of us bitches will have them because we’re so picky. If you’re ignoring women for being too smart, too fat, too small-breasted or not looking enough like a model, do not whine that nobody wants you. You just disappeared 9/10ths of women from your little world, lowering your odds ridiculously.
The post is actually showing how the whole “league” idea leads men to loneliness, and then they BLAME WOMEN FOR THEIR LONELINESS when it is completely within their control to learn to appreciate women who aren’t supermodel types.
Can’t you just be interested in different people at different times of your life? Why does it have to be this woman conspiracy where we fuck the brains of all the alpha males while we’re young and hawt and then, hahaha betas, when we need your stability and money, we’ll come your way as we get less 18-23 (clearly the height of desirability)
Most PEOPLE I know, their tastes change as they age. And yeah, I’m older and looking for someone more stable to date than I was when I was 19 — I wasn’t ready to date someone where we actually had any type of future together when I was 19! Then again, I was also capable of both studying and having a social life, so what do I know.
Re: Negotiations
A bunch of people have disparaged the use of ‘negotiation’ with respect to relationships, suggesting that it reduces relationships to economic transactions. While the assertion that dating is an negotiation may do so, the thought that it involves negotiations does not. I’ve seen many budding relationships fail or fail to start because it was clear that someone’s lifestyle choices (e.g. smoking) about which they were inflexible was a deal-breaker for the other. But to say that is quite a long way from saying that a kiss is a contract.
Second, imbalances of power with respect to how willing people are to bend on points of negotiation do seem to exist. As a 30-something living in Brooklyn, these compromises (anecdotally, of course) seem to cut in the opposite direction that Sam indicates. I know plenty of women executives/lawyers/etc. (admittedly, I know no CEO’s) who would be pretty stoked with a Kindergarten teacher. There is a scarcity problem, but suppose there weren’t, do I think that a male Kindergarten teacher would fare worse than a CEO? I very much doubt it. Kindergarten teachers have a lot going for them - knowledge of childcare, good benefits, job security, and regular hours. On the other hand, I doubt that ordinary Kindergarten teachers, who values those things would have much in common with high-powered, long-hours , travelling CEO.
Third, people with an abundance often live profligately. I can’t produce any evidence, but I have no idea how anything constitutive about men or women would cause them to behave differently. I believe that the result of saliency biases, according to which flaws about existing situations are weighed too heavily in decision-making while in the presence of alternative possibilities (and their flaws), is just a human thing. I guess what I mean to say is, I don’t know what any of this has to do with gender.
LaLubu,
“Point taken. The imagination is a powerful thing. Where does that imagined reaction come from? Why does it take that shape? What causes that?”
I think apart from the general fear of rejection that is universal among humans and the general inability to take rejection not personally, I believe it is mainly because the lack of belief in many, if not most - certainly younger - men, that women are interested in them for the same reasons they are interested in women. I’d say that has a lot to do with the way male sexuality is portrayed as something that is compulsive and dangerous and not something to be desired - remember Hugo’s post about “the missing narrative of feeling hot in the life of youg men” (or so). The only way to get past that would be experience, but many boys/younger men don’t attempt that to gain that experience because they believe they don’t “deserve” a relationship anyway because they don’t conform to what they believe is the adequate male standard of “doing” (which, of course, in turn potentially causes “entitled behaviour” in those who feel they do). And if those girls who may be interested in them aren’t communicating that they are, these guys will only have their own imagined standard of adequacy to judge themselves by. And thus male “doing” is reinforced on the micro-level again… does that make it clearer?
So Jennifer
Do tell, what is it Izzy is talking about?
Oh and Nav good for you, more double talk.
I also know plenty of humanities majors who had time to spend 4 nights a week dead drunk and still pass.
Joy,
Un, no not every single woman goes through this. Because women are not the Borg and they all have different desires and behaviors. However, frequently some section of both men and women will exhibit similar behavior.
For example, when you say he wasn’t as successful as men who attract the kind of women they want - fair enough. But how does that compare with me, who had some trouble attracting the kind of men I wanted. On the surface doesn’t it seem like we had equal success? But I dated a lot and had a couple of long term relationship because… I enjoyed dating and valued it in and of itself. So it’s a very tricky thing. My point was and is that we talk about “success” with men or with women as if everyone desires to date a lot. That is just not true. Other than my SO I have several good female friends that really hate dating. Being popular in the sense of getting lots of dates - of no value to them. Finding the life partner they were seeking - very valuable and the only kind of success (I’d argue) that counts in relation to them. Some people love to flirt - some people would rather get hives. Success will look different to these people. So it drives me batty to talk about success as if everyone is dying to go out to the clubs every night - it’s far more likely that everyone is dying to find someone to marry.
OK,
I’m just utterly confused by you. I can tell you’re expressing bitterness over something but I don’t know what! You claim that you weren’t that interested in your teens in relationships and that girls are more likely to be interested in you now that you’re close to your thirties - so haven’t things worked out perfectly? What’s the problem here - seems like everyone is getting more or less what they want most - happiness all around. I don’t get what the problem is. Oh and the whole experienced thing - um, experience and quality not at all the same thing so frankly if someone is giving you that reason it’s an excuse because they’re not interested.
And what’s double talk about being tired of playing around? Seems extremely straight talk to me.
Victoria
You are not reading what I am writing.
The problem is that now at my age women mostly say things like ‘go for experience, that’s a better lay’. This is not someone telling me something personally, this is a pervasive attitude.
“And what’s double talk about being tired of playing around? Seems extremely straight talk to me.”
What they are really saying is, ‘The meat market is no longer favorable to me, I have to start looking in the second and third tier and make it look like it’s a choice, not a necessity’
So which is it, Ok? Are these women scraping the bottom of the barrel and taking what they can get, or are they still rejecting men like you even now because you don’t have what they want and they think they can do better? It really can’t be both at the same time.
sophonisba
There is a huge difference between casual sex and relationsships. Ant it seems that these women talk a lot about the more experienced guys being the better lay, and then when they discover that the more experienced guys rarely stay then the women start scraping the bottom of the barrel.
Besides I think Hugo is taking a stance quite reminiscent of the white self-made man, ‘I made it, so why don’t the rest of you just stop whining and do as I did?’.
I’m still wondering in what world women have a hard time finding casual sex when they’re at the venerable age of…27. Ok, are you John Derbyshire in real life?
La Lubu
Casual sex is one thing, then comes the whole ‘long term relationship, family’ and similar, then it seems that the third tier is suddenly interesting.
You’re seriously saying that people are less picky about long term relationships than they are about one night stands?!? What universe are you living in?
If you are of the impression that people enter and stay in serious long term relationships with people they view as “second” and “third” tier whom they don’t really like… I don’t even know… I’m sorry for you and your reality has zero connection to my reality.
Also why are you bitter that “the third tier is suddenly interesting” isn’t that a good thing for that “third tier” whatever the hell that means?
People might want different qualities in a one night stand and a partner and there’s nothing either double talk or evil or mean about it.
Victoria,
with respect to your reply to OK -
“You’re seriously saying that people are less picky about long term relationships than they are about one night stands?!? What universe are you living in?”
I think that is correct only with respect to appearance - visual aspects of attractivity will - logically - be more important for a one night stand than they will be for a longer term relationship in which other aspects will also decide about a person’s attractivity - because other aspects of attractivity will be hard to evaluate sufficiently quickly even if they were equally valued in a one night stand, and because people looking for a one night stand are probably not looking for that.
Btw, I like your definition of “success”, but I would also suggest that it is not universal, as you can see in OK’s statement.
Victoria
I am bitter about first hearing how non-desirable I am, and how I should just basically accept that I will be single forever. And then magically when the prime runners aren’t interesting or too demanding, then suddenly I am acceptable. I wonder if this ties into that now I have a career, I make a decent amount of money and suddenly now I am the looker when I lost my weight and my acne cleared up.
Ok, the way you look at women is very troubling.
First you keep phrasing things as men who are “prime runners” being “not interested or too demanding”. Are you aware that women frequently break up with men? And women frequently pass on relationships with men? At the very least at a rate of 50%? So, uh, the idea that any woman who expresses interest in Man X has been rebuffed by Men Y, Z, F is… ridiculous. And how do you define the “prime runners”? Is the hot guy who could always get laid just like that but can’t keep a girlfriend past the first week a “prime runner”? Why are you upset that now you have more women interested in you? Because it wasn’t your super special inner spark that attracted them? I hate to break it to you but no one is actually in a relationship because of their super special inner spark - people get into relationship with people they like, who are interesting and nice and attractive. Maybe you’ve become more interesting and nice and attractive, maybe women are now looking for something different than they were looking for before. What is wrong with that? Why do you resent that as a mass a gender might want something different at 30 than at 15 or at 60? Why do you assert that the only reason they might want something different at 30 than at 15 is because who they liked at 15 is rejecting them now or they are somehow less powerless? Preferences change.
Are you also aware that women are not the Borg? And that any woman who is interested in you today is not the same woman (Borg) as was cruel/whatever to you a decade ago? And so she is not being inconsistent in any way shape or form? Not to mention that the idea of being judged for being inconsistent in what you like between 15 and 35 is ridiculous in the extreme.
Sam,
It’s true that looks will probably be more important in a one night stand than long term partner - though even that’s not sure because it’s one thing to look at that weird bump for one night and another to look at it forever. However even conceding that - contrast it to allll of the things that are much more important in a long term partner. Their family, their values, their health, their consideration, their neatness, their ability to support emotionally, their ambition, their tact, their store of interesting conversation, their politics and on and on and on. I think it’s clear the standards for a long term partner are much more detailed than for a one night stand, it’s a much higher barrier to cross.
You’re right that my definition of success is not universal and that’s a pity.
Victoria
1) “Are you aware that women frequently break up with men? And women frequently pass on relationships with men? At the very least at a rate of 50%? So, uh, the idea that any woman who expresses interest in Man X has been rebuffed by Men Y, Z, F is… ridiculous.”
This makes no sense, woman gets together with prime choice, finds he is not all that. Now suddenly she starts expressing interest in runner up.
2) “And how do you define the “prime runners”? Is the hot guy who could always get laid just like that but can’t keep a girlfriend past the first week a “prime runner”?”
He would obviously be the womans’ prime choice, yes.
3) “Why are you upset that now you have more women interested in you? Because it wasn’t your super special inner spark that attracted them? I hate to break it to you but no one is actually in a relationship because of their super special inner spark - people get into relationship with people they like, who are interesting and nice and attractive.”
More double talk for ‘I have the choice, and if you work really hard, maybe I will bestow you the honor of being chosen.”
3) “Maybe you’ve become more interesting and nice and attractive, maybe women are now looking for something different than they were looking for before. What is wrong with that? Why do you resent that as a mass a gender might want something different at 30 than at 15 or at 60?” Oddly it seems Hot Guy ™ loses his attraction for the woman somewhere around her approaching 30, the time when she starts feeling the time to raise children, also around the time she is not attractive enough to compete.
4) “hy do you assert that the only reason they might want something different at 30 than at 15 is because who they liked at 15 is rejecting them now or they are somehow less powerless? Preferences change. ”
“Preferences change” this is what I mean by double talk.
5) “Not to mention that the idea of being judged for being inconsistent in what you like between 15 and 35 is ridiculous in the extreme. ”
More like, ‘you made the bed, now lie in it. Don’t come running to me when you discovered that Hot Guy ™ wasn’t all that”.
Victoria,
“I think it’s clear the standards for a long term partner are much more detailed than for a one night stand, it’s a much higher barrier to cross.”
Absolutely, I thought I said as much.
As for looks and long term partnerships, in my experience, if you, say, as a bar game, let both men and women choose between two people they don’t know, whether to “marry” them or to take them home one night, the conventionally better looking will almost always be the one chosen for the one night stand, the less conventionally attractive person will usually be chosen for a relationship. There seems to be a tendency in both women and men to attribute relationship “power” and trouble (cheating, demands, etc…) with visual attractivity, probably because they themselves find it so sexually appealing.
Huh? Oh, subtlety does not go through well on the internets.
Victoria, I meant “That does explain a lot about Ok”. I didn’t actually believe every single woman goes through this. Communication error there.
But I dated a lot and had a couple of long term relationship because… I enjoyed dating and valued it in and of itself. So it’s a very tricky thing. My point was and is that we talk about “success” with men or with women as if everyone desires to date a lot. That is just not true.
Well, there’s dating for the sake of dating (as a substitute for going out with friends or going out alone, I suppose) and there’s dating for the sense of seeking a relationship.
I mean, you have to know the other person somehow before getting in a relationship with them, even minimally. At least I hope so. Dating is one way to do it, though I suspect a lot of people hate it because it’s so formalized. Hanging out together, doing some activities together, etc is another way though if the relationship goes south it can sometimes get awkward.
But still, what’s a better substitute for getting to know each other? A club of some sort, I suppose, but a lot of the time the gender ratios may not be even. I’ve never done online dating, but I heard it’s more discriminatory than face-to-face interactions.
To me, a possibility of success is better than a certainty of failure. I realize that’s cold comfort to people who don’t get a relationship as the result, but I honestly think that there are people without even that opportunity, or their opportunities are much poorer. (If this seems incoherent, please tell me)
So it drives me batty to talk about success as if everyone is dying to go out to the clubs every night - it’s far more likely that everyone is dying to find someone to marry.
I wouldn’t say “marriage” (some people who like each other may not want to get married), but somewhat permanent partnership, sure.
Ok, I give up. We are not in the same universe. A guy who can’t get someone to put up with him longer than a week is “prime choice” because he can get laid… I don’t even have the words. And “preferences change” instead of an observation so obvious as to be universally accepted is double speak! And it’s someone how evil that women have the “choice” and choose who they like even though guys also have the “choice” and choose who they like. Nothing you’re saying makes sense .
Jay, that’s true about dating. So people who want relationships suffer through and figure this dating thing out. But in my observation those who do not enjoy the flirting dating portion in and of itself go on fewer dates - not surprising. But that doesn’t make them pitiful or unsuccessful or whatever, they just weed out potential partners at an earlier stage.
And absolutely some people don’t want marriage and some people don’t want a somewhat permanent partnership but some people don’t want one night stands . My point is that there are more people who don’t want one night stands than there are people who don’t want marriage. So to define success as OK does, in getting laid makes no sense because plenty of people don’t want that.
Ok,
you know, Victoria is making a very, very good point here -
“Why are you upset that now you have more women interested in you? Because it wasn’t your super special inner spark that attracted them? I hate to break it to you but no one is actually in a relationship because of their super special inner spark - people get into relationship with people they like, who are interesting and nice and attractive.”
I suppose, attraction for you will work just the same way. And as someone who believed he was unattractive and had sexual shame issues and thus didn’t really like himself for a long time - I’d say that you not liking yourself is the core of the bitterness you feel. Problem is, bitterness is contagious, and probably the least attractive thing on the planet. The point is - if this world was as cynical as you suggest, then there’d be really no point in blaming anyone for playing along, just good reason to be happy things changes. You cannot change anyhting about the structure anyway. And if this world isn’t as cynical, as I would suggest, then hey, even better, as you can start to forget about the hierarchy you built in your head that seems to be keeping you from enjoying yourself and your potential relationships as honest. They probably are, because preferences *do* change as you interact with other people, and as you learn about yourself, although you may not have noticed that in yourself, because of the lack of interaction with women you mention. And of course, it’s hard to believe that women may have changed when your standard for evaluating other women hasn’t had a chance to change.
What I talked about in my conversation with Hugo and LaLubu are the forces that make you and other men (”us”) build that hierarchy and project it upon the women who are apparently becoming interested in you. These forces certainly include “female choice”, but not only. Check this out - it may help you.
http://www.thefword.org.uk/blog/2008/06/do_you_love_a_b
Victoria
“Ok, I give up. We are not in the same universe. A guy who can’t get someone to put up with him longer than a week is “prime choice” because he can get laid”
I would say that is obvious yes.
“And “preferences change” instead of an observation so obvious as to be universally accepted is double speak!”
It is double speak, it simply means, ‘Hot Guy ™ wasn’t all that, so now I might be willing to let you make an attempt”.
“And it’s someone how evil that women have the “choice” and choose who they like even though guys also have the “choice” and choose who they like. Nothing you’re saying makes sense . ”
It’s evil in the sense that women seem to think that they first can have a string of Hot Guys ™, prime choices, and then when these prime choices have chewed her up and spit her out, then she can go to Rejected Guy and tell him that now suddenly she has matured and wants a ’stable relationship’ and ‘maturity’. Let the women chose, but make it perfectly clear that they can’t come running to Rejected Guy ™ in their early thirties and expect him to just swallow a decade of rejection.
“So to define success as OK does, in getting laid makes no sense because plenty of people don’t want that.”
Yes and I am sure if you ask Warren Buffet, he will tell you that there are other indicators of success than wealth.
““Why are you upset that now you have more women interested in you? Because it wasn’t your super special inner spark that attracted them? I hate to break it to you but no one is actually in a relationship because of their super special inner spark - people get into relationship with people they like, who are interesting and nice and attractive.””
So where were you when I was a fat broke grad student? Oh, that’s right, you were out with Hot Guy ™. Well, don’t come running to me now.
“They probably are, because preferences *do* change as you interact with other people, and as you learn about yourself, although you may not have noticed that in yourself, because of the lack of interaction with women you mention. And of course, it’s hard to believe that women may have changed when your standard for evaluating other women hasn’t had a chance to change”
You mean like now Hot Guy ™ is sporting a bear belly and a minimum wage job, while I have an eight pack and make bucket loads of money? I wouldn’t say womens’ choice change, it’s only a question of who can satisfy their preference now.
Sam Seeborn, your link only derailed into the usual feminist ‘Nice Guy ™’ shame tactic, usually leading up to the normal, female right to preference, be eternally grateful she even looks at you.
We get it, Ok. You’re pissed off at all the bitches who went after hot-looking guys instead of you ten years ago, and so any female interested in you now is just after your money and you’re going to reject her to teach her a lesson. Go you. They’ll be sorry.
It’s funny how the Oks of the world never think about how, ten years ago, it was reasonable for them to lust after Hot Girls, instead of chasing their female fat-broke-grad-student counterparts.
Whoa, whoa, hold the phone. A number of things are being conflated here that shouldn’t be.
1. The idea that “success” with the opposite sex rests in the number of sexual partners, rather than the quality and/or longevity of mutually-satisfying, non-toxic relationships (Victoria did a great job in blowing that one out of the water).
2. The idea that more-physically-attractive-than-average people necessarily have the most number of sexual partners, or even desire a high number of sexual partners (seriously—one look at most of the leading lights of the PUA movement ought to show you this isn’t true. They tend to be better dressed—except for the ones with goofy prop clothing—but they aren’t better looking than the average man).
3. Confusing general trends (like folks’ not wanting to get married while still in college) with “the Borg” (morphing a trend into an intrinsic, essentialist quality).
4. Confusing entertainment media “numbers” and trends with real-life (yes, I’m looking at you, Ok). From the Kinsey Institute:
•Males 30-44 report an average of 6-8 female sexual partners in their lifetime (Mosher, Chandra, & Jones, 2005).
•Females 30-44 report an average of 4 male sexual partners in their lifetime (Mosher, Chandra, & Jones, 2005).
•3% of men have had zero sexual partners since the age of 18, 20% have had 1 partner, 21% have had 2-4 partners, 23% have had 5-10 partners, 16% have had 11-20 partners, and 17% have had 21 or more partners (Laumann, Gagnon, Michael, Michaels, 1994).
•3% of women have had zero sexual partners since the age of 18, 31% have had 1 partner, 36% have had 2-4 partners, 20% have had 5-10 partners, 6% have had 11-20 partners, and 3% have had 21 or more partners (Laumann, Gagnon, Michael, Michaels, 1994).
(Kinda puts that myth about run-around young women in perspective, hmm, Ok?)
5. Too much conflation of the practices of predominantly white, wealthy, highly-educated people with what “everyone” does (no worries. I see that a lot on this blog, usually from its author.)
I would say that is obvious yes.
Ok, for crying out loud. ANYONE can “get laid.” Anyone. Seriously, anyone.
(and I have another comment in moderation with a link and some statistics for you, Ok, that blows your little theory of “all the hot chicks were banging hot guys and ignoring meeeee…” straight out of the park.)
What I don’t get is (and maybe you can explain it to me)….even if it were true, why is that a Big Deal? Why would it matter at all? If someone is shallow enough that she treated your with contempt, why would you care that she didn’t want you? Do you really think you’d be happier with someone who treats you with contempt, or takes you for granted, or is only using you? Seriously?
La Lubu, you know the answer to that one: rage and entitlement. Look at Ok’s post: he’s talking about a specific woman who, shallow bitch that she was, rejected him for hotter guys when she was young (and presumably herself hot), but having learned the hard way that a stable fat-but-broke guy beats out the shallow, selfish Lord of the Abs any day, she comes crawling back to Our Hero wanting him to forgive and forget. But he, nursing the grudge at her unfair rejection, has in the meantime acquired lots of money and an “eight pack”, whatever that is, and rejects her attempt to use him as a fallback plan.
Really, it’s not much more than a revenge fantasy, including the part where the handsome prince switches roles with the ugly duckling, and now it’s the former schlub who is the wealthy Hot Guy, empowered to punish the Hot Girl for her shallow, selfish rejection of his earlier self.
Let the women chose, but make it perfectly clear that they can’t come running to Rejected Guy ™ in their early thirties and expect him to just swallow a decade of rejection
Who’s saying you have to accept any woman who rejected you when you were younger? As far as I’m concerned, you can go ahead and be bitter and reject the entire female sex because you didn’t get laid enough at 19. It’s silly, but it’s absolutely your right. And I wouldn’t even call it silly to reject women who actually personally treated you like crap and are now coming after you.
What people are objecting to, is the fact that the imaginary world you’re constructing doesn’t remotely resemble what women, men, and heterosexual dating are like in our universe. I, for one, dated guys I liked as well as found hot, they didn’t drop me after one night but came back for more, and I eventually married a guy I found hot as well as nice. I did, yes, change my preferences once I had graduated from college and had a steady job - to add, “wants kids” and weed out all the otherwise likeable guys who didn’t want kids ever. I did not change my preferences to pick third tier guys to marry over the first tier Hot Guys I had supposedly been having zillions of one night stands with when young.
I don’t think I’m some unusual freak in having this experience. I think I’m pretty ordinary.
And if you think I’m a hypocrite because I wasn’t pursuing guys who actively wanted kids before I even had a college degree or any ability to put a roof over said kids’ head, well, that’s your right, too, but it’s my right to roll my eyes at that suggestion and think it’s pretty darn silly.
Really, it’s not much more than a revenge fantasy
It reads to me a little as if I were to post comments about all the mean boys who called me names in grade school, and how I was so going to get back at them all by not dating them now.
LaLubu,
“Ok, for crying out loud. ANYONE can “get laid.” Anyone. Seriously, anyone.”
I suppose that depends on the definition of “can” - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Involuntary_celibacy (sex statistics are notoriously unreliable, for a lot of reasons, I’ve seen figures of up to 10% involuntary celibates in their 30s, and that figure makes more sense of what I seem to see around me than the 3% you quote.)
A lot is possible when people have the will to improve their social skills and understand that, while it may be fun to discuss social structures, social structures are largely an independent variable for all of us, even if we try to change things. Blaming the rest of the world is usually not a good way for behavioral change. Beyond lack of effort, there clearly also are people who are not sexually attractive and who will have a hard time “getting laid” however skilled they maybe socially - both women and men.
mythago,
“It’s funny how the Oks of the world never think about how, ten years ago, it was reasonable for them to lust after Hot Girls, instead of chasing their female fat-broke-grad-student counterparts.”
I think the rationalisation process works a bit like discounted cash flow valuations here - if you think of something like a composite lifetime attractivity value for men and women and that an optimal structure would be a pair bonds of equal attractivity, then the problem seems to be that OK used a discount factor for his lifetime attractivity value that was diffeerent from the one used by the women he desired, so he arrived at a net present lifetime attractivity value for himself that was higher than the net present lifetime attractivity value for the “female fat-broke-grad-student” and equal to the net present lifetime attractivity value of the women he actually desired. Problem of course - either these women’s assessment of his net present lifetime attractivity value was much lower than his own or they weren’t using this kind of thinking at all, did not discount assumed future attractivity at all, trying to live in the present and all, and so they only saw the fat broke grad student and weren’t attracted.
OK,
being a guy who *was* not particularly successful with women before, I really try to be sympathetic and understand your position. But despite my assertions about structures, including female choice, that reinforce current notions of masculinity “on the micro level”, I agree with Lynn when she says -
“What people are objecting to, is the fact that the imaginary world you’re constructing doesn’t remotely resemble what women, men, and heterosexual dating are like in our universe.”
You should go out and enjoy that you’re apparently attractive now instead of sulking about other people who weren’t able to discount your potential earlier or weren’t able to love you for that “inner sparkle”. And you should be careful about bitterness’ effect on that “inner sparkle”…
and so they only saw the fat broke grad student and weren’t attracted.
I think it’s much more likely that at least one or two out of however many hundreds of women who passed by him saw him and were attracted, right up until they spoke to him enough to find out one or two of his extraordinarily interesting opinions.
The thing about broke male grad students is — if you like that type, and who doesn’t — it’s extremely easy to find one who either isn’t sexist or is smart enough to never let on to the world that he is. And what’s Ok’s excuse for not being that smart? What else is that big grad school brain for?
Sam: While it’s true that sex statistics are more unreliable than most, the folks at the Kinsey Institute are not exactly slouches in that regard. They’ve been doing this for awhile, and that’s why I quoted them. (Note: they didn’t say anything about “voluntary” or “involuntary” in their celibacy stats.)
Here’s the thing: yes, anyone can get laid. The percentage of people who perhaps cannot get laid by any means other than hiring a sex worker is so infinitesimal that for this conversation, doesn’t need to be taken into account.
Wanna get laid more often? Is that the goal? Then….(drum roll please)….lower your standards. All standards, not just physical attractiveness standards. Voila! You will now get laid more often.
In real life though, the goal for most people, including Ok, isn’t merely getting laid. Most people don’t enjoy sex with others that they don’t like (imagine that). So, why be bitter about other people who are having a lot more sex, but are invariably having that “lot more sex” from people they’d rather not see again? (frankly, isn’t that saying something about the quality of the sex, too? that one would rather not repeat the experience? oh yes, Virginia, there is such a thing as “lousy sex”.) What is the appeal? More importantly, what is the appeal of hanging on to that bitterness? (though mythago answered that one—starring in the role of a modified “Hero’s Quest”)
Look at what Lynn said here:
It reads to me a little as if I were to post comments about all the mean boys who called me names in grade school, and how I was so going to get back at them all by not dating them now.
Did you notice something? She immediately had to revert to grade school to conjure up the same feeling. Think about that. That is why I keep comparing this act (because Ok isn’t the first guy on this or other feminist blogs to carry on in this way) to “king of the mountain”—another childhood, male-oriented game. I maintain that the root cause of this behavior is bitterness at falling behind in the competition with other men, while (conveniently) displacing this rage onto women. (it’s only fair of me to mention just how much of a disconnect this is for me personally. I can’t imagine being upset with what other people are doing or not doing with their sexuality.)
One more thing, to the other women on this thread: is it just me, or does the “competition” analogy not work for you too? I’ve never felt I was in a “competition” with other (hetero) women for “class: men”—more like on a discovery mission to find one who genuinely liked me. The competition analogy just seems to have as its inherent goal a prize (Some Man) for whom the “winner” (Some Woman) is easily expendable or interchangeable (or, vice versa). The hell with that!
LaLubu,
“Here’s the thing: yes, anyone can get laid. The percentage of people who perhaps cannot get laid by any means other than hiring a sex worker is so infinitesimal that for this conversation, doesn’t need to be taken into account.”
I’m not so sure about that percentage being infinitesimally small. But it could be. I’m sure, though, that the percentage of people who believe to be “unshaggable”, mostly men, is much bigger, in my perception about 5-10%. And that self-perception is probably the biggest obstacle in “getting laid”, because it will influence their social behaviour in usually particularly unattractive ways.
“I maintain that the root cause of this behavior is bitterness at falling behind in the competition with other men, while (conveniently) displacing this rage onto women.”
Hmm, well, you and others are suggesting that he should have been interested in other women - conventionally less attractive ones - than he was apparently interested in. Doesn’t that argument include an assumed hierarchy of pair-bond attractivity? So there is a hierarchy in mating, right? (”Is she really going out with him?”)
You don’t think that the world would look differently, if the most attractive females would be attracted to males currently considered far less attractive then them? Wouldn’t the world look different if different kinds of male “doing” (the nurturing part Hugo references) would be valued differently by women? I’m not denying male competition, I’m saying that the role of female agents *for* holding up a structure of male competition that is considered problematic by both genders is unfairly disregarded in Hugo’s argument.
I mean, didn’t Ok reject the “doing” male competition idea rather explicitly? He didn’t work out back then. He wanted to be loved for his inner sparkle (himself), and became bitter when his inner sparkle apparently didn’t help.
And now that he’s apparently accepted the “doing” bit (worked out, got money) he’s attractive but still bitter that his position in the hierarchy is caused be his doing and not his being (although he doesn’t seem to see that physical attraction is at least to a significant extent, an element of being, not doing)…
I mean, one could say that he rejected patriarchical prescriptions only to see that it doesn’t work. Which, in a way, is making my point that female choice *on the micro level* is reinforcing stereotypical notions of masculinity rather than deconstructing them - even *if* the revealed choice may not be the ideal choice, but limited by intervening variables (ie it’s not a completely socially independent variable itself).
La Lubu
“One more thing, to the other women on this thread: is it just me, or does the “competition” analogy not work for you too? I’ve never felt I was in a “competition” with other (hetero) women for “class: men”—more like on a discovery mission to find one who genuinely liked me. The competition analogy just seems to have as its inherent goal a prize (Some Man) for whom the “winner” (Some Woman) is easily expendable or interchangeable (or, vice versa). The hell with that!”
No, it doesn’t work for me either. I’ve never been motivated by competing with others, although I have met tons of people who are by their nature extremely competitive and this includes women as well. Some of those women (acquaintences) I dumped. It’s just not healthy and one cannot relax around someone who always has to be number one or the top of the heap. These types of people don’t make good friends. I don’t aspire to have toxic and unfulfilling relationships with others.
“(it’s only fair of me to mention just how much of a disconnect this is for me personally. I can’t imagine being upset with what other people are doing or not doing with their sexuality.)”
Same for me. I could care less about other people’s sexuality and what they are doing or competing with them. I have a hard time understanding this obsession or infantile focus of others too whether it’s competing for accumulation of stuff or that their kids are better than yours, etc. It’s a very shallow and stupid focus and I don’t care to associate with people who behave that way.
Count me too as someone who’s never ‘competed’ for a man with another woman in her life. I don’t hit on/flirt/anything with men that are taken. And I’ve never been in a situation where the guy I was interested in was being hit on by another girl in front of me. Well… there have been girls who flirted with my bf but since he was my bf I didn’t feel myself in competition. And I’ve never felt that the guy I was interested in was judging me by comparing me to other girls (they might have who knows but it never occurred to me) I always assumed they just judged me by how interesting/attractive I was to them, period.
I did have an ex that sort of broke up with me because he wanted to see if he could do better. Which drove me bonkers because I just didn’t get it and to me that meant he didn’t love me. I wasn’t with him because I thought he was better than anyone else I could attract, I was pretty sure he wasn’t on a lot of criteria but I liked him and wasn’t interested in anyone else, he made me happy not any particular scoring on random criteria. Oh well, I got over him.
I’m not so sure about that percentage being infinitesimally small. But it could be. I’m sure, though, that the percentage of people who believe to be “unshaggable”, mostly men, is much bigger, in my perception about 5-10%. And that self-perception is probably the biggest obstacle in “getting laid”, because it will influence their social behaviour in usually particularly unattractive ways.
Agreed. Lulu’s really only talking about whether or not anyone else would be interested in having sex with them, not whether they have the social skills to recognise when someone is interested and act on it. Standards are probably irrelevant; the guys who talk about being attracted to distant, unreachable women when they’re more plausible dating candidates around them are usually doing that by design. It’s much easier to deal with it emotionally if it’s impossible for you to get a date, than if it’s possible and you just can’t or won’t do it, precisely because then you can channel your hate or anger towards J. Random Lady, rather than yourself.
5yrs old - fell in love - she’s as skinny as a rail and pretty as a picture. Turned out to be a whiny, spoiled brat. I moved on.
5 1/2 to 8 yrs old - dicovered most girls my age and older were spoiled and mean and priveledged and entitled, protected like rare animals from us violent, destructive sexually rapacious little boys, and I didn’t want a whole lot to do with ‘em. And this is when most of my insecurities and doubts and sexual ambivalence and shame regarding the opposite sex began to see the light of day.
8yrs old found a girl who was fun, funny, a complete and utter liar, adventurous, attractive (at least to me) and loved her for the next 16 yrs, until she was raped and strangled in a London park. We were never girlfriend/boyfriend.
Around 14 to 16 hung out with and got sexy w/ girls at school. Some gorgeous, some plain, but they were all willing, as was I, and for some reason we each forgave the other many, many failings.
This is where it gets ugly……..Out into the real world at 16 (left high school early), only to find more damaged than whole goods on the street, including myself. It was amazing how, under the pitiless glare of young, adult socialising, in pubs, clubs and at the beach, how all those very bad lessons learned in formative yrs came back to roost on one roof. Resentment, jealousy, shame, insecurity, fear, anger and competitiveness all acted out by both male and female, in a pretty vicious take no prisoners kind way.
After 4 or 7 yrs of survival in this active, sexual, gender on gender war zone, we are all somehow expected to forget all the bad things we have each ingrained in our characters, and become prefect little boys and girls again. One only has to read through this one thread to understand that the damage done to both sexes in early childhood, and reinforced through puberty and adolescence, doesn’t really come to the expressive light until well into adulthood. For some of us it never does.
Well, I have not come across one single solitary person who is so well socialised and adjusted that they do not cater to, actively engage in, or in someway continue to contribute to gender bias. Not on this blog, nor any other website, and cetainly not in my day to day life.
So, if y’all want to quit squabbling over semantics, and get down to the nitty gritty of coming out of your corners, and perhaps offering a gentle, patient and helping, one on one hand to the worst gender bias offender you can find. Or take on some role medelling (spelling error seemed more appropriate left in), at the local day care or kindergarden, that might just further the debate in a practical and productive way.
FWIW, I believe that everyone taking part here is trying to do the right thing. Just not trying hard enough.
Not quite. The problem is insisting that other people’s standards should be lower than yours.
Let’s be crude for a minute and assume that we can actually rate people in terms of conventional attractiveness on a 1-10 scale. Let’s also assume I am a 5. I am interested in people who are no lower than 8 on this scale. They do not reciprocate my interest.
Where do I get off (ha) throwing a fit about how shallow these 8-10s are and how they’re snooty, because refuse to date a 5? So do I. I would be insisting that I get to be picky, but people I want to date aren’t allowed to be picky too. How stupid is that?
Now, Ok wasn’t very clear in his rant, so maybe he was interested in women who were also fat broke grad students - though apparently they had no trouble attracting “hot guys”, so who knows. But I’ve known a lot of average-looking guys who griped about how they could never get dates - despite the fact that they were the subject of interest from any number of average-looking women, they were uninterested in those women, and somehow didn’t manage to grasp the idea that if they only wanted “hotties”, perhaps the “hotties” felt the same way, and it was ridiculous to consider that unfair or shallow.
(And I should have been clear above that I am not in any way saying that being fat, broke, a grad student or any combination of these things means one is necessarily unattractive and/or undeserving of companionship.)
s. But I’ve known a lot of average-looking guys who griped about how they could never get dates - despite the fact that they were the subject of interest from any number of average-looking women, they were uninterested in those women, and somehow didn’t manage to grasp the idea that if they only wanted “hotties”, perhaps the “hotties” felt the same way, and it was ridiculous to consider that unfair or shallow.
They’re doing that precisely because it sets them up for failure. “Women reject me” is a much easier burden to bear than “Women wouldn’t reject me, but I don’t try, so they don’t get the chance”. In the former, you can blame no-one (or the women, but “the universe is cruel is probably easier.) In the second, you’re to blame for your own misery. Or you can even be honest about who you’re interested in, and just assume that anything that seems like interest is just wishful thinking. This comes with the added bonus of feeling ethically good because you’re never trying to impose on women with your feelings for them. I don’t recommend it, but it works out … more pleasantly than hating yourself, anyhow. The real questions to ask is “How many women have you asked on dates?” and “How many agreed to it?” Watch how quickly it turns out the answers are “Well, none, but … ” or “Okay, most, but …”
And I should have been clear above that I am not in any way saying that being fat, broke, a grad student or any combination of these things means one is necessarily unattractive and/or undeserving of companionship.
Well, as a graduate student who’s more “pudgy” than “fat”, but certainly try to have both food and shelter on a graduate student stipend, let me say: “Phew!”
Hmm, well, you and others are suggesting that he should have been interested in other women - conventionally less attractive ones - than he was apparently interested in. Doesn’t that argument include an assumed hierarchy of pair-bond attractivity? So there is a hierarchy in mating, right? (”Is she really going out with him?”)
(first, thanks for the Joe Jackson flashback! For the rest of you, I’m not talking about Michael’s father, but this guy.
I didn’t mention anything about more or less attractive; I merely mentioned chess club guys and chess club girls—commonalities of experience, but of perceived different value (than the cheerleader/athlete set). The Hollywood film stereotype is that one group (the “nerds”) is homely while another group (athletes/cheerleaders) is “pretty”; in reality, there’s the same mix of physical attractiveness in either group (maybe not at Beverly Hills High, but just about everywhere else). (in fact, one of those 80’s high school flicks pointed this out. In “Can’t Buy Me Love”, Patrick Dempsey (the nerd) merely needed a change of clothing and a haircut to morph into Mr. Cool.)
You don’t think that the world would look differently, if the most attractive females would be attracted to males currently considered far less attractive then them?
But that is the status quo. In heterosexual couples, the woman is almost always several degrees “better looking” (as far as any “objective” measurement; looks being an inherently subjective thing) than her male partner. It is relatively rare to see a man that is “better looking” than his female partner. So, if looks are what you prioritize, you already have the advantage if you’re male.
Wouldn’t the world look different if different kinds of male “doing” (the nurturing part Hugo references) would be valued differently by women?
Like I said before (remember my quote from the previous thread, that Hugo cited in this one at the top of the dial?)—we already do. Most of us, anyway. You’d be hard pressed to find a heterosexual male teacher or nurse who isn’t married or in a relationship. If this isn’t the case in your world, you (the “royal you”) can only decide for yourself if you want to inhabit those values, or stretch your boundaries. If you stretch your boundaries, trust that you will be in plenty of company.
(that whole “doing” vs. “nurturing” thing rubs me raw. I do both, all day every day. That is Real Life in my world—my demographic. Also, there is an undercurrent of “doing” as only applying to men–”doing” meaning achievement in the marketplace. No one speaks of women’s “doing”, even though we’re up in the morning and working all day to bring in money just like the men. What’s up with that?)
I’m saying that the role of female agents *for* holding up a structure of male competition that is considered problematic by both genders is unfairly disregarded in Hugo’s argument.
It should be disregarded. Those female agents are not the foundation of that structure. If they didn’t exist, the structure would still remain. But besides that, women didn’t wait around for men to pretty-please think of us as equals and pretty-please let us into college and apprenticeship programs and other male-only domains.
Brian brings up a good point about impossibly high standards serving a self-protective (albeit self-sabotaging) purpose; like Aesop’s fox that doesn’t really want those grapes….
LaLubu,
I loved “Can’t buy me love”. That movie totally made sense of my personal experience with social dynamics at the time (I was a star in one group and not at all popular in another for a while - and I totally fell in love with Cindy/Amanda Peterson). But it wasn’t the haircut that made him MrCool, he became popular because other people believed SHE picked him as her boyfriend. Interestingly, in my case, my social status in the group in which I was not at all popuplar at the time also went up surprisingly quickly, when a girl who was two years older than I was was interested in me. Suddenly I became attractive to girls in that group that peviously wouldn’t even have looked at me. I’m not sure you’re making an argument *against* the behavioral influence of female choice by citing that movie…
“Those female agents are not the foundation of that structure. If they didn’t exist, the structure would still remain.”
Here’s where I disagree (as I think has become clear throughout the thread - I believe that female decisions are a key element of the social reproduction of the structure, and it’s unfair und analytically unhelpful to leave that dimension out of the analysis).
I believe (generalized) female preferences are a (possibly *the*) prime motivating factor for men in general. I’m not denying structural causes that influence revealed preferences and are thus likely to cause them to differ from what they would be without socialisation. And vice versa.
Trying to make sense of my experience and several of your valid objections, I would have to conclude that “attractivity” is - in revealed preferences that are subject to the qualifications mentioned above - generally measured as a composite value with different dimensions given different weights by women and men. If, as I assume, women are more willing than men to allow factors (say, social status - part of “doing”) other than appearance (part of “being” - which is apparently the most important variable for both sexes) to influence the composite attractivity value, then investing in “doing” would make more sense for men, and investing in “being” would make more sense for women, thereby - the personal being the political here - reproducing the structure considered problematic by everyone.
It’s obviously not the cae, but even assuming for the moment that mating potential was the only criterion that men paid attention to when making decisions about choosing more nurturing lifestyles or less nurturing ones, this decision would have to be made relying on assumed preferences that would optimize this person’s position on the mating market. These assumed preferences are likely different from actual individual preferences, but as I already mentioned above, life choices are usually made in absence of much experience with actual women and their (changing prefernces) and largely based upon generalizations that are *revealed* but are also likely not an entirely independent variable.
I would also say that this kind of problem is deeply intertwined with other social narratives about success and doing and “deserving” that are deeply conservative and problematic with respect to the portrayal of male touch/sexuality as less valuable than female touch/sexuality. Alas, even here, while not all women have it easy on the mating market, it is easily observable that many more women than men would have it easy if they were looking for what men are supposedly looking for, which in a way, will confirm the hypothesis everytime even though there may well be intervening variables of social context (wether or not feminism got those right is a different question) that shape behaviour and preferences.
But that does not mean that this behaviour is not a relevant aspect, potentially the most relevant aspect, shaping people’s behaviour. Revealed female preferences on the micro level reinforce such notions, and it’s, again, unfair, and, in my opinion, analytically unhelpful, to disregard them (as Hugo does).
Phew, this was long, hope it makes a bit of sense.
Longest thread of the year candidate?
Figleaf writes a lot about the No-Sex Class Paradigm that is ruled, in his thesis, by the two “Rules of Desire:”
1. It is simultaneously inconceivable and intolerable for a woman to have sexual desire.
2. It is simultaneously inconceivable and intolerable for a man to be sexually desired.
He’s pointing out that these two mutually reinforcing myths contribute to much of the shame, pain, miscommuncation etc, ad nauseum that pervade human sexual expression (at least where he comes from).
I would guess that what OK is experiencing is the rejection of this mythos both by himself, and by those who are also maturing with him. So he looks back and remembers a time when he (and his age-mates) where more contaminated by these peculiar but pervasive notions.
R.
But it wasn’t the haircut that made him MrCool, he became popular because other people believed SHE picked him as her boyfriend.
Yes and no. She would not have been able to pick him as her boyfriend had he been unwilling to change his appearance. She would have been ostracized (by her crowd) as well. Go watch the movie again. After his appearance changed, he started changing (not for the better, might I add). Meanwhile, during what started as a business transaction, she started falling in love with him, when she got to see the real him. When he developed the same shallow personality she was already growing out of (in herself and in her friends), she didn’t like him as much—and having seen how sensitive and intelligent he was on a one-on-one basis, she couldn’t believe he would buy into the (un)reasonable facsimile of what passed for friendship in her crowd. “Can’t Buy Me Love”, indeed. The moral lesson of that film wasn’t about the power of the “popular” crowd to bestow coolness on nerdy wannabees, y’know.
You are still speaking as if Women are The Borg, as if (unlike in that film) there aren’t different groups of women in different socioeconomic sets, different cultures, different backgrounds—that inform their different desires. The complaints I’m hearing from the men on this thread and other, similar threads in the past boils down to: “I want to retain the same prestige and status I would have as if I were a high-flying executive, and I want to be able to attract women from that socioeconomic background who prefer prestigious men—but I want to be able to do that without having to adopt that lifestyle for myself. I want Some Woman to carry that freight for me, while I enjoy the lower-key lifestyle of a Kept Man. I want what I imagine to be the benefits of a Kept Woman, without actually having to have the lower status of the Kept Woman.”
Just ask me if you want to know what that sounds like to a working class woman—a woman who has known practically since birth that she would never have that imagined life of leisure. Or status.
You (and others) could make that choice—pick some lower-status, lower-paid occupation, while still being able to find female companionship. Your problem is that you would have to tolerate the working-class life (no house in the Hamptons, no vacations in Bali, no society dinners or country-club membership) in order to do so. You (the royal “you” again) don’t really value what you say you do, or else you’d be making that choice.
To use Hugo’s terminology, this is a “NOKOP”/”OKOP” conversation. I can’t tell you how to change your culture to be more amenable to your desires. I’m not from “there”. Women of my socioeconomic and cultural background are already amenable to men bringing in a modest paycheck. Apparently, we—my people—are not considered desirable by….for lack of a better term, “your people”. So in a sense, you (that royal “you” sure gets around, doesn’t it?) are self-creating this problem.
But Lubu, the lower-middle-class men (teachers, nurses) facing the Iron Wall of middle-class women’s preferences don’t read as “masculine” in working-class culture, and don’t date working-class women either. And oddly, the most vociferous MRA advocates tend to be men like Arpagus, from worker-friendly social nanny-states who have failed within academe, the most feminized and socialist-ized hierarchy within those states. So it’s not an imagined class blockage–we see Kept Women and Executive Women all the time–but a real one. But I agree with you that the inability to find any man good enough is a middle-class and Executive Woman problem, and that the men who are continually passed over are a symptom of the aspirational psychosis of the middle classes, that is, a side-effect of the way in which Middle-Class-Woman fails to deal with her unquenchable hypergamous lust.
LaLubu,
“The moral lesson of that film wasn’t about the power of the “popular” crowd to bestow coolness on nerdy wannabees, y’know.”
In general, agreed.
I think the socioeconomic element you mention is valuable for the discussion, but you’re assuming things about me that aren’t correct. I don’t really know what “my people” are. While I have an education and CV that made me the pretty good case study about to become Mr Big, I decided to drop the prospect of a Wall St. corner office for a bit of academia, art, entrepreneurism and dealing with my psychological issues. I’m rather sure you’re closer to your House on the beach than I am. I do know people who could invite me to their houses, sure. We studied together, but they’re not really “my people”. I went to East Asia with a backpack and stayed in a hostel, not a luxury resort. In my case, not becoming Mr Big is what allowed me to deal with my issues and become masculine (learn how to be attractive to women) rather than the other way around. But as you (or someone else) mentioned above, I’m more of an outlier than most people.
I think my personal story as an outlier with personal issues to deal with, exposure to a couple of different cultures, and an obsession with the psychology of human mating that is only indicative of someone who was estranged from his sexuality when growing up has given me a special perspective on a topic that people usually only look at from one side. And I’m still learning - discussions as this one help me form my own perspective.
When I say *doing*, *doing* is what I mean. It doesn’t necessarily mean working in a broken financial system to get a house in the hamptons, it means being in control of your life and having a vision you where you want to go and an idea of how to get there. It’s not money that is attractive per se, although complete lack thereof certainly won’t help, it’s the confidence that comes from having such a clear outlook. Money may follow, but there’s any number of geniuses with confidence and clear outlook that died miserably and in poverty.
Mating processes and psychology seem to both require and reflect such confidence in “doing”. Where male *doing* is valued it becomes valuable, since the social structure tends to shift that way (chicken and egg) - particularly if access to female sexuality is further restricted by cultural means. Then the pay-off of “doing” becomes even more valuable, and, in return, “doing” will be valued more.
I once heard about the matriarchy of the Mosuo (Chinese Tribe), a tiny matrilineal society in which women are generally in charge, yet the mating ritual seems to follow roughly the same script as in “the West”, requiring male/masculine confidence to initiate actual interaction, but the pay-off of for male “doing” appears to be lower as female sexuality seems to be more readily available even to “non-doers” and children are reared by the woman’s clan, not within a newly formed pair-bond (thus relieving the need of partner-support), according to an Argentinian doctor who spent time with the tribe - http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/0,1518,627363,00.html.
“Coler: But when it comes to seduction, they completely change. The women act shy, look at the floor, sing softly to themselves and blush. And they let the men believe that we are the ones who choose the women and do the conquering. Then you spend a night together. The next morning, the man leaves and the woman goes about her work like before.
Q: A paradise of free love, in other words?
Coler: The sexual life of the Mosuo is very distinctive and very active — partners are changed frequently. But the women decide with whom they want to spend the night. Their living quarters have a main entrance but every adult woman lives in her own small hut. The men live together in a large house. The door of every hut is fitted with a hook and all the men wear hats. When a man visits a woman, he hangs his hat on the hook. That way, everybody knows that this woman has a male visitor. And nobody else knocks on the door. If a woman falls in love, then she receives only the specific man and the man comes only to that woman.
Q: What makes a man attractive to a Mosuo woman?
Coler: When she can talk with a man, have sex, and go out, then she is in love. Love is more important for them than partnership. They want to be in love. The one reason to be with another person is love. They aren’t interested in getting married or starting a family with a man. When the love is over, then it’s over. They don’t stay together for the kids or for the money or for anything else.”
It’s a small culture, and thus it’s just a small data point. But I think even this example from a matriarchical culture seems to indicate a female preference for male “doing” on the micro-level (as I argued above). And which macro-structure develops from the micro-preference probably depends upon a whole lot of factors, including, apparently, accessibility of female sexuality, but I’d still say that female choice cannot be disregarded when it comes to such developments. It is one of the decisive factors.
“I want what I imagine to be the benefits of a Kept Woman, without actually having to have the lower status of the Kept Woman.”
Interesting perspective. I’d say, as only one indicator - the Mosuo example indicates the opposite. I first read about this on a website, and, interestingly, women there were wondering why the Mosuo men would not rise up against matriarchy while men were wondering - why should they? Why would they want to change a system in which they have no responsibilities and are still getting lots of sex and love as two people wish - by female choice.
“You (the royal “you” again) don’t really value what you say you do, or else you’d be making that choice.”
Well, I did. I had to work to understand real life, and understanding real life (to the degree that I was able to since) gave me an opportunity to grow as a person and become attractive as a man. I don’t know if I had wanted to walk down the beaten path as the person I am now had I been that person when I had to make that choice, but I can tell you with a lot of confidence that that hypothetical person would have been rather successful at attracting women within the classic “doing” paradigm.
From where I am now, even that doesn’t seem too appealing. But back then I certainly wasn’t behaving even remotely rationally, from a mating or any other aspect (except psychologically, which was impossible for other people to understand).
When I say *doing*, *doing* is what I mean.When I say *doing*, *doing* is what I mean
Unfortunately, you’re talking to a several people who are capable of remembering that when you endorsed this weird-ass dichotomy in the first place, it was in the context of male schoolteachers.
Specifically, you were saying that being a male kindergarten teacher doesn’t make you a chick magnet because women prefer ‘doers’ to ‘feelers’.
If you have decided that you were wrong and extremely insulting to claim that female-coded and caretaking jobs don’t involve “doing” anything, you might want to say so explicitly. Because my god but it was wrong and insulting. Or if you still believe what you said, perhaps you might try running a classroom or a daycare for a week without doing anything, no vision and no confidence armed with nothing but your feelings.
Probably not very many children will die.
But Lubu, the lower-middle-class men (teachers, nurses) facing the Iron Wall of middle-class women’s preferences don’t read as “masculine” in working-class culture, and don’t date working-class women either.
That is pure, unadulterated horseshit, Eurosabra. These men are highly sought after in my world. So much so that most of them are married—they don’t stay single long. Frankly, I don’t think you know much about what working class women find masculine. In the working class world, the sex roles aren’t as rigid as in the “middle class” world (”middle-class” by Internet standards, that is, which would be called “rich” by my crowd, or “upper middle class” by sociologists). Also, don’t twist my words—I don’t think middle class women are too picky. They want the same thing working class women do—someone who can bring the same things to the table that they can. That they have higher standards is a reflection of their higher class status.
Sam: When I say *doing*, *doing* is what I mean. It doesn’t necessarily mean working in a broken financial system to get a house in the hamptons, it means being in control of your life and having a vision you where you want to go and an idea of how to get there.
Ok, NOW, we’re getting somewhere! I assumed by “doing” you meant as-in-contrast to feeling, and/or being a real go-getter materially out in the world (contrasting men’s “doing” with women’s “doing”, since we earn less, and so much of our labor is unpaid and uncredited).
Being in control of your life and having a vision of where you want to go and how to get there? Hell, yes! But isn’t that what everyone in modern society goes through in the process of becoming an adult? Meaning: I don’t see that through a gendered lens. That’s no more masculine than breathing. All that talk of male teachers and nurses confused me into thinking you meant something different with “doing”.
But I’m still confused. If that’s what you mean by doing, how does that fit this conversation? Women are tasked with the exact same struggle in that regard.
Sophonisba,
“don’t involve “doing” anything”
actually, that’s not what I mean and not what I meant. Probably not the best wording, agreed. See, I’m trying to explain something about a phenomenon I see out there, but maybe I’m simply not able to express the conceptual distinction I perceive sufficiently clearly for you (and possibly others) to understand what I’m talking about. I’m sorry for my apparent inability to make my point more clearly.
“Well, I did. I had to work to understand real life, and understanding real life (to the degree that I was able to since) gave me an opportunity to grow as a person and become attractive as a man.”
Isn’t this experience common to many people–that we grow as people from our experiences even if some of those experiences are imposed on us, NOT our choice and what we don’t wish to have? Doesn’t everyone eventually grapple with becoming who we are meant to be rather than who others want us to be or who they think we should be?
The process of becoming an adult—what everyone usually goes through in modern society, I don’t see through a gendered lens either. Yes, people are very attracted to others who appear to be in control of their life or have a vision of where they want to go and how to get there, at least outwardly, but nothing is written in stone. We can also run into many obstacles on that path to where we think we want to be.
Maybe it looks so good to some people because they struggle inwardly with these processes and knowing what they want too, but everyone’s processes are different and so unequal. And when you are struggling you are certainly not valued as much as the person who looks as if they are on a certain and sure path, even if they are unhappy.
I may not be saying this well, but I’ve found that there is a world of difference between who we are and what we do. People often confuse the two, especially since so often we are valued for our outward expressions or work, such as a doctor, etc. People make a lot of assumptions about character based on doing certain types of work. But this really isn’t a measure of character or even happiness nor does it really demonstrate whether someone has a sure sense of themselves or their identity.
I’ve been somewhat trying to follow this discussion and I guess I wasn’t getting what you are trying to explain either–the doing part. It was confusing to me too. I still don’t see how some of this is as gendered as your explanations entail.
Lubu, out here the world of white, guild-oriented union-trades is over, the factory jobs that sustained the high-school educated African-American middle class have been sent to Maquiladoras, while the bad trades jobs have been taken by Mexican nationals and the small supply of native English-speaking OSHA-compliant union-backed trades workers are completely occupied and prospering with the top jobs and boutique work in McMansions as independent contractors. So I can truthfully say that men in Pink Collar jobs in Los Angeles County (perhaps Hugo can correct me) are seen as middle-class failures rather than catches for working-class women, very few of whom are in trades (as opposed to almighty, sclerotic SEIU) and very few of whom are white. It may be that the Jewish community has an odd demographic here as opposed to the East Coast, since there appear to be no working-class Jews in Los Angeles, and that I am excessively sensitive to my demographic, but I think (to a certain extent) Sam is right w/respect to Jewish college-educated men: either they achieve as “doers” or they go completely without mates. While I think the 30%-40% never-married rate for my particular demographic of men is radically high compared to the state or nation as a whole, I tend to think of them as canaries in the coal mine of hypergamy…
out here the world of white, guild-oriented union-trades is over,
Of course. There haven’t been any guild-oriented union trades in the United States since the 1800’s. The process of industrialization and the influence of immigration and industrial unions necessarily restructured the format of the older, guild-oriented unions (my union post-dated all that; we never were guild-oriented). Sheesh. Read some labor history.
For that matter, get out of the house more often. Dude. I’ve been to L.A. Trust me, there are plenty of working class white women there. I’ve seen them on the job. I’ve also seen wedding rings on male teachers and nurses and other medical techs—I find it painfully hard to believe that they are all gay.
It is fascinating that you think all those folks out there doing the invisible work—all the truck drivers, retail workers, warehouse workers, letter carriers, teachers, nurses, medical technicians and support staff, food service workers, telecom workers, tradespeople, auto mechanics, secretaries, clerks, building and grounds maintenance workers, etc. aren’t “doers”—just collect a paycheck for doing nothing, I suppose, since we don’t contribute to society in any meaningful way (eyeroll). It’s even more fascinating that you think all the men in these jobs are single. That really tells me you need to get out more.
Also: the definition of working class that I’m using is a combination of income, education, job status, degree of control over job duties/schedule/conditions—and most importantly, the level of financial safety net a person has. If you’re trying to parse out whether an individual or a job is “working class” or “middle class”—take a look at the safety net. How would that person (or the average person holding that job) fare if the job was lost? How long before bankruptcy? Before homelessness? A “middle class” person has the wherewithal to “downsize” their personal expenses to stave off destitution. Working class folks can’t downsize any more than we already have. Just sayin’.
but I think (to a certain extent) Sam is right w/respect to Jewish college-educated men: either they achieve as “doers” or they go completely without mates.
Wholly by their own fault. They could start looking in the direction of say, teachers and nurses (since those are the occupations Sam brought up). What’s that? You don’t want to date someone so gauche? Well, suit yourself—but (as we say in Flyover Country™, kwitcher’bitchin.
OK, she’s talking about personal preferences, which is completely different from “league.”
BTW, you’re complaining that once you weren’t desirable (because, presumably, you weren’t that sexually attractive) and now you are (because you have other stuff going on for you)? Do you actually think this is a worse problem than what women go through, being rejected for lack of hotness at every stage no matter what else we’ve got going for us? Men routinely dump attractive, successful women just because they’re over 30 and the men are now financially secure enough to score themselves a young hot trophy thang. And you’re bitter that now women are interested in you?
That’s how the “league” works. You can dislike it all you want, but don’t hunt for ways to blame women for it. This shallow approach to trophy bedding/marrying was designed by men to benefit men, and you’re benefiting from it, so either put the blame where it belongs, or quit whining.
Right, but unlike Sam I can substitute “dominant upper-middle-class position in the kyriarchy beyond the power of Cubicle Man, or celebrity equivalent” and be accurate for my demographic’s minimum criteria for “doer”, with the never-married rate held at 30-40% instead of 50-60% by early family formation among Orthodox Jews. Middle-class Jewish men here do not get to “downsize” their professional success or that of their mates just because teachers need to get married, because female teachers invariably marry UP. They can, however, downsize their relationship expectations to never finding anyone, which seems to work for all the Jewish women sharing a small pool of [tee hee] Aleph Males. I realize this is only a demographic problem for a tiny (2.5% of the population) minority that has been spoiled by academic and economic success, but this is a gripe of SWMs in general and seems to be true even as far away as Norway (from 16% of men never-married to 25% in the past 10 years, while the rate for women is much less) and Jews are (however problematically) read as white in this culture and encapsulate many wider demographic trends in an accelerated fashion.
NB Also the question of a support network of friends and family, I’ve been made economically homeless on several occasions by job loss despite a graduate degree but had a viable support network to turn to that allowed me to make do despite not having the resources to do so had I been forced to pay cash up front for everything. Upper-class identity includes access to adequate immediately-liquid-izable assets to maintain housing, etc, I would argue that in high-rent areas like Los Angeles no one is ever middle-class except the rich.
Middle-class Jewish men here do not get to “downsize” their professional success or that of their mates just because teachers need to get married, because female teachers invariably marry UP.
1. Provide a cite (preferably one with reliable statistics) that demonstrates this marrying “up”. Marrying “up”, if the term is to mean anything, should refer to people from a lower socioeconomic class marrying people from a higher socioeconomic class. A female teacher who marries a male engineer who makes $5000 more annually than she does isn’t marrying “up”; she’s marrying someone from the same social class. I’d love to see reliable stats that show even a sizeable minority of women marrying men who make significantly more than they do—enough to put them in a different class category. This is something I have NEVER seen in real life.
2. What, pray tell, is your definition of “middle class?” I’m fluid in my definition, depending on my audience. When midwesterners in my demographic use the term, they mean something pretty much synonymous with working class—someone who can pay the essential bills, and still have a little left over for discretionary spending. On the Internet, “middle class” seems to have a more Hollywood definition—-y’know, like in the reviews of old Speilberg films like E.T., where the reviewers would mention the “typical middle class” homes. Hell, I was sitting in the theatre thinking, “GodDAMN, where do people get the money for these kinds of mansions?!” In the midwest, a “middle class” person has a somewhat older Chevy in the driveway. In L.A., a new Volvo or BMW (or whatever).
So, what do you mean by “middle class”? I don’t think we’re in the same book, let alone on the same page. (Also, teachers where I live are unmistakably working class. Starting pay for teachers where I live is $30,000—and even here, that’s barely skating above the de-facto poverty line. To make over $60,000 a year, a teacher has to have a master’s degree and over twenty years experience in the classroom. That’s pathetic, but that’s a whole ‘nother post.)
Provide a cite (preferably one with reliable statistics) that demonstrates this marrying “up”.
Yeah, I’d like to see that cite, too. I went to grade school through high school in Chappaqua, NY, which was chock full of educated, professionally accomplished Jews (as well as tons of WASPs), and then went to Stanford. And I’ve since found out what happened to a lot of those people, through reunion updates and Facebook, and, a) I haven’t noticed, among the Jewish men I know from Westchester or from Stanford, anything like the 30-40% never married rate that you say is normal for that demographic, and, b) the Jewish women I know from Westchester and Stanford seem to be marrying men more or less of the same class as them, rather than, as you suggest, all dating the same millionaire. (FWIW, actually all the women I can remember blatantly saying they wanted to marry money were WASP, but there were so few of them that I don’t think I can really read an ethnic trend there; it was probably just random chance.) So, if Jewish women are super duper hypergamous, it sure isn’t anecdotally obvious.
It’s also my experience, both in NY where I grew up and in California where I lived my adult life, that most male teachers are in fact married.
Jennifer Kesler
Could you tell more about this?
As far as I know women are the initiators of something around 80% of the divorces. This seems at odds with your claim that it’s the men walking away.
Oh and on a personal plane. Should I be happy now that I am attractive, when the only things that have changed are that I am fit and make money. I am filled with joy, let me tell you that. What man doesn’t dream of being reduced to a good looking wallet.
What man doesn’t dream of being reduced to a good looking wallet.
Reduced to a wallet? What happened to the part where you started working out and sculpted yourself a willowy new body? Remember your whole argument was about how women are shallow creatures of lust who just want to bang the hottest 18 year olds they can until they’re over the hill and forced to settle down?
If you want to jump the track and latch on to the “women are calculating machines, dead from the waist down,” that too is a time-honored misogynist trope, but you’ll have to come back with a new pseudonym if you want to try that one on, since it entirely contradicts your previous pose.
People do notice these wild inconsistencies.
Ok, you are certainly filled with something, but I’m not sure it’s joy.
sophonisba
Did you miss the part about ‘good looking’? Oh, and if you want to discuss inconsistencies. Try talking to Jennifer about why it is so troublesome that women get dumped in their thirties, when she at the same time defends every womans right to have any preference whatsoever. You can check the link I posted earlier. Why doesn’t she condem the women posting that confess they are shallow, if shallowness is such a problem as she states it is when men dump women.
Ok, if as you say women are shallow and attracted only to Hot Guys (which is why you, pre-eight-pack, couldn’t get a date, right?), then why do you assume they are interested in your wallet?
Did you see the entire sentence ‘good looking wallet’. If you don’t have both, it seems you need a lot of either of the two other.
Ok, we all saw the sentence and, as sophonisba pointed out, we also saw what you’ve written before. You’ve told us previously that young women, who you are now just waiting to reject, only go after Hot Guys. Now you’re telling us, well, maybe it’s not just Hot, they also require Hot and Wealthy. How you would know this, since by your own admission you’ve never been either Broke Hot Guy or Rich Not-Hot Guy, I’m not sure.
Pro tip: an ‘eight pack’ is not enough, by itself, to make a guy hot. Walking around with a chip on your shoulder about the women who wouldn’t date you in grad school and anyway they’re all greedy bitches who think with their vulvas? Definitely NOT hot.
mythago
Fine by my. But my question then, will feminists keep calling female shallowness ‘Right to high standards’ or ‘Right to preference’ while male shallowness is ‘Objectifying’ and ’sexist’? Just look first at the discussion on Jennifer’s blog, and then look at what she wrote here about how sad it is for women that have to be hot.
Ok, sorry, I think I missed a step. What’s “fine by” you? The stereotype that women are greedy, shallow bitches?
Please point to where anybody has said that it’s perfectly reasonable for women to demand high standards in their choice but unreasonable for men to do the same. Oh, wait, that was you, in reverse; you were throwing a fit about how the attractive women you wanted to date wouldn’t have anything to do with you because you weren’t a “Hot Guy”, with a mysterious silence as to whether you ever asked out any of your fellow “fat, broke grad students” who happened to be female.
Mythago, fine by me as in fine that it’s not hot to carry a chip on my shoulder.
Here is one example http://thehathorlegacy.com/men-are-too-picky-about-dating/#comment-92593
Compare to this.
“That’s how the “league” works. You can dislike it all you want, but don’t hunt for ways to blame women for it. This shallow approach to trophy bedding/marrying was designed by men to benefit men, and you’re benefiting from it, so either put the blame where it belongs, or quit whining.”
Ok, I don’t understand what is objectionable about the comment you referenced, in that the comment was talking about men who did not pursue basic hygiene and social skills, but desired near-perfection levels of beauty and social skills in women.
Particularly when you put it into context in the previous statements on that thread:
“I cut my BF slack for not shaving just as he does for me. No one should be expected to look pristine at all times.”
“I get tired of guys who complain about being overlooked by women. These guys are usually chubby and nerdy. I love chubby and nerdy. Lots of women do. You know what I don’t like? The fact that they haven’t showered in three days or shaved in five. Their shirt is covered in stains and holes. And their social skills are . . . lacking. Maybe you can’t do much with your weight or receding hairline or general image (i.e. nerd vs. jock) but if you can’t be bothered to perform simple routine maintenance on yourself don’t blame me for not looking twice.”
And this is from the original post itself, concerning the different socialization of men and women (of a certain demographic, of course) regarding initial approaches (later comments in the thread emphasized the different perception of women who make initial approaches—roughly, “Super Slut” or “Ballbusting Bitch”, ‘cuz Good Women™ don’t do that sort of thing):
“See, if you’re a guy who asks a woman out and she says no, you have been rejected. But if you’re a woman who is hoping a man will ask you out (sadly, most men can’t handle a woman doing the asking, even these days) and he doesn’t, she has been rejected. You go out to a bar and ask ten women for their numbers or some promise of future contact and they all turn you down. Ouch – you’ve been rejected by ten people! A woman goes out to a bar and ninety-three men walk past her, glance her over, don’t see what they’re looking for and move on. She’s just been rejected by ninety-three people.
If you’re one of the ninety-three who tripped over that women and loads more like her in your stampede toward the supermodel lookalike in the corner, you don’t feel like you’ve rejected that other woman. In five seconds, you won’t even remember all the women you glanced over who didn’t meet your criteria. But they exist. And in not hitting on them, you have demonstrated that you have – gasp – standards for choosing who you will and won’t date!
If you have ever passed over a woman who was available at a time when you wanted to be with someone, you have standards for who you will date. Don’t feel bad – it means your brain is functioning, which is important for your overall health and well-being.”
Granted, some of those comments about the basic hygiene read as hyperbole (I don’t really see that many men out in public who have such poor hygiene), but the greater point—that beauty standards are much higher for women than they are for men, and beauty rituals are more time and money consuming for women than for men—still stands. I also think the perception of rejection is worth considering; the “ten women just rejected you” vs. “93 men just rejected you” based on the social norms of dating rituals.
When women tire of the “93 men just walked past me” routine, the response is generally to change gears—be proactive, and ask men out. Sometimes, this gets positive results, or a polite “no thanks”. But often it gets….less than positive results (for young women anyway; younger men seem to have more masculinity issues) with sexist assumptions about sexual norms or general aggressiveness levels. Women are put in a can’t-win-for-losing position.
My question for the men on this thread is: if or when you were a young man, did it freak you out when women made initial contact? Did you make assumptions about their sexuality or social behavior based on her taking the “male” role? Did you ever turn a woman down not because you weren’t attracted to her, but because she broke ranks and did the asking? Did you hear other men talking disparagingly about women who asked men out (slutty, desperate, predatory, etc.)? Did it make you feel like more, or less, of a man to have a woman take on the “male” role of asking? Did it offend you to be asked out by a woman? Was it offensive or nonoffensive based on the particular woman’s physical appearance? Did you feel that women who asked you out were more, or less of a woman? Did that impact whether you wanted to reciprocate her interest? Were you willing to pursue casual sex with a woman who asked you out, but unwilling to pursue further contact (whether a casual dating relationship or a longer term relationship)? Did your reaction depend on whether or not there were other males (particularly other male friends) witnessing the woman making initial contact? Did your attitude change as you got older? If so, was this change based on general maturity, or specific to more dating and/or sexual experience? What was the “setting” for these experiences—the ages, background or identities of the persons, location, etc.?
I would guess that women are usually the initiators, but that because the communiction is either non-verbal or subtle, it doesn’t count, somehow. I, for one, am quite thick when it comes to non-verbal cues. For a women who is sending out messages in this way, having them ignored could, I suppose, feel rejected. It is not quite the same though as asking (using your words) and being turned down.
Of those 93 women a guy walks by, he might only pick up clear messages from one, a few or none at all. Only those who he understood to be trying to connect were actually rejected.
For me, a woman initiating is great. Of course if I don’t find her attractive, I can decline. That is standard rejection of the sort guys are expected to routinely endure. I actually would think more of her as a confident assertive human being and certainly wouldn’t be inclined to shame her for “breaking ranks.”
BTW — my wife tells me that my response to confident, assertive, self-possessed women is atypical in her, confident, assertive, self-possessed experience.
My question for the men on this thread is: [snipped]
Well, I’ve never had a woman make the first move towards me, but I think I can extrapolate a bit from two cases where I made a move in a (let’s say, drunken stupour) but I didn’t understand it to be part of any longer term thing (insofar as I could understand anything, which in both cases was probably pretty marginal). But both times, when they contacted me the next day, I was totally unprepared to deal with it, and freaked out a fair bit. Pretty much, because I didn’t know what to do, or how to act, or didn’t understand what they wanted from me, or whatnot. In both cases I got through enough of my angsting/panicking/whatnot that we ended up dating (and in fact, in both cases, cohabitating, though I think that’s not a direct result or anything?) Overall (at least, gauged to when I’ve approached women), I was pretty happy and relieved (the few hours of panicking and angsting I went through in those cases is far less than the ~10-~100 hours worth I usually go through to work myself up to asking a woman on a date) I don’t think I formed any judgments about them over it, positive or negative - I was way too concerned over what I was supposed to do, how I was supposed to act, how I was going to be judged, etc., to give the issue any thought. (Oh, for what it’s worth, I was ~22 and ~24 in those cases - I’m 28, and I expect not much has changed.)
With respect to other men I’ve known? I can’t say I know of any cases in particular detail, though what I have heard has been pretty magnanimus and casual, maybe a bit of having felt silly that they could’ve made a move but failed to do so? Even the ones with pretty serious masculinity issues accepted, and didn’t seem to form any negative opinions over it (Okay, I’m really only thinking of one guy in particular, who had a lot of anger towards women to boot).
Brian, but sometime’s mens reactions to freaking out is to say “no” not because they mean it but because they are freaking out.
Funny story, I asked my high school boyfriend to dance with me in 7th grade at a dance. He ignored me. Just walked by as if he didn’t hear me when clearly he did. I was so pissed and insulted! How hard is it to be polite?! … In tenth grade I was still the one to ask him out but I didn’t have any doubt he’d say yes and liked me a lot. I asked him several times why in the world he said no at the dance - he couldn’t really tell me, just that he was nervous.
If I’m in a club and pick a guy to make eyes at my percentage of getting the guy to come over is high. If I go up to guys and ask to dance - lousy percentage.
This is just anecdata but it’s my life experience so far (and I’m unlikely to get more being all settled down).
In a bit of a hurry, just briefly -
“Did it make you feel like more, or less, of a man to have a woman take on the “male” role of asking?”
I felt a bit less of a man because I wasn’t really able to take on the “male” role myself for a long time. So while being really grateful and needed women who initiated, it was always a bit of a reminder that this was something I should also be able to do. There is also the anticipated assumption that she will think less of you because she has to do what she may think would be your job (which some women do). I also believe the initiation role scripts are more important when it comes to actual romantic initiation. I once was at at festival, walking hand-in-hand with a girl for the whole time. She said at the end, she’d never be the one who kisses a guy first. I still couldn’t do it at that time.
Ok, I get that you still want to talk about anything other than the contradictions in your posts, but going to that link, I again didn’t see anyone arguing that women are allowed to be choosy but men aren’t. You linked to a post that says men think they are less choosy than women because they aren’t perceiving it when they do reject women.
It’s hard to take someone writing about femininity seriously if he can’t even spell it.