Sunday, December 30, 2012

The Peter Pan Man Boy.


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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

Nope.

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


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


Yeah, sure.

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

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

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

Tuesday, December 25, 2012

Some Thoughts on Christmas.



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

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

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

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

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


Saturday, December 22, 2012

The Slutification of Taylor Swift.

I suppose it was only a matter of time.

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


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

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

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

For Christian men, the pickings are mighty slim.


Friday, December 21, 2012

Morality and Economics.

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

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

Friday, December 14, 2012

An Officer and a Gentleman.

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

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

 'For me it would have been the same as shooting at a parachute, I just couldn't do it,' Stigler later said.
What is clear here is that his conception of honour is different to the mainstream conceptions of it. Honour, it appears to Roedel, was not a mark of social merit or standing but rather a practical code of action designed to avoid self corruption. This seems particularly relevant in light of one of Fred Reeds latest essays.
These are degenerate days. Once I breached the walls of Ilium or Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade and killed and looted and raped girls of seven in front of their parents—how they howled! Now perforce I say I do it for democracy, about which I don’t give a damn, or to end evil, though our allies are the worst tyrants we can find. Before, I could torture my captives between two slow fires, or by running a red-hot poker up their neither ends, and this in the public square for the amusement of a bored populace.
Now I water-board them, bringing them to the edge of drowning, screaming, begging, puking, yes, that does nicely, now a little more water as their minds break, and maybe I will masturbate over it later. For I am a soldier. I am dirt. I am the worst of a sorry species. ...........
For this we hold reunions. We get together in Wyoming and Tuscaloosa and Portland and remember when we were young and the war held off the boredom of life and the star shells flickered in the night sky over Happy Valley and life meant nothing but was at least intense. I hated the H&I fire over the dark forests of a puzzled Cambodia and I hate you cocksuckers living soft at home for sending us and I hate what I did and I hate what my friends did who were there, who are really my only friends. Aind I hope you one day pay, what we paid, what our victims paid and you pay it as we did. And this will bring me the only joy in my life.
Unlike most people, I regard soldiering as profession akin to the priesthood, for greater love than this no man hath. But just like the priesthood, when it goes bad, it goes bad horribly. And the problem for the soldier, particularly, is that his opprotunities to go bad mulitply in combat. Particularly, in drawn out, low grade guerrilla type of war. Which raises a particular question. How do you fight such a war and maintain your humanity? Personally, I think this is another one of the weak points in Western Culture. Our doctrine on the morality of war seems not to have moved much since the 19th Century and has created a situation where we are trying to fight guerrilla wars with battlefield assumptions that are rooted in traditional European history. This hamstrings our soldiers, who are always judged under the same conditions. On the other hand, this failure to develop a doctrine within the Christian tradition has left the door open to utilitarian modes of thinking which justify all actions in the pursuit of victory.


Tuesday, December 04, 2012

Dark Triads and Dark Knights: Another interesting study.


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Friday, November 30, 2012

You can lead a horse to water.*


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

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

Back to Ms Borg's research.

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

Saturday, November 24, 2012

I'm calling it Koreogamy.



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

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


Wednesday, November 14, 2012

Femogamy: A New Term for the Manosphere.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thursday, November 08, 2012

Hard Wired: Bonus Scientific Paper.

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

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

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

Alpha Circuitry.


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

From, Correlation of Insula Activation and Self-Reported Quality of Orgasm in Women; the authors, after analysing functional MRI data, conclude:
Neuroimaging data expanded these behavioral results by demonstrating the involvement of a specific left-lateralized insula focus of neural activity correlating with orgasm scores, irrespective of dimension (frequency, ease, satisfaction). In contrast, intensity of being in love was correlated with a network involving the angular gyrus.

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

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

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

Clearly then, if romantic love does not necessarily fuel the sexual fire what does? Another study, however, did find something which modulated women's orgasm frequency. From, Men's masculinity and attractiveness predict their female partners' reported orgasm frequency and timing. The authors conclude:
We found that women reported more frequent and earlier-timed orgasms when mated to masculine and dominant men—those with high scores on a principal component characterized by high objectively-measured facial masculinity, observer-rated facial masculinity, partner-rated masculinity, and partner-rated dominance.
This was an interesting study since it demonstrated that orgasm frequency was contingent upon a male possessing objectively ascertainable characteristics. The relationship quality was an uncorrelated variable.

This fascinating study (abstract only) was able to decouple women's assessment of male facial attractiveness into sexual and non-sexual assessments (two separate circuits):
In the present study, while nonsexual judgments best explained facial attraction in whole-face images, a reversal occurred for split-face images such that sexual judgments best explained facial attraction, but only for mate-relevant faces (i.e., other-sex). These findings indicate that disrupting holistic processing can decouple sexual from nonsexual judgments of facial attraction, thereby establishing the presence of a dual-process.
And this study (abstract only) demonstrated that sexual arousal seems to activated by different set of of neurotransmitters when compared to romantic love:
The sexual arousal responses of women in the Lust group, but not in the Romantic group, were positively and significantly associated with elevated NE and DA. It is feasible that, when women are seeking a partner (Lust), NE and DA may facilitate attention toward sexually relevant stimuli
All in all, the research seems to point towards the existence of two separate neurological circuits. An alpha network; which is concerned with sexual desire, the activation of which is contingent upon men having certain objectively determined characteristics, and and a beta circuit concerned with asexual aspects of male/ female relationships.


Friday, November 02, 2012

Lemmings.



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

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

I have a lot of respect with regard to commentator Dalrock, and his rebuttal to me in the last post was intelligent and thought out. Still I think he errs in his understanding of female motivations.
This goes against what we know, both from a biological perspective and what the PUAs are telling us. Having sex makes babies, and it stands to reason that there is a strong biological drive to have sex with men the woman perceives (psychologically) as the fittest genetic donor. This is core to your (correct) point that it isn't reasonable for unattractive betas to demand that women become attracted to them. This is in fact what they are doing (having sex with the most attractive men they can get), and also what they tell you they are doing. Yet when these women have sex based on exactly these constraints, you attribute it to peer pressure. Biologically they should want to have sex with these men*, yet you are convinced that they really don't. 
Firstly, I'm not a big believer in evolutionary explanations of human behaviour. (No, I'm not a Creationist). The evolutionary crowd attribute too much to the genetic imperative and not enough to cognitive, social or emotional reasons.  David Buss recently wrote a book on women's sexual motivations and found a multitude of reasons why women have sex.  The take home message is that women's sexual motivations are complex and simple "genetic" imperatives are a worthless guide to understanding female motivations

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wednesday, October 10, 2012

Cigstachio

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

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

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

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

Simon Grey disagreed with some bits of my previous post but I've got to agree with him when he says:
Here, I think, is the most important part:  most men simply do not deserve good wives, and thus good marriages.  Most men are not attractive.  And not simply in the looks department.  Most of the men I have met are weak, back-biting, narrow-minded losers.  Many of the young men I know have no goals or direction in life; they seem content with dead-end jobs, Xbox and porn.  I sincerely hope they avoid marriage.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Let's conduct an interesting thought experiment.

Take a look a Cigstache. (Hat tip Roissy)

Let us suppose that:

Cigstache is fertile.
She is committed to having a family.
She rejects feminism.
She goes to Church and believes in God.
She is a virgin.
She wants to be a stay at home mother.
She knows how to cook, clean and mend.
She is not a spendthrift.
She is happy to put out whenever.

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

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

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

Wednesday, September 26, 2012

As if on cue.



Amongst some in the manosphere, there seems to be this prevailing notion that the problems between the sexes can be boiled down to the notion that men are good, women bad. I personally do not subscribe to this view as I believe that while Feminism has corrupted the average woman, modern masculinity is nothing to write home about.  In my previous post, I argued that in my experience women seem to have more "balls" than men, and that given their hypergamous nature this makes many men unattractive to them. A patient came in the other day who illustrated this phenomenon quite clearly.

(I've changed the details of the patient and her story to protect her privacy but the details are true to the best of my recollection.)

Patient:  Doctor, I wonder if I could see someone because I'm suffering from quite a bit of anxiety.
Me: Can I ask what is going on?
P: I'm stressed.
M: What is causing you stress?
P: I'm having problems with my boyfriend.
M: What sort of problems?
P: We argue all the time, over everything.
M: What do you argue about?
P: Money mainly. He can't seem to hold down a job and whatever job he does get he seems to be exploited by his employer. I mean he is never able to save any money and he works incredible hours but he spends all his money on alcohol and trinkets and I still end up having to give him money for his lunch.
M: His lunch?
P: He rings me up from work stating that he has nothing to eat. I'm mean, can't he pack a sandwich or just buy something? He rings me up complaining that he is so thirsty from work yet he won't take a water bottle with him.  He complains all the time about stupid little things and seems to want me to tell him how to fix them. It's like he is a little kid and I have to pack his school lunch.
M: Does he help around the house?
P: He leaves his stuff laying around. He won't wash the dishes. If he is at home during the day he won't lift a finger and I have to do everything.  I have to nag him to do anything and I'm beginning to sound like my mother and I hate it. I don't want to be a nag.
M: Do you work?
P: Yes, I do. I work as (uncredentialed clerical work) and work long hours as well.  But I'm trying to pay off a house. I bought a property before I met him and put tenants in it. They can help me pay it off.  It annoys me that my partner is not contributing. All I want is for him to be able to put some money away so that when we get married we can have some furniture and a stable financial future together, but he just seems to blow all his money and it's like I'm supporting him.
M: It's tough out there in the job market.
P: Yeah, I know. But he turns up late for work and can't seem to organise himself while he is over there. (She lists a litany of examples of manifest imbecility.)
M: Do you sleep at night?
P: I have a very broken sleep. I used to sleep very well but lately I wake up at two in the morning and can't fall back asleep. I lay awake in bed thinking of our future. I don't want to be poor and struggling for the rest of my life.
M: Are you intimate with your partner?
P: No, and that's weird, because I've always had a high sex drive. I just don't feel like doing it anymore. He gets angry about it.  Then we end up in a big shouting match. It's like I'm shouting with another girl. He's always making excuses and blames me for everything.
M: Blames you?
P: Yes, he says that I want too much. That I'm too demanding. Look, he was working in sales and his boss was exploiting him. I told him to find another job which he did. When he lost that job he blamed me saying that he should have stayed in his first job. Everything is my fault and he never takes responsibility for anything.
M: (I'd been "reading" the patient whilst she was talking. She was clearly a naturally intelligent aspirational woman who was tough). Perhaps you are being too tough on him. I reckon your pretty strong willed and can be demanding.
P: (Looks surprised!) Maybe, but I only want what my mother has. My father was always able to keep down a job. He's always fixing things up around the house and helps my mum. He never argues like a woman with my mother. When my mother starts yelling at him he tells her to shut up and walks away. When my mother cools down then he will talk to her.
M: What does your father think of your boyfriend?
P: He doesn't like him. He thinks he is a loser.
M: What do you think is the main problem then in your relationship?
P: Look doctor, I'm sick of being the man in the relationship. It's like I'm wearing the pants and I don't like it. It may sound old-fashioned but I want a man who can carry me to bed. Not the other way around.
M: It looks like your relationship is in serious trouble, why are you staying?
P: Guilt. He blames me for everything, he blames all his failures on me and perhaps I'm doing something wrong.  I want to speak to someone to see if I need to change or if something can be done.
M: I see. Look, I only have your version of events and not his,  and it may be that you really are quite  a demanding woman but it does appear that your relationship is in serious trouble and that you are quite stressed. I'll refer you to Dr X for some counseling, I think you should not make any major decisions until you've seen Dr X. He might be able to speak to both of you.
P: Do you think there is something wrong with me Doctor? Do you think I'm too demanding?
M: Like I said, I only have your version of events. But based upon my brief impression of you and your history I think you're tough but I don't think your demands are unreasonable. Your obviously stressed because you're in an unhappy relationship. Your looking for a man to look after you and challenge you and if necessary put you in your place and your current man isn't doing that.
P: Yes, Yes!
M: Look, I'm a bit of a sexist pig and believe that man needs to know how to manage his woman and not tolerate any disrespect. It's not that I want dominate women or think that they're inferior, it's just that when a woman is able to dominate her man she becomes profoundly unhappy.(Starts staring at me with puppy dog eyes)  Once again, I only have your version of events but you seem to be self disciplined and have got your act together; your man doesn't. I'd still want to hear your partner's side of the story and I don't think you should make any decisions till you see Dr X. But that's my personal opinion.
P: (Puppy dog eyes) Are you married Doctor?
M: Unfortunately for you, yes.
P: (Smiles)

I have these type of consultations roughly twice a week.  The theme is the same. Competent woman, loser man, unhappy relationship.

Many in the manosphere would view this woman as a demanding bitch. I don't. She would be a good modern fit for Proverbs 31:10-31. She has independently, on a low income, saved money and bought herself a house, put tenants in it and has a long term plan for the future. She is keeping down a job and has been able to organise her own affairs. She wants a stable future and does not want to live in poverty. By the way, I'd estimate her BMI at about 22. Such a woman is percieved as a threat to Western Civilisation by the manosphere. Facepalm.

On the other hand, her boyfriend, who can't keep down a job, is poorly organised and pathetic and relies on his wife for everything is paraded as some form of victim of modern Western Civilisation by the manosphere. Houston, I think we have a problem.

Now, it may be my opinion doesn't really matter here, but what I think is most telling is the opinion of her father, who seems to have his shit together. He thinks his potential son-in-law is a failure as well. I feel that the father's opinion may have some validity.

The manosphere has quite rightly denounced the corruption of women by feminism but what it has been unable see is the failure in modern masculinity. Roosh and Roissy may get lots of lays but they would have hardly been though of examples of masculinity either in Roman, Greek or Victorian times. Hedonism was always the "soft" option of manhood. And the reality today is that many men are soft. Not so much physically as in character. Women are far "harder" today and more self disciplined. Making women "softer" may restore some of their femininity but it no way guarantees the masculinity of men.  Taking away a woman's rights does not give a man alpha qualities.






Saturday, September 22, 2012

Hypergamic Affirmative Action.

The aeroplane is like a woman. To get the best out of her you have to seduce, not rape her.
(Attributed to a Polish pilot in WW2)

Over at Alpha Game, Vox noted the recent developments in Iran on the subject of gender relations. The Ayatollahs have begun to implement a social policy designed to push women out of the engineering professions. Incidentally, it's a very similar approach that has been advocated by many traditionalist bloggers in the manosphere. Vox writes:
Of course, the Iranian action presents a potentially effective means of solving the hypergamy problem presently beginning to affect college-educated women in the West. Only one-third of women in college today can reasonably expect to marry a man who is as well-educated as they are. History and present marital trends indicate that most of the remaining two-thirds will not marry rather than marry down. So, by refusing to permit women to pursue higher education, Iran is ensuring that the genes of two-thirds of its most genetically gifted women will survive in its gene pool.

Now, I have quite a lot of respect for Vox but I think he is totally wrong on this one. Hypergamy simply can't be socially engineered away, and the approach taken by the Ayatollahs and advocated by many in the manosphere i.e handicapping women in order to make second rate men look better is simply an affirmative action program for beta males.

The social, sexual and economic liberation of women in the latter half of the 20th Century has meant that for the first time women were able to compete with men in society without restriction. The result has been spectacular if not particularly beneficial to the happiness of women. Whilst not all degrees are created equal (men still overwhelming dominate the "hard" fields of knowledge) the fact that there are now more degree credentialed women than men is simply astonishing. As income is broadly correlated with economic well being,  its safe to assume that women have been able to achieve a economic parity with men. The manosphere may not like this result but the fact is that women have been able to effectively compete with men when the shackles of social convention have been removed.

In my experience, women today seem to have more "balls" than men do.  They seem more driven, more ambitious and can make stuff happen. They seem to cope better with adversity than many of my male patients.  With most women, life goes on. The kids need to be fed, the uniforms washed and the bills paid. Many men flounder. My readers may not like this but they are my objective observations.

I'm not applauding this phenomenon or deriding it but simply stating the fact of it. The fact is that there are many women of great ability and intelligence. Now its true that this ability can impaired by failing to educate a woman or denying her a role in the economic system, but the innate ability and potential remains. All of us know individuals who, through the hardships of life, were denied an education but are yet wise, prudent and industrious. We also know others who have gone to the best schools but remain eternal morons. In the real world educated morons are no match for the street wise.

Now, suppose we take a bright girl and deliberately hamper her education and deny her economic liberty in order to make her dependent on a man. Now, suppose we introduce her to some buffoon who has finished at Harvard. Does his artificial status enhancement satisfy her hypergamic desires?
I mean, after getting to know him she recognises that he has some social status but in real life can't manage his own affairs, make a decision or have an opinion. Is such a man attractive to her? Ponder this last point.

Sure, she may marry such a man because of her limited options, economic necessity or social convention but she is doing it for other reasons besides being attracted to him. Any marriage where the partners are there for  mutual convenience instead of mutual attraction soon becomes a prison to one or both.  Modern divorce laws are perhaps the most destructive solvent in the West today but it would be a mistake to think all was well with the institution of marriage prior to their introduction. Traditionalists fail to explain the surge in divorce once it became liberalised. Happy marriages don't fail; its the unhappy ones that do, and its quite obvious that there were a lot of unhappy (and sexless) marriages in the good ol' days .

Happy marriages are marriages of mutual desire. It's not a prison when you want to be there it's only a prison when you don't.  In order for a woman to be attracted to her partner (and therefore want to have sex with)  he has to satisfy her hypergamic imperative. The problem with female hypergamy is that is is relative to the woman's own ability and status. A dumb woman has an deep ocean of suitable suitors, a smart woman a far smaller pond. Sure, some women may have an overinflated opinion of their own capability (they are easily cut down to size) but a naturally superior woman has a real problem. She may marry a man because of her economic disability, she may stay with him for the love of God but there is no way in hell that she'll want to screw her husband's brains out if she is not sexually attracted to him. Sexual attraction is an animal instinct not a rational calculation and it is conditional on the satisfaction of her hypergamic desires. He has to be smarter, wiser, and more challenging than the woman. Socially disadvantaging women in no way fixes this problem. For if a man hath no alpha then his woman hath no desire. Alpha here does not mean straight out sexual allure, but things such as masculine virtue and intelligence. Taking away a woman's rights in no way gives a man alpha qualities. There's the problem.

The manosphere rightly criticises women for their diminishing femininity, but what the manosphere does not do so well is criticise the increasing infantisation of men.  When Roosh and his followers point out that quality women are only to be found outside the U.S. he is giving the masculine version of the modern feminist lament that there are no good men at home. What many manosphere commentators fail to recognise is that the nice computer nerd is the male equivalent of the nice fat chick. The manosphere demands thinness  but criticises women for wanting its feminine equivalent. Mote, beam, eye. It's all a bit of hypocrisy.

Calls to take away the rights of women are really nothing more than an affirmative action program for weak and beta men. Desirable men don't have a problem getting married.

Wednesday, September 05, 2012

How to Screen the Good Girls from the Bad.


It's not foolproof but a pretty good rule of thumb. Roughly 3% of women with 0-1 sexual partners have a tattoo. From this study.

It called a tramp stamp for good reason.

(Hat tip, Roosh V)

Glad to see my Australian colleagues doing their share of the heavy lifting.

Thursday, August 23, 2012

More Promiscuity Data.


Back in 2010 Anthony Paik published a study which received widespread media attention at the time. The findings were "spun" in such a way to show that casual hookups could lead to successful long term relationships. Susan Walsh had a look at it and found that the media reporting was quite biased, but this is to be expected, as selective reading of the findings were supportive of the liberal social script.

He did manage to get another study published in 2011, however, the findings in this one could not be spun so easily and hence the media gave it only a nominal amount of  coverage.

Titled, Adolescent Sexuality and The Risk of Marital Dissolution, the study attempted to find out whether adolescent sex was a risk factor working against long term marital stability, and if it was, whether the effect was causal or selective. The paper is available from here. (You can get the .pdf at the site)

The science of Slutology is still in its infant stages and Paik acknowledges that there have been very few studies done.  He lists the previous work in the area and some of the mentioned papers have been presented on this blog previously.
Only four nationally representative studies have examined whether premarital sexual experiences are linked to divorce (Heaton, 2002; Kahn & London, 1991; Laumann et al., 1994; Teachman, 2003). Nevertheless, the core finding—the association between premarital sex and increased risks of divorce—is robust[Ed]. Teachman (2003) found that women who had sex only with their future husbands did not have higher risks of marital dissolution, which suggests that the premarital-sex effect on divorce is related primarily to having sex with multiple partners
Now the question that Paik wanted to answer is whether premarital sex made a good woman risk or whether risky women engaged in premarital sex.
Despite the many contributions of prior research, there is a need for an approach that distinguishes between selection and causation explanations and that focuses attention on whether the timing and unwantedness of adolescent sexuality are linked to divorce.
He looked at the sexual histories of approximately 3,800 women taken from the 2002 U.S. National Survey of Family Growth and crunched the numbers. You can read about the methodology in the paper but the important findings are as follows:
  • Women who had unwanted first sex were at increased risk of divorce.
  • Women who had sex prior to 16 years of age were at increased risk of divorce, regardless of whether the sex was wanted or not.
  • Women who had sex after 16 were not at greater risk of divorce if they had only ever slept with one man. Once they had slept with more than one they were at increased risk of divorce.
  • He was able to pretty much replicate Teachman's findings that the increased rate of divorce amongst co-habitors is due to their multiple partner count. Note: He also replicated guest commentator Intrepid's finding that virgin brides are the safest bet of all.
  • Finally, his findings support the hypothesis that having multiple partners exerts some sort of effect on a woman that increases her risk of divorce.  Women who are prone to divorce are not born but are made that way:
My results support the argument that observed linkages between adolescent sexual debut and marital disruption is one not of selectivity but of changes in beliefs and attitudes about marriage and relationships that result directly and indirectly from these [Ed: Multiple Sexual]experiences.
and
I have argued that these formative sexual experiences directly change attitudes toward marriage and sex or lead to these changes indirectly through later life-course transitions, such as the accumulation of sexual histories or
experiencing premarital fertility.
Now Paik cautiously advocates that this is only a tentative conclusion and that more work needs to be done. I personally think that Paik wasn't too happy with the findings either. Throughout the work there appears to be a grudging acknowledgment of the effect of multiple sexual partners on divorce risk. Most sociology professors are liberal but he is to be commended on letting the chips fall where they may.

No one, of course, has yet been able to explain the rock solid association between premarital virginity and decreased risk of divorce.  These women, either through partner choice or personal quality have "something" which protects them against life's vicissitudes. No "scientific" explanation is yet forthcoming. Yet for the non-virginal, the bulk of data available seems to indicate a positive correlation between partner count and divorce. I can't but help but think of GBFM, and wonder if promiscuity is a mechanism of desoulment . It's a good an explanation as any.

Note. I can hear the bleating of Left already.

I know that correlation is not causation but the whole point of looking for correlations is that there is a likelihood of finding causation as well. For years the risk of smoking was only correlated to the risk of lung cancer. Tobacco companies for years denied the link and it was only in the late 1990's that a direct mechanism was demonstrated.  Feminists and Leftists will, with same logic of tobacco company lawyers, attempt to do the same. I am not attempting to convince them. Logic and empirical evidence are no use to people who practice cognitive dissonance as a voluntary habit.

Wednesday, August 22, 2012

Brendan, Dalrock and Sluts. (NSFW)


Commentator Brendan is one of the more thoughtful commentators on the internet and I have a great deal of respect for him.  Over at Dalrock's, there has been a discussion going on with regard to what constitutes sluthood and Brendan chimed in with his thoughts on the matter:
On the “what is a slut” issue, the question really isn’t about a numerical cutoff, which is why that’s generally an unfruitful way of looking at the question. A slut is someone who has an instrumental view of sexuality — that is, one who views sex in a hedonistic way for the most part. A person with this mentality towards sex will not link sex with marriage exclusively, because the view of sex is distorted and based on hedonic elements which we all know can well occur outside of marriage as well. That is, sex is about two (or more) human beings collaborating physically to bring each other sexual pleasure, and this is a “good” in and of itself as long as ‘enthusiastic consent’ is present. That is an instrumental/hedonist view of sexuality, and is the sine qua non of being a slut.
While I personally agree with a lot of Brendan's views, I disagree with his reasoning on this one. Now, I do think the number of previous partners does matter, and to be fair to Brendan, he does counsel that men avoid women who have high numbers, but the executive summary of his view seems to be that number does not mater as much as "women who think sex can occur justifiably outside of marriage". I think that this is good practical advice but the problem occurs when we get to the woman who's view of sex has changed and the the real problem is how to deal with the "reformed slut". It's a bit like the reformed alcoholic or drug addict, despite their protestations how do we know they aren't going to lapse into their former ways? Real life experience shows that many do.

The whole "my previous number doesn't matter" argument frequently touted by feminists is premised on the assumption that sexual continence is easy and its just a matter of being a simple choice.

It isn't.

The pleasures of the flesh, like the bottle, are source of temptation to many people. Lot's of good Christian people, who live in fear of the Lord, go to Church regularly and believe that sex is exclusively reserved for marriage, have been caught up in affairs. It's a stock staple for atheists to snicker when some Christian Pastor is caught In flagrante delicto, and attribute to hypocrisy what is in reality an act of weakness.   When it comes to the practice of virtue, philosophy is less important than habit.

This is what I think is the weak point in Brendan's argument, sluthood becomes a philosophical position instead of moniker of actual promiscuity. I mean, take the example of feminist who has only ever slept with one man. Is she is a slut? Her view of sex may be instrumental but common sense would say no. The other problem with Brendan's approach is that is that it tends to de-emphasis the importance of the actual number count, which this blog has shown before to be a far better predictor of both divorce and infidelity.

Now, it is a well known fact that co-habiting couples have higher rates of both infidelity and divorce  should they eventually decided to marry. For years the conventional wisdom was that this fact was attributable to the more liberal philosophy of the co-habitors.  A study done by Teachman, which I have linked to previously, dispelled that theory;
The results presented in this article replicate findings from previous research: Women who cohabit prior to marriage or who have premarital sex have an increased likelihood of marital disruption. Considering the joint effects of premarital cohabitation and premarital sex, as well as histories of premarital relationships, extends previous research. The most salient finding from this analysis is that women whose intimate premarital relationships are limited to their husbands—either premarital sex alone or premarital cohabitation—do not experience an increased risk of divorce. It is only women who have more than one intimate premarital relationship who have an elevated risk of marital disruption. This effect is strongest for women who have multiple premarital coresidental unions. These findings are consistent with the notion that premarital sex and cohabitation have become part of the normal courtship pattern in the United States. They do not indicate selectivity on characteristics linked to the risk of divorce and do not provide couples with experiences that lessen the stability of marriage.
In other words, the risk of divorce did not depend on a person's sexual philosophy, rather, what mattered is the actual number of partners they had. Teachman showed that liberal women who were not slutty were good bets.

Now, common sense would dictate that a woman who embraces a hedonistic philosophy is probably going to be a bad bet compared to woman with a more overtly Christian approach. But this graph below will show you just how little comfort you can take from that line of reasoning.
The data was taken from this paper, The Benefits of Religious Worship, by the Marriage and Religion Research Institute. They didn't do a breakdown of the different denominations in this paper, and so I imagine the conservative Christians are lumped together with the liberal ones. Frankly, I'm surprised that 4.33 is the average for weekly attenders as I thought it would be much less (I imagine the pious divorcees distort the figure). But there you go. Viva La Sexual Revolution!

Having a Christian philosophy helps but it is no guarantee against carousel riding, and even your apparently averagely pious Christian girl has gone for a quick spin. But what is evident though, is the more seriously she takes the faith the lower the partner count.  But Philosophy doesn't matter nearly as much as practice, because the greater the number of partners the greater the risk of divorce. All the studies show that a zero previous partner count is the safest bet. N matters.

The other problem with the "philosophical approach" to the definition of a slut is that it supports the bad theology of what commentator at Darock's blog called "sloppy seconds agape." The idea here is that once a woman professes her love for Jesus and repudiates her wicked past she suddenly becomes a good catch. The "theology" can be briefly summed up as "Because Jesus forgave sinners you should marry them even if they don't appeal to you". Any quite prudent reservations with regard to her marriage worthiness are dismissed as a lack of charity or too much judgement(with all the negative Christian connotations that it brings). The philosophy of Sloppy Seconds Agape conflates forgiveness with imprudence and thrives in the church's where goodness is equated with niceness. The well meaning but naive Christian young man is a sheep amongst wolves in this crowd. All forms of psychological pressure and dubious theological argument will be put on him to "man up". He will be made to feel guilty for having sensible reservations. Scripture will be quoted to make him feel bad. Appeals will be made to his chivalry.

Six years later he'll be paying alimony and seeing the kids every two weeks.

As a Christian, I do realise people change. God's grace is transformative and I don't want to write off men and women who are honestly trying to make a change. I've known many women who have had torrid pasts and did their best to try and escape it by living good lives and being stable partners. I know players who realise that the lifestyle was damaging them and have opted out. People do change. But the habit of virtue is more important than the philosophy of it.  Before a man (or woman) invests their future, and their children's future in a spouse, a degree of prudence  and common sense is required. Actions speak louder than words.

Once again, I've got the highest respect for Brendan but I disagree with him on this one.