Telling Girls You Were Once Engaged

If you are a man such as myself with a long and storied relationship history, it will start to worry new girls that you meet why you have decided to remain “single”, i.e. unmarried. You see, a former marriage, no matter how spectacular its failing, is a mark of success on a man; it says to a prospective mate he was able at one time to attract a woman the traditional way and bind her in the facsimile of a long term commitment. This is another one of those intractable and intrinsic gender double standards that whiners will just have to learn to accept with dignity — divorced men suffer less of a blow to their dating market value than do divorced women. The same is true of divorced men with kids, or single dads; they do not suffer nearly the same market value penalty that single moms do.

It all comes down to the biologically induced disparity in how men and women respond to the phenomenon of preselection. Men, being nearly 100% visually oriented in their attractions to women, couldn’t care less what kind of man is on her arm, or what kind of men used to be on her arm. They see, they like. Simple equation. All they care about is that she is unencumbered (or unskewered) by dicks present, and to a lesser extent, by dicks past. Women, on the other hand, rely heavily on preselection (when it is available as a tool to judge mate quality) in their attractions to men. They see he is liked, they like.

And so it goes with divorcées. Divorced men can see a boost in their attractiveness to women (as long as they avoid bringing up the ex-wife in reverent tones during pickups), while divorced women see no boost, or even a negative hit, in their attractiveness to men. Consequently, my advice to divorced men is to mention your divorcée status early in a conversation. My advice for divorced women would be just the opposite — refrain from bringing it up, and if he asks, lie. This double standard is so entrenched that even *married* men will see an increase in their pickup success.

This is why I have discovered that a man telling girls he was once engaged works to stimulate their curiosity. And female curiosity is the catalyst that speeds the chemical reaction leading to tingles. Why engaged? Because former finacée sounds sexier than ex-wife. It is pregnant with romantic and tragic possibility. She sees this man, once engaged but no longer, and her mind reels with fantasy of what went wrong. Was it irreconcilable differences? Did he cheat on her? Did she move away? Did he make demands she couldn’t meet? Did she die in a horrible car accident? Was there a vast cultural gulf? Did her family sabotage their love? What did she look like?

Don’t worry if you were never engaged. Lie. It is the sort of lie that is nearly impossible to detect, or accidentally expose. And it is the sort of lie women crave from men, and would not disrupt with arid investigative pursuit. Your job, as a man with a keen grasp of female psychology, is to lie and let her overworked hamster fill in the missing narrative. The best way to do this is to say you were once engaged to a French girl, for American women bristle from the imagined competitive threat of French girls. (When American women ask me who my favorite actresses are, I always mention Marion Cotillard and Audrey Tautou. Then I watch with satisfaction their faces flash a hint of sexually lubricative insecurity.)

HER: Were you always single?

THE DEVIL WHO REMAKES U IN HIS IMAGE: No, I was once engaged.

HER: Really!

THE DEVIL WHO REMAKES U IN HIS IMAGE: Yes. [Turn away, look pensively at the horizon] She was a French girl. We were in love.

HER: What happened?

THE DEVIL WHO REMAKES U IN HIS IMAGE: It’s complicated.

Read Full Post »

Science Continues Proving Me Right

Chicks dig dominant men (at least for hot sex). Men with low voices are perceived as more dominant. Hence, you should take up smoking to give your voice that rich, deep, gravelly timbre that make chicks swoon. Isn’t a shortened lifespan worth the extra poon?

Men with a deep, masculine voices are seen as more dominant by other men but a man’s own dominance – perceived or actual – does not affect how attentive he is to his rivals’ voices. His own dominance does however influence how he rates his competitors’ dominance: the more dominant he thinks he is, the less dominant he rates his rival’s voice.

Paging G Manifesto… (women should avoid smoking for the same reason.)

******

If you are a white man with brown eyes, chances are you have a more dominant looking face (and, thus, more access to pussy!).

Faces of brown-eyed men were rated more dominant than those of blue-eyed men, even when their eyes weren’t brown.

The effect, which didn’t hold for female faces, may have something to do with the shape of brown-eyed men’s faces, said study researcher Karel Kleisner of Charles University in Prague. On average, brown-eyed men had broader chins and mouths, larger noses, more closely spaced eyes and larger eyebrows than blue-eyed men.

Ever notice how closely spaced the eyes are on criminal thugs and stupid people? It’s a telltale sign that a person is probably not very trustworthy. And, yes, ugly people really are more criminally inclined than better looking people. You CAN judge a book by its cover, Virginia!

Naturally, one wonders why blue eyes — and thus less masculine faces — evolved in men. Perhaps in northern climes, where blue eyes predominate, there was selection for more cooperative males who could put aside strutting displays for the sake of reliably providing for the community and the family during long, cold winters. Or maybe it’s just a vestige of the sexual selection for very fair women with blue eyes.

******

Make her swoon with a love tune:

If you’re having trouble getting a date, French researchers suggest that picking the right soundtrack could improve the odds. Women were more prepared to give their number to an ‘average’ young man after listening to romantic background music, according to research that appears today in the journal Psychology of Music.

I slap on some Metallica — from the Kill Em All album — to get girls to leave my place after sex.

******

People discriminate based on beauty:

In her provocative new book,The Beauty Bias: The Injustice of Appearance in Law and Life, Stanford law professor Deborah Rhode argues that workers deserve legal protection against appearance-based discrimination unless their looks are directly relevant to their job performance. […]

Volumes of psychological research have shown that unattractive people are assumed to be less intelligent, less capable and less trustworthy. Almost from birth, infants stare longer at faces that adults rate as attractive.

No doubt Deborah Rhode is a raving lunatic equalist femicunt. But she’s right that people treat the ugly worse than they treat the pretty. Where she goes off the rails is in her solution to the “problem”. Does anyone think this isn’t the endgame when “anti-discrimination” became the religion of the USA in the mid-20th century? It was only a matter of time before those who argued against discriminating based on race — an immutable human characteristic — realized that it was the next logical step to justifiably argue against discrimination based on looks — a mostly immutable human characteristic. (Fatties are exempt from playing the immutability card.)

In fact, most facially ugly people really can’t do a thing about their unfortunate condition. In a “fair” world, anti-ugly discrimination would be outlawed, and the ugly would receive some recompense for their suffering.

This is why I am a true believer in the freedom of association. I knew that the eternal egalitarian quest for “fairness” would inevitably lead to the absurd totalitarian state we see unfolding all around us today. The only way it could be stopped was by rejecting its first principles — namely, by insisting that people have a right to associate with whomever they please. Equalists need to come to grips with the fact that life is not fair, that some human beings really are worth more than others, and that the constant pounding of square pegs into round holes is, in the long run, neither good for the peg nor the hole.

******

From the No Duh! files: fat chicks have trouble getting laid.

Scientists say being fat can be bad for the bedroom, especially if you’re a woman.

In a new study, European researchers found obese women had more trouble finding a sexual partner than their normal-weight counterparts, though the same wasn’t true for obese men, and were four times as likely to have an unplanned pregnancy. Fat men reported a higher rate of erectile dysfunction. […]

Obese women were 30 percent less likely than normal-weight women to have had a sexual partner in the last year. In comparison, there was little difference among obese men and normal-weight men as to whether they found a sexual partner.

This should disprove the notion (propounded most often by Satoshi Kanazawa at Psychology Today) that women do all the choosing in the dating market. In fact, they don’t. Men actively choose against dating and fucking fat chicks, old chicks, and, in some cases, single moms.

Not only are fat chicks sexually denied, they also skew the dating market to the detriment of men. What good are fat chicks? Just air drop ’em on an island somewhere, preferably all on one side so that the island might tip over and capsize.

Previous studies have found similar trends, but researchers were surprised by the discrepancy they found between the genders as to how excess weight affects peoples’ sex lives.

“Maybe women are more tolerant of tubby husbands than men are of tubby wives,” said Kaye Wellings, a professor of sexual and reproductive health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and one of the BMJ study authors.

Women don’t care as much about looks as men do. Cue the Drudge red siren.

The researchers found that obese women were less likely to ask for birth control services, and thus, four times more likely to accidentally get pregnant. Pregnant fat women and their babies also faced a higher risk of complications and death than normal-weight women.

“Accidentally” my ass. Fat chicks know that they have fewer chances than slim chicks to bed a man, so when the opportunity arises, they take full advantage to fill their slovenly, bloated wombs with a reason for existence. My advice to low self esteem men with dumpster diving issues: don that schlong before you impale a whale.

******

More proof for female preselection and the game techniques that spoof it:

“The idea is if you walk into a room and there are 50 people there, you can’t talk to everyone. So whom do you choose to talk to first? You could talk to the most attractive person or you could see whom others are already interacting with. If you’re a female and all the other women are just talking to 10 men, the other 40 aren’t potentially good mates. It would seem it’s a cognitive short-cut.”

One of the best things a guy can do for his game is to go out with a female friend. Instruct her to smile a lot and laugh at your lame jokes.

******

Courtesy of Vox Day, proof that women prefer fucking alphas:

About 16 percent of Americans between the ages of 14 and 49 are infected with genital herpes, making it one of the most common sexually transmitted diseases, U.S. health officials said on Tuesday… women were nearly twice likely as men to be infected, according to an analysis by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.  About 21 percent of women were infected with genital herpes, compared to only 11.5 percent of men.

Twice as many women as men have genital herpes. This could only happen if a smaller group of infected men is giving the gift of their infectious love to a larger group of women. Looks like female hypergamy is conclusively proved.

******

It’s a myth that marriage is good for a man’s health.

But while it’s clear that marriage is profoundly connected to health and well-being, new research is increasingly presenting a more nuanced view of the so-called marriage advantage. Several new studies, for instance, show that the marriage advantage doesn’t extend to those in troubled relationships, which can leave a person far less healthy than if he or she had never married at all. One recent study suggests that a stressful marriage can be as bad for the heart as a regular smoking habit. And despite years of research suggesting that single people have poorer health than those who marry, a major study released last year concluded that single people who have never married have better health than those who married and then divorced.

All of which suggests that while Farr’s exploration into the conjugal condition pointed us in the right direction, it exaggerated the importance of the institution of marriage and underestimated the quality and character of the marriage itself. The mere fact of being married, it seems, isn’t enough to protect your health. Even the Healthy Marriage Initiative makes the distinction between “healthy” and “unhealthy” relationships when discussing the benefits of marriage. “When we divide good marriages from bad ones,” says the marriage historian Stephanie Coontz, who is also the director of research and public education for the Council on Contemporary Families, “we learn that it is the relationship, not the institution, that is key.”

What this says is that men can get all the benefits of a good marriage within an unmarried relationship. So what was the point of getting married again? Oh yeah, right… to keep the cogs firmly ensconced in the gears of the grinding globocorporate machine.

******

Giving women the right to vote really was a bad move:

Did Women’s Suffrage Change the Size and Scope of Government?

Giving women the right to vote significantly changed American politics from the very beginning. Despite claims to the contrary, the gender gap is not something that has arisen since the 1970s. Suffrage coincided with immediate increases in state government expenditures and revenue, and these effects continued growing as more women took advantage of the franchise. Similar changes occurred at the federal level as female suffrage led to more liberal voting records for the state’s U.S. House and Senate delegations. In the Senate, suffrage changed voting behavior by an amount equal to almost 20 percent of the difference between Republican and Democratic senators. Suffrage also coincided with changes in the probability that prohibition would be enacted and changes in divorce laws. We were also able to deal with questions of causality by taking advantage of the fact that while some states voluntarily adopted suffrage, others where compelled to do so by the Nineteenth Amendment. The conclusion was that suffrage dramatically changed government in both cases. Accordingly, the effects of suffrage we estimate are not reflecting some other factor present in only states that adopted suffrage. […]

More work remains to be done on why women vote so differently, but our initial work provides scant evidence that it is due to self-interest arising from their employment by government. The only evidence that we found indicated that the gender gap in part arises from women’s fear that they are being left to raise children on their own (Lott and Kenny 1997). If this result is true, the continued breakdown of the family and higher divorce rates imply growing political conflicts between the sexes.

Yes, women’s suffrage really did herald the end days of America. The result of giving women the vote has been an ever-increasing nanny state funded on the backs of increasingly sex-dispossessed betas (dispossessed from banging women during their prime years). The elevation of diversity as a moral value and the flooding of the country with incompatible third world immigrants has no doubt been a secondary consequence of suffrage for women, who naturally bring their feminine sensibilities, for better or (more usually) for worse, to the polls. This is why I have argued that the next step in this national devolution toward mindless compassion is the creation of armies of cads. Men want sex, and will do whatever it takes to get it, whether that be good or ill for society.

******

More American women choosing to not have children:

More American women are choosing not to have children than three decades ago, according to a new report.

Nearly 20 percent of older women do not have children, compared to 10 percent in the 1970s, the Pew Research Center said.

It’s possible the procreative pendulum will naturally swing back to replacement rates, but for now the economic and cultural empowerment of women has de facto rendered their wombs barren. The fulfillment of their demands has been the harbinger of their own annihilation. I think the hipsters would call that irony.

******

I’ve written before that for women, travel is just an excuse to bang a swarthy local. Now the proof arrives:

Study: For Israeli women, going on vacation means more sex.

For Israeli women, going on vacation means more sex and lots of touristy activities – whether they are with their partners or not. Even so, if the overseas trip involves intense physical activity, the women reported no significant improvement in their sex lives.

Such are the findings of a new study of the sexual behavior of vacationing Israeli women, conducted by the Department of Hotel and Tourism Management at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.

If you’ve got a girlfriend, and she’s going on vacation by herself, odds she will cheat rise 50%.

If she’s taking this vacation in a Latin country, odds rise 75%.

If she says you don’t have to drop her off at the airport, odds rise 90%.

If she bought a new bikini for the trip, odds rise 120%.

If she’s staying in a hostel for the duration of the trip, packed some spare rubbers, and routinely emails some guy named Jacque who runs a tour guide group, odds rise 1,000%.

Poria views this phenomenon as part of the ritual that accompanies the tourism experience: Just as tourists feel the need to tour the museums and famous sites in the cities they visit, even though they have no real inclination to do so, “having sex is sometimes also perceived as compulsory.”

Also known as the “ovulatory ritual”, the “hybrid vigor ritual”, the “anti-slut deniability ritual”, and the “expert from afar ritual”.

Business trips, on the other hand, were portrayed in the study as inappropriate for much sexual activity, since they are not perceived as free time that presents an opportunity for such activity in an anonymous environment.

The interviewees explained that sexual permissiveness is impossible when they are accompanied by their colleagues from work.

Opportunity + anonymity + beta back home = infidelity.

******

Speaking of cheating…

Two new studies find that women may be genetically predisposed to cheating on their partners.

One study published today by the University of California, Los Angeles Center on Behavior, Culture, and Evolution and the University of New Mexico says women have evolved to cheat on their mates during the most fertile part of their cycle, but only when those mates are less sexually attractive than other men.

The study in the Journal of Hormones and Behavior examined 38 coeds from one large, unidentified U.S. university.

“We found that women were most attracted to men other than their primary partner when they were in the high fertility phase of the menstrual cycle,” said Dr. Martie Haselton, a UCLA researcher. “That’s the day of ovulation and several days beforehand.”

Small sample size, but still. My advice to men who don’t want to risk a cuckolding:

Dread.

If she understands in no uncertain terms that cheating will guarantee she loses you, she will think less with her clit and more with her head.

The other precautionary measure you could take, besides being better looking than 99% of other men, is to make sure you are around and fucking her hard during the ovulation part of her cycle. If she denies you access during this part of her cycle, DUMP HER POST HASTE. You have just been served a huge, unfurled red flag.

Or you could skip marriage and kids, and just enjoy the ride of multiple, tacitly open relationships.

Read Full Post »

Study Confirming My View Of The Job-Sexual Marketplace Nexus

Apropos yesterday’s post:

This paper examines the extent to which human capital and career decisions are affected by their potential returns in the marriage market. Although schooling and career decisions often are made before getting married, these decisions are likely to affect the future chances of receiving a marriage offer, the type of offer, and the probability of getting divorced. Therefore, I estimate a forward‐looking model of the marriage and career decisions of young men between the ages of 16 and 39. The results show that if there were no returns to career choices in the marriage market, men would tend to work less, study less, and choose blue‐collar jobs over white‐collar jobs. These findings suggest that the existing literature underestimates the true returns to human capital investments by ignoring their returns in the marriage market.

Source: “Marriage and Career: The Dynamic Decisions of Young Men” from “Journal of Human Capital”

You can read more here.

I am proven right once again. There are radical sexual marketplace consequences from the integration of women into the workforce. The sexual market is not a positive sum game. Economically empowered women curse themselves with a smaller dating pool of acceptable men, because female hypergamy adjusts itself relative to the status of the woman. This explains why we see the absurd phenomenon of ugly, aging, unmarried bitter lawyer cunts refusing to settle. Once millions of women are working at the same or higher level as working men, those men — who in the past could count on their worker drone jobs to give them enough status over women to sexually attract them — see their sexual market leverage decrease as a consequence of immutable female hypergamy.

Result: men turning away from the drudgery of building careers as a surefire investment strategy for acquiring pussy. The ROI of a corporate 9 to 5er is decreasing rapidly, and men are beginning to catch onto this.

Prediction: as long as women remain a large and growing segment of the white collar job market, men will continue to “drop out”. Replacement strategies for men include:

– prostitution (with concomitant calls for legalization)
– sexbots/3D porn
– video gaming
– growth of high paying blue collar trade jobs that women studiously avoid
– thuggishness
– game and assorted pickup strategies. (i.e. the birth of the “alpha mimicry market”.)

There are now more beta and omega male losers than ever before thanks to the whittling away of men’s traditional route to status through work. (Note: reproductive success does not equal sexual market success. While less promiscuous “betas” — and I use quotes to imply that promiscuity is not necessarily a defining characteristic of alphaness — may have more children on average than more promiscuous “alphas”, the timing of those childbirths are the relevant variable. A beta who goes his entire 20s and maybe even his 30s watching from the sidelines as the young hot babes ride the alpha bang bus is going to find cold comfort once that rode worn and tossed away wet former hottie deigns to settle for him in her waning 30s in order to pop out a couple kids before she well and truly hits the wall headlong.)

I can’t say when the breaking point in such an unstable system occurs, or how it will occur, but it will happen, sooner or later. Unlimited Third World immigration, of course, only exacerbates this inherent instability. I think betas and omegas would do themselves much good if they jettisoned their antiquated morality, kicked out the legs from the pedestals they raise women onto, and turned to the task of learning how to give women exactly what they crave — male dominance and high status through game. That way, they can enjoy not just reproductive success with cougars, but sexual success with kittens.

Read Full Post »

The Sexual Market Stripped Naked

Do you want to see the sexual market raw and uncensored, all superfluous hypocrisy and rationalization stripped clean? Watch this 20 minute reality TV show called ‘Battle of the Bods’. (It’s more exciting than watching soccer.) Five skimpily dressed women are asked to compare themselves on their faces, asses, and overall look. Call it the World Slut Cup. The women hiss and scratch each other until they reach a sort of consensus on where they rank, and then their self-evaluations are matched up with the evaluations of the three male judges sitting in a judging booth behind one-way glass. The closer the evaluations match, the more money the girls win.

Before the usual suspects chime in, I checked around for evidence that the show was faked. I didn’t find any, so let’s operate on the assumption that what you see in this show is what you get. Why would grown women ritualistically humiliate themselves for fame and (a very small) fortune? After watching this clip you’ll come to understand that a financial incentive was not needed. Once the competitive spirit is unleashed in the one market to rule them all, an ancient spirit force lumbers up from the depths of the human psyche to do its will, and politesse yields mercilessly as claws and fangs are bared for the kill. The men’s own market value was barely a factor to inspire this cat fight! All that was needed to inspire the worst in the women was knowledge that they were being judged, one against the other, by men sight unseen.

A few observations:

This show is further proof that Russian women are, on average, the most beautiful women in the world. Was WWII a great evil that birthed a great good? And, if so, would that be evidence for, or against, god?

It is also more proof that men pretty much think alike about what constitutes female beauty. I agreed with the final ranking.

It also offers evidence that men of different large scale racial groups differ slightly in their sexual preferences. The one black man on the judge’s panel expressed a clear preference for the black woman’s bigger butt, while the two white men preferred the less obtrusive asses of the white girls.

Josie, the yapping yenta and least attractive of the five women, immediately comes out swinging. She intuitively knows she is outranked by all the other women, so her strategy, honed by millions of years of evolution, is to drag the higher ranking members of the tribe down to her level.

Josie also shows that tallness, in and of itself, is not a positive attractiveness trait in women.

Anastasia, the hottest girl, is the most self-deprecating and diplomatic of the women. As the implied leader of the group, (in modern human tribes, the most beautiful woman is usually, though not always, the alpha female), she also has been honed by evolution to avoid ostracizing herself by arrogantly strutting her genetic advantages.

The women are most vicious when it’s their facial beauty under the harsh klieg lights. They’re a little more tactful and conciliatory when they’re judging each other’s asses or “overall look”. This proves my contention that for most men a woman’s facial beauty is more important than how closely her body conforms to ideal proportions. When a choice between the two has to be made, men will choose the facially beautiful woman with the slightly flawed body over the facially average woman with the rocking body for long term commitment. Short term flings and one night stands are a different matter, as men find the thrill of banging a hot bod worth the cost of being dragooned into kissing the lips of an unappetizing face. Women instinctively know this about men, and since women value long term commitments far more than short term hookups, they understandably are very reluctant to admit flaws in their faces.

The rationalization hamster is tuckered out. Never has the poor rodent had to spin spin so hard. Josie’s hamster alone could fuel the delusions of an army of single moms, fatties, and cougars. “I date doctors, physicians, and executives, I don’t date losers. They couldn’t afford me anyway.” If true, those doctors are wondering why the losers are banging all the hot chicks. “This is my strategy, to piss off the judges and always put myself in last place.” A winning strategy indeed.

I love the hostess. She is genuinely cruel toward Josie, the biggest loser (and likely highest IQ girl) of the group. Her scathingly cutting remarks gave me a boney. “They can’t afford you? Is that because you eat so much?” Ha haaw!

Sexual market ranking has real relevance in the world. Josie’s lower ranking will mean that she will be propositioned less by, and have less long-term access to, the kinds of high ranking men that Anastasia will enjoy with more regularity.

Studies have shown that after an initial, often violent battle, men are quicker to sort themselves into a hierarchy, while women tend to occupy a constantly shifting hierarchical landscape that encourages endless and repetitive jousting over one’s place in the rankings. This show seems to prove it. (Evolution would predict that since men are less reproductively valuable than women — sperm is cheap, eggs are expensive — they span a greater range of status slots than do women who bunch up more in a vast interchangeable bellcurvy middle with less gradation between the different status positions. Do note, though, that where men are less reproductively valuable, women are less civilizationally valuable. See: Charles Murray’s Human Accomplishment.) Watch closely how the men, who at the end of the show must sort themselves for the women’s edification, arrive at a ranking decision rather more quickly and less acrimoniously than did the women. In fact, because status battles between men can often result in bloodshed, (as opposed to psychological status battles among women which rarely endanger the women’s reproductive integrity), men have incentive to refrain from unnecessarily instigating their male competitors when little is on the line. (A man’s looks are less relevant to his sexual status than is his personality, dominance, and social acumen.) You’ll notice the biggest male of the group is also the most self-deprecating and effusive with his compliments to the other men. The other men, meanwhile, don’t go out of their way to endorse their own looks status and thereby risk a possible antagonistic showdown.

I’m sure short men who watched the end of the show are saying to themselves that this proves chicks dig the height. They do. My advice: focus on girls shorter than yourselves, there are plenty of them. And avoid nightclubs.

Josie totally tries to cockblock at the very end when the guys are mingling with the hotter girls. But she is shut out, reduced to orbiting the group like a buzzing bee. There’s a lesson here; cockblocks need allies. Drive the wedge first, then seduce the target.

Read Full Post »

World’s Biggest Dick Farm Goes Nuts

Knack sent me this story about Chinese men going on a rampage in recent months and attacking elementary schools.

The attack occurred in Linchang Village, in Nanzheng County’s Shengshui Township. Police had cordoned off the village Wednesday,as they conducted their investigation, with locals allowed in but reporters kept out. […]

It was the sixth such attack in China on schoolchildren since March. […]

The attacks come despite the execution of Zheng Minsheng, 42, a former community doctor who stabbed eight children to death and wounded five others at an elementary school in eastern China on March 23.

Zheng, executed by a firing squad in Nanping City late last month, told investigators he carried out the attack because he was frustrated by “failures in his romantic life and in society,” according to Xinhua.

China Daily newspaper quoted Nanjing University sociology professor Zhu Li as saying Zheng’s attack inspired copycats.

There’s been some discussion on this blog lately about sex ratios and male violence. The theory holds that when the sexual market is skewed in favor of women (more men than women), men will be better behaved (i.e. “dads”) because women will be able to demand that of them. Another side argues that once a tipping point of excess males is reached, violence erupts when all those bachelor males not getting any realize the hopelessness of their situation. In China, at least, it looks as if their 35 million excess males are starting to act up, and the Chinese government doesn’t know what to do about it, except beef up security at schools.

35 million hard up bachelors with no hole to go home to. And it’s projected to get worse, with possibly 60 million more men than women in China by 2050. The usual caveats about correlation and causation, but it bears noting that savvy investors ought to keep a wary eye on China’s supposed unstoppable growth machine — a lot of funny stuff can happen when huge armies of dispossessed men are tossed to the icy wastelands of involuntary celibacy.

Read Full Post »

Sex Ratio, Redux

For those who are interested in a syncretism of competing sex ratio theories (an elite audience, I’m sure), Jason Malloy sent me an email responding to my ‘Sausage Fest‘ post, and responding indirectly to Peter Frost whose quote I used in that post:

Hey, I just came across your sex ratio post from several weeks ago. I’m surprised I missed it at the time, because I read fairly often.

Just to clarify a few issues:

A common misunderstanding which I kept addressing on Dr. Frost’s blog was that I was claiming that women have some absolute preference for Dads over Cads. This was not my argument. My argument was that: “Females are never as promiscuous as men (as a group) prefer, therefore when male scarcity puts females at a sexual market disadvantage, females give in to male sexual pressures more easily.” And this innate differential preference is the ultimate basis for sex ratio dynamics.

Peter Frost’s claim that I “ignored”  some crucial wisdom from Guttentag & Secord isn’t true. I left numerous comments on his blog explaining to him why Guttentag & Secord’s social constructivist understandings about sex differences were wrong. Frost is suggesting that, sans social pressures, women are just as oriented towards low investment mating as men. This is wrong. Sex ratio dynamics are based on biological differences between men and women, not on gender politics. The wider society will likely never be as libertarian towards women’s sexuality as a college campus, but even there we see that more women = more male “misbehavior”; because even on college campuses men want lower investment sex than women: “Think of it as a game of chicken that men will always win. In an environment where women are ok with one night stands, men will push for the glory hole.”

I realize your primary interest is in how gender dynamics shift with male quality, but on this issue I don’t think I’m missing much. e.g. The number of top quality males increases on a male-biased campus, but female promiscuity still decreases. There are, no doubt, many hidden dynamics to sex ratio, but they don’t seem to monkey wrench the general predictions.

Jason

Sounds intuitively correct to me. What I’ve witnessed in social venues where the sex ratio is skewed in favor of women: when men outnumber women, the women set the terms of the courtship, and this is true regardless of the number of alpha males in attendance. They flit about soaking in the attention of all the male suitors, act bitchier, and play harder to get. Shit tests are locked at maximum deflection. The men are more animated and become agitated toward the end of the night, which sometimes spills over into (literally) pushing and shoving the male competition aside, and getting blotto once they realize the odds will not work in their favor.

Of course, more alpha males is always better than fewer alpha males from a woman’s perspective, because alpha male attention is almost as good as alpha male sex (though not as good as alpha male love). In fact, for most women, alpha male attention is better than beta male sex and love. So while women may be less promiscuous in male-skewed environments, they are going home happier in their chasteness if the male attention they lapped up came from higher quality men.

In contrast, those heavenly times when the women outnumbered the men, pickup up could not not have been easier. I sometimes had women approach me.

It’s like shopping for a TV in a store that has an abundance of TV choice. You might very well walk out of there empty-handed because you figure you can afford to take your time deciding which brand best suits you, and that there are so many brands there’s bound to be an even better value in there next week.

The part where sex ratio dynamics gets interesting is what influence it has on rates of male violence. As I mentioned in my previous post on this subject, when I’ve been in bars that skewed male the drunkenness and rowdiness hit a fever pitch. Male friendships temporarily sundered when a target was in sight: hos before bros. It’s sad watching a bunch of angry dudes squabble over the few remaining fat chicks at garbage hour. I suppose it helps in sex ratio discussions to define what we mean by male “misbehavior”. Maybe it should be divided into two categories: male violence and male caddishness. They overlap, but they aren’t synonymous. This accounts for the observation in some contexts that more men = more male agitation but not more male caddishness, whereas more women = more male caddishness but less silverback posturing and fighting over the abundance of women.

A lot of what I write about on this diaryetic outpost is based on personal experience, and only second-hand do the forces of science get summoned when I feel like putting in the extra work to buttress my steely-eyed observations of reality. If you want (mostly) hard science and bursts of numerical flavor, GNXP is a good place to go.

In general, I find that about 80% of what I observe in real life is eventually corroborated by scientific evidence. The remaining 20% left with question marks can be explained either by experiences peculiar to some subset of my life circumstances, or idiosyncratic personal observations insufficiently examined by science. My belief is that most people go through life lying to others, and to a lesser extent to themselves, about 90% of the nature of reality. Everything from the finality of death, to the horrors of aging, to the pitiless churning of the sexual market, to the true costs and benefits of human diversity is sheathed in a velvet scabbard of pretty lies. Pessimists would argue the excalibur of truth-examination is best left sheathed, for some truths bring nothing but distress. Optimists would argue the sword is a figment of negative minds, a weapon of the haves to dispirit the have-nots. Chaotics such as yours truly revel in the paroxysms the unsheathing of the sword causes those who stumble into the id monster’s lair.

It is possible to make it to the endgame having avoided the worst travails while refusing to acknowledge 90% of reality, as long as you don’t act in accordance with your stated beliefs. For example, a fat woman looking for love may console herself without consequence that it’s what’s on the inside that counts as long as she pays the lie to her beliefs by dieting and exercising. Her hypocrisy, from her point of view, is win-win — her psyche is soothed by her lies while her love life is invigorated by her sexier body. Similarly, a single mom anxious for love can tell herself she is choosier than her single female counterparts without bastard baggage, but when the quality of suitors willing to commit to her and her child by another man predictably degrades she will ignore her little lies and act like a woman with fewer options, smartly offering more concessions in the zero-sum race to settle for Mr. Better Than Nothing. If, however, she insists on living by her lies she will likely spend the rest of her dreary years half-nourished by a child’s love instead of fully nourished by the added romantic love of a male partner.

Despite evidence of hypocrites acting in ways contrary to their lies and in accordance with the reality of the mating market, in the double helical arena of all against all, it is those who acknowledge more of reality who will win out over those who acknowledge less of reality. Hypocrisy costs mental energy, and when incentivized enough and fully internalized can lead to bad decisions. The few who can look the chaos in the eye and not flinch will best those whose ego-assuaging lies act to divert them from the path of personal happiness. A downwardly spiraling feedback loop can result when hypocrisy is allowed to run rampant, as one bad decision after another coaxes ever more contorted pretty lies to stave off the chilling self-realization that creeps up in the deep black of night when solitude enshrouds.

There is one truth that will always be heard. The shiver down the back of your neck late at night never lies.

Read Full Post »

It May Be Better To Game In Small Groups

Randall Parker forwarded me a link to a study about abundance of mate choice affecting the quality of the choice.

Quantity may determine quality when choosing romantic partners

The context in which humans meet potential mates has a hidden influence on who they decide to pursue. In particular, when people have a large number of potential dating partners to select among, they respond by paying attention to different types of characteristics – discarding attributes such as education, smoking status, and occupation in favor of physical characteristics such as height and weight.

A number of studies in recent years have looked at what happens to humans when faced with extensive choice – too many kinds of chocolate, or too many detergents to choose from at the grocery store. Under such circumstances, consumer psychologists believe that the brain may become “overwhelmed,” potentially leading to poorer quality choice or choice deferral. Psychological scientist Alison Lenton, of the University of Edinburgh, and economist Marco Francesconi, of the University of Essex, wanted to know if the same was true of mate choice, given that humans have been practicing this particular choice for millennia. “Is having too many mate options really like having too many jams?” they ask. The study is published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

To find out how people respond to relatively limited versus extensive mate choice, Lenton and Francesconi analyzed data from 84 speed dating events, which is where people meet with a series of potential dates for three minutes each. Afterward, the men and women report their choices (a “yes” or “no” for each person). It should surprise no one that choosers generally preferred people who were taller, younger, and well-educated. Women also preferred partners who weren’t too skinny, and men preferred women who weren’t overweight. Beyond that, though, the attributes that speed daters paid attention to depended on how many opposite-sex speed daters attended the event.

At bigger speed dating events, with 24 or more dates, both male and female choosers were more likely to decide based on attributes that could be judged quickly, such as their dates’ height, and whether they were underweight, normal weight, or overweight. At smaller events, choosers were more likely to make decisions based on attributes that take longer to identify and evaluate, such as their dates’ level of education, their type of job, and whether or not the person smokes.

“Obviously, I think we look for different attributes in partners than what we look for in a chocolate, a jam or a 401(k) plan,” says Lenton. “But one of the points we’re trying to make in this article is it’s the same brain we’re carrying around. There are constraints on what our brains can do – they’re quite powerful, but they can’t pay attention to everything at once.” And if the brain is faced with abundant choice, even about who to go out with, it may make decisions based on what it can evaluate most quickly. As a result, this previously invisible aspect of the choice environment has the potential to determine one’s romantic fate.

The consumerists’ quandary. I’m surprised this phenomenon hasn’t been discussed more by game instructors. It would seem logical that the number of girls as well as the number of men in a pickup environment would have an effect on how we choose mates and how we ourselves are perceived as mates. How many times have you stood in front of a huge aisle displaying 62 varieties of vitamins and just said “fuck it” and grabbed the cheapest, or the nearest, brand? If “choice deferral” or choice constriction happens with vitamin brands, then it could conceivably happen with girl brands.

So what are the take-home points from this study? What should we men, always on the lookout for a quicker route to getting laid and loved, learn from the study’s conclusions?

1. In groups that have a lot of men, (for example, clubs and bars on busy nights), women will evaluate your mate potential on “superficial” (i.e. readily discernible) qualities like height and looks.
2. A corollary to number 1 is that in venues where there is a lot of male competition for the women to choose among, and you are average or below in superficial traits, you will not get many chances to run game on the girls.
3. In groups of few people, (for example, book clubs or painting classes), women will evaluate your potential as a partner on more “meaningful” qualities that can only be discovered during the course of lengthier conversations.
4. A corollary to number 3 is that women will be more likely to grant an average looking man an audition at an event that has few other men from which the women can choose. She will also want to know more about each man she joins in conversation.

If you imagine each woman has a tingle-o-meter that oscillates with varying strength to the proportion of male attractiveness traits present in a man she is talking with, and that also oscillates according to the number of other men in her visual field, then you can visualize how a typical woman will react to you in different environments. If you are great looking and tall, you will get a lot of insta-play from women where large numbers of other men are present. She will be choosing you almost entirely based on your easily perceived high value traits, and will likely be more forgiving of any shortfalls you may have in the less visually oriented suite of male attractiveness traits. So if you’re a broke, uneducated, Johnny Depp lookalike, you’ll want to make nightclubs your venue of choice, and you’ll want to close the deal sooner rather than later, before she has an inclination to dig deeper into your value as a man.

If you are not great looking or tall, then you’ll want to steer clear of venues where there will be a lot of men. You will do best in smaller groups with few men, let’s say bars on a weeknight, where the women will be open to learning more about you, and also likelier to overlook any physical shortcomings you may have. She will be choosing you based on a mixed package of easily perceived physical traits and less obvious high value male traits such as dominance, physical assuredness, humor, and charm/game. So if you have tight game but lack the looks to easily acquire auditions to demonstrate your game, you’ll want to focus on environments with few other men around, like day game or really any venue on a night besides Friday or Saturday night.

Since by definition most men are not in the top 10% of looks and height, it stands to reason that pickup instructors should not be teaching game to newbies in high energy environments like nightclubs. The best place to practice game is any place where a bunch of superficially high value men will not show up to distract the girl.

Some other conclusions we can draw from the study:

• This “choice abundance mentality” by women can be artificially triggered. If you have a lot of guy friends who are worse looking than you, then bring your posse to the local club. Faced with all those men to choose from, the women will naturally gravitate to you as the most superficially appealing man of the group.
• Addendum to the above: your friends can’t be *too* dorky, because then the women will tar you with the same dork brush.
• Also, if one of your less good looking friends has better game than you, and the environment you are in is sufficiently low key that he can run his game undistracted, then he may steal the girls’ attention from you. Good looks on a man are great, but good game is even better.
• If you are very good looking but a so-so conversationalist, you will want to stay away from things like book clubs, where the homelier men with sharp wits will absolutely crush you. I’ve seen it happen. Score one for the smooth talking Voltaires.
• If you are very good looking but have no game, suit up and hit da clubs on a busy night where women can instantly compare your looks to a ton of other men. Physical presence game is all you’ll need. Try to get used to one night stands.
• Homelier men should focus on gaming one or two girls in a night. They need more time to allow their heart light to shine. Theirs is a big stage with lots of props and a multitude of scenes to tell the story. Homelier men must be better at building connections with women, because a strong emotional connection will handily compensate for a weak physical magnetism.
• Good looking men should maximize the number of girls they hit on in a night. They don’t need a lot of time to attract attention. Theirs is a small stage featuring a one-act play and a very large audience all vying to get his autograph after the show. By maximizing the number of targets and compressing time spent with each target into a few minutes, they maximize their chance for a same night lay.
• If you have a sucky job and few ostentatious credentials to wave around, but your game is tight, you’ll want to hit on girls in large venues. The girls will be less likely to grill you on your educational and career background, and more likely to enjoy the spontaneous feelings you evoke in them. In other words, choice abundance means that girls are going to be too distracted to bother figuring out your life story. A confused girl is an easily gamed girl.
• If you have a great job, money, and conventional cred, but your game is weak, you’ll want to hit on girls on slow nights in smaller venues, or day game and insta-date them. Maximize your strengths and minimize your weaknesses. A calm, focused girl is a future time oriented girl who will judge on substance more than flash. (Note: sluts excluded.)
• Where there are a lot of men, you can create the illusion of male scarcity (and thus increase your odds of successfully gaming a girl) by walking away from girls early in a conversation. Always end conversations first, seem needlessly distracted, and make it seem like you are a man who has options, even if technically in a bar with more men than women, you don’t.
• If you are looking for a wife or girlfriend, you may want to shift your base of operations to smaller venues or events where you will be less tempted by choice abundance to invest time gaming the flashiest chicks whose key attribute is how good to go they are.

Apropos the study, only go to speed dating events where the women rotate. You will seem in higher demand than you really are.

Read Full Post »