Happy day! Susan Walsh has drawn another diagram! Loyal readers of Man Boobz will recall the last time that Walsh, a would-be relationship expert who blogs at Hooking Up Smart, tried her hand at diagram making. It wasn’t pretty. In an attempt to sketch out the economic costs of sluthood, Walsh cobbled together an extravagantly convoluted mess of a flow-chart based on little more than a few bad assumptions and what she insisted was common sense.
This time, Walsh attempts to chart how the sexual revolution has transformed dating, borrowing her argument largely from some dude called Frost who blogs about sex and relationships and PUA bullshit at Freedom Twenty-Five.
Back in the old “leave it to Beaver” days, Frost argues, virtually all men and women paired off efficiently with partners who exactly matched their level of hotness, as charted on the infamous ten-point scale beloved of pickup artists and other such creatures. Fives married fives, nines married nines, and even lowly ones were able to find true love and hot ugly sex with others as unfortunate as they were. As Walsh puts it, attempting to make all this somehow sound vaguely scientific:
This system worked pretty well in achieving equilibrium with respect to SMV (sexual market value).
Naturally, neither Frost nor Walsh offer any evidence that any of this was true. Which only makes sense, since it, er, wasn’t.
Let’s set that aside for a moment and move on to our current fallen state, post-sexual revolution. Now, apparently, a small minority of hot dudes score all the chicks, from nines on down to threes. Everyone else spends their lonely nights alone with their hands and a choice of vibrator or fleshlight.
Here’s where the diagram comes in. It’s a doozy:
Now, Walsh doesn’t actually explain how she knows this (or, rather believes it, since it clearly is not true), or why exactly she thinks the sexual revolution is to blame. But Frost does, sort of. With the sexual revolution, he argues,
the social convention of monogamy starts to break down. Women are free to do what they want, and they quickly realize that the men they can persuade to have short-term sexual relationships with are much, much more attractive than the men willing to marry them. Attractive men are free to eschew marriage, and instead maintain a harem of rotating friends-with-benefits and one-night stands. Super-attractive men (professional athletes, rock stars, bloggers) can spend every night with a different coterie of young, attractive women, railing lines off their ass cheeks and banging them senseless.
Sounds great for men. And not too bad for women either, who get to shag NHL players and bloggers instead of their ho-hum husbands.
Wait a minute. “… and bloggers?” Bloggers are now the alpha males? I wish I’d known this sooner!
But every woman who elects to join a harem, must necessarily leave a lonely man behind in the great mating scramble. … The men at the bottom are left to their RPGs and porn.
So there you have the effects of the sexual revolution on men: Great for the few, awful for the teeming masses.
Well, there’s a certain logic to that argument. It’s just not, you know, true.
Walsh and all the manosphere dudes who’ve convinced themselves that 80% of men have been left sexless have it backwards: as a handy FAQ at the Kinsey Institute points out, only about 10 percent of men don’t have sex during any given year. The average frequency of sex ranges from more than 100 times a year for those in their teens and twenties to about 70 times a year for those in their 40s.
But what about the ladies? Frost explains that they suffer too, especially those unfortunate enough to be mega-hotties. Frost seems to base this conclusion almost entirely on the sexual history of one Betty Draper. This seems a very small sample size to me. Also, she’is fictional. But that doesn’t stand in Frost’s way:
What about the top woman? The ultimate hottie? Previously, she had the top man all to herself. She literally could not have asked for anything more, assuming as I do that women naturally gravitate toward sleeping with the one man who is their best option at a given time, while men are only as faithful as their options. Suddenly, her man is beset by hussies, plying him with offers of cheap sex. How does Betty Draper feel about the breakdown of monogamy in her world? …
Now [the top women] must choose between sharing, or settling for a man far below her previous catch. Meanwhile, uglier women can choose between monogamy with a man far above her previous level, or a shared slice of one of the top men. She is unequivocally better off, as the hotter women are unequivocally worse off.
Frost concludes:
The Sexual Revolution harms attractive women, and unattractive men. It benefits unattractive women, and attractive men.
Naturally, none of this is the fault of men. It is, Frost and Walsh apparently agree, the fault of all those mid-level bitches slutting it up with the top men. It’s all their fault that the ladies at the top and bottom are getting left high and dry.
Indeed, it’s high time that the hottest hotties stood up for their rights, Frost argues in a second blog post:
It never seems to occur to the hot girls of the world that the sexual revolution is the cause of their troubles. Without it, the best that a top man could do is find a top woman, and devote his life to her. In our present dystopia, he can find that top woman, and rip her heart and soul to pieces by maintaining a harem of flings on the side.
If it wasn’t for the legions of female 7′s and 8′s throwing themselves at the male 9′s, the female 9′s could have their men all to themselves. But in the world as it is, they will always be competing with the omnipresent availability of cheap and easy sex.
Were the hot women to regain their hot pride, sluts and feminists alike would quake in their boots:
The greatest fear of the feminists is that desirable women like yourselves will wake up the lies they’ve been fed, embrace their feminine modesty, and cast the harsh light reality on of the fat, shrill, used-up slutwalkers and middle-aged divorcees.
What of the not-quite-hotties? Walsh has some harsher advice for all those “mediocre sluts” out there riding that alpha asshole cock carousel. She writes:
For less attractive women, an objective assessment of market value is essential. That can only be realized by evaluating which men are interested in dating you rather than banging you.
In other words: mid-level ladies, you’re still losers. Eventually, you asses will get fat, your skin will get wrinkly, and the alpha assholes will grow tired of banging you. So what are you poor gals to do? Walsh offers this grim assessment:
These are the hard truths of the Post Sexual Revolution era. There are a few winners, and many losers. It is difficult to see how equilibrium can ever be regained. For now at least, your only option is to think carefully and realistically about your personal life goals. Make sure the choices you’re making get you closer to them.
(Confidential to Susan Walsh: You do know that using terms like “equilibrium,” like you’re some sort of sexual economist, doesn’t actually make your bullshit true?)
Given that everything in Frost and Walsh’s posts here is such unmitigated bullshit, I think I have some better advice for women of all hotness levels (if they haven’t already figured this out for themselves): stop taking relationship advice from a woman who wants you to hate yourself.
And speaking of bad choices: those smileys? Oy. Strive for elegant simplicity, not tacky clutter.
NOTE: Chuck on Gucci Little Piggy has written a response of sorts to this post. I’ve replied on his blog here. But there is something distressing going on there: Someone has posted several rude comments there under the name “Man Boobz.” THAT PERSON IS NOT ME. If any of you are responsible, STOP IMMEDIATELY. I’ve asked Chuck to ban that person and delete the comments.
EDITED TO ADD: Chuck changed the name of the commenter to “not man boobz.” That makes sense to me.
The chart does not depict who’s having sex, it depicts the nature of female attraction in the Post Sex Rev era of unrestrained sexuality.
For those who want data, might I suggest:
http://www.hookingupsmart.com/2010/09/14/hookinguprealities/sex-and-the-pareto-principle/
http://www.hookingupsmart.com/2011/04/28/hookinguprealities/whos-really-having-sex-in-college/
In fact, there is no evidence that female promiscuity is the norm. I estimate that approximately 20% of both sexes are sluts. This group consists of the most desirable males, but not the most attractive females, in general, who are reluctant to sell themselves short by engaging in no-strings sex.
Rutee,
“Incidentally, if you want to play the anecdata game, my girlfriend’s chances are much lower than mine, what with being a kinsey 6 nerd. As it happens, not all women and men are straight.”
And you call yourself a good writer? I took this to mean that you were a Kinsey 6 nerd. Meaning, a gay nerd. Meaning, your girlfriend’s chances are slim to nonexistent because you are gay.
“Are you illiterate, stupid, or just massively sexist? I specified my girlfriend was a kinsey 6 and you still somehow think I am a gay man? Is it the fact that I am better at science than you, or just the fact that I’m not politely humoring your bullshit?”
No, just confused. You’re saying now that your girlfriend is a Kinsey 6 – as in she is a lesbian? The point still stands because if your “girlfriend” is a lesbian then you still know jack shit about the hetero SMP. Actually, I take that back. If you’re relegated to calling lesbians your girlfriend then you should clearly understand the dynamics of what Walsh was trying to say.
Piggy, the Kinsey scale is a 10 point scale with straight at one end and gay at the other. If you’re a 5, you’re bisexual. Each additional point is a gradiation of gender preference, which is why it’s called the Kinsey SCALE. His girlfriend is bisexual but prefers women slightly more than men, not that she’d never like a man for any reason.
Molly:
Sorry, no. The Kinsey scale maxes at 6 which indicates that someone is “exclusively homosexual”.
http://www.kinseyinstitute.org/resources/ak-hhscale.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinsey_scale
So what was Rutee saying about scientific prowess again?
Piggy, the Kinsey scale is a 10 point scale with straight at one end and gay at the other. If you’re a 5, you’re bisexual. Each additional point is a gradiation of gender preference, which is why it’s called the Kinsey SCALE. His girlfriend is bisexual but prefers women slightly more than men, not that she’d never like a man for any reason.
Oh, I misremembered my numbers there. That’s her, still.
“So what was Rutee saying about scientific prowess again?”
If you can confuse remembering a fact with understanding the process of science, your understanding of science is so weak that it’s beyond laughable, dude. You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about at any point in time, do you?
“And you call yourself a good writer?”
Again, if you can confuse remembering a fact for the process of writing, you don’t know what writing is.
Have you nothing to say about anything else? Or is it just so far beyond you that you tried for the easy pickings of my misremembering the precise points on the kinsey scale to try to distract from the fact that you couldn’t substantiate a *single meaningful point*? Anytime you wanna try for the meat of your argument, such as it is, you’re welcome to it.
“The point still stands because if your “girlfriend” is a lesbian then you still know jack shit about the hetero SMP.”
It’s almost as if you didn’t specify! Oh wait, BECAUSE YOU DIDN’T 😀
I knew what you meant, of course, but you were erasing us so you could try to make a cheap point about women in general.
Oh, wait, I misread earlier.
Dude, *I AM A WOMAN YOU STUPID FOOL*. My girlfriend is a Kinsey 6. This shouldn’t be that difficult for you. And you *STILL* confused remembering a fact with understanding science.
The Kinsey scale is 0-6.
However, remembering that fact is not an indicator of tremendous “SCIENCE!” and is not really that relevant to the debate. Just pointing it out.
Kinsey’s scale wasa 0-6 and only considered sexual experience rather than internal desires or identities, but there are scales modeled after his scale that use 0-10. Single axis sexuality scales are often referred to more generally as “Kinsey scales”.
Rutee:
““So what was Rutee saying about scientific prowess again?”
If you can confuse remembering a fact with understanding the process of science, your understanding of science is so weak that it’s beyond laughable, dude. You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about at any point in time, do you?”
You went through all of this shit talking and trying to rag on me because I assumed you knew what you were talking about. Has very little to do with science and more to do with you not knowing what you’re talking about. I have no reason not to assume that your ignorance filters over into other arenas as well.
“Again, if you can confuse remembering a fact for the process of writing, you don’t know what writing is. ”
Throwing stones, glass houses, all of that.
This is what you said that got all of this started:
“Incidentally, if you want to play the anecdata game, my girlfriend’s chances are much lower than mine, what with being a kinsey 6 nerd. As it happens, not all women and men are straight.””
So I (a man) anecdotally cited my girlfriend’s mobility in the SMP. And then you rebut with something about your girlfriend. Thus, since we are clearly discussing the *heterosexual* SMP what would your girlfriend have to do with anything? Do you see how this unraveled because of your poor communication skills? Good.
“Have you nothing to say about anything else?”
I now have two posts on the topic over at my blog. My main contention is that David (and most commenters here) is misunderstanding the point of Susan’s post. There is absolutely nothing controversial about there being sexual “Haves” and “Have nots”, and studies of primate behavior, human DNA, and social behavior bear that out. As I said earlier, Susan wrote her piece with her particular audience in mind. Her model was obviously not meant to be rigorous science, but it was provided as a tool to loosely explain the SMP. David took that model seriously (despite the goofy cartoons which should have clued him in) and brought it over here to his blog to say “See how stupid these people are?” Yes, if David looks at that off-hand model as evidence of what Susan et al actually believe is going on in the SMP then he would have grounds to say that she (we) are stupid. But David took the model too seriously. That is the fundamental miscommunication here.
My other points were these: David’s statistic that 90% of men have had sex within the last year does not disprove Susan’s contention. 90% of that 90% might only have sex once within a year – 10% of that 90% might have sex 300 times. That is an extreme example to show that David’s assertion and Susan’s assertion are not mutually exclusive.
Anyway, I found statistics from the CDC and analyzed them over at my blog today. Check it out if you want. There is stil a mismatch but not of the 20-80 split that David says Susan believes is the case. I think it is more along the lines of a 40-80 split though the stats are limited in that the CDC doesn’t consider men who’ve had more than 3 sex partners. This artificially smooths out the distribution.
To sum this up, David’s blog just casts aside any sort of analysis of the sexual marketplace as misogynistic and anti-feminist. It’s a knee jerk reaction.
Rutee:
“Incidental note to David: Please do not take this ‘sexual marketplace’ metaphor seriously. It’s stupid, and mockworthy, because it equates things to supply and demand, which is a terribly reductive way to look at even quick one nighters.”
What typical feminist anti-intellectualism. Just say it’s stupid or patriarchal or sexist or misogynistic. That’s the quickest way to stifle debate. You’re either pitiful or overly sensitive. Suspend your fears of reductivism and realize that it’s not going to kill anyone to think in economic terms i.e. unlimited demand for limited resources, for a minute.
Haha, I find it hilarious that GL Piggy doubly proved Rutee’s point that this whole SMP idea is exclusively heterosexual but is presented as if it speaks for/about ALL men and women. Delightfully meta.
*rainbow fist bump for Rutee*
“You went through all of this shit talking and trying to rag on me because I assumed you knew what you were talking about. Has very little to do with science and more to do with you not knowing what you’re talking about. I have no reason not to assume that your ignorance filters over into other arenas as well. ”
You did not substantiate your fact claim. That means I’m correct to dismiss it.
“Throwing stones, glass houses, all of that.”
I like to think there’s a society of ninja that will execute PUAs and MRAs for a failure to meet the false equivalence quota, it’s much more entertaining than thinking you have slipshod thinking.
If you only got single facts wrong, I would not have said what I did. That’s not what you did. You completely confused the process. You thought that extraordinary claims with no evidence are equivalent to weak claims with weak evidence. You thought that people outside your idiot movement should and would take your ‘common knowledge’ as serious and correct. In fact, you seem to think ‘Common knowledge’ is sufficient evidence of ANYTHING. Those are indicative of much deeper flaws in your understanding than mere misremembering of facts. If what I did was get the date of the battle of trafalgar wrong, you spouted off about how history revolves around great people.
General point:
“studies of primate behavior, human DNA, and social behavior bear that out.”
Which studies, where?
Specific Point:
“[studies of] human DNA,”
If you mean the one I think you do, you’re a moron. That study checked Mitochondrial DNA, which is by and large PASSED DOWN BY MOTHERS. You don’t check mitochondrial DNA if you want to determine which gender had sex in the distant past. I don’t know how you would, actually, but I’m not trying to do it to prove men had all the sex in the past, because I don’t care. I don’t actually think it passed Peer Review at all.
“I think it is more along the lines of a 40-80 split”
Really?
” though the stats are limited in that the CDC doesn’t consider men who’ve had more than 3 sex partners. This artificially smooths out the distribution. ”
I just checked your blog. I don’t see any support in the CDC study for your claims. Let’s go through these line by line.
The top 50% of men aged 20-24 had 75.2% of the sex partners
The top 30% of men aged 20-24 had 63% of the sex partners
The top 20% of men aged 20-24 had 44% of the sex partners
The only way to approach this conclusion is to try to claim that each and every man who had a sexual partner had a completely discrete sexual partner. That is, that each of the 15+ women that 29.2% of men report having had sex with only ever had sex with them, and that no woman had sex with more than one dude, which is sort of mistaken if you go look at the numbers below. Your study says that 29% of men had 15 or more lifetime partners at the age of 24. It does not, and can not, say that 50% of men had sex with 75% of women, especially since the distribution of men and women who’ve had no sex or only one sex partner in their life is a lot smaller.
You also made some claims that are *BALD FACED LIES*.
“Another statistic, 1.2% of men over the age of 40 are virgins while only 0.3% of women in that age group have never had sex. This is a small number, but the findings fit the predicted distribution. ”
Page 29: Percentage of women age 44 who have had 0 sexual partners, 1.4%. Is this your level of scholarship?
Oh, and the number of men from same who had 0 same sex contact, 1.9%. So you got both parts of your claim wrong. That’s a difference, but hardly the difference you want it to be.
Fuck. 1.9% had 0 opposite sex contact. Stupid typos.
“What typical feminist anti-intellectualism. Just say it’s stupid or patriarchal or sexist or misogynistic. That’s the quickest way to stifle debate.”
The guy who can’t science or statistics is going to talk to me about anti-intellectualism? Projector Shields: Not as cool as deflector shields.
*Rainbow Fist Bumps Comrade Svilova*
Rutee:
I’ll circle back around to your other points later on, but the 1.2% and 0.3% statistic was from the National Center for Health Statistics, not the CDC. I cited the NCHS statistics in my post yesterday and then CDC in my post today since it had more detailed data.
I’ll ask you this question in the interim. What exactly are you denying here? Are you trying to say that men and women have equal choice in the sexual marketplace? That there aren’t haves and have-nots? And we haven’t even addressed that when women don’t have sex it is often because they choose not to have sex whereas it is more true of men that when they don’t have sex it is because they don’t have a willing partner. This isn’t meant to say that men deserve sex or whatever: they don’t. But it is meant to point out that the sexes are fundamentally different in terms of their biology which informs their sexual behaviors. Your turn.
But it is meant to point out that the sexes are fundamentally different in terms of their biology which informs their sexual behaviors.
I see xD This goes back to the “so where does Ami fit in? :D”
By David’s statement above about objectivity btw, maybe *I* have the most objective view on the “sexual marketplace”. xD Btw, that’s what Rutee is denying I think… not blah blah blah about the sexual marketplace but that it’s not a freaking sexual marketplace xD
I’m still infinitely amused by Piggy assuming that Rutee was a man xD If you thought she meant SHE was a Kinsey 6, then she’d be a lesbian wouldn’t she? xD Apparently he thought David was a gay man too before? xD (from what was said earlier) Next I’m gonna be told I’M a gay man also 😀
So my sexual behaviour is informed by biology hmmm…. 😀 So what IS my sexual behaviour? xD
“I’ll circle back around to your other points later on, but the 1.2% and 0.3% statistic was from the National Center for Health Statistics, not the CDC. I cited the NCHS statistics in my post yesterday and then CDC in my post today since it had more detailed data. ”
Fair enough, my mistake.
“I’ll ask you this question in the interim. What exactly are you denying here? Are you trying to say that men and women have equal choice in the sexual marketplace?”
For one, I’m denying that economic metaphors are remotely useful or good for dating, relationships, and sex. Economics is a shoddy enough science when it deals with discrete units that have objective measures. Attractiveness isn’t, because people can have massively different turnoffs based on their own experiences. For instance, I don’t care what you look like; your erasing of non-hetero people means I would never, ever consider dating you, even if you looked as beautiful as Orlando Bloom did when he was playing Legolas. I don’t consider you remotely attractive as a mate for it. But this is not such a powerful turn off for most women. market forces of supply and demand can only work in the most abstract, where all of a product is similar. Men and women aren’t that similar to each other.
“That there aren’t haves and have-nots? ”
No, that would be a truth claim. I said you haven’t produced convincing evidence of haves and have nots varying by gender in the direction you want. Your sources indicate that a majority of women and men have both had 1 sex partner in the last 12 months; Further, more women have only had one partner, and this is not made up for by the difference in men who’ve had 0 partners in the last year (15.5%: no sexual contact this last year. 49.3%: one sex partner, for men 20-24. 13.6%: no sexual contact this last year. 60.9%: One partner) For women 20-24). This by itself destroys any claim that a few men monopolize the majority of women.
Now, it is POSSIBLE that a minority of men have more heterosexual sexual activity on the lines of such an uneven split. But you can’t substantiate that with partner studies at all. Only having one sexual partner in the last 12 months could mean you only had sex once. It could also mean that you fucked almost every fucking night for an hour, keeping your poor roommate up (Not really angry guys, but *SERIOUSLY*, you’re lucky I’m a night owl). You may have had sex literally hundreds of times throughout the year. Similarly, maybe you only had sex with 14 different women once. There’s no way to know merely by asking about differences in partners.
“And we haven’t even addressed that when women don’t have sex it is often because they choose not to have sex whereas it is more true of men that when they don’t have sex it is because they don’t have a willing partner. ”
Based on….?
Do you not understand the substantiation of claims? Because that’s kind of critical.
“. But it is meant to point out that the sexes are fundamentally different in terms of their biology which informs their sexual behaviors. Your turn.”
WHAAAAAAAAAAAT!? You’re making claims about biological differences by looking at this shit!? What the fuck is wrong with you!? What next, a fitness study by examining attitudes? I’ll grant biology is by a wide margin my worst science, but you’re not going to make a study on biological differences by studying sociological data about a single culture, and especially not a single culture that isn’t equal in opportunity.
G.L.Piggy the data you talk on your blog is wrong because you believe that if a woman has sex with a guy that had a lots of sexual partners, she will refuse to have sex with anybody else. Which is impossible. In fact it’s the opposite, if a woman was tricked by a player to have sex, she will probably have sex only with non-player guys after that.
Furthermore you confuse the number of sex acts with the number of sexual partners. A guy that live with his girlfriend for one year will have sex with her 100 times and have only one sexual partner. On the other hand it’s very unlikely that if a guy has only one-night-stands he will manage to have sex with a 100 different women in one year.
I have no idea what’s going on here, but there is something I’d like to comment on.
“Are you trying to say that men and women have equal choice in the sexual marketplace?” -GLP
See, here’s the problem. When you are at a store, the power of choice means you can buy any item in the store, and receive it. The store is selling everything, it doesn’t matter to who.
In sex, choice does not mean being able to have sex with whomever you want. It can only mean choosing when you personally want to have sex, given a willing partner. This is why the market metaphor breaks down. If everyone has freedom of choice, then you will get people who can’t have sex with someone, because that person chooses not to have sex with them.
Trying to enforce who has sex with whom is not freedom of choice, it is the removal of choice. And if you focus on men being able to choose which woman they have sex with, it is the removal of choice for women, and therefore misogynistic.
*gives Kirby a prize* <3
Who’s trying to enforce sexual pairings? That would be regulation of the market. The market reflects the interaction between supply and demand. The demand for sex is constant. Women have, since the beginning of time, competed intrasexually to control the supply.
Men are not choosy about sex. They want to get it in. Women are selective, that’s biology. Men are choosey, however, about commitment, and the vast majority of men prefer a woman of low sexual experience for long-term mating.
No amount of fist pumping and snark here can change that.
Sorry for the delay.
No, Clarence, you don’t understand. According to CONSAD, accounting for all 14 factors that you ascribe to “women’s choices,” an “adjusted gender wage gap” remains, one “that is between 4.8 and 7.1 percent.” That’s exactly what I started from above. (In fact, my numbers were a little off, in your favor. I put the floor at 3 percent, rather than 5 percent, as as I should have.)
I was pointing out that even if CONSAD were completely right on its own terms, the comparatively minor levels of paycheck wage discrimination would still be a big deal, especially among those people who experienced the most of it.
Oh, and Rutee, fyi, my pronoun is “he.”
Science, right there.
The chart does not depict who’s having sex, it depicts the nature of female attraction in the Post Sex Rev era of unrestrained sexuality.
The guys at Hookingupsmart believes it depicts who’s having sex.
In fact, there is no evidence that female promiscuity is the norm. I estimate that approximately 20% of both sexes are sluts.
Therefore why are you obsessed by them ?