How many women do men really want to fuck? The answer, if surveys are to be believed, is a bit less than infinity. Scientists are baffled. A reader writes:
I’ve said on your blog that I consider you a bit of an outlier, someone who places much more importance on sex than the average man. I thought I should bring some data to back that up. The average man seems to only want about 6 lifetime partners. And gay men, who presumably can get as much sex as they want don’t all go hog wild. If we judge by teh gey only about 32% have more than 10 partners, while only about 18% had more than 20. Perhaps numbers would be higher without AIDS, but blowjobs (raw) and sex with condoms are both pretty safe, even for gays, so I’m not sure how much to count that. However, even with AIDS, 18% is nothing to sneeze at so you’re not that much of an outlier. As for myself, I too sympathize at least somewhat, in theory, with the guys who want to rack up large numbers. But I try not to judge other people’s sexual proclivities by my own.
None of this contradicts the finding that men are considerably more promiscuous by inclination than women. It just means they aren’t outrageously more promiscuous by inclination.
Ah, self-reported data. Of sexual desire. The least trustworthy data there perhaps exists. As I’ve noted before, people are never more apt to lie than when they are being asked about their sexual habits, or about their sexual desires. The hamster is a rationalization machine first and foremost for sugar-coating lust, the most primeval of the primeval emotional juggernauts that silently yet relentlessly infuses and guides our every thought and action.
But that aside, I actually don’t have much beef with what this self-reported survey data says. I’m not at all surprised that men, when asked how many women they would want to sleep with in the next months or years, would choose a number not fantastically higher than that chosen by women. The hamster resides in male brains as well, (though it is a far less sturdy specimen than that found spinning in female brains), and will happily spit out “acceptable” answers that adhere to social expectations for virtuous behavior. Sometimes these acceptable answers are completely unintentional, and reflect less a hypocritical posturing to conform to cultural pressures than an ego-assuaging, knee-jerk bromide to buttress one’s self-conception.
But reality has a way of intruding on happy thoughts. If a researcher had asked me at age 18 how many women I would want to sleep with in the year ahead, I might have offered, with some haughty self-righteousness derived from precious feelings of romantic abandon and insta-pedestalization, one or two as my optimal number. Had that same researcher asked me, ten years later and post red-pill (as the scallawags would say), how many women I had slept with in the previous year, the number would have been considerably higher than the one I suggested was optimal before a pussy potpourri of options opened themselves to me.
To put it more simply, most men are not going to admit, to themselves or others, that they want to fuck hundreds of women. Or, more precisely, they aren’t going to admit that they would be interested in fucking hundreds of women if the option to do so were readily and uncomplicatedly available to them. Men and women both don’t really like to think of themselves as sex fiends.
And this goes as well for gay men, who, though they have less formidable obstacles to hurdle on the path to sexual release than do straight men, are still nonetheless straitjacketed by some unforgivable rules of the sexual marketplace, such as the fact that ugly gay men are not going to have the same number of opportunities for amassing partner counts as that afforded to handsomer gay men; and of those opportunities the less favorably endowed do have, the urge to capitalize will be much enervated.
And therein lies the crux of skepticism I hold about these sorts of “hey, tell me about your sex life and most secret fantasies!” self-reporting surveys: they aren’t telling me what men, or women, would do IN REAL LIFE if they had no restrictions on their buffet of mate choice. They are only telling me what numerically-bounded desires men and women — most of them by nature enduring severe restrictions on their sexual or romantic opportunities — are acclimatized by circumstance and lifelong experience to expect, and thus to valorize, for themselves.
To find out what men would avail themselves of in real life, we have to examine what kinds of partner counts real men with virtually UNLIMITED OPTIONS acquire. For that, we need to find those men who live with few, if any, constraints on their ability to fulfill their desires.
Men with few restrictions on satisfying their carnal cravings are men with options. By restrictions, I mean anything that could act as a force against the full realization of one’s desires. If most women don’t find you desirable, then you are working with limited options, and this is true no matter how much you tell yourself or others that your small sample platter is just the right amount to slake your desire. If women find you desirable, but social expectation or political calculus discourage your follow-through, then you are working with limited options.
For these reasons, some very alpha men who could theoretically clean up with women don’t make the UNLIMITED OPTIONS MAN cut. A married CEO who could conceivably entertain a harem of adoring lovers is limited by his wife, children and close acquaintances to behave according to certain norms that preclude harem-building. The President of the United States, a super alpha by dint of his station alone, would suffer tremendous blowback from the consequences of sleeping with even a tiny fraction of his admiring thong-y throngs.
No, the men of our modern society who are free in the best sense of the word… the men who have limitless options with women… are unmarried rock stars and famous actors. There are others, but these two groups best exemplify the unchained man. What kind of man has the lustful fervor of millions of women directed at him, and who would not suffer much of any consequences in his personal or career life from indulging in his bounty?
Well, George Clooney comes to mind. Here’s a guy whom women love, and who would not jeopardize his career or social status by sleeping with the maximum number of lovers his heart (and groin) can accommodate. And how may women does such a man with nearly unlimited options accumulate over a lifetime?
A lot. And these are just the women the media know about. Or the women Clooney wants the media to know about. The true number is likely in the hundreds, maybe thousands if we count one night stands and short flings.
PUAs also make the list of men enjoying veritable limitless options. The haters will slip into hate overdrive upon hearing this, but skilled womanizers, as many PUAs are, luxuriate in the attentions of many women, and don’t pay a price for satisfying their desire. The successful PUA does not have a wife or family to protect from his predations, nor does he have a political career that would crumble from public airing of his dalliances. He is, in contrast to the mass of mediocrities railing against his lifestyle, a free man able to meet his own needs, in whatever capacity he deems satisfactory.
This is not to say that men don’t desire long-term relationships with women, or to say that men would not be happy banging fewer than one hundred or more women in the course of their lifetimes. It is simply a perspicacious reminder that, as with women, what men may claim about their ideal number of lovers is often less a true measure of their visceral desire than it is a mental palimpsest revealing underneath the restricted range of limited options within which they necessarily resign themselves.
To quote by way of illustration a billion ugly, obese feminists with severely curtailed options in the dating market:
“I don’t NEED a man!”
My take on this matter, sociological stabs at the truth notwithstanding to the contrary, is that most men are inclined to periods of “settling down” monogamously with a woman of outstanding quality, but that most men would also rack up considerable numbers of lovers between and during their monogamous downtimes if there were no consequences to suffer and they had the option to acquire those lovers relatively effortlessly and expediently.
Since most men labor with a limited menu of options, what we see transpiring in the real world are the top 10-20% of free men acting in accord with the rhythms of their primitive compulsions, and a horde of less-free men learning to love their meager choices.
You want to be a man with options.
The option to love recklessly, or love faithfully.
The option to marry, or to sow your oats as an eternal bachelor.
The option to have kids, and to be assured of your paternity.
The option to date monogamously, or to date profligately.
The option to stay, or to leave. On your terms.
The option to give ultimatums, and to ignore ultimatums.
The option to screw around, or to start a family.
The option to do what you want, when you want it, and to do what others want, when you want it.
This year is the Year of Men With Options. There has never been a time more suited to teach men the art of options than right now, when options everywhere for men seem to be shrinking.
This dwelling of ideas will be your guide.
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