Susan Walsh, the slut-shaming, chart-making dating guru behind Hooking Up Smart, has made yet another chart! This time, it’s a flowchart attempting to diagram “the anatomy of a hookup.” While not quite as impressively incoherent as her infamous flowchart trying to explain the dire economic costs of sluttery, or as plainly incorrect as her diagram purporting to show that hot dudes get all the sex, this one is impressively daft nonetheless. I suggest you click here to see it full-size.
Well, I’ve followed all the various little arrows around on the chart, and as far as I can tell, her point is that if you have sex with someone, this may not result in true love for all time. There’s a shock. In other words, all these little boxes and arrows are intended to draw our attention to the fact that, as Cliff Pervocracy has put it, “every relationship does either end or continue. I salute your tautological genius.”
The other thing to notice about Walsh’s chart is that she apparently can’t conceive that people can remain friends, or even become friends, after sex. As Walsh loves to remind her female readers, having sex with someone doesn’t automatically make them fall in love with you. But it doesn’t make them automatically hate you or want to have nothing to do with you either.
So I present to you a somewhat more simplified hookup flow chart, which nonetheless manages to cover the possibility that people who hook up with one another can sometimes become friends afterwards.
Super Obvious Note: All friendships and relationships may at some point come to an end, or change into something else.
Despite the clear flaws of Walsh’s chart – it’s a strange mixture of obviousness and obliviousness — many of Walsh’s readers hailed it as a work of genius. One anonymous commenter wrote:
I don’t think there has ever been a better visual representation for the hookup that shows its futility from the woman’s point of view.
Sassy6519 agreed:
That diagram looks as pleasant as trying to cross a minefield.
And that, of course, is the real message Walsh is trying to get across with her (probably deliberately) muddled chart: hookups are scary!
As Walsh put it in a comment:
The point of the chart is really to highlight the odds of getting to dating via a hookup. Studies say 12% of the time. All those yellow and red boxes are just a visual representation of those odds.
Of course, in Wash’s vision, not “getting to dating” is apparently as bad for women as getting an STD, or finding out the guy you’re fucking is a feminist, or something.
Ian Ironwood agreed with her analysis, more or less, but urged his fellow dudes to exploit the situation for their own advantage:
Men are starting to learn their own value in the dating world. They’re beginning to learn Game and use women’s desire for a relationship as leverage. And that means that they’re raising their expectations (which sucks for feminists, who are constantly trying to lower women’s expectations of themselves while raising it for men) and getting a lot more canny about just who they want to spend their lives with.
Men are, indeed, the keepers of commitment. It’s the masculine equivalent of our “virtue”, our ability and willingness to ally ourselves with one woman (or just a few). Those fellas in the Puerarchy who are still hooking up like mad, y’all are the rest of that leverage. With Game-savvy PUAs pumpin’ & dumpin’ like it’s on sale, they provide a bleak alternative to pursuing commitment with a quality dude, which means his value as a high-status male goes up with his willingness to commit. But that also means his expectations of his future bride go up as well.
Guys, recognize your value to women, and use it to your advantage. Remember, a woman in a crappy relationship enjoys higher status in the Matrix than a woman without a relationship, all things being equal. They crave the validation they get from their female peers in the Matrix more than they even crave the romantic connection. That provides a tremendous amount of leverage for the dude who understands that.
Other dudes, nonetheless, still feel that women are too icky to deal with. Herb put it this way:
[I]f there is one lesson Game types and MRA should be pushing it is this:
“A man needs to be ridden by a woman as much as a bicycle needs to be ridden by a fish.”
And yes, I changed it from “have” to “ridden by” for a reason. In the combat dating era, especially in marriage 2.0, men are saddled and ridden too often.
You don’t need a woman in your life to be a man or be complete. …
If you physically need sexual contact there is no shame in deciding the way women have organized the current SMP is a losing game and just turn to the world’s oldest profession (which too many women let themselves become even if they don’t realize it)
You know, if you’re running a dating site ostensibly to provide useful information for young women, and your most enthusiastic commenters are either PUAs hoping to use that information to better exploit women, or MGTOWers looking for more excuses to denigrate and dismiss all women, maybe you’re doing something wrong.
Friend-of-Man-Boobz Ozymandias tried to inject some good sense into the discussion over there. Unfortunately, very little of it stuck.
EDITED TO ADD: I added a quote from Walsh.
The “NSA->Fade” path doesn’t strike me as inherently bad. If that’s what you want.
I guess, though, her entire thing is premised on there being a single correct way to Do Relationships, and if you think you want something different, you are mistaken.
“Combat dating era?”
Your lies are like a tidal wave, spinning over my head
Drownin’ me in your premises, better left unsaid
You’re the wrong kind of preacher, so release your inner fantasy
An unalloyed liar, do you know that you don’t have to be
You’re a chartbreaker,
Dream taker, love faker
Don’t you mess around with me
You’re a chartbreaker,
Dream taker, love faker
Don’t you mess around, no no no
is there a part that’s missing or do a lot of those choices really just have multiple outcomes with no explanation as to how you end up at one or the other
also, as hilarious as susan walsh’s repeated failures to understand empiricism are, i question whether it’s worth her inevitable appearance here to sneer vacuously at anyone who enjoys sex
This is a great chart, it could be used for so many things. What will I have for lunch? I will either eat, or not eat, or grab something from the local cafe, or make something myself, and I may enjoy what I eat, or feel blah about it, or maybe even not like it. So many possibilities! So blazingly obvious!
Am I supposed to feel deathly afraid of some of these outcomes? Shame over not liking the sandwich as much as I could? Do all sandwiches need to end in marriage?
I think the chart needs more fangs and blood droplets if it’s meant to be fear-mongering.
I was under the impression that some “bicycles” loooove a good riding from their chosen “fish(es).”
I started reading this post in Google Reader and wasn’t really paying attention to where it was from when I looked at the chart. I was sort of like, “Yup, hmm, that makes sense I guess, although ‘pump and dump’ is a disgusting term – but isn’t it all pretty obvious?” Then I read the post and realized that it’s supposed to be some kind of cautionary tale, cause the “Dump” and “Fade” outcomes are supposed to be the! worst! thing! ever! to happen to a lady. Sigh.
Also, glad to see Ian Ironwood appearing on these pages. He likes to post 1,000-word pseudoscientific rebuttals on Emily Nagoski’s excellent blog, which most commenters there just sort of chuckle or 0_o at. I’ve read his MRA blog a few times for a laugh, as well. He thinks a lot of himself.
“I don’t think there has ever been a better visual representation for the hookup that shows its futility from the woman’s point of view.” This quote here is the most baffling. For this to be true, women would have to gain no utility from sex, a postulate that can be falsified by interacting with sexual women. I mean, the point of a hook up is to have sex, and at every point on the original chart this goal is achieved. This is not futile, it is a 100% success rate. Want to have sex—–>have sex—–>win!
See you guys, I’m off to make a chart on the anatomy of breathing. People have to be told about it, you know.
Fatman, everybody knows women don’t like sex! Women only use sex in order to steal sperm from men in order to get pregnant and entrap a man into marriage. Then years later they’ll go out into the street and cry that their husbands said something mean to them so they can be arrested and sent to jail forEVAH and forced to pay ONE BILLION dollars in vaginamoney to their horrible sexually coercive wives every year.
I mean, heck, getting my master’s was just a back up plan/cover to all the willy sexual coercion I really want to spend my life doing. /sarcasm
Yeah, because what I think about when a person talks about women riding men in a sexual context is some bad metaphor about ‘sadling and riding’, though that did lead my next thoughts even kinkier…
I think their is a need of a scary chart telling us what can happen when we put on a sexy dress. We may meet strangers, or friends, or foes, or family, or someone who is several of it at the time, we may be raped, we may find a new career, we may fall in love, get pregnant with or without STDs, we may be mugged, or mug someone, we may trip over a rock or be arrested for drawing graffitis.
I need to know.
Also, I’m pretty sure her chart lacks probability.
Sadly true. Our society puts FAR TOO MUCH emphasis on the importance of sanctioned heterosexual pairings(tm) for my taste, or for the taste of most feminists.
:
… but this is just bullshit. Most women I know would far rather be alone than date an asshole.
Err I don’t really give a shit if my friends have SOs or not? I know that alot of people, myself included, can feel lonely without a partner (altho it is infinitely preferable to dating a jerk, from first-hand experience) but why would women ‘validate’ other women for dating a guy? “Oh I’m so glad you have a boyfriend, now we can err…hang out less and…possibly I don’t get on with this guy…” I’ve seen many, many problems arise among female friends when others don’t like somebody’s boyfriend, and would rather they were single.
ostara: You forgot that the urges to steal sperm and sue for child support; enforced by BIG DADDY! is biologically pre-determined.
fun fact: the wikipedia article for “involuntary celibacy” uses hooking up smart as a reference.
You know what would be terrifying? If every hookup did end in Forever Love.
God, I’d be afraid to have coffee with a guy if every time had to end in either a proposal or “Well, that was nice coffee but I’m not sure you’d be the best possible husband for me so we can never speak again.”
Here’a lovely comment from the thread:
Is it just me, or is this the flip side of the rape culture coin? Men want sex all the time, and their role is to chase. Women are responsible for saying no. If they say yes, it’s their fault that the man (poof!) becomes a cad? I think the commenter (Hope), is a woman.
HTML tags why you so mean? That’s supposed to be one solid block quote, no indents. It’s one comment. The ellipsis is for a sentence I skipped over.
I think the biggest problem Walsh and her readers are having here is not understanding that there’s more than one type of dating, and you can actually talk to your partners about which one is going on.
Explicitly asking “hey, is this just a hookup, or are you looking for something more?” (and believing their answer, not assuming it’s just part of some game) is a whole lot more helpful than just sleeping with someone and hoping you guessed right.
Walsh is right, for a very limited value of “right”–women who are looking for long-term relationships probably will not get them by sleeping with guys and not communicating anything about their expectations.
This is why the good Lord gave us mouths (and/or hands). You don’t have to not-communicate. Communicating won’t get you a “yes, our goals match perfectly” every time, but it sure beats the hell out of this bullshit.
What, one wonders, does she mean by, “”until guys proved they weren’t cads”? I happen to like to think the women who decided they wanted to sleep with be felt I’d proved I wasn’t a cad.
I do know that I did my best to do the same. A couple of times I was wrong, but that’s a pretty small percentage of 1: the women I’ve slept with, and 2: an even smaller number of the women whom I might have slept with.
Pecunium: *facepalm* How could I forget? It’s not even so much that I’m an individual person with hopes and dreams of my own, it’s just that damn biology says I am destined to jack sperm (ha) out of used condoms and run into the street shouting “FINALLY! I SHALL HAVE THE BABY I DESERRRRRVE!!!!11!!”
On a more serious note, re: “women having crappy relationships is better than no relationship at all”, sadly, in a way this is true, but this isn’t a problem caused by “too much feminism” this is one of those, “need more feminism” things. Last I checked, most feminists weren’t really keen on pushing the meme that women are only worth what their connections are to men.
So… I’m looking at the chart.
Her blog is, “hooking up smart”.
Her chart is, “War Games” and the only way to win is not to play.
So she can stop blogging now; she’s solved the problems.