Manosphere dudes – MRAs, MGTOWers, PUAs and whatever other acronyms they will eventually invent – love to tell themselves little “just so” stories about women. One of their favorite stories is the story of the Bad Boy Cock Carousel.
The gist of it: Women in their twenties are at the height of their physical beauty. So they act like entitled bitches, sleeping with every Bad Boy and Alpha Asshole there is and ignoring the humble, honest, hardworking “nice guy” betas silently pining for them.
But once these mean girls hit the age of 27 or so, they suddenly become ugly monsters, and the bad boys stop returning their calls. So then the evil ladies try to glom on to the nearest beta male in an attempt to marry him and steal all of his money.
But the beta males don’t want none of that used-up pussy, and so they Go Their Own Way and everyone ends up forever alone. Or the guys learn “game” and start banging the hotties. Or they just go back to posting sammich jokes on Reddit. I think these are all supposed to be happy endings, because at least the evil bitches get their comeuppance.
Recently, someone posted a n especially creepy version of this Manosphere fairy tale in the comments here; it turned out to have been cut and pasted from a comment on Roissy/Heartiste’s “game” blog by a guy who calls himself PhillyBoy81. It’s long; I trimmed it a little for space.
“[A]lpha males” are doing all the rest of us a favor in the long run. They operate very much like short sellers in the dating market, exposing fraud and helping to discover the true prices of commodities (women).
Yep, we’re on the express train to Doucheytown.
Let’s take a 21-year old chick who’s between a 7/8 (cute to pretty. … She can pretty much get sex whenever she wants it and with whomever she wants to have it with. And that is ultimately her downfall.
Young women (and some older ones) have an overinflated sense of the value of their vaginas. I mean, they have Wharton MBAs paying for exotic trips and they’re drinking Cosmos in the VIP with the Wizards.
Apparently this is just how women in their early twenties live. Who knew?
Since they are able to get such easy access to “alpha” dick, it follows logically that they should also have access to “alpha” wealth, marriage, and the lifestyle that accompanies all of that, right?
Wrong. See, when women gain this enormous sense of pussy power, they swing for the fences. … So, the cute guy with a 3.8 GPA, but no car? Nope, not good enough. The nice-looking pre-med student? “Nah, I’ll just get back to him later. I heard Jude Law’s hotter brother is transferring here this semester.”
This had me worried for a second, but I looked it up: Jude Law does not have a “hotter brother,” or indeed a brother at all, which is good news for all straight men of equal or lesser hotness than Jude Law.
Anyway, back to the evil women:
They invariably end up overplaying their hand. They chase these players looking to get a ring, and then that ring never comes. So now they’re 27. It’s a good thing she kept that pre-med Johns Hopkins student in her back pocket just in case things didn’t work out with the player, right?
Wrong again. In a vacuum, women would have their way. Men beg for sex. Women decide whether to give it to them (and for most guys, they will not give it to you). But luckily, we don’t live in a vacuum. We live in the real world with social constraints, and there are two that work distinctly to a man’s advantage: reputation and age. …
Ladies don’t think … we won’t remember your bitchiness. And don’t think we won’t remember those guys who you ran behind like a cum bucket.
Hmm. I’m pretty sure the only place buckets are gifted with mobility is in old Disney cartoons.
We remember. And we punish.
When a man sleeps with 100 chicks, he’s a stud. When a woman sleeps with JUST ONE guy, that eliminates you as wifey material to ALL of his friends. …
Apparently penises have a sort of reverse-Midas Touch thing going on: every woman who touches one turns into a filthy, used-up slut.
The height of a woman’s value, in terms of her value as a long term partner, is around the age of 27. That is the praecipice. The older she gets, the more her singlehood gets scrutinized by men. Why the hell is she still single? Who’s cock has she been sucking all these years?
Clearly that is the first question every straight man should ask himself whenever he sees a single woman older than the age of 27. (Just make sure you don’t actually ask this question out loud; it doesn’t go over well.)
[L]et’s face it, what virile, successful bachelor wants to entertain a 29 or 30 year old as wifey potential. She’s going to want to become a baby factory right away and rip away the last vestiges of your freedom. I don’t think so. It’s now my time to swing for the fences and bang some of these 21 year olds that I couldn’t bang in college.
Hello creepy older dude lurking in the shadows at the frat party!
In conclusion, a woman’s value is really defined by the type of man who puts a ring on her finger, not the type of guy who will fuck her. It takes a lot of women a long time to understand this, and thus, they overplay their hand. If it wasn’t for the players dogging them out, these women would not get a sense of their true value and start to seek out men who fit within their price range.
It’s all about market equilibrium, yo! SCIENCE!
So that’s the story. It’s a stupid story. It’s not a true story. But it’s the story that manosphere dudes, like young children, want to hear over and over and over.
But I haven’t even gotten to the best part. Our pal MarkyMark, an excitable and somewhat addled Man Going His Own Way, reposted PhillyBoy81’s comment on his blog. In the comments there (as Man Boobz commenter Wetherby pointed out) we find this little gem:
A man is not being respected if the woman he is with has spent her youth, beauty and fertility on someone else.
Yep, that’s right. I’m just going to repeat that, because, wow.
A man is not being respected if the woman he is with has spent her youth, beauty and fertility on someone else.
All women older than 27 or so who date or marry men are disrespecting these men because … they are older than 27. Apparently women age out of spite. Maturation is misandry!
The writer of this article obviously has some issues (I couldn’t even understand some of what he was saying, for one), but there’s a grain of truth there. Why would I, as a self-respecting man, want to be with a woman who didn’t think I was good enough for dating or casual sex before, but now that her looks and “dating value” are fading is willing to settle for me?
That’s because the studies are almost certainly measuring different quantities, as Dracula explained for instance. (What an idiot.)
Broseidon: Well, why would ANYONE want to be anyone else’s second choice or to think that they’re being settled for?
The main problem here is that the writer’s perception of the world is narrow and binary in the extreme. According to him, attractive young women are mean and “bitchy” and reject young men, only to return to them when their looks magically “fade” at the pivotal age of 27. Furthermore, it’s only women’s “dating value” that relies on youth and beauty, and women have no interest in their own careers or achieving anything in their life apart from a man and a family. The message seems to be: Women are evil and self-serving and use men for their own ends.
With a winning argument like that, I’m sure you’re a real hit with all your lady friends! Are you in training to become like the litigious douchebag mentioned in Wetherby’s post upthread?
(Sometimes I feel glad to be over the hill — I am guaranteed not to be of any interest whatsoever to the superficial types.)
“Broseidon: Well, why would ANYONE want to be anyone else’s second choice or to think that they’re being settled for?”
True enough. Of course it’s dumb to make generalizations about all women, but I’m sure some of them do take advantage of their looks to date the hot ‘alpha’ guys until they get old enough that the alphas, being just as superficial, don’t want them anymore, so they settle for some poor sap whom they’d never have given the time of day to before, who will worship the ground she walks on, while she’s still dreaming of the alpha(s). I personally wouldn’t want someone like that.
Xanthe: you sound like a real catch yourself. Maybe the article hit a little too close to home? 😉
Again: This whole ‘alpha’ thing is a ridiculous simplification of human society. Reality doesn’t work this way
Oh what a sweetie you are, Bru, trying to play the “have I hit a nerve?” line. Fortunately I am neither in the dating scene, nor am I being fucked by a man, so by the logic of the article it’s a win all round, amirite?
On the other hand, both the article and your comments derived from the same mediocre view of the world (your supposed “grain of truth”) could be a load of horse shit. Who’s to say?
If a specific woman acts like that, turning you down at one point and later comes along and is like “Hey, how about now?”, then sure, I can get why you wouldn’t be interested. But that’s a far cry from “hey hot ladies dating people who aren’t me, you’re doing it maliciously”.
Xanthe: So far you haven’t really offered a refutation to anything, just snideness and cheap shots and “you’re wrong because I say so”, so who’s more full of horseshit here?
Daphne B.: I know, that’s why I said it’s wrong to generalize.
Daphne B’s right. At any rate, Broseidon, from what you’re saying you clearly wouldn’t worship the ground such a woman walked on, so what’s the problem?
If we’re talking about personal experience I know plenty of women who have been put on the back-burner and have been treated as someone else’s back-up plan. People reject other people and settle into relationships all the time, but this kind of behaviour is not restricted to young, attractive heterosexual women.
“Daphne B’s right. At any rate, Broseidon, from what you’re saying you clearly wouldn’t worship the ground such a woman walked on, so what’s the problem? ”
I don’t have a problem, I was just commenting on the situation because it does happen. And you’re right, all kinds of people do this, the article’s author just happened to focus on young hetero women because presumably they are the ones he’s interested in.
thesecond: You do realize that women still age if they’re married, right?
Broseidon: Okay, I’m sure that happens, but I’m pretty sure it’s about as common as polyamory as a relationship structure.
What refutation is needed to the odious notion that a man with “prior” experience suffers no penalty whereas a “pre-loved” woman (ha) is irredeemably soiled and devalued? Mocking and derision is enough.
Maybe those ideas are the rules you’re playing under. Others seem to be playing to different, more rewarding rules…
I’ve wondered the same thing. My fiance looks like a younger Tevye. He’s a digital archivist, teaches himself programming languages in his free time, and collects all sorts of books (from sci-fi to Judaica to classic literature to plays and physics textbooks).
Is he an alpha? Is he a beta that’s been suckered by some used up husk of a woman? Does it matter that I never actually “strung him along” while screwing other guys? (I met him in March 2009 and we were engaged at 1 a.m. on New Year’s. I wasn’t “friends” with him while running around with other people and letting “wait in the wings.”)
Or, maybe, attraction is far too individualized and idiosyncratic to fit into a stupid, superficial little system. It’s just a way to organize one’s sour grapes, really.
Broseidon: I’d argue that the article’s author focuses on young hetero women because he subscribes to a very particular view of the world in which all other women are invisible or irrelevant. Furthermore, he generalizes about the behaviour and nature of these women, suggesting that:
a) All good-looking women are intoxicated by the “power” their looks give them, and therefore treat men badly.
b) All of these women, once they’ve had their fun with “alpha men” (I’ve never seen a convincing definition of this term, by the way) are only really interested in bagging some poor hapless guy so that they can have a family and be financially provided for.
If you simply say “I can see his point, I wouldn’t want to be someone’s second choice either” (or words to that effect), then you ignore a whole host of problems and ideological assumptions, including:
– How “powerful” are these women really if their looks (and therefore their “value”) are deemed to fade at 27? How powerful are they if their value as human beings is contingent soley on their looks and their sexual history?
– Not all conventionally attractive young women behave in this way, but if some of them do, could it in part precisely be because society places such a lot of importance on female youth and beauty specifically?
– The article’s writer actually mentions the double standard (e.g. a man can sleep with a 100 women and be a stud, a woman sleeps with ONE man and is instantly “ruined” for all of his friends) but doesn’t problematize it at all.
Your comment was:
“Why would I, as a self-respecting man, want to be with a woman who didn’t think I was good enough for dating or casual sex before, but now that her looks and “dating value” are fading is willing to settle for me?”
Could we reverse the genders here and say
“Why would I, as a self-respecting woman, want to be with a man who didn’t think I was good enough for dating or casual sex before, but now that his looks and “dating value” are fading is willing to settle for me?”
Yes? No? Your comment carries the implication that a woman’s “dating value” IS, in fact, lowered as her looks decrease and her number of sexual partners increase.
“What refutation is needed to the odious notion that a man with “prior” experience suffers no penalty whereas a “pre-loved” woman (ha) is irredeemably soiled and devalued? Mocking and derision is enough.”
Enough for those who can’t manage anything more, sure, I can’t argue with that.
The article’s author made that point, not me, and I already said I didn’t understand/agree with everything he said. Oddly enough it does reflect some people’s views. I’ve heard women unambiguously saying that if a man hasn’t had a lot of relationships by a certain age, they wouldn’t date him because there might be something wrong with him and/or they don’t like the idea of being with someone that nobody else wanted. So it’s basically the same kind of discrimination but in reverse.
For me personally it’s not the idea that the woman is ‘soiled and devalued’ but more that she’d be settling for me as her second (or fifth, or twentieth) choice and I’m supposed to accept that cheerfully and without question.
“- How “powerful” are these women really if their looks (and therefore their “value”) are deemed to fade at 27? How powerful are they if their value as human beings is contingent soley on their looks and their sexual history?”
They are powerful in their prime, that is the point. That power being defined by having lots of suitors and being able to choose from among them. More on this below.
“- Not all conventionally attractive young women behave in this way, but if some of them do, could it in part precisely be because society places such a lot of importance on female youth and beauty specifically?”
You’re right, the power comes not from within them, but from the importance placed by men and by society on their youth and beauty. It doesn’t make it any less real, though.
“- The article’s writer actually mentions the double standard (e.g. a man can sleep with a 100 women and be a stud, a woman sleeps with ONE man and is instantly “ruined” for all of his friends) but doesn’t problematize it at all.”
I just talked about this above (one of the annoyances of trying to reply to several people at once) but basically for women it seems to go in reverse, i.e., they will look suspiciously and unfavorably on a man who hasn’t had a number of partners by a certain age.
“Could we reverse the genders here and say
“Why would I, as a self-respecting woman, want to be with a man who didn’t think I was good enough for dating or casual sex before, but now that his looks and “dating value” are fading is willing to settle for me?””
I’d agree and be absolutely cool with that. Did you think I would deny women the right to say it or something?
Are you suggesting that men don’t ever settle for second-best (or fifth-, or twentieth-) either? That would be a huge surprise. As would be the men cheerfully drawing attention to the fact that the unlucky woman they’ve been inconveniently saddled with wasn’t their first choice, so they should be grateful for whatever they get! (That would be a great bit of negging there.)
Gee, it’s almost as if individual men and women have their own goals and agency! Why isn’t everyone entitled to their choice of perfect partner?
To add a bit of context from the original post, this charming sentiment sums up the nastiness that is being served up for second-best (though I think it probably stems from a bit further down the queue than that):
So here’s how the actual reverse gendering of Bru’s quote should go: “Why would I, as a self-respecting woman, want to be with a man who has such an ugly, misguided, and morally reprehensible view of other people’s attributes and worth?”
There, fixed it for you — no need to thank me. (It’s time to put head to pillow.)
Daphne:
Exactly. When my girlfriend went and married someone who wasn’t me, that wasn’t a rejection. That was close to a decade before we even met.
Advanced class: When the girls I knew in high school didn’t go out with me, that wasn’t a coordinated campaign to reject me, it was (with a lone exception) a consequence of my being to shy to make a move.
Honors level: Some if not most of them would have rejected me — frex, there was one crush whose family probably didn’t really like Jews — but since they didn’t have the opportunity, and I have no way of knowing which ones, I can’t really hold it against them now (not that I want or expect the opportunity to arise).
Bro:
If you know she’s settling, fine. I just don’t think that’s the only or even most likely explanation for her having sex with other people previously and being interested in you now.
Bro:
… yes, that’s what “power” means to me.
I think Gillian Anderson disproves the theory that women only get worse-looking after 27. I’ve been re-watching the X-Files on Netflix lately, and she’s way hotter now than she was when she was playing Scully. She just gets more gorgeous over time.
Anyway, PhillyBoy’s theory only makes sense if you assume that:
– all women are “hot”
– no woman actually likes a man or wants to spend time with him, and vice versa; male-female relationships are based solely on a cold exchange of sex for goods and services
– women have no inner lives, but act entirely to please or frustrate men
– women do not like sex with men, and there is no such thing as a woman who likes having sex with women; but men are entitled to sexual services from women
– and in general women are evil and out to get you.
He’s paranoid, entitled, and hostile. How can this guy still be single? You’re missing out, 22-year-old ladies!
“It is interesting that the canadiancrc article put the bare minimum at 10%, again with mandatory dna tests the problem woud be solved.”
Brandon, is that you?
Seconding the “what is an alpha?” question. Is my acquaintance who tends bar, has multiple black belts and is a proponent of “being an asshole” to women an alpha, if he also spends his Friday nights creating My Little Pony modules for World of Darkness? Is the overweight nerdy dude who spends too much time on the Net an alpha if he’s had threesomes with models?
If he was marrying someone who was dull as in had a rotten personality, sure, I might scratch my head at it but for the most part, it is none of my effing business if someone marries a dull person. They are the one who has to live with the person-not me.
Nor is it something I “respect” if someone marries a person that is supposedly soft, funny and not bitter-because a person can be funny, soft, and not bitter at any age, not just young ‘uns.
Actually it is more likely that you will find someone who is less whiny if they are over a certain age, one thing I noticed about my sister who was what we called “high maintenance” was how utterly vacuous, boring and whiny she was despite being nice to look at at 20. Now that she is in her mid-thirties she is a lot funnier and nicer.
Thesecond wrote, “Yoing and soft just feels so much better.”
Dude, if the age you think is “old” is 27, you don’t understand how *aging* works. Your skin is still gonna be elastic and stuff until menopause, which for most people is around 40.