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.
Oh, cute, another idiot who thinks the wage gap is a myth. Would that I had the time to sort through your nonsense, but I’m on call.
@Clarence:
“The Farrell thing is old, is a distraction, is an adhom (whatever he thinks of incest has nothing at all to do with whatever he said in say his book about the wage gap), and really isn’t all that bad anyway.”
It is old (to people under 30), it is not a distraction (it was a response to FactFinder), and it is not an adhom (David was explaining why he puts Farrell in his boobroll). And yeah, it really is kinda bad. You have a guy who, at the time, claimed that although most daughters in a father-daughter relationship have a negative experience of the incest, the fathers have the opposite view; this could only mean that either men “view the relationship differently” (how innocent they are), or the women are lying.
Oh, and as to your defense of your idiot brigade and her ‘sexual politics’ claims…. yeah, yeah, and you’ve got a bridge in scotland that’d be a great deal I’m sure. Put it with the mortgage securities. And learn what hateful actually means, it’s not pointing out problematic speech.
Rutee:
http://www.consad.com/content/reports/Gender%20Wage%20Gap%20Final%20Report.pdf
I’ve been on the internet researching this stuff since 1997. I think you’ve decide to take on more than you can chew.
If you want to debate it, meet me at a more neutral ground like NSWATM.
Till then, chew on Consad. I doubt you can handle it without choking.
I’ve been thinking…and if Walsh is against the system that gets middling attractive women the most laid, does that mean she sees herself as a 10 or as a very low number? Or does she sacrifice hot man sex out of solidarity for the hotter and uglier?
Oh no. 1997. You old timer, you.
Protip:If we didn’t control for hours, we wouldn’t get very far.
Try the 10 seconds on google scholar to find studies that try to control for extra factors like that, they really fuck with a serious study on a *PAY* gap when that’s all you’re looking for, and you’ll find those gaps continue. REally, if we wanted to take the easy way out of not controlling for factors like that, it’d be a lot easier to just point out that the overwhelming majority of CEOs and other mega-wealthy positions are held by men. Given the distribution of wealth in the USA, that would create a pay gap substantially larger than the one CONSAD is trying to explain away. But no, we know how to control for factors. You keep shining on, you grizzled veteran you.
Now, differences in those other factors are still important. There’s not just a pay gap; there’s promotion and hiring gaps, and there might be one for hours worked as well. But they’re not the same as a pay gap.
Rutee:
Yawn.
One out of every..1000.. 10000 men is a CEO? CEO being a position in a medium or large company with a fairly defined role. Heck even if you count self employed sole proprietorships I doubt more than one in 100 men could be considered a “CEO”.
The essence of the pay gap is supposed to be discrimination based on sex. But the more factors you analyze, the less room there is for sexism, which undercuts the argument entirely. Pretty easy really. The “pay gap” is a myth. You want to help what IS there?
More family friendly policies. You can also try to get females as a group to change their behavior. Good luck with that.
You are boring me. I suppose you’ll link me to the Amptoons post on CONSAD next.
@ Clarence; Consider it chewed up and spit out…
http://www.amptoons.com/blog/2010/11/26/how-the-consad-report-on-the-wage-gap-masks-sexism-instead-of-measuring-it/
Poor studies are poorly done.
Perhaps you shouldn’t use logical fallacies either.
“One out of every..1000.. 10000 men is a CEO? CEO being a position in a medium or large company with a fairly defined role. Heck even if you count self employed sole proprietorships I doubt more than one in 100 men could be considered a “CEO”.
The essence of the pay gap is supposed to be discrimination based on sex. But the more factors you analyze, the less room there is for sexism, which undercuts the argument entirely. Pretty easy really. The “pay gap” is a myth. You want to help what IS there?”
Oh, so you’ve been on the internet since 1997 and this is the first you’ve heard of the distribution of wealth within the US? I know it’s a big place and all but I find it a little hard to believe you’ve managed to avoid it for that long with all those arguments you must have been in and all that research you did.
Also, that’s beautiful. “If you control for those factors you leave less room for sexism!” Well, you do when you actually are left with an equal distribution of pay. There’s a problem there…
Facts are so boring. Why do you respond with tedious critiques of the methodology when Clarence has skimmed over a 95 page report that glosses over things like work samples, hours worked, glass ceilings, etc..
Let’s not even get to the point that in Clarences lengthy 14 years of in depths study of wage gap he’s found 1 study to support his sexist claim while Ampersand’s debunking of it is supported by nine listed:
Oh, the burden of being debunked so thoroughly is so boring!
Yeah, I’ve lived in “coastal cities” all of my life and Walsh’s post is pure, unmitigated bullshit. I also went to college, lived on campus, and saw quite clearly that even in the dreaded “hook up” culture, young adults managed to base their relationships on something other than, “who is the hottest person I can nail”.
Adhering to a wildly subjective 1-10 ranking system and having a religious belief in the concept of Sexual Market Value may pass for rigorous study and “dissection” in some circles. Most of us, however, don’t consider citing some guy who can’t even recognize that Betty Draper is a fictional character and cherry-picking Cosmo quizzes to be a valid form of research.
“Bring it, hon.”
Aww, who’s an adorable little bigot? You are! Come here and let me pinch your cheeks, cuddlebum! Aren’t you just a little sweetie!
cynikal:
I’ll give you two clues:
A. It’s a meta-analysis
B. Ballgame (in the comments section which I was reading when this was first posted on ALAS ..old hand at this stuff, see?) completely obliterates Amp by pointing out that ALL THOSE STUDIES were already included in CONSAD. Hee hee. THIS is the level of analysis on this site?
I’m literally laughing so hard I’m crying.
See, I can do snark and sarcasm too.
Nobin:
I actually agree with you. This article on HUS actually proves nothing and the only reason I like it is because I partly agree with it, and I think the chart that David linked to is hilarious. I’ve made it the background to my computer screen. Susan’s site is a disorganized mess. She actually has read and dissected many studies and formed (and even changed her mind) her opinions over a few years of being on the net. So she sort of assumes her regular readers will take her word, but honestly that won’t convince anyone who doesn’t hang around HUS. Like I said, we have our disagreements, I’m wary of “slut shaming” for instance, and I know that the situation in some colleges for instance, doesn’t totally match the situation in others. Still for the “hook up culture” in larger campuses I think this is accurate. When one is not interested in relationships but just sex and the other partner wants to trade sex for the HOPE of a relationship, you get lots of this stuff.
I’m not going to defend this post because it doesn’t even try to defend itself.
I’ve been on the internet since 1997 too! =D
But back then I mostly just messed around with neopets and this site that did gifs of mice. I can’t remember what it was called, but I was super into it! Also, rpgs. I played a lot of rpgs.
And then a few years after that I pretended to be a 20 year old woman in chat rooms to try and get men to cyber with me. (It, uh, worked.)
What? Was that a messed up thing for a 10 year old to be doing? *blinkblink*
Also, the thing that drives me nuts about that chart is the fact that, apparently, uggos won’t have sex with other uggos anymore. What’s up with that? THAT MAKES NO SENSE!
And all of the ladies on MBZ are 10’s to me! =D
(Also, please note that I am apparently back after being gone FOREVER.)
Sarah:
Yeah. But I’ll cop to having a 21 year old female friend whom I met 8 years ago online. She pretended to be 20. Since I didn’t talk on the phone with her for nearly 2 years (boyfriend, she said and I don’t mess with girls with boyfriends in fact it was a parental issue, she had no celly). So when she was 15 and we started talking on the phone and she said she dumped the boyfriend and I thought she was 22, we cybered. She didn’t come clean until early last year. Sent me some of her pics through the mail. She had me believing she was this whole other person until then. Feel free to mock. Perhaps I should have required a picture of ID, but I’m sure she could fake that too.
cynickal:
Do you want to back up your words with cut and paste? I’m fully willing to back up mine. Heck, I’ll even leave a link. I double triple dog dare you. Why? Because I think you are dishonest, and dishonesty never stands up when exposed. In fact, I’m going to go farther and accuse you of intellectual dishonesty. I’m fully prepared to prove it here if David lets me or NSWATM if he does not.
It has not been a pleasure getting to know you.
CAPT Bathrobe, 8/4 @”I think there’s some good old fashioned Oedipal stuff going on here, since the older the vagina, the more like mommy’s it is, supposedly. I think that may account for the popularity for the shaved trend in porn, which is something that baffles me, personally.”
I personally think it’s got more to do with turning chyx into interchangeable human fleshlights, free of odors or secretions or other markers of humanness. Don’t worry about getting them preggers or STDs, just shlonk ’em and rinse ’em out for later.
You agree that the post is bullshit but you like it because you partly agree with it? And you’ve seen some examples of people who behaved this way so Walsh, who is saying that this is the way things are as opposed to how some people behave, is sort of right but not really?
Um… okay.
Well, carry on with your assertions about the wage gap, I suppose. This should continue to be very entertaining.
Oh, oh. On used up vaginas. I have been fisted before. (And hope to be again!) And generally sexed up very much. And people always comment on how strong my vaginal muscles are. Apparently I can clamp down so hard it hurts. CLEARLY I AM BEING USED UP!
Sarah: But, but… oxytocin! ECONOMIC STAGNATION!
RE the wage gap thing:
I have found something interesting. You know how when people say the wage gap doesn’t exist, they mean that men take up all the high paying jobs and women all the low, and that if you balanced for hours worked and type of job everything is even?
http://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2011/ted_20110216_data.htm
Apparently, over different fields of work, construction was the most equitable between men and women, with the income of women at 92% of men. So much for the most manly of jobs proving how men take all the dangerous jobs, and therefore deserve the most pay.
But yeah, it still isn’t clear how factors like hours are taken into account. But according to the Census Department, after looking at countless studies on the wage gap between genders, and after controlling for hours and type of job and value and so forth, there is still a consistent gap that remains unexplained.
So we have two things that contribute. One is that unaccountable gap that represents pay bias. It’s not clear, after doing research, exactly how much of a gap that particular bias creates.
But we’re still left with women earning less money than men overall (not factoring out hours and jobs and so forth). In a truly equal society, even this statistic would be balanced. It encompasses hiring bias, pay bias, field bias (men and women mainly working in different fields), and so on. And while not every factor can be linked to sexism, there is still a prevalent view in our culture that men and women are fundamentally different beings, that women must take certain jobs while men must take others. It’s probably wide-spread enough that women choose to go into fields through this bias.
I’m sure others will have more luck finding the portion of the gap directly attributable to per-hour pay bias, but even the raw stats of income are representative of a major problem in our society, one that cannot be addressed simply by enforcing rules on industry. It is a problem rooted in the fundamental view of the nature of men and women, and this is the problem that feminism is trying to fix.
kirbywarp:
To this day the CONSAD report remains the most comprehensive on this subject and really, until feminists can actually critique it, it remains the final word. It was commissoned by the government too. And the final word is that that
A. There is no significant gap between group “woman” and group “man” when over a dozen factors that deal with total compensation and pay are taken into account.
B. The small amount of the gap that remains may or may not be due to sexism. In short, there’s no evidence for substantial sexism in the workplace.
Nobin:
Since you seem intelligent, why don’t you do me a solid and read and attempt to rebut CONSAD? Walsh’s current post is based on her totally unbacked opinions. That I know she has reasons for some of them doesn’t mean that this post is worthy of anything but mocking. Well, that and for the cute and funny chart. So why not challenge yourself?