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.
Kendra: I left the SCA and faire out of the nerd categories, because they are very different sorts of culture. 1: There are a lot of women in them, and 2: the cultures have complete sets of interactional models; and lots of romantic relationships which go on in them.
I’ve never been all that active in the SCA (though I have lots of friends who are), but I’ve spent a lot of the last 25 years working them (it’s part of why I have that laundry list of skills).
crap… I’ve spent a lot of the past 25 years working faires (in Calif).
Susan, yes, a lot of the time I offer snark, because there is not much logic in the stuff I write about to rebut. When someone says we should stop talking about the history of women’s suffrage because the women who were unable to vote are all dead, what sort of argument is there to make beyond “history matters.”
In the case of your posts, there is also not much to respond to. You offer little more than repeated assertions without evidence and value judgements. With regard to several of your assertions I have actually offered several substantive criticisms, in my posts and in the comments here:
1) You provide no empirical support for your claims, and a quick look at some basic stats about human sexuality proves at least some of them wrong. You have no data on how attractiveness based on the magical 1-10 scale actually affects how much different people have sex. You have no evidence that about that in the present, and no evidence about that from the past, so you also have no evidence of how or why it changed or even if it did because of the sexual revolution. The evidence you have provided in this thread does not back up your claims.
2) You use terms from economics that you don’t actually understand. The term “equilibrium” does not mean what you think it means. In the “is she really going out with him” post I have explained how you have misunderstood and misused the concept.
3) As for your value judgements, what is there to say? I don’t think sluts are evil. And your attempts to prove that they bring about ECONOMIC STAGNATION111!!!!! with that earlier chart of yours were not altogether successful. As far as I remember your only real response to the various criticisms leveled against that was “it’s just common sense and providing charts with no empirical evidence is good enough for consulting work!”
You’re calling out David for not having original thoughts? Susan, everything you write -once you remove the pseudoscience, economic-y references, and silly charts- boils down to: “No man will buy the cow if he can get the milk for free.”
Wildly original, that. And the best part is, if you’re a woman who buys into it, your reward is being with a man who thinks of you as a cow. Happy day.
All snark aside, there’s nothing remotely original about telling a bunch of 20 year old girls that the only things they have of value to a man are their looks and their chastity.
Rutee:
Economics attempts to explain the consequences of unlimited wants versus limited resources. This applies to money, land, capital, labor. This also applies to sexual and domestic relationships. I’d argue that most people wouldn’t mind having half a dozen people at their beck and call for sexual relationships whenever they want them, long walks whenever they want them, phone calls, child rearing, etc, with the caveat that those half dozen people were completely kosher with the idea of sharing one partner.
The point is that an economic framework can help explain why people make the partner choices that they make. Time, goals, budgets, offspring potential, status, and flat-out physical attraction are all things that must be balanced in looking for the right person to spend time with.
Further, peer-reviewed journals accept the economic concept behind the SMP.
Here’s a paper from Personality and Social Psychology Review which is a top-ranked peer-reviewed journal.
http://www.csom.umn.edu/Assets/71503.pdf
As Baumeister states in that paper, Social Exchange Theory posits the role of economic decision-making in all sorts of social relationships. It should hold that social exchange theory could also apply to the use of sex as a tool to gain value for a woman. Baumeister begins from the premise that female sexuality is valuable (thus value-statements about virginity etc.) and a nearly one-way vector in the prostitution market. Nobel prize winning economist Gary Becker did a lot of work discussing marginal cost versus marginal benefit relationship in the “marriage market”.
So you are out of step if you think that applying economic principles to the sexual realm – thereby discussing the “SMP” – is wholly junk.
David chose to discuss Walsh’s post which was only about the hetero SMP. I didn’t erase anyone; I just said that a straight person – especially a straight man – might have insight into this which you may not. I’m not trying to offend gay people here. I’ve had discussions with gay people I know about the “gay SMP”, and it was all stuff that I found interesting, but I was a passive listener and questioner. I assumed they knew more about what was going on than I did.
You’d have to clear this up for me. First, men and women aren’t that similar? At least you’re acknowledging sex differences. And I’m not sure I understand the way you’re looking at the SMP. A grocery store is a gigantic market full of different types of goods – different types of food versus household items, magazines, toiletries, etc – fighting for position in a given person’s budget.
The CDC data showed that (unsurprisingly) sexual activity is skewed to a certain degree. There can be no qualification that the skew is “high” or “low” or “just right”. There are haves and have-nots; the question is is it greater now than it would have been if monogamy was more in fashion. I think it goes without saying that it would. Of course, my limited analysis doesn’t prove that or anything nor did I claim that it did. But that skew mixed with statistics which show a mismatch between the median number of sex partners for men and women (I’ve seen 8 versus 5, 5 versus 3, and 8 versus 3 – not sure which is correct) proves – insofar as those statistics are correct – that more women are screwing above their so-called station.
Which leads to…
Dramatic much? Can you really not entertain the notion that gender differences might inform social outcomes? I mean, a lot of people debate this topic rationally and nobody has disproven either side. I don’t even know that this can be wholly proved or disproved. The social/biological constructionism debate has been raging for a long while now so it would be pointless for me to rehash it here; I assume you’ve been through them before and know what both sides offer.
This also applies to sexual and domestic relationships. I’d argue that most people wouldn’t mind having half a dozen people at their beck and call for sexual relationships whenever they want them, long walks whenever they want them, phone calls, child rearing, etc, with the caveat that those half dozen people were completely kosher with the idea of sharing one partner.
The point is that an economic framework can help explain why people make the partner choices that they make. Time, goals, budgets, offspring potential, status, and flat-out physical attraction are all things that must be balanced in looking for the right person to spend time with.
You realize your whole analogy of vaginas as a scarce resource breaks down when it turns out vaginas generally come attached to a think with personhood and agency right? Like the only way this framework remotely works is if you’re willing to come out and say you think women are objects, not people.
NWO (you ignorant twit): Well years later these women have slept with ten or a dozen different guys. Nobody is gonna buy a car thats had a dozen users, it’s a used piece of crap with a world of issues. Like the saying goes, if the kitten didn’t want me I don’t want the cat.
It is to laugh. The vast majority of my lovers have all had more than a dozen lovers before me.
I was more than happy to play with them and love them, and live with them.
Then again, I guess, since you think it’s a minority of men getting laid, that I must be one of the lucky few.
If so… well it’s not like I’m a rock star, sports figure, rich, etc. So either I’m astonishingly good looking, or women aren’t as you think.
I know which of those I think to be the more likely.
Clarence: Again with the, “I’ve spent so much time on this” (and on the internet too… because we know that internet time is the best time; not like someone who goes out and gets paid to it).
A little truism, one of Rostler’s Rules (not that I expect you to know, nor even respect the late Bill Rotsler, but hey, he said it, and I’m quoting it, so I’ll credit him).
Quantity of effort does not equal quality of product
From a more tactical standpoint, quoting yourself as an authority is only useful if either you are known as one, or you can show an actual expertise.
Repeating that the same report being disputed is the best thing going, and not actually providing more supporting evidence isn’t the way to do either of those.
Also, as a tactical point, being rude; and intentionally so, isn’t going to cause the tight calls (on things like sources you attempt to refute with) from being decided in your favor.
It may be all you want to do is make a statement, and be able to go to some other site and use this little interaction to boost your cred with people you want to have respect you, but if what you want is to actually persuade people in the places you go to make these disputations, this isn’t the best line of attack.
NWO: Didja ever maybe think ya get paid what you’re worth?
Could this be why you have to work so much for your, “miserable” wage?
G.I. Piggy: Susan Walsh laid out a rudimentary model for what most people agree is true of the modern sexual marketplace.
[citation needed]
Sharculese:
Social exchange models reduce everyone to objects of some form. We trade money for goods and services, we trade brawn and brains for goods and services, why wouldn’t women trade off one asset that benefits them over the other half of the population?
Percunium:
That statement is so widely understood that I think the burden is on you to disprove it.
Economics attempts to explain the consequences of unlimited wants versus limited resources.
And what makes you believe that female sexuality is much more limited than male sexuality ? According to “The complete guide to mental health for women” by Lauren Slater and Jessica Henderson Daniel”, the largest number of recorded orgasms for a woman in one hour is 134, for a man it’s 17. Even if a woman has sex with what you call “an Alpha male”, what prevent her to have sex with other guys ? You have this ridiculous idea that all women are frigid and all men are studs.
I just feel sorry for women like Susan. I had a boyfriend who treated me like shit, then I slutted around happily for awhile, and my current boyfriend could not give a fuck how many people I have had sex with. I don’t think he even knows, why is it relevant o_O You think women are cars and they get ‘used up’, fine, you hate women. But anyone with a brain does not have the same priorities as you.
My boyfriend has slept with 10 people, I have slept with 7, we are both in our early 20s and we have not looked twice at anyone else since we met. We love each other and I don’t ever want to be with anyone else. And one of the reasons I love him is that he doesn’t think my vag is a fucking commodity.
“That statement is so widely understood that I think the burden is on you to disprove it.”
One million frenchmen? Really? No, sorry, making a positive fact claim (two, in fact), makes the burden of proof on you. If it’s so widely understood, why is the whole SMP so ‘messed up’, at least as far as Susan and your understanding of it goes?
“Social exchange models reduce everyone to objects of some form. We trade money for goods and services, we trade brawn and brains for goods and services, why wouldn’t women trade off one asset that benefits them over the other half of the population?”
NMMNG has mostly covered this, but sex is not a trade of services. When women have sex, they get sex, too! When we trade brains and brawn and get money in return, that is the trade. One does not trade brawn and then get money and brawn in return (or if you do it’s at the cost of lower money, a la barter). If a woman gives sex, assuming it is good sex, she gets sex in return.
because, as has been pointed out to you many times, human relationships involve people liking other people. that tricky agency thing you don’t like. i know that your sexual marketplace has no room for that concept, but it’s a reality and you don’t get to magic it out because it makes you uncomfortable.
i have no problem with the idea that economic ideas might help describe human sexual relations, but a model that doesn’t account for individual taste in partners is a piss poor model and that’s all there is to it.
That statement is so widely understood that I think the burden is on you to disprove it.
yeeeeaaah, no. the burden is always on the person making the positive claim. baldly asserting that it’s common knowledge in the circles you run in doesn’t absolve you from backing up your claims.
“Percunium:
That statement is so widely understood that I think the burden is on you to disprove it.”
Ahahaha the burden of disproof! You couldn’t make this shit up.
If something is true you should be able to PROVE it, Piggy. Whether the statement is ‘widely understood’ or not.
And now comes this interesting article by Robert Frank at the New York Times discussing the baby boom’s effects on loosening sexual ties and the attendant decrease in the “price” of sex for men. Very interesting read showing yet another application of economic principles to the SMP.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/07/business/economy/marriage-and-the-law-of-supply-and-demand.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss
Prove there is no dragon living under my bed!
Ah, yes. the New York Times, widely known as the best of peer-reviewed publications!
GL Piggy, I can also devise a system whereby gnomes living in our heads make all the decisions related to who to have sex with. I can make it conform to all the available data quite easily. Does that make it right?
As to your actual article above, the problem with that is that it is, as stated in the article, the positing of a theory. That does not make it right. It is also missing quite a large bit of data. Which is somewhat permissible. However, being a good paper, it does make testable claims. Which don’t stand up. Example: sexual strategies theory has been dealt quite a sound blow recently:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022351411600216
“Overall findings suggest that the large gender differences Clark and Hatfield observed in acceptance of the casual sex offer may have more to do with perceived personality characteristics of the female versus male proposers than with gender differences among Clark and Hatfield’s participants and that sexual pleasure figures largely in women’s and men’s decision making about casual sex.”
Emphasis mine.
“… why wouldn’t women trade off one asset that benefits them over the other half of the population?”
Jesus, man. Do you actually tell your girlfriend that you think the best thing about her is her pussy?
“why wouldn’t women trade off one asset that benefits them over the other half of the population?”
Hey, you know, men have one thing that women don’t have! It’s a penis. Is that just worthless in comparison to a vagina? Huh, never figured you for a man-hater, GL.
hey nobby, since it’s on topic, kind of, and you seem to know what you’re talking about, i was wondering if you had any thoughts on joan roughgarden. i recently picked up evolution’s rainbow on a whim, and although her argument as a whole seems plausible, it also feels like she stretches it too far at points.
“Economics attempts to explain the consequences of unlimited wants versus limited resources. This applies to money, land, capital, labor.”
Aware of what the voodoo tries to do. It turns into pseudoscientific religion in most cases, worshipping the Power of the Market and hailing the rationality of both it, and the actors within it. I recognize that Economics is not the first field to use “Rational People” as its foundational myth, and that in particular, the Law does as well, but Economics is the field that makes actual truth claims about reality that could be tested.
“This also applies to sexual and domestic relationships.”
[Citation Needed]
“I’d argue that most people wouldn’t mind having half a dozen people at their beck and call for sexual relationships whenever they want them, long walks whenever they want them, phone calls, child rearing, etc, with the caveat that those half dozen people were completely kosher with the idea of sharing one partner.”
You’d argue this based on? I mean, it might be true, I don’t really care, but it isn’t substantiated by saying you’d argue it.
“The CDC data showed that (unsurprisingly) sexual activity is skewed to a certain degree. There can be no qualification that the skew is “high” or “low” or “just right”. ”
Ah, I see, no wonder you come to the conclusions you do, you’re an idiot. A study about sexual activity focuses on, believe it or not, SEXUAL ACTIVITY AND ITS OCCURENCE RATE; the CDC data [b]ONLY[/b] discusses sexual partner counts and the percentage of people who have performed a particular sex act. That is [b]NOT[/b] actually a stand in for the amount of sexual activity; As I said, if a married couple has only had sex with each other, and they do it EVERY DAY, that’s 1 partner, and 365 sex acts. If someone has 15 partners in a year, and only screws each once, that’s 15 partners and 15 sex acts. It doesn’t say you’re wrong, but it doesn’t substantiate your claim either. You haven’t provided evidence for the claim that sexual activity is skewed to the small minority of men.
And really, it doesn’t provide evidence that men suffer in dating unless WOMEN don’t share this status as well, but we’re focusing on the initial premise first. If you can’t even substantiate it, I see no reason its conclusions should be bothered with.
“Of course, my limited analysis doesn’t prove that or anything nor did I claim that it did. But that skew mixed with statistics which show a mismatch between the median number of sex partners for men and women (I’ve seen 8 versus 5, 5 versus 3, and 8 versus 3 – not sure which is correct) proves – insofar as those statistics are correct – that more women are screwing above their so-called station. ”
Wait, men having more sex partners over their lifetime proves that more women fuck above their station? Explain the logic underlying that conclusion, as well as the data supporting it. It means more men have fucked different people, nothing more and nothing less.
“Dramatic much? Can you really not entertain the notion that gender differences might inform social outcomes? ”
Funnily enough, whining about how this can be ‘debated rationally’ isn’t a substantiation of your claim.
“Further, peer-reviewed journals accept the economic concept behind the SMP.
Here’s a paper from Personality and Social Psychology Review which is a top-ranked peer-reviewed journal.
http://www.csom.umn.edu/Assets/71503.pdf”
It doesn’t have data. It’s evo psych, so I’m not surprised by this like I would be for real science.
Also, I notice that this is a journal specifically of Evopsych, peer reviewed only by other evopsychologists. You know what other circle of cranks has a worthless journal only reviewed by other members of their crankitude? Astrobiology.
“So you are out of step if you think that applying economic principles to the sexual realm – thereby discussing the “SMP” – is wholly junk. ”
Because you can find a dude in a non-journal with no data who does it? No, that’s not how it works. Especially since the dude doesn’t seem credible; he’s not well-cited, which means people outside his junk field can’t actually find anything useful.
“You’d have to clear this up for me. First, men and women aren’t that similar? At least you’re acknowledging sex differences.”
Oh my god. When you buy 1000 kg of Iron and 200kg of crude petroleum, you’re pretty much buying the same thing from whoever, there’s no way to make them different. There might be 100 dudes and 100 women available and looking for sex, but that doesn’t make those people similar. You can’t actually talk about supply and demand if there’s not really a discrete supply of similar things.
“And I’m not sure I understand the way you’re looking at the SMP. A grocery store is a gigantic market full of different types of goods – different types of food versus household items, magazines, toiletries, etc – fighting for position in a given person’s budget. ”
But there’s a supply of cabbage, a supply of toilet paper…
There’s not a supply of Rutee. There’s just me. And I’m not really that similar to other women, even in more narrow subsets. Nor are you that similar to other men, even in more narrow subsets. You can’t talk about supply and demand if there’s no supply to speak of in the first place.
The fact that Piggy should back up his assertions is widely understood.