Pleasures of the Flesh

I’ve been noting in my Lightning Rounds that a few experienced players have been reaching the end of their run on the hedonic treadmill and are finding the whole experience unfulfilling. Last week, I wrote of how neither hedonism nor meaningless LTR’s will leave a man fulfilled. Now it seems Frost is suffering from player burn-out as well.

Except for a few men, playerdom will never be fulfilling in the end. Shallow pleasure does not bring contentment, only momentary happiness. Meaningless sex is simply the same effect as drugs, except one step removed (or more accurately, drugs are simply artificial inducements of effects similar to that which meaningless sex will bring). As with drugs, it will not satisfy, but it will become increasingly consuming as it becomes increasingly less pleasurable.

You will have sex, feel pleasure, then have but feel slightly less pleasure, and each time you will require more sex, more kinkiness, hotter women, and yet still feel slightly less pleasure each time. Meanwhile, you never feel the contentment you seek. The hedonic treadmill continues to roll until you either die or get off.

So, why not just ride for a while and get off at the right time?

The treadmill takes its toll even after you get off. Just as a carousel rider suffers as an alpha widow, so to does the ex-player suffer from the player’s curse.

A man who limits himself to one sexual partner has, by definition, the best sexual partner of his life with whom he is having the best sex of his life. The player, not so much. Any long-term relationship he may try will always be haunted by the ghosts of better sex and more beautiful partners of time past. The more partners he had prior, the more likely and stronger the hauntings.

There is no purpose to be found in hedonism, only emptiness.

I bought male and female slaves, and had slaves who were born in my house. I had also great possessions of herds and flocks, more than any who had been before me in Jerusalem. I also gathered for myself silver and gold and the treasure of kings and provinces. I got singers, both men and women, and many concubines, the delight of the sons of man.

So I became great and surpassed all who were before me in Jerusalem. Also my wisdom remained with me. And whatever my eyes desired I did not keep from them. I kept my heart from no pleasure, for my heart found pleasure in all my toil, and this was my reward for all my toil. Then I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had expended in doing it, and behold, all was vanity and a striving after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun. (Ecclesiastes 2:7-11, ESV)

Other men go make a different, but no less mistaken, extreme. Rather than pursuing meaningless sex from multiple women, they pursue meaning in a single woman. They find their identity and purpose in loving and serving another fallen person. This is as almost as empty as the meaningless sex, and will leave a man almost as hollow in the end. How is her value more than your own?

A man’s purpose of life can not be found in women or a singular woman.

If a man fathers a hundred children and lives many years, so that the days of his years are many, but his soul is not satisfied with life’s good things, and he also has no burial, I say that a stillborn child is better off than he. For it comes in vanity and goes in darkness, and in darkness its name is covered. Moreover, it has not seen the sun or known anything, yet it finds rest rather than he. Even though he should live a thousand years twice over, yet enjoy no good—do not all go to the one place? (Ecclesiastes 6:3-6, ESV)

So, where can purpose be in life be found?

For this, we can turn to Genesis:

And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

This is the first commandment; this is for what God made man.

Man’s purpose is to be found in filling and subduing the earth. Work was what man was created and/or evolved for. Man is meant to tame the land and to build from that which he needs and desires and to fill his tamed land with his own.

Man’s purpose is in building something greater than himself and then to create future generations to enjoy it.

Yet, there is a problem:

“Because you have listened to the voice of your wife
and have eaten of the tree
of which I commanded you,
‘You shall not eat of it,’
cursed is the ground because of you;
in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life;
thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you;
and you shall eat the plants of the field.
By the sweat of your face
you shall eat bread,
till you return to the ground,
for out of it you were taken;
for you are dust,
and to dust you shall return.” (Genesis 3:17-19, ESV)

I have read this verse many times in my life, but only recently did I realize the full measure of agony contained within these words.

It is only in his work that man can find meaning, yet rather than something pleasurable, work is something difficult, bitter, and wearying.

How bitter this cup, that man’s purpose is to toil, yet his toil is naught but pain to him. To his even greater agony, when his toil is through and he surveys the work gained by through the sweat of his brow, he always knows that from dust it came and to dust it will return.

To find purpose, a man must always be working, always in bitter toil, yet know that all his work will eventually crumble in ruin.

I hated all my toil in which I toil under the sun, seeing that I must leave it to the man who will come after me, and who knows whether he will be wise or a fool? Yet he will be master of all for which I toiled and used my wisdom under the sun. This also is vanity. So I turned about and gave my heart up to despair over all the toil of my labors under the sun, because sometimes a person who has toiled with wisdom and knowledge and skill must leave everything to be enjoyed by someone who did not toil for it. This also is vanity and a great evil. What has a man from all the toil and striving of heart with which he toils beneath the sun? For all his days are full of sorrow, and his work is a vexation. Even in the night his heart does not rest. This also is vanity. (Ecclesiastes 2:18-23, ESV)

What is a man to do when all is vanity? How can man continue on, when all about his is rust and decay

Here is all for man to do:

Go, eat your bread with joy, and drink your wine with a merry heart, for God has already approved what you do.

Let your garments be always white. Let not oil be lacking on your head.

Enjoy life with the wife whom you love, all the days of your vain life that he has given you under the sun, because that is your portion in life and in your toil at which you toil under the sun. Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might, for there is no work or thought or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol, to which you are going. (Ecclesiastes 9:7-10, ESV)

A man accepts that life is vanity; he accepts that life is toil, but he continues. He finds what joy he can, knowing joy is illusionary, while working to build, knowing that his works will fade and decay.

A man’s purpose is to continue to build and enjoy the fruits of his labour even when he can not find meaning in the building or its fruits.

Go Big or Go Home

In my last post, I gave my thoughts on long-term relationships and came down against them. I started writing the piece last week, then left it for a few days, and because of this it became somewhat disorganized, and I couldn’t get it quite right before I posted it. Since posting and reading some of the responses, I realized that this was because I was only writing about the end conclusions of my reflections, while glossing over the premises.

So, I’m going to expand a bit on the post here. The purpose of the post was not to dismiss long-term relationships, in and of themselves. It was to dismiss purposelessness and mediocrity in relationships, which are exemplified by the trends of increased shacking-up and LTR’s.

I’ve noted on here before that a man should have a mission to live for (vaguely hypocritical, in that I am kinda lacking a mission myself, but this blog is somewhat aspirational). Relationships with women should be an augmentation in your life to best help you reach your purpose in life.

Therefore, when pursuing relationships, you should have a clear goal of what you want out of the relationship and how it will help you achieve your mission. Plan out what you want.

If your goal is a family and a committed relationship, then find the right girl, seal the deal, and get married. Do it purposefully; do it right. Don’t fall into a long-term relationship half accidently, then move in together and/or get married after a few years because that’s how things go. Plan it out.

If your goal is hedonism and avoiding commitment, do it right; be a player, start gaming, and have the wildest ride you can. Don’t limit your hedonism to a “safe”, mediocre LTR.

My problem with LTR’s is that they are not succeeding at serving any particular mission all that well. It is a mediocre half-solution that seems to simply try to fill a gap in life without any particular greater purpose behind it.

Essentially go big or go home.

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Smoothreentry also commented on this piece.

I would accept most of his qualifications, with the following caveats.

He is right that the sex for the PUA is not about fulfillment, it’s about hedonism; pleasure. It will often leave a man unfulfilled, as anybody who’s been reading Roosh these last few months can easily see for themselves. It looks like he’s about to try something new, but I doubt he will find the fulfilment he seeks in this new plan.

For fulfillment though, the LTR would not be an answer either. It may feel somewhat more fulfilling in the moment, but tt builds nothing of long-term value. Only the stability of a marriage provides the leverage necessary to build a meaningful home and family. A meaningful life can be built outside of sexual relationships, but in that case it will be apart from sexual relationships, which will be a distraction or at best a simple sideshow.

In today’s modern sexual marketplace, the LTR as a transitional phase towards that of wife is almost always necessary. It should not be the end goal though. As well, it should be carefully watched that these transitions do not “just happen”. You should be transitioning purposefully with a plan. If you start walking without a map you may find yourself in a place you don’t want to be and don’t know how to leave.

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Sarah’s Daughter asked:

I understand you’re saying (as a Christian) you aren’t advocating for one situation or another. I wonder, however, if you would agree that it is equivalent to an analysis on which abortion clinic/procedure is the most appropriate for the non Christian.

It would be equivalent to saying that an abortion by a doctor would be less painful than doing it yourself with a vacuum cleaner. Which I would not hesitate to say, as it is simple reasoned conclusion that does nothing to further an abortion.

I would avoid, say, actively researching which clinics were the best price, or what doctor had the best bedside manner, as these are all actively helping further someone along the path to an abortion. In the same vein, I wouldn’t actively give out tips on which club was the best to find easy chicks or who’s the best value hooker in the area, as these are actively furthering someone along the path to sexual sin.

It can be  a fine line at times, I know, but I think there’s a difference between a simple reasoned observation and an analysis which pushes a person farther towards sin.

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As a final note: The primary purpose of this blog is for me to work out my thoughts on life in relation to finding my purpose in life. I try to keep the blog either analytical or positive and aspirational. I try to with Christian charity. I do try to avoid being overly negative, bitter, or unChristian. Despite this, I am but fallen man, my thoughts are not always Christian or charitable.

I’m naturally cynical and pessimistic. In addition, I am struggling with being unsuccessful in finding a wife while still trying to maintain Christian sexual standards. For a man in his late 20′s, this can, at times, lead to loneliness and sexual frustration. Finally, I have always been a rather pro-civilization type and seeing the civilization I love crumbling around me can be frustrating.

The combination of these factors can sometimes lead to bitterness and unrighteous anger welling-up in my soul, to my discredit, which may occasionally creep into this blog. On top of this, the temptations of nihilistic hedonism are very enticing; thoughts of simply embracing apathy and going poolside while it all burns are not uncommon. This flirtation with nihilism may also creep into my writings.

So, forgive me if occasionally I give into temptation and be somewhat unChristian in word or tone.

Thoughts on Avoiding LTRs

At the end of my recent post, Dating and Verbalization, I left this little bit:

If you’re looking for an LTR or a girlfriend. Just don’t; it’s stupid. If you want sex, get sex through an STR, FWB, or ONS. If you want companionship, get a male friend or a dog. If you want a family and life-partner, get a wife. Getting a girlfriend is the worst of all three worlds while minimizing the benefits of any of them.

I was asked to talk more about it in the comments. Given that I was already planning to write more on it and would have had the post not already been at the 2000+ word mark and had I not run out of time, I will do so here.

Before I begin, I should note that my use of a girlfriend in this case denotes a women with which a man has a long-term relationship (in this case, more than a year) that may or may not include a live-in relationship. It does not include a girlfriend from a short-term relationship or a potential wife you are currently spending time with testing for marriage-potential that you would label a girlfriend. Now, onto my previous assertion.

There are three primary reasons a man pursues a woman romantically: sex, companionship, and for a life-partner/family. Given the vagaries of human interaction, they are probably others, but those are the main ones.

If you are looking for just sex, use short-term relationships of under half a year or friends with benefits. Previous calculations I have done, calculated the economic cost of sex was less the longer your relationship lasted. For the most part though, there was declining marginal utility as the relationship extended. After the first few months, the cost of sex stopped going down significantly.

Also, this was a simplified, assume-a-can-opener calculation. It mostly assumed that the immaterial costs and benefits of a relationship, such as time invested, emotional investment, commitment, and companionship, evened themselves out over time.

Obviously, that is not the case. As the relationship increases in length, it increases in “seriousness” or, at least, the demand for “seriousness” and more commitment from the other half of the relationship. This increases the costs of the relationship, ie. investments in the relationship that don’t lead to sex. For example, going to her mother’s birthday party or picking her up when her car breaks down.

In other words, the longer a relationship continues, the rate of depreciation of the cost of sex in material investment decreases, but the cost of sex in non-material investment increases. Of course, if you choose to live together, both material and non-material investment explodes, bad move.

If sex is what you want, the longer the relationship goes, the more you are investing to receive it. As well, due to the level of commitment a girlfriend requires, you are not allowed to seek out other sexual outlets in which to invest, limiting your options. A relationship of longer than a half-year or so is a bad investment for sex.

On the other hand, there is something to be said for having a sexual partner you can love and trust implicitly, but in that case, get married. Otherwise, there is always that edge of uncertainty eating at that trust.

Next companionship. If you want someone to talk to and hang out with get a male friend. If you want someone to meet you happily when you get home and snuggle up beside you while you watch TV get a dog.

The problem with companionship within a long-term relationship is that it comes with so much other baggage. You can (and should) have a male friendship be the end in itself, but you can not have a long-term relationship and have the companionship be an end in itself. The addition of romance changes the nature of the relationship. It makes the companionship a means rather than an end, limiting the depth of the companionship. (For more on male/female friendship see here).

For this reasons, any companionship within a relationship is contingent on the other aspects of the relationship. If the other parts of the relationship fails, the companionship ends as well. In addition, a relationship without life-long, will almost inevitably end and it is known it will inevitably end (otherwise, the couple would have married). Because of the contingency and purposefully limited time-frame of the relationship, the companionship can never be as deep or as true as that in a male friendship which has no such contingencies or time frames.

Onto life-partner/family.

A marriage (at least prior to no-fault divorce) provides stability in which to raise a family. It provides an commitment and guarantee of someone you can rely on when needed. It provides a high level of trust and reliability. A marriage is something you can build a mutual life and family together around.

On the other hand, while a long-term relationship has a certain level of commitment, it can be ended at any time. There are no legal or cultural bonds holding the relationship together. There is simply not enough stability and commitment in which to create a family or fully build your lives together.

Now some would say a no-fault marriage could be ended at any time and, to some extent, this is true. But even in these degenerate times marriage still holds a certain cultural value. All but the most morally bankrupt people will put some effort into preserving their marriage and there is a certain level of cultural pressure to work on a marriage that is not their for a LTR. There are also legal commitments that work to support a marriage. While marriage is not as ironclad as it used to be, there are still some moderately strong cultural, moral, and legal forces working to preserve people’s marriages.

So as you can see, the long-term relationship offers only a weakened version of the benefits of marriage, short-term relationships, and/or friendship, while simultaneously having the costs of all. You get sex, but it’s neither the hedonic pleasure-high of STR’s, ONS’, and FWB’s nor the all-consuming, spiritually-fulfilling, trusting love of marriage. You have too much commitment to go outside the relationship and have to invest a lot in the relationship, but you do not have enough commitment and stability to build a mutual life and family together. You have a certain level of companionship, but its always limited by its nature. As I said, you have all the disadvantages of all three worlds, while minimizing the benefits of any of them. It’s a very lukewarm type of relationship.

Of course, the long-term girlfriend is rational in one scenario. Where you are looking for a moderate amount of commitment, but not too much, a moderate, but limited, level of companionship, and regular sexual access with a singular partner at a not too high cost. But I don’t see the point in pursuing such a lukewarm strategy. It lacks both the hedonic thrills of being a player and the meaningfulness of a strong marriage and family. Don’t settle for mediocrity.

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To conclude, some talk on morality.

Some might wonder, why I, a Christian, am advocating one night stands and am opposed to long-term relationships. Isn’t a loving relationship what Christians should support?

The answer is I am not advocating either. In fact, I hereby warn all my readers, on the penalty of eternal judgment, to avoid any sexual relationship outside marriage and any romantic relationship outside of marriage and the pursuit thereof, and to repent of their immorality and give their hearts to Jesus.

But confusion on this might come from the fact that long-term relationships are often seen as being “morally superior” in some way to random hook-ups.  This is wrong. Christians should be opposed to any romantic relationship other than marriage. Romantic love is not the basis of sex or marriage in the Christian view, marriage is the basis of both sex and romantic love. Anything else is sin. If you are a Christian advocating long-term romantic relationships, your view of Christian sexual morality is fundamentally flawed.

I repeat, there is absolutely NO moral difference between friends with benefits, a living-together relationship, a one-night stand, prostitution, and a boyfriend-girlfriend relationship. There is not the tiniest bit of moral difference between Roissy’s pump’n'dump strategy, dissention’s advocacy of escorts, and Susan Walsh’s advocacy of “meaningful” relationships.

Marriage is the only relationship in which sexuality can morally be expressed. The marriage and the pursuit thereof is the only one in which romantic expressions are not sinful.

Sex is made for marriage, romance is made for marriage and the lead-up in marriage.

Seeking to sate your lust in an ONS is sin, seeking to sate your passion in a long-term relationship is sin.

For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from sexual immorality; that each one of you know how to control his own kbody2 in holiness and honor, not in the passion of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God (1 Thessalonians 4:3-5, ESV)

I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem, that you not stir up or awaken love until it pleases. (Song of Solomon 8:4, ESV)

That being said, I do not judge non-Christians for their moral choices. The condition of their souls is between them and God. My duty is to warn them of their sin and its consequences out of love and let the Holy Spirit work. If they do not heed my warnings, their blood is on their own head.

So morally, do not engage in sex outside marriage.

But as a purely practical matter, if a male sinner is planning to fornicate, obtaining temporal pleasure through low-level commitment relationships is likely the materially preferable option.

Dating and Verbalization

I have received a request to write on a topic. I’m always willing to entertain ideas for discussion on this blog, and if I believe I have time and anything of value to write concerning the issue, I’ll put something up. So, if any of my readers have something they’d like to be addressed, feel free to drop me a line or leave a comment.

I was asked by smoothreentry:

I am interested in articles that discuss women acting one way, and freaking out if the obvious is verbalized. If you have written on the subject, or read a good article on it, I would appreciate being pointing in the right direction.
…
But I am talking about the phenomenon of women acting one way, and being okay with it as long as the elephant in the room isn’t verbalized. This characteristic is causing me much grief as I continue to date.

First, I would direct you to Rollo’s two pieces, Female Dating Advice and Just Get It. Essentially, what both argue is that women want you to know how to approach dating and relationships, to “just get it”, without having to be told. By being told what she desires, you kill the “naturalness” of the relationship.

Having read that, we can continue.

The modern woman (at least until she’s hit the wall and is desperate) does not choose a mate for such practical reasons as reliability, provision, protection, fatherhood potential, etc. She has a surrogate husband, the state, to take care of all those things for her.

Instead, what she is looking for is “chemistry.” By chemistry, she means she is sexually and emotionally excited by you. But the modern woman can’t call “chemistry” by its real name, sexual attraction, because sexual attraction is what shallow guys who are only after immature, big-titted sluts rather than mature, ‘real women’ feel. She’s not shallow, she’s looking for “chemistry”, which is much deeper than looking for some young, perky slut.*

That little mind game aside, she wants to feel chemistry; she desires you to sexually and emotionally excite her. To be sexually and emotionally excited, your romance has to feel “natural” to her. Deliberate romance feels “artificial”, and artificial love can’t be “true love”. If you have to work at it or verbalize, it kills the “chemistry”. You need to “just get it”.

Essentially, the modern women wants spontaneity, to be “swept off her feet”. She wants it to “just happen.” As soon as you start verbalizing things, then it is no longer just happening, it is planned; it has become artificial. Verbalized romance is no longer “true love” (under this warped definition of love) because it is no longer “natural”.

As per one of the original examples from smoothreentry, by calling a date, “a date”, you are robbing the date of all sponteneity. It has become planned and no longer feels natural.

I’m going to guess the same with the example of sleeping over at her house. The times you slept over at her place, it probably “just happened”. It felt natural. When you assumed you were sleeping over, you killed the spontaneity of the sleeping over at her house. It became planned, and was no longer romantic. She didn’t feel excited about it.

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“Chemistry” is not the only possible reason, there’s also the issue of dating scripts. Back before contraception and feminism destroyed modern relationships, there were accepted dating scripts for society. While the details might differ between people, there was a general, socially accepted way of doing things. You’d go on a date: dinner, a movie, a walk in the park. You’d kiss on the third date, then you’d start going steady a date or two after. After dating for a year or two, you’d ask her hand in marriage, then get married, have kids, etc. Physical intimacy would escalate in conjunction with both emotional intimacy and commitment. Before this script other, more patriarchal, scripts existed, but there was usually a script of some sort.

There is no longer any generally accepted dating script, or societally accepted ways of doing things. Commitment, emotional intimacy, and physical intimacy have all be completely delinked. Depending on the individual, sex might occur on the first date, the third date, without a date at all, in a relationship, or not until marriage. Dating has been replaced by hook-ups, at least for some people at some times. Marriage has been replaced with common-law relationships, at least for some people. FWB has both physical intimacy and (maybe) emotional intimacy, but no commitment. The increased acceptance of close inter-sexual friendships creates emotional intimacy without physical intimacy or commitment. There is no accepted script; just chaos.

Everybody, including you and the girls acting weird, are all making it up as they go along. When do we first have sex? When do we get engaged (if we do)? When is a date a date? Are we friends, friends with benefits, or dating? At what point is sleeping over ok? How many dates until we are dating? Does going on a date imply anything? What does “it’s complicated” mean?

Who the hell knows?

I don’t, you don’t, and neither do the girls you are with. Dating has devolved from its earlier purpose of spousal selection and preparation for marriage into who the hell knows what.

Even apart the larger issues, there’s the more practical issues. Is holding a door open chivalry, good manners, or sexism? Is chivalry appreciated or insulting? Is this drunken sex going to be a good time or rape? Who pays for the meal? Is a kiss appropriate on the first date? Is sex?

Who the hell knows? It all depends on who you ask.

And nobody knows how to handle it; few people know what they are doing. The only two groups that really know what they are doing are the players/sluts who are just looking to score and the extreme traditionalists who are still following an even older script. The vast majority of people don’t really have a goal or a path to get there. They vaguely want a relationship (of some kind), vaguely want sex (in some manner), and maybe want to get married (at some point, for some reason) but don’t know the when, what, or how. Everybody is trying to navigate chaos without a map.

The girls you are with are trying to do this as well. Is that time with that guy really a date or are they just friends? Is getting together for coffee really a date? Does going on a date imply we are dating? Does going on a lot of dates imply I’m easy? Does him assuming he’s sleeping over mean we’ve advanced to a higher level of commitment? Am I ready for that? Is this a lead up to moving in together? Am I being taken advantage of?

She doesn’t know because she does not have a social script of what normal, appropriate relationship behaviour is. Just like you don’t know what’s up with her because you do not have a script.

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Another reason could be a form of cognitive dissonance. There is who she thinks she is and what she thinks she’s doing, and how it interacts with what she is actually doing, which may not be the same. So she engages in cognitive dissonance.

For example, only desperate and/or slutty women go on lots of dates. I’m neither desperate nor a slut. I go on lots of dates.

Obviously, at least one of these statements must be logically false, but there’s a problem: she can’t stop going on dates because she wants a man (probably desperately, even if she won’t admit it to herself), her “self-esteem” would be ruined if she thought she was either a slut or desperate, and she still wants to be able to judge Jenny, that desperate slut at the office, so they all have to be true.

The easiest, most psychologically appealing way to get around this contradiction between logic and emotion is to simply change the definition of “a date”.

I go out with men a lot, but I’m not a desperate slut (like Jenny), so it’s only a date if we know each other. Therefore, I’m not going on lots of dates, therefore, I’m not a slut and I’m not desperate.

Or it could be: I’m a nice person. Rejecting men you have dated is not nice. I’ve rejected many men I’ve dated. Therefore, they weren’t dates, we were just friends. no one was rejected.

This kind of cognitive dissonance could also works its way in as a cover for straightforward manipulation.

She’s simply embarrassed. She thinks going on a lot of dates makes her look slutty, desperate, easy, etc. to you, so she tries to manipulate you/herself into not thinking she’s been on a lot of dates by simply maintaining that she has not been. This works often enough, because most men find it too much of a bother to call women on this kind of silliness.

Or she wants a free meal/drink without feeling guilty about taking advantage of guys, so she’s not going on dates, she’s going out with “friends”.

If this is unconscious on her part, it’s cognitive dissonance and/or self-delusion, if it’s conscious on her part, she’s lying, a hypocrite, and/or engaging in self-justification.

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As for smoothreentry’s other example:

Calling an obese women “fat”, or a women that sleeps with many men a “slut”, are more extreme examples.

That is something else. A modern woman does not like being judged, she does not like being held to standards. By calling a fat woman fat or a slut a slut, you are holding that woman to a standard and judging her by it. If you are holding another women to a standard, that implies you are also holding her to that standard, and *horror* you are judging her by that standard.

By thinking you might be judging her, you might cause her to feel shame or guilt about things she may be doing that are shameful. She doesn’t want to feel shame, therefore, you can’t judge her, therefore, you can’t judge other women either. Therefore, being judgmental is wrong, it says so in the Bible. Therefore calling a fat person fat or a slut a slut is wrong.

Read my post Fat Acceptance for some more of my thoughts on this.

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The actionable take-away (oh, corpo-babble, how you have ruined my writing):

If you are simply looking to fuck random sluts and have short-term relationships, do not verbalize things. Act. Let things “just happen”. This does not mean you don’t have a plan; you need to plan, you need to run game, but don’t let her see it, make it seem natural. Let her see the finished sausage, but not the killing floor.

As well, do not fight her hamsterizations, she’ll just get angry and block you on FB. Ignore them without buying into them like a dupe.

On the other hand, if you are looking for a wife, don’t date a modern woman. Find a nice traditional gal who’s hamster is mostly in check and who’s more rational in her expectations for a relationship.

If you’re looking for an LTR or a girlfriend. Just don’t; it’s stupid. If you want sex, get sex through an STR, FWB, or ONS. If you want companionship, get a male friend or a dog. If you want a family and life-partner, get a wife. Getting a girlfriend is the worst of all three worlds while minimizing the benefits of any of them.

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* As an aside, note the feminine imperative at work here. “Chemistry”, ie: that which sexually excites a woman, is something promoted as being important and is a perfectly acceptable reason on which to accept or reject a relationship. “Looks”, ie: that which sexually excites a man, is shallow and derided and any man who accepts or rejects a relationship because of looks is a shallow jerk. Society is trying to normalize female sexual attraction while marginalizing male sexual attraction.

The Two Male Sexual Appetites

In males there are two competing sexual appetites for the “hot” and for the “cute”. The difference is well illustrated by these two pictures from Rollo’s:

This is the same girl before and after her pornography make-up. You can tell which picture is hot and which is cute without me telling you.

These two appetites both elicit different types of attraction. The attraction to hot is entirely sexual, the attraction to cute is both sexual and emotional.

My triggered sexual response to the hot picture is primarily consumptive. There is no emotional elicited by the picture, just primal lust. I desire to fuck her; to use her like a piece of meat for my pleasure. The desired sex would be rough, bestial, and uncaring. When finished with her she would be kicked out. The desire is one of violation.

That is what hot elicits, the desire to consume sexual pleasure without regard for sexual object being consumed.

My triggered sexual response to the cute picture is different; there is an emotional component to the attraction. The desire is not just for sex, but for companionship as well. The desire is not just make love to her, but hold her close and caress her. The desired sex would be gentle and loving, finishing with drifting asleep, arms around her. The desire is one of protectiveness.

This is what cute elicits, the desire hold, to protect, and to love.

The hot woman becomes a sexual object to the man, the cute woman exists to him as a subject.

Having said this, hot provides a more powerful and urgent sexual attraction. The visceral desire to consume is stronger and more immediate, but it lacks depth. Finishing masturbation would immediately end any use for the hot picture, but one’s gaze may linger for a while on the cute picture even after completion.

The sexual attraction of hot is also a lot easier to trigger, all it requires is a decent body, make-up, and decent posing. All four of the Rollo’s post-make-up pictures triggered some consumptive response, as did most of the pictures at from the site he got it from. But only the cute one above triggered the cute response, and only a few of the dozens of pictures from the site he got these pictures from did.

Cute, pretty, and beautiful are a lot harder to pull off than hot is.

Yes, there is a difference between the four. Hot elicits a purely consumptive sexual desire. Cute is the type of attractiveness that elicits the protective desire in a man (it may be sexual or asexual, depending on the context). Pretty refers to common attractiveness, while beauty refers to a transcendental attractiveness.

Of these, hot is easy to create; a woman simply needs paint herself up and lose a few pounds. Cute is hard to create and fades harder with age (at least until a woman becomes grandmotherly where cute can return in an asexual form), but can be helped along by adopting a pleasant demeanor. Pretty is not overly difficult as long a women didn’t lose the genetic lottery or ruin herself by getting fat, going butch, etc. Beauty is the rarest and near impossible to create; a woman is born with it or she isn’t, but she can destroy it even if born with it.

It hardly needs to be said that different men have different preferences for the level of hot and cute they prefer, likely linked to their desire for sex versus their desire for companionship.

****

This distinction is why women in pornography are usually hot, but are often not cute (or beautiful for that matter). Most pornography feeds on the consumptive desire, cute is not necessary, and can even be harmful to the “experience”. If the protective desire awakens the man may wonder how he can watch the “star” treated like a piece of meat, he may feel guilt or uneasiness; this is a boner-killer.

****

This distinction is not something I made up, feminists have been abusing the madonna-whore dichotomy for their own ideological purposes for decades. The madonna would be cute, the whore would be hot.

Of course, they are correct that men desire the mutually exclusive dichotomy of the madonna or the whore, but they mistakenly think it’s some sort of socially enforced control. It is not, rather it is rooted in biology and darwinian strategy. It is similar to the cads and dads dichotomy. There are two different biological strategies for women, just as there are for men. A madonna (and a dad) pursues a reproductive strategy of high investment in a limited number of biologically non-diverse young (quality), while a whore (and a cad) pursues a reproductive strategy of low investment in a larger number of biologically diverse off-spring (quantity).

A man looking for sex wants a whore, someone hot, who will put out and be fertile. A dad looking for companionship wants a madonna, someone cute, who will reserve herself only for him so he can invest in her and their children.

Feminists rage against this, because they want to be hot, act like a whore, and pursue the quantity strategy while young, but be treated like madonnas pursuing the quality strategy when it becomes convenient to them.

****

For men, this is mostly a theoretical post. You already know that the hot babe at the bar and the cute girl next door elicit different sexual responses in you, this just explains it. There’s not much practical to be drawn.

For the women who may happen to read this though, there is a lesson.

When you go out socially, how are you acting, dressing, etc. to achieve the type of relationship you desire?

If you are looking for companionship, slathering on lots of make-up and trying to look hot is counter-productive. You will get a response, but it won’t be the protective response, it will be the consumptive response. Men will desire you but only to use you sexually. Even the type of man looking for companionship will put you in the meat category, rather than the companion category.

It may be easier to be hot than to make yourself cute, pretty, or beautiful, and you will get stronger immediate responses for being hot, but you will not be getting anything deep from it. Put in the extra work and be cute and beautiful (or at least pretty if you weren’t naturally blessed) if you are looking for more than sex.

If on the other hand, you are looking for naught but sex, cake on that make-up and send this guy an e-mail.

College Education and Impossible Standards

Here’s another one of those whinefests from a liberated career woman about how she and her “successful, gorgeous, and amazing friends” in their 30′s can’t find a man to save them from themselves.

This stood out for me from the article:

For one, it’s not as if we are holding out for Jake Gyllenhaal, but we do have certain non-negotiable expectations for potential mates that include college degrees and white-collar jobs. Life has always gone according to our plans, so why wouldn’t we land a man with these (reasonable) requirements?

This point has been made before, but I will make it again.

A woman requiring an education from a man is not a reasonable requirement, at least if she actually wants to find a man.

There are 1.3 females graduating for every 1 male who graduates. For every 10 females that may potentially find a man with a college degree, it is an absolute impossibility for 3 of them to.

I repeat: it is a mathematical impossibility for at least 23% of college-educated women to find a college-educated man.

The article, like most of these types, does mention this, but glosses over and understates the severity of it:

But increasingly, there aren’t enough of these men to go around. Women now outnumber men on college campuses, and single, childless women out earn their male counterparts. In fact, as author Liza Mundy writes in her book, The Richer Sex, Millennial women are increasingly finding two options when it comes to romance: marry down or don’t marry.

It’s not that there just “aren’t enough”, it’s that there is a major shortage.

And men know this.

Can a women honestly think that a 30-year-old college-educated man, knowing that he’s in very high demand is going to settle for a 30-year-old career broad, rather than the newly minted 23-year-old college grad or the cute 22-year-old waitress?

Honestly?

Sure, I said absolutely nothing new, but it bears repeating. While some seem to recognize the problem, it is always understated.

It is an absolute impossibility for 1-in-4 college-educated women in the US to find a college-educated man.

If you are a women looking for a college-educated man, look hard and when you find bite hard while young before both you and the college-educated man enters your 30s and he realizes his high value, otherwise you could be in the 25%.

On the bright side, if that happens you could always write freelance articles complaining about how you can’t find a man.

****

For those women who don’t want to be in the 25%, the Captain runs down how to capture your college-educated man. You simply have to be:

A physically attractive woman who is
nice
responsible
reasonably intelligent
and likes sex

That’s it. May probability be with you.

Housework, Independence, and Entitlement

The issue of men and housework seems to have sparked renewed interest among the chattering classes. It seems to have been sparked by this Tide commercial of some vaguely metrosexual father washing his daughter’s princess dress.

Judgy Bitch had some fun with this and CR points out the biological origins of the issue, but I’m going to weigh in as well.

Now, honestly, I don’t care if men do housework. Doing the laundry, cooking, or cleaning because you want to makes you neither more nor less of a man. If stuff needs to get done, men get stuff done.

A family should pursue whatever division of labour works best for them.

On the other hand, being a kitchen bitch is emasculating and will ruin your marriage. If you are a man, avoid it, it won’t go well for you.

Of course, all this assumes that there’s actually a chore gap. Which is unlikely as the time-use studies on this tend to ignore traditionally male chores.

I’m not going to write about proper housework division, that’s a personal issue. Instead, I am going to write about how this debate relates to independence, entitlement, and the society.

****

First, independence and strength.

Feminists, you wanted careers, you wanted to work outside the house, you got your wish, please shut up.

What these women don’t see when they complain about the “patriarchy” and being “oppressed” by staying at home rather than work mindless corporate drudgery, is that they now are doing what men have always done.

In the industrial era, men have always gone to work, they have always come home to do house work (home repairs, renovations, garbage, car repairs, yard work, finances, BBQing, etc.), and they have always participated in family life (to a greater or lesser degree).

The thing is, they didn’t, and still don’t, bitch about it. They didn’t write articles about how “over-whelming” it was. They didn’t demand that women step up and do they’re jobs for them. They didn’t whine about how unfair life was.

They just did their jobs, because that’s what independent adults do.

Independent and strong people don’t whine about how tough life is, about how unfair it is, they just do what needs to be done.

Women, you are now in the position those “oppressive” men have always been in.

Working all day for somebody else then coming home to take care of the house and family is what men have always done. You wanted to do it, now you are doing it.

You can not complain about women being “oppressed” when you do not have men’s responsibilities, then whine about having men’s responsibilities when you have spent decades demanding them.

From the Atlantic article:

The good news is that many men already seek out these responsibilities. I like to call their actions “small instances of gender heroism” or “SIGH”s, in honor of the intense pang of gratitude and relief a damsel-in-distress feels when a superhero notices her especially—amidst a crowd—and swoops in to enact a rescue that was so unexpected that its impossibility had become the central pillar of her fierce independence. You know, like the dreamy effect Mr. Darcy has on Elizabeth Bennet, Superman on Lois Lane, and Antonia on her line through Danielle and Therèse.
…
Find a working mom and lead with the following SIGH: “What do you need, in order to raise your children and advance in your career at the same time?” Just swoop in and help her out, not because you’re obligated to rectify an injustice, but because you can. Responding to the misery of the people you care about is what you do.

Independent and strong people don’t need SIGHs.

What the hell is wrong with you people?

If you need someone else to help you, you are, by definition, not independent. You are, by definition, weak.

If you want to be independent, be independent, but then don’t beg others to pick up your shit for you, do it yourself.

Don’t demand men clean your houses, don’t demand men come to your rescue, don’t demand others do things for you. You are independent now, deal with it.

****

Second, entitlement.

If you read these articles, you get a strong sense of entitlement.

The SIGHs talk above and the rest of the Atlantic article reek of entitlement, but as usual Jezebel just does horrible, entitled bitch so much better than anyone else.

The title of the Jezebel article (no link, if you’re curious see JB’s article) displays this perfectly:

“How to Make a Dude Sweep the Kitchen Floor (Correctly), Without You Even Having to Tell Him“

What kind of world-class bitch writes this? It sounds like a manual on training dogs to urinate outside.

In this mentality men exist to do what women desire, in the way women desire, while telepathically understanding both.

A few gems of overactive entitlement:

It’s not just that you’re tired and pissed, it’s that you never get the feeling of having your own life, or free time, or time to recharge, if you feel like you are the only person overseeing the household’s concerns and making sure they are handled, or worse, if you are re-doing the work your husband or partner did poorly.

Because the entirety of everything revolves around the women’s feelings. As well, men are incompetent and everything must be done to the women’s standards or its worse than not having done anything at all.*

The Atlantic has some fancy sociological theories for this well-documented disparity as to why humans with peens can’t scrub a bathroom right without a lot of rigmarole:

Remember, all the jobs have to be done to the women’s standards, because men are incompetent and their standards don’t matter.

They Can’t Be Bothered (Motivational Hypothesis)

Of course they can see what needs to be done, but in their eyes, it’s just not that important to do it, especially when other stuff matters more. Homemade valentines for your class party, kiddo? Why bother when we can just buy some and save time?

No matter how useless the man may think the project is, if the women desires it must be done and he’s a jerk for not counting it as important housework and sharing the duties.

Later, Travis wonders why Alice can’t just constantly leave him notes to tell him what he has to do? Sure thing mister, right after she cuts the crust off your PB&J.

Because men should know what women want. We’re all mind-readers.

Here’s an idea for the women complaining: go fuck yourself.

If you want to be a controlling bitch and demand things be cleaner, do it yourself. If you want the house cleaned to your spoiled, exacting standards, do it yourself. If men’s standards are not up to those that your entitlement complex demands, do it yourself. If a man doesn’t think your little social-climbing and status games are important enough to act on, do it yourself.

Essentially, quit trying to force your neuroses and perfectionism concerning cleanliness and social status-seeking on men.

Do it yourself, and stop bitching that men don’t care about your neurotic desires.

****

Third, society.

From the Atlantic:

Only a handful of working parents have the “village” they need to care for their children during the period in which career opportunities slam up against pregnancies, births, years of nursing, and other crucial forms of caregiving. Most of us have to buy the village, and it’s expensive—so expensive that almost everyone has to stop hiring once they have paid for childcare and, in the very best cases, a cleaning service, despite the fact that there is much more to do.

To completely eliminate the destruction that childrearing exacts on your mind, body, and career, you would have to hire workers to handle your finances, home repairs, pets, laundry, afterschool commitments, errands, and shopping, among other responsibilities. Add to these costs the overtime that most working parents pay to accommodate the fact that their childcare needs extend well beyond the presumed eight hours a day, and you’re talking about a lot of cash. No one has this kind of money.

Because no one can afford to fully replace themselves at home while they are at the office and because, when it comes to more important tasks like selecting afterschool lessons and resolving playground disputes, no one wants to replace themselves, working mothers have famously picked up the slack for both partners, subsidizing our market with their free labor, enabling our companies and institutions to charge artificially low prices for their goods and offer artificially high salaries to their employees.

All of this means that mothers are important, in all of the ways in which socially conservative forces routinely note. But it could also mean that mothers—especially working mothers—are exploited. They are being used as a means by their partners, our institutions, and our economy in a system they did not design, to do more than their fair share of the family’s work, all without compensation. No one yet has asked or empowered working mothers to reimagine and restructure their workplaces to suit their own ends. So the basic lack of self-governance and self-determination, combined with the unpaid labor, raises the specter of injustice.

I’ve written about all this before, but it bears repeating. Nobody is meant to work, take care of family, keep home, raise children, and all those other responsibilities at once. Of course child care is expensive. This is why we once had a division of labour in the family. It made it so people could manage all these things.

An you know what? It worked, at least until whining feminists destroyed it.

Now that they’ve destroyed the family division of labour which “oppressed” them, they are now whining that there is no division of labour and they actually have to take on multiple roles.

Well, boo-dee-fucking-hoo.

Feminists, you got what you wanted. Why are you so unhappy?

Please stop complaining about the changes you wrought on society.

Enjoy what you created.

****

Anyway, to sum, the whole housework debate, assuming that it is not a myth created by statistical manipulation, is simply women acting entitled.

Women wanted the “prestige” of the careers of men, so they “liberated” themselves and started to work outside the home.

Now that they are working outside the home, they are realizing it’s a lot of work, but instead of simply sucking it up and being strong and independent like men always have, they are bitching about how hard it is to work both outside and inside the home.

Instead of engaging in self-reflection on their own choices, they are choosing to blame men.

In addition, they are choosing to force their neurotic standards of housework on men and whining that men don’t comply with their controlling attitudes.

The whole housework debate is a ginned-up non-issue created by controlling, neurotic feminists who want to blame the hardship created by their own personal choices on men.

****

* As an aside, the sentence “or worse, if you are re-doing the work your husband or partner did poorly.” sort of validates some aspects game theory. It is better to forgo helping women at all then to be a beta about it. They may dislike you doing nothing, but they will hate obsequiousness that isn’t perfect obedience even more.

Feminist Self-Annihilation

It seems it’s now a thing that women feel guilty about desiring a long-term relationship. As per that liberal rag, the Atlantic:

As a sociologist who’s interviewed several 20-something women on their sexual development, I’ve found straight young women aren’t necessarily embracing hooking up because they’re masters of their own destiny, as suggested by Hanna Rosin here a The Atlantic but because they face a new taboo and it’s not about sex or money or power. Instead, it’s a taboo about that traditional province of women: relationships. Ambitious young women in their 20s feel they shouldn’t want relationships with men at this phase in their lives.

I can’t believe this is a thing. I knew some feminists wanted the right to be sluts without shame, but what the hell?

What could possibly possess a person to feel guilty about desiring a human relationship?

But what really got me about this piece was this:

Some young women deeply desire meaningful relationships with men, even as they feel guilty about those desires. Many express the same sentiment again and again: “Why do I, a young and highly educated woman in the 21st century, value relationships with men so highly?” To do so feels like a betrayal of themselves, of their education, and of their achievements.

Really? I can’t even really feel anger over this, just sadness.

Women value relationships with men because humans were created (or evolved) to live with each other, to love each other, and to form relationships. We are social creatures; relationships define who we are.

To not value human relationships is to engage in self-annihilation.* The desire for companionship is the most human part of you, to fight against it is to destroy yourself and your humanity.

Meet a girl named Katie:

Katie, a 25-year-old woman I spoke with as part of my research, confided that she worried her single-minded pursuit of a graduate degree might limit her ability to meet a man with whom she could build a life. This realization—that she might want to prioritize a relationship over a career—felt shocking to Katie, and she did not admit to it easily. She felt deeply ashamed by such thoughts, worried that they signaled weakness and dependence, qualities she did not admire. To put such a high premium on relationships was frightening to Katie. She worried that it meant she wasn’t liberated and was still defined by traditional expectations of women.

Read that again: “She worried that it meant she wasn’t liberated and was still defined by traditional expectations of women.”

This women is destroying herself, destroying the things that are real in her life (relationships, family, and her desires for such) over ideological cant.

Dear Katie, if you are not pursuing what you truly desire because you are worried about signalling weakness and dependence, then you aren’t liberated and you are weak. If you are denying your human desire for companionship to “signal” independence, you are a slave, not of the body, but much worse, of the mind.

You are still letting others define you, you have just changed which group is doing the defining.

Also, which do you think you will value more in a decade: a man who has loved you for the last decade or an over-priced piece of paper that you are still paying off?

I have heard Katie’s dilemma from countless young women. Many feel ashamed about being too relationship-oriented in their 20s. Parents warn, “Do you really want to settle down so early? We just don’t want to see you miss out on any opportunities.” Friends intone, “How will you know what you like and want if you don’t play the field? You’re only young once. Now’s the time to explore.”

I think these parents and “friends” are going to have a lot to answer for on judgment day. What kind of idiotic advice is that?

Like Hamilton and Armstrong’s respondents, many young and aspiring women with whom I spoke felt as though it were counterproductive to their development to prioritize a relationship with a man.

Because human relationships are not a part of self-development?

This is a new phenomenon that goes against the grain of centuries of female socialization.

Because the desire for human relationships is something socialized?

Anxiety is difficult to tolerate, and rather than experience it, many of the young women I interviewed and work with in my psychotherapy practice split their desire for a relationship off from their professional and self-development desires. Confused about freedom and desire, young women often split their social and psychological options—independence, strength, safety, control, and career versus connection, vulnerability, need, desire, and relationships—into mutually exclusive possibilities in life. Romantic relationships then often become something to be avoided and denigrated rather than embraced.

Wow. Why would any women tolerate this kind of psychological self-annihilation?

Why? Why would women put up with an ideology that required them to destroy themselves?

I find this more sad than maddening, but if I were a women, I would be pissed over this.

****

Slate XX commented on this. Read:

How can you want a relationship if you have no prospects? Unless you’re actually casually dating someone (or have a secret crush on someone you interact with regularly), actively “wanting” a boyfriend seems rather silly to me.

Really? It’s silly to desire the basic human need of companionship?

Ellen Tarlin: I disagree. I think it’s almost unavoidable. Relationships are so romanticized and overvalued in our society! We are plagued by images of them.

Materialistic nihilism on full display.

Laura Helmuth: I don’t mean to be unsympathetic, but I am kind of thrilled that this is considered embarrassing among smart young women.Having a boyfriend and/or being well on the way to marriage used to be the default for twentysomethings. It’s fascinating that the social stigma has reversed so dramatically.

I am thrilled that women are denying their basic human desires and needs to pursue empty corporate work and a consumerist lifestyle.

Hanna Rosin: I feel like this moment we’re in now of shame about the boyfriend is great and necessary for progress and all that but will recalibrate and settle down.

Is she a fucking sadist?

Emma Roller: On the other side of this, I feel a lot of guilt for having a wonderful, stable relationship with my boyfriend of two-plus years. I’m  anxious about missing out on what the zeitgeist says the 20s lifestyle “should” be (playing the field, etc.), but what if I’m happy where I’m at?

Please re-read that, and just think about it for a minute. “I feel a lot of guilt for having a wonderful, stable relationship with my boyfriend of two-plus years.”

Juliana Jimenez: I hear you. I sometimes get a bit anxious over that as well—that I’m missing my 20s and I’m really living a 30s kind of life with my stable boyfriend and what not.

Again, consider that.

Meg Wiegand: I guess I’m the minority here: I’m in my late 20s, perpetually single, and very much worried about not finding someone. I know I’m absolutely fine on my own, and like Aisha, I’ve rarely met anyone I would ever want to consider being ”attached” to. But I continue to bounce on and off online dating sites and go on dates with friends of friends (mostly just ending up with great cocktail fodder) in hopes of finding someone who could be a partner.

Part of me is embarrassed by this—that I’ve escaped small-town Ohio and lived abroad and have a master’s degree but can’t find a partner. The other part feels that society already tells me that I should be ashamed of my body fat and short legs and hair that isn’t straight and blond, so why should I take this any more seriously? And why is this any different than feeling lonely because my family members and close friends are a plane ride away?

Wow. You could write an entire post just on these two paragraphs. It’s like every manosphere stereotype of modern American women rolled into two paragraphs.

Alyssa Rosenberg: What strikes me as weird about this conversation, and why this shift in priorities doesn’t seem like a complete feminist victory, is that it discounts the idea that a relationship can be an incredible source of support for career and life goals. Having someone who, say, helps with chores to give you more time to study or work, or who encourages you when you’re discouraged, or works in a similar field and helps you with ideas, who backs you publicly, etc? All this stuff can make it much easier to work harder and in a more productive way or to work through difficult challenges. I’m not sure we should get psyched by the idea that young women don’t want relationships but rather by the idea that women want more from their relationships or that we view relationships as part of a larger matrix of things that can work well together.

Alyssa here is comparatively rational. She sounds almost human and not like she had her heart replaced by the archives of Jezebel.

Ellen Tarlin: Because twentysomething men are selfish! (Joke. Sort of.) No, I’d say because these ideas about what women should be or do die hard. Your boyfriend or husband may support the ideals of feminism, but when he gets home, maybe he’d just really like it if you would make dinner, too. (Who wouldn’t?)

Read that again: “No, I’d say because these ideas about what women should be or do die hard.”

Think on it for a minute. You should now realize how insane this whole thing.

These women are sitting around discussing a sadistic, near-psychopathic (feminist) societal expectation that is causing women to annihilate themselves and their base human desires, and celebrating it because it destroys older societal expectations.

Dear women, why do you listen to people like this?

Why do you take the advice of people like this?

Why?

I don’t know, there’s not much left to say. This makes me sad.

****

* Severe autists, clinical psychopaths, and others with a natural inability to form human relations excepted.

Accomodation to Sensitivity-Driven Discourse

Over the last few months, Vox has been writing a fair amount about rabbit people and the various forms of discourse. I personlly am very much within the heterotopic or modern discource camp, often to a fault. This, combined with my natural introversion, emotional detachment, and my poor ability to read social cues, leads to me being naturally insensitive to others or their feelings.

It is one thing to be purely heterotopic on the internet. Savaging some random idiot you’ve never met and will never meet or having sport with a silly rabbit is one thing. The internet and internet discourse is naturally impersonal and oriented towards modern discourse, so I feel free to let loose without worrying about offending people or being insensitive. If you get offended by some random jackass (ie. me) on the internet, you have much bigger problems than that random jackass; you should probably work on those.

I generally surround myself with male friends more given to the heterotopic side of things, although, not quite as extreme as me. So when with my male friends in RL I can usually engage in discourse with only a minimum level of attention to being sensitive.

On the other hand, I do have some female friends and many of my male friends are married, so often our activities are mixed-company, and females are more prone to sensitivity-driven discourse. While in discourse with said female friends, I try to generally be more sensitive, but my “more sensitive” is still far more analytical than the norm.

At one such mixed activity, after a negative off-hand remark to one of my male friends about Naomi Wolf, I found myself in discourse with four females (most of my male friends left for the other room, unnoticed by me until I was already well-enmeshed in the conversation; the others stayed quiet) about such sensitive topics as feminism, rape, submission in marriage, etc.

While I tried to keep myself from being intentionally inflammatory, it ended up with one of them blowing-up at me emotionally (I hit an personal emotional button or two without intending to). It came to light that it was the consensus among my female friends that I can be a pompous, insensitive ass at times and that this can cause them hurt.

I recognize that I can at times (usually?) be an insensitive ass, and I admitted as such as we spent some amount of time discussing it. Once that conversation ended, I ended up meeting each woman individually and apologizing any times I may have hurt them by being insensitive. I also said I would try to be less insensitive in the future, for they are my friends and I have/had no intention of causing them distress.

I did not apologize for either my positions or for expressing them, although, they did make me reconsider my position on the Biblical view of women in the workplace. (As EW recently argued, “Women were meant to labor so as to help their men support a household and multiply the species. A clear-eyed read of the Bible makes this clear.”)

So, now I’m going to try to be more sensitive in my discourse with the females around me.

But at the same time, I do not want to become a man beheld to the whims of others’ emotions. I do not want to become a rabbit given to prostration and capitulation at the whiff of negative emotions.

So, how do I do this? How do I become less insensitive?

Additionally, as I do so, how do I avoid letting my rhetoric become overly feminized?

Essentially, how do I draw the line between working towards being a rational Sigma/Alpha (or at least a strong upper beta) and not being, as Francis so delicately put it, an “Aspergery fucktard”.

Or should I just avoid discussing “controversial” topics with women?

Anyway, based on the recommendation of Joseph of Jackson, I pre-ordered the 2nd Edition of Verbal Judo from Amazon. I’ll review here when completed. I’m hoping reading this might give me more information to work within sensitivity-driven discourse, without giving myself over to it.

Friend Zone: Wherein I Agree with a Feminist

I came across this article by a feminist on the “friend zone” concept. My anti-feminism is readily apparent to any reading my blog, but this time I have to give her credit, she’s right.

The friend zone, for those of you older folks not hip to the jive, refers to:

a platonic relationship where one person wishes to enter into a romantic relationship, while the other does not. It is generally considered to be an undesirable situation by the lovelorn person.”

The vast majority of the time the man is the one being friendzoned. (Although, I did end up friend zoning a female friend once).

Anyway, she posits three reasons why the friendzone concept “sucks”:

1) It ignores the actual wishes of the woman
2) It displays an entitled attitude to a woman’s body
3) It posits that the worst thing ever is to be “just” friends with a woman
4) It’s a go to complaint of guys who are actually deeply misogynistic

I agree with her on all four.

Remember men: you are not entitled to sex.* A women’s body is her own, as your body is yours. You have not claim on hers, she has not claim on yours.

Being a “nice guy” no more entitles you to her vagina than it does to my labour or freedom.

If you want sex, win it. Develop yourself as a person to the point where women want to give you sex.

By being friends with a women solely to get in her pants you are disrespecting her and manipulating her. You are using her as a means, not an end. You are not actually her friend, you are an ass. You are not a “nice guy”, you’re an entitled jerk.

I know all the women, movies, TV shows, and authority figures in your life have told you to just be yourself, make friends with her, and you’ll get the girl. That’s bollocks.

If you want a romantic relationship, develop romance first, friendship after (or grow both together). If you want a wife, same thing.

If you simply want to use a woman for sex, than be honest about it. Game the shit out of her, sex her, then dump her the morning after like a proper player. Use a woman who wants to be used. Don’t screw around pretending to be friends with a women and hoping to prey on a moment of weakness, you ass. It’s not only a jerk move and immoral, it’s also a waste of your time.

And yes, you’re damn right I’m shaming you.

Because, here’s the thing, the friend zone is not only disrespectful to the woman, it’s far more disrespectful to yourself.

You are showing how low you think your value is (very low), as you are willing to waste so much of yourself on nothing more but a very low probability chance of romance with a woman.

You are showing how worthless your friendship is, by offering it solely in the hopes of getting sex.

You are emasculating yourself by putting yourself under the power of a woman.

By being friendzoned, you show your time and effort are worthless, as you have so much of it to waste on faking a friendship you don’t actually want.

You are showing how desperate you are as your only hope of romantic success is to spend your life hoping to prey on a moment of weakness.

Remember, you will be treated exactly as you believe you deserve to be treated in life. By allowing yourself to be friend zoned you are showing you deserve to be disrespected and are not worthy of a real romantice relationship.

I’m shaming you. By allowing yourself to be friend zoned you are showing yourself to be worthy of shame.

The friend zone is for losers. Don’t be a loser.

Don’t be this guy.

If you are, you deserve the pain you get.

Have some some self-respect.

So, here is the remedy, here is what you need to get from this post:

If you are currently in the friend zone with a woman, stop spending time with that woman. Cut her off from your life and stop being “friends” with her. Stop thinking about her. Do not spend your time, effort, or resources on her. Do not respond to her requests for your time or effort.

Be like Mike.

If you ask a girl out, and she says no, cut off contact with her. Don’t go out with her as friends, don’t spend time with her, do not get into long phone calls or text exchanges with her, etc.

If you are in the friend zone or about to be put in the friend zone by any woman, cut her out of your life. Do not be “just friends” (how I hate that phrase).

If she asks why she’s being cut out of your life, tell her the truth. You want to be romantic partners with her and do not desire and will not accept anything else.

Man up and stop disrespecting yourself (and others).

****

Also, a sidenote:

While writing this I almost (did?) wrote or implied that a romantic relationship is more than a friendship and that being friends is settling for less.

It is not.

No relationship is higher than that of a virtuous friendship, the highest form of relationship you can have. A marriage is also the highest form of relationship you can have.

A marriage and a virtuous friendship are equal in value. They fill different needs in your life but both are equal, neither is better, neither is more.

A romantic relationship that is not a marriage (or becoming a marriage) should always be worth less than a friendship.

If it is not, your priorities are wrong. Fix them.

It is sad commentary on modern society that friendship has somehow become worth less than romance. The general acceptance of the phrase “just friends” is a tragedy.

Do not devalue the value of your friendships by being friendzoned.

****

None of this is to say you can’t have a friendship with a woman. Some (not many, but some) women are worth having as friends. Some women can be enjoyable, productive friends without drama, BS, emotional games, attention whoring, etc.

You just have to choose carefully and make sure you are not romantically interested in her.

But do not befriend a woman when you do not value the friendship in and of itself. Friendship is an end, it is not a means to a further end.

Despite my ‘romance first, then friends’ declaration above, you can have friends first, then romance, but only in very narrow circumstances. If the friendship is the end in itself and the romantic relationship evolves naturally with no attempt or desire from yourself to try to force it, then there’s no problem.

****

For those women (and men) who have “friends” that you know are in a friend zone relationship in regards to you, my advice is the same, stop spending time with them.

They are not your friend, they are using you. Even if they are your friend, being in the friend zone hurts, end their suffering.

As I said, I put a women in the friend zone (and knew she was there). At the time I didn’t realize it, but after it all came to a head and the friendship ended because of the friend zone thing, I realized I had been hurting her through the whole time we were friends, simply by being friends. I regret allowing it to get to the point, I should have cut it off earlier.

Learn from my example, do what’s best for both of you, and end that friendship.

If you have a friend-zoned “friend” and do not want to give it up because of the attention you receive, because you get free stuff, because you like the unrecipricated adulation, or some other selfish reason. You are an asshole. Stop it!

Anyone who manipulates a friend-zoned “friend” for selfish benefit is a horrible person.

****

* Excepting where you are biblically married and/or you and your wife got married on the agreement not to deny each other sex, in which case you are both obligated to provide sex to and entitled to sex from each other.