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 problem arises when women collectively relinquish the role of sexual gatekeeper.”
I don’t know much, but I do know that Sexual Gatekeeper is the best imaginary funk album from 1977 that I’ve ever heard of.
“She lied about her age” actually does make perfect sense, unless not having sex remains an option even after you’ve found out the other person’s age.
O/T, but did anyone catch the newest Bob’s Burgers taking the piss out of PUAs? I died.
We don’t even need to move out of Hetland for this one. How do they explain men who want relationships and women who want no-strings-attached sex? Oh, right, they don’t. Fear of Flying never existed, lalalalala.
Pat Califia had their number a long time ago: they’re fetishists, and their kink is gender roles.
Jokes appart, yes NSA means No String Attached (sex). But I love the idea that the NSA is involved into casual sex not leading always to marriage. It’s a new conspiracy!
Erm, is it just me or does that Shining Pearl nonsense have a dire ‘square, Conservatives trying to do rap’ sort of a quality? Are they just trying to be hip with the kids or is there the delectable soupçon of racism in there as well? All I know is that there is absolutely no poetry whatsoever in that composition.
Wait, wait, I’m going to send it to my partner, who is finishing up his PhD on early modern poetry. He might cry a little when he reads it.
Oh, oh, I take back my unfair assessment now that I see the poem was written by a student. So it’s just a terrible poem, then. Ah well.
This is the resulting analysis of the verse:
I hope you appreciate that this constitutes humour between us. Please try not to pity us too much.
donsie: That was wonderful.
Good point, and well said. I stand corrected.
Still, I hope for his sake he’s learned to communicate what he really wants better since then. It’s a bad thing to discover these major dealbreakers when you’re actually inside someone.
@donsie: Why am I suddenly nostalgic for my alma mater? Must be the heady and redolent scent of Blather Skite in the air!
Kudos!
donsie: Excellent. I like your friend.
The thing I find somewhat strange is that while Walsh is trying to say that the status quo is absolutely TERRIBLE for women and gives all the power to men (because sometimes one might do a thing with someone and then not do that thing with that person again afterwards), one of the commenters you quote is saying that the status quo is absolutely TERRIBLE for men because the ladies have all the power and have set it up in a terribly unfair way along with the School Mathematics Project.
I’ll have to tell him you liked it! Maybe he can make it into a meaningless flowchart.
@MissPrism
That’s the interesting thing about Walsh, she wants women to regain power in this “sexual market place” and actually reinforces this hypergamy idea. Basically she wants women to stop giving it away for free and make men work harder and prove themselves to women, wine and dine them then commit to them, THEN its acceptable to have sex. Isn’t this what MRAs are against? how is it she can gain so much approval from MRAs and PUAs? do they actually want to buy women dinner, work harder and pay for a house in order to get sex? how is that liberating? it makes no fucking sense.
I think the ideal society we should be striving for is one where sex is not used as something to extract resources from someone. Are we really not human enough to do so? or is it just that too many people are happy enough to act like apes? I notice this in manosphere dudes the most, they revel in it because it doesn’t take any effort and a convenient excuse to fall back on (its my hardwiring to be a dickhead!) meanwhile if women fall back on their so-called biological hardwiring of alpha chasing MRAs will still degrade and vilify them for it.
Why is male biological hardwiring accepted and excused but female biological hardwiring not?
(this is all assuming any of this is even true)
You’d think so. In reality, what they are against is the exchange rate (they think a drink and/or a dinner is too much to pay for sex, which makes me wonder if they’ve ever checked out the price of hiring a sex worker) and the fact that women are not obligated by law to respect the unspoken contract that dinner = sex, and that women may thus have the audacity to think that if you offer to pay them drinks or dinner, these things are disinterested gifts rather than some ‘gotcha’ lure that entraps them into sex.
I don’t think their complaint is that a drink and/or a dinner is too much to pay for sex. I think their problem is that actually liking a person is too high a price to pay for sex. They seem to want to have sex with women while simultaneously hating women. It makes me think that what they enjoy about sex is in no way related to what I enjoy about sex, so much so that I do not think that MRAs and I could understand each other at all when talking about sex.
What I really don’t get is why if they think a drink and/or dinner is too much to pay for sex, why they bother with that in the first place. I’ll admit it’s nice to be offered those things, but not a requirement. And quite frankly, ever since a guy friend of mine basically made me feel like shit over dinner and drinks he’d insisted he get to buy me, I tend to be a lot less trusting of men who take it to an extreme. Cue cries of what a distrusting, misandrist bitch I am for thinking some men might be trying to manipulate me by making me feel like i “owe” them.
If they think a drink is too much in “payment” maybe they could just say “hey, I dig you. Wanna fuck?” and see where that gets you. That might not work, but it might. And at least if it doesn’t, they don’t have to spend the night being bitter about how she “owed” him.
The thing is, 50% of MARRIAGES end in “dump/fade”.
Why didn’t she just put “get married!” in the first box? Oh, right. Because that’s not in the script. There’s as much “truth” in this propaganda as there is in a Chick tract.
Fatman, you hit the nail on the head. Sex isn’t fun for them. It’s a contest of wills. It’s like playing basketball–it’s no fun if the opposing team keeps handing you the ball and helping you make a basket. The fun is in taking something or getting one over on someone.
Nothing pisses an MRA off more than falling in love. They’d just ruin it for spite. No way is anyone going to have that power over them, by God.
I think a lot of the more hostile type of Nice-Guy™-ism is rooted in that, combined with our old friend “making me have a reaction is something they are doing to me.” So “i have a crush on her” becomes “she has power over me” becomes “she is trying to control me” without the person having to even be aware the Nice Guy™ exists.
Discordia:AAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!! The comments over there are inveruriating…I also just had to comment on that fool that was scolding you for for saying 40 year olds should not be sleeping with teens because the bitch lied! Shye said she was 18 btw if you don’t beleive me thats MISANDRY!!
If you realise the real argument they are trying to make, it all makes sense.
The argument is basically, “a stiff prick has no conscience”, which has an implied corrolary: Make sure no prick is ever stiffed.
So, if they pop wood, it’s open season. All the rest is just window dressing.
Ah, that makes me remember the time I tried to woo a girl in my class using Robert Green’s “The Art of Seduction” as a template. At some point I realized that all I was doing was creating social pressure on her by means of publically presenting her with gifts and attention she could not turn down.
It was kinda disgusting, really.
When I was twenty it happened once that a guy offered to buy me a drink out at a club. I wasn’t attracted to him at all, and said “no thanks”. The following conversation went something like this:
Guy: Don’t you want a drink?
Me: Well, I might want a drink, but I can buy one myself, so no thanks.
Guy: But why can’t I buy you a drink if you want one?
Me: Well, it’s just that I’m not interested.
Guy: But I just offered to buy you a drink!
Me: Well, yes, but we all know that means you’re flirting, right?
Guy: NO! I just wanted to buy you a drink! Nothing more!
Me: So you’re not interested in me or anything, you just had this URGE to BUY ME A DRINK for no apparent reason?
Guy: YES!
Me: Okay, whatever, I’ll take the drink.
The guy ended up buying me drinks all night, and then he was pissed off when I didn’t want to go home with him. There’s just no pleasing some people.
When guys offer to buy one of my friends a drink at the bar, she will take the drink and walk off with it. XD
I’m honestly not sure if this makes the problem better or worse! I guess she figures since she’s already attached and the guy’s obviously trying too hard, he’s getting what he deserves. I personally can’t accept things when I know someone’s motive for giving me them is misguided–one time she got two drinks off a guy and gave me one, and I shamefacedly told the bartender to put one of the drinks on my tab because he looked horrified at her being so mercenary. 😛
This, bigtime.
It makes me wonder how they have sex just physically, too. I think it must be either a horrible two-pumps-and-tell-her-to-get-out fuck, or look ordinary on the surface but be filled with resentment that they “have” to pleasure the woman and they “have” to cuddle afterwards, treating both as miserably humiliating obligations that exist only for humiliation’s sake.
Meanwhile in the real world, I’ve been with multiple guys who actually asked to cuddle but then declined sex. That’s gotta break some MRA brains.
(Sadly, I’m sure there’s some confirmation-bias-tastic explanation they could come up with. Like, the cuddling was beta supplication to attempt to establish themselves as Nice Guys, and of course they secretly resented having to do it and secretly just wanted to fuck me.)