Manosphere misogynists like to tell themselves fairy tales about women. Their favorite such tale, repeated endlessly, is one called “The Cock Carousel” – sometimes referred to in expanded form as the “Alpha Asshole Cock Carousel” or the “Bad Boy Cock Carousel.” (Hence that Rooster-riding gal you see in this blog’s header about half the time.)
Despite the different names, the story is always, monotonously, the same: In their late teens and twenties, when they’re at the height of their sexual appeal, women (or at least the overwhelming majority of them) have sex in rapid succession with an assortment of charismatic but unreliable alpha males and “bad boys” who make their vaginas (or just ‘ginas) tingle. Then, sometime in their mid-to-late twenties, these women “hit the wall,” with their so-called sexual market value (or SMV) dropping faster than Facebook’s stock price. As Roissy/Heartiste puts it, in his typically overheated prose:
So sad, so tragic, the inevitable slide into sexual worthlessness that accompanies women, the withering tick tock of the cosmic clock stripping their beauty in flayed bits of soulletting mignons like psychological ling chi. A sadistic thief in the night etching, billowing, draping and sagging a new affront to her most preciously guarded asset.
While many women try to pretend they’ve still “got it,” even at the ripe old age of thirty, they inevitably have to either get off or get thrown off the “cock carousel.” At this point the more savvy women glom onto some convenient “beta male” who, while somewhat lacking in sexual appeal, will at least be a good husband and provider for them – and in many cases the children they’ve had with alpha male seed. Those women who don’t accept the new reality are destined to end up alone and childless, surrounded by cats.
To borrow the phrase South Park used in its episodes about Scientology and Mormonism, this is what manosphere men actually believe. Not only that, but they claim that this fairy tale is based on real science.
So who are these mysterious alpha males that get the women so excited? As one guide to pickup artist (PUA) lingo puts it:
In animal hierarchies, the Alpha Male is the most dominant, and typically the physically strongest member of the group. For example, in wolf packs, the “alpha wolf” is the strongest member of the pack, and is the leader of the group. This position of leadership is often achieved by killing or defeating the previous Alpha Male in combat. Alpha wolves have first access to food as well as mating privileges with the females of the pack.
Social status among human social groups is less rigidly defined than in the animal kingdom, but there are some recognizable parallels. Although people don’t often engage in physical violence to achieve dominance, there are still recognizable leaders in different fields who have wide access to material resources and women.
Because the qualities of the Alpha Male (such as social dominance and leadership) are attractive to women, many PUAs have adopted these ideals as models of emulation. In fact, the term “alpha” has come be shorthand for the qualities of an attractive man, and it is a common refrain among PUAs to be “more alpha” or to “out alpha” competitors.
There’s a certain logic to all this. But unfortunately for the PUAs and other manospherians the notion of the Alpha male is based on bad science. The notion of Alpha dominance, as the definition above notes, came originally from studies of wolf packs. Even if we assume that wolf behavior is somehow a good model upon which to base our understanding of human romance – as manosphere men and evolutionary psychologists tend to do – the science behind the Alpha male wolf has now come completely undone, with many of those who promulgated the theory in the first place decades ago now explicitly repudiating it.
The problem, you see, is that the studies underlying the notion of the alpha male wolf, who aggressively asserts his dominance over beta males in order to rule the pack, were all based on observations of wolves in captivity. In the real world, wolf packs don’t work that way at all. Most wolf packs are basically wolf families, with a breeding pair and their pups. When male pups reach adulthood, they don’t fight their fathers for dominance — they go out and start their own families.
As noted wolf behavior expert L. David Mech, one of those who helped to establish and popularize the notion of the alpha wolf in the first place, explains on his website:
The concept of the alpha wolf is well ingrained in the popular wolf literature at least partly because of my book “The Wolf: Ecology and Behavior of an Endangered Species,” written in 1968, published in 1970, republished in paperback in 1981, and currently still in print, despite my numerous pleas to the publisher to stop publishing it. Although most of the book’s info is still accurate, much is outdated. We have learned more about wolves in the last 40 years then in all of previous history.
One of the outdated pieces of information is the concept of the alpha wolf. “Alpha” implies competing with others and becoming top dog by winning a contest or battle. However, most wolves who lead packs achieved their position simply by mating and producing pups, which then became their pack. In other words they are merely breeders, or parents, and that’s all we call them today, the “breeding male,” “breeding female,” or “male parent,” “female parent,” or the “adult male” or “adult female.” In the rare packs that include more than one breeding animal, the “dominant breeder” can be called that, and any breeding daughter can be called a “subordinate breeder.”
So the dominant male wolves – those whom manosphere dudes would still call the alphas – achieve this position not by being sexy badasses but simply by siring and taking responsibility for pups. To use the terminology in the manner of manosphere dudes, alphas become alphas by acting like betas. That’s right: alphas are betas. (For more of the details, see this paper by Mech; it’s in pdf form.)
Also, they’re wolves and not humans, but that’s a whole other kettle of anthropomorphized fish.
A community that glorifies rapists and rape advocates while not listening to your (alleged) calling out of rapists and rape advocates = a community that you should leave.
I mean, first off, it’s sad that even in the community that defines your social life you don’t feel comfortable voicing your opinion. You deserve better friends than that.
Second, in a normal community, you shouldn’t NEED social capital to point out “advocating rape is wrong.” Like, it should be basic common sense for anyone hearing that to agree with you. If you don’t think other people will agree with you, that points to some very serious problems in the “community” as a whole
I’m sure Eurosabra tried real hard. /sarcasm
Real Alpha Males (like the dude at Danger and Play) sell shit on the blogs they use to promote their alphaness:
Danger and Play
(Dave, feel free to break the link, if wordpress denies nofollow, and you don’t want him around/the link karma, since he’s trying to get clickthrough to sell shit)
and by sell shit, I mean juicers and herbs and shit for body-building; because looks make you alpha, or some such nonsense.
Yeah, I’d have to step out of every community I’ve ever been in to avoid rape culture, it’s THAT pervasive. Orthodox Judaism, right-wing Zionism, etc. The more hippie-ish Anglo Hasids are probably the only Jewish culture relatively free of rape culture with which I’m in contact. And the wider culture…pfft.
There are much more mainstream PUA blogs than Danger and Play, and they are still full of tons of fail.
Yeah, Eurosabra, it sucks a lot. And you’ve probably notice that people who are invested in rape culture are also super invested in a whole bunch of other bullshit power games. Typically, they will make you feel like shit for spending time with them.
However, pretty much everywhere on Earth, there are people who aren’t into all that! I’m sure your city has some feminist groups or alternative lifestyle groups or secular social groups that are less oppressive and more fun.
The Conservative, and Modern Orthodox with whom I spend time (New York, and Toronto) seem to be pretty free of any more rape culture than the rest of the society; and the specific people I hang out with are very much free of it.
That’s leaving out the Reform flavors altogether. Nice erasure/self-serving justification you’ve got going there.
If I remember correctly (way too lazy to try to look it up right now), in some primates the male who helps raise another male’s baby is quite likely to get the next mating opportunity with that female. In other words, the male raising another male’s “seed” is not so much a sucker as a planner.
Where it says “cock carousel” my mind is insisting it’s “cock casserole”. Presumably with sage, onion and perhaps a little white wine.
I’ve been catching up on posts (and laughing hysterically at the phrase “trotskyist banana”, thanks for that one) and have now seen this phrase “cock carousel” so many times I am starting to kind of want one!
Do you think my boyfriend would agree to have sex on a merry go round?
MK, I don’t know about that. But what I do know is that you can buy yourself a lovely “cock carousel” t-shirt (or mug, or stickers) at the Man Boobz store on Zazzle! (See the link at the top of the page.)
Love this, and love that it contains debunking info about wolves. Wolves are one of the types of animals that actually mate for life, an example of monogamy in nature that I always refer to when some numwit tries to claim monogamy isn’t “natural.” On the flip side, I’m almost a little appalled to discover the existence of the “manosphere” to the point where they have their own LINGO (PUA, BETAs???) But don’t worry, the other end of the spectrum (uuber feminism) is pretty obnoxious to me as well.
Hey, Eurosabra!
for the love of God, stop being a chillul hashem. If you want to believe in stupid-ass things about women, fine, but keep it to your own damn self. You’re tarring us all with the broad brush of idiocy.
Manboob,
It never ceases to amaze me how happy it makes me to come to this site and call you a suck up mangina fag. I hope you get lots of pity pussy where the girls tell you “Magina Manboob, we love you so much for fighting against those evil bad misogynists that portray us helpless innocent women in a such a bad bad misogynistic way. We are not the lying, cheating, scheming, materialistic, gold digging bitches that those bad bad men portray us to be”.
Your attempt to discredit the cock carousel with a lame ass .pdf is mangina lameness.
The cock carousel meme is not only supported by that little blurb of science that you took from Roissy, BUT BY THE ANECDOTAL STORIES OF MILLIONS OF MEN AND THEIR EMPIRICAL OBSERVATIONS THAT THEY HAVE MADE OF WOMEN. Its one of features of the internet that people that came together and share experiences and create a collective consciousness that their experience wasn’t unique, that millions of men have had similar experiences and observations.
Also, mangina man, the PUA industry didn’t grow from a few guys on a chat site to a billion dollar a year industry because a bunch of geeks want to believe in something that will magically transport them to studs, but mostly because it fucking works. Game works on bitches and that is that.
The reason this stuff sticks with men is because it like learning the Law of Gravity. You see observations all of your life. You drop things and they fall to the ground. If you give something enough support it stays up. You start to make deductive reasoning about the phenomenon. Then in some physics class you get your observations quantified with the Law of Gravity and you accept it immediately because your experience tells you that it is true and now you now the reasons why.
Same thing for the Cock Carousel, buddy. When you watch bitches throw themselves at thugs or men with money for your whole life and you see them frantically rush for marriage with the most eligible beta man once they hit 32, then the Cock Carousel makes absolute since to you.
Also once you study game, fitness tests, attraction cues, and then when you start to practice what you learn and you see results, ha, then guess what, the rest of the story told on the manosphere blogs suddenly gets a whole lot more believable. So for every freaking .pdf you got, fuckhead, I got ten from Evo Pscych to back up the Ted Pill story. So shove your one PDF about a study of wolf packs up your ass. Ours are based on studies of human women, things like which men they pick when they ovulate, how they dress, male forms they prefer, game theory studies, and whole slew of academics other than your fucking one lame paper. Our theories are not based on wolves but studies of human bitches, both academically and empirically.
Like Roissy says “Women holler the loudest the closer you get to the truth”.
And this one here, this Cock Carousel meme is one that Maginas and women had better defeat or the Female Imperative of cunts being able to find sucker beta males that jump in with both feet merely because this bitch throws them a Whif of Jif just might get called out for the Truest Scam that there is.
Men gotta clue now about the reality of women and women hate that they do. A man is a fool to trust a woman over 30 and marry that lying slut. Any woman over 30 should be doubted. If she was worth a shit then some man would have wanted her before and she would have had the good sense to be realistic about herself, her future, and about the men that offered to be partners that she rejected over and over because she felt she deserved better. Fuck those cock carousel riding bitches. Even if she wasn’t riding it, it is safer for the man to assume she was or she is just generally fucked up and should be avoided in general. “All of the good ones are taken” was man’s saying before all of these hypergamistic bitches stole it because no alpha millionaire wanted to marry that stretched out, used up, cock carousel riding bitch.
Up yours, you Magina fag.
Ooh…. the “anecdotal stories”.
I’m all agog and a-twitter.
Tell me, Mr. Macho-man… why, if “men” such as yourself are all getting pussy left, right, and sideways, do you care if Dave, or anyone, mocks you?
If it’s true, than no mockery in the world will derail you from all the tail an “alpha” could want.
If, however, it’s not true… then I can see an urge to try and make people stop talking about it.
Yeah somehow I don’t think a dude who feels the need to drop a long angry turd in a 2-month-old blog post is leading a happy or fulfilling life.
LOL at Mark Minter!
Do what now? Ted Pill Story?
Also, how does one shove a PDF (or any electronic file) up hir ass? At least our insults (“Go step on a LEGO!”) could actually happen. Somehow “Hey why don’t you stick this .gif in your ass” doesn’t really carry the same weight…
Let me get this straight…
You assume Dave is getting lots of sex with women for treating them like they are human beings and respecting them, a practice which can be done at literally zero cost and without making up excuses to dehumanise half the population, yet you are happy to pay into and endorse a ‘billion dollar a year’ industry so it can teach you to hate women (something which will substantially reduce the number of them sleeping with you), then you claim that a) this results in many more women sleeping with men AND b) this makes the women bad? Citation fucking needed for a start.
Could you please explain,
a) If there’s a thing you can do for free and and a thing you can do that costs money, effort, time and let’s face it, a possible prison sentence and has a lower level of success, why aren’t you just doing the first thing? Are you an idiot?
b) Do you want women to ride the cock carousel with you or not? I’m getting mixed messages about whether they should be putting out like the wind or whether they’re ‘ruined’ the second they pop their hymen and they should just be happy to settle for you at the age of 12 or whatever your creepy little gang of
paedophilesoh sorry, ‘ephepophiles‘ want now*? Can you explain to me how I am supposed to simultaneously put out for any over-entitled whiny fuck-face like yourself when and where they demand it and ALSO keep my chastity shrink-wrapped for the man who ‘twuly deserves’ it? What the fuck is this, Schroedinger’s vagina?I’d carry on but I just heard the sound of a wallet opening and my bottom’s turned bright red, must dash!
* (and trust me precious, spending any time with you would put a woman at beyond settling and on a swift path to beatification)
Mark, what is a “Whif of Jif?”
Women are using peanut butter to lure poor beta males to their doom?
Jif used to be an oven cleaner in the UK. Now it’s called Cif. Using this knowledge I shall attempt to translate the whole paragraph:
And this one here, this women having sex meme is one that men who don’t hate women ad women had better defeat or the female imperative of women being able to find men that don’t hate them who jump in with both feet merely because the woman helps him to clean the oven might just get called out for the truest scam that there is.
*squints* Nope, still doesn’t make sense.
Although BoyFantastic and I tried to fix our oven today, we took the door off and had it out of the unit and everything. Our hands got covered in oven gunk, so we decided that it will get a Proper Clean once it is fixed.
Does this mean we have to get married now? And does this make him a beta or an alpha? I’M SO CONFUSED.
Also I do not want BoyFantastic to dive with both feet into my vagina once our oven is clean because that sounds really painful and vaginas do not work that way.
Back! Back to your grave, O foul zombie thread! Behold the cleansing power of Pelor the Shining!
*turns undead*
Before this thread goes back to its well-deserved rest, I have to say that “Schroedinger’s vagina” is the best thing I’ve heard this week.
Sure are a lot of trolls willing to pair their creepy-ass faces with their creepy-ass opinions today.