National Review has delivered unto us a puckishly paleoconservative cover story with a very Redditesque headline: “Like a Boss.” Which is perhaps appropriate, in that the story that goes with the headline uses the faux logic of evolutionary psychology (always popular on Reddit) in order to argue that Romney, a true alpha male, should be getting something like 100% of the female vote rather than trailing Obama by ten percent in this rather important demographic.
The article, by Kevin D. Williamson — no, not the Dawson’s Creek dude — starts off terrible:
What do women want? The conventional biological wisdom is that men select mates for fertility, while women select for status — thus the commonness of younger women’s pairing with well-established older men but the rarity of the converse.
And it only gets worse from there.
The Demi Moore–Ashton Kutcher model is an exception — the only 40-year-old woman Jack Nicholson has ever seen naked is Kathy Bates in that horrific hot-tub scene. Age is cruel to women, and subordination is cruel to men.
So, yeah. As Williamson evidently figures it, Romney oozes status, so therefore women should adore him. No, really.
You want off-the-charts status? Check out the curriculum vitae of one Willard M. Romney: $200 million in the bank (and a hell of a lot more if he didn’t give so much away), apex alpha executive, CEO, chairman of the board, governor, bishop, boss of everything he’s ever touched.
Heck, even his sperm is macho:
It is a curious scientific fact … that high-status animals tend to have more male offspring than female offspring, which holds true across many species, from red deer to mink to Homo sap. The offspring of rich families are statistically biased in favor of sons — the children of the general population are 51 percent male and 49 percent female, but the children of the Forbes billionaire list are 60 percent male. Have a gander at that Romney family picture: five sons, zero daughters.
But Obama, meanwhile, has got the sperm of a girly man:
Professor Obama? Two daughters. May as well give the guy a cardigan. And fallopian tubes.
With so much going for him, Williamson wonders, why isn’t Romney doing better with the ladies?
From an evolutionary point of view, Mitt Romney should get 100 percent of the female vote. All of it. He should get Michelle Obama’s vote.
Because all women are inherently golddiggers. It’s SCIENCE!
Given that we are no longer roaming the veldt for the most part, money is a reasonable stand-in for social status. Romney’s net worth is more than that of the last eight U.S. presidents combined. He set up a trust for his grandkids and kicked in about seven times Barack Obama’s net worth, which at $11.8 million is not inconsiderable but probably less than Romney’s tax bill in a good year. If he hadn’t given away so much money to his church, charities, and grandkids, Mitt Romney would have more money than Jay-Z.
He’s big pimpin, yo!
So why aren’t the ladies lining up for him?
Well, Williamson suggests that despite his wealth, Romney doesn’t act as rich as he really is. Indeed, he’s been known to ride coach on airlines! Williamson urges Romney to fully embrace his inner pimp, because “Americans love rich people.”
Still, despite Romney’s failure to live as large as he could, given the amount of money he’s got in the bank, Williamson still thinks he’s pretty darn alpha:
Look at his fat stacks. Look at that mess of sons and grandchildren. Look at a picture of Ann Romney on her wedding day and that cocky smirk on his face. What exactly has Mitt Romney got to be insecure about?
A lot, really. Do you actually follow the news? If Americans – particularly American women — love rich guy alphas so much, there’s not a lot of evidence of this in the current presidential race. Heck, every time Romney acts like the rich person he is — you may recall his comments about his good buddies the NASCAR team owners — he becomes the butt of jokes.
Could it be that people don’t actually act the way that the cavemen and/or animals in evolutionary psychology “just-do stories” do? That, perhaps, those stories are bullshit?
Indeed, Williamson’s story is such an effective rebuttal of evo-psych nonsense, it’s hard not to wonder if National Review has just trolled itself. Or us.
Women wonder if men’s documents are justified, and would like men to forgive us if that’s a stupid question.
Falconer, do you have the text left and right justified? That might be the problem. Do you know to use that weird little paragraph sign so that it shows each space as a small dot?
Duh. Sorry, Falconer, I was thinking of vertical spacing. Check under Format under Paragraph, that could help.
Women are on their lunch break at work, which is why they can post here.
If women could see men’s Word document for themselves, they could figure out the problem right quick.
Duh. Sorry, Falconer, I was thinking of vertical spacing. Check under Format under Paragraph, that could help.
(Darn WordPress, it used my other nickname, and so I have the comment above in mod now.)
The MRM 101:
Pointing out any flaws in a philosophy/argument = strawmanning
Directly quoting from an MRA source = cherry picking
Criticism in any form = shaming
Men sometimes do bad things = misandry
Women are inherently greedy and materialistic = science
Women lose value with every sexual encounter = morality
I forgot one:
Man who respects women = mangina
@Wisteria: Sorry, it’s work product, and I can’t share it. It’s interrogatories, and the effect happens in bullet lists of things we’re asking for, like exactly what we want from someone concerning bank accounts.
I can say that I do have the document fully justified, and I’m used to spaces between words varying based on having to stretch or shrink to justify.
This is varying spaces between letters in a word:
Sample sentence.
S a m p l e s e n t e n c e .
Except I’ve had to put in spaces in that second one to show what’s going on. I’ve looked all over and I can’t find anything to add space after each letter, like you can with lines and paragraphs.
Oh, the sentences this is happening in don’t reach to the edge of the page.
Probably I can’t do anything about it. Our client sent it to us in a monospace font, and my boss asked me to get it ship shape in our regular format, which includes Times New Roman, which ain’t monospace.
Stupid computers >:(
All right, there’s a little button marked “clear formatting” in the tool bar. Time to brute-force this and go in by hand and change it all so it looks like I want it to look.
Thank you, everybody, for your help and suggestions.
I think I’ve seen that happen before in justified documents, especially in lists, where a soft return (shift-return) was used instead of a hard return
did you try deleting the line breaks and then putting them back? You can use the Show Stupid P Thing With Extra Strokes button to make this process easier; that will also show you if you’ve got soft returns because they have a different symbol.
And then if you need the list to be spaced without gaps between the paragraphs (avoiding new paragraph formatting is the main reason why people use soft returns) you can just format that section of text accordingly.
fuck, I know so much more about Microsoft Word than I ever wanted to. I do like my job but writing this comment is giving me pause.
Ah ha! Under the Font window, there’s an advanced tab, and that tab includes options for character spacing. So now I know.
(Yo Joe!)
Inconvenience: So that’s your game, Futrelle? Actively seeking articles that incorrectly describe Game and strawmanning the shit out of them?
No… the game is mocking misogyny. Sadly PUAs aren’t the only misogynists in the world. That you think this one is making a mockery of “Game” just shows how little you know about “Game Theory” in the wider world.
Which is a pretty inconvienct truth for you.
often_partisan: we had Eugene Debs, and the Socialist Party he was leading. It was doing well, then FDR co-opted a lot of the things it was pushing for and it withered.
This has been the steady state of progressive populism in the US.
Genderqueers* are watching YouTube and doing their embroidery instead of reading more medieval miracle plays, because those things are depressing.
*Do we get to be a monolith too? Or is that only for binary people?
@Jayem
Everyone gets to be a monolith, monoliths for everybody!!!
As for me, I’m just messing with some silly monkeys.
Hiveminds for everybody! On the house!
monoliths for everybody!!!
We’re all Necrons now? :O
Hah, I love that. Someone mentions something that could vaguely be interpreted as something from fiction, and everyone breaks out the references. 😛
@lowquacks – I can just imagine Paul Ryan as a Young Liberal. Gross.
Say, who do you think’s more physically repellent – Mitt Romney or Tony Abbott? Bit of a toss-up to me, they’re both disgusting in every department.
Mitt Romney is definitely not the only rich man in America. It’s laughable to think that women would choose between 2 male candidates based on who’s richer when they know that they will NEVER get access to either ones personal assets regardless of who gets elected. Also, to pontificate that from an “evolutionary point of view” Romney should get the female vote shows a gross misunderstanding of evolutionary psychology.
Funny enough,damn near 100% of “alpha male” politicians are democrats! Don’t believe me? Take Bill Clinton as an example. Or JFK. Or Charlie Wilson, or even John Edwards. Seems that the republican party is full of closet cases(Dubya, Larry Craig, that gay jersey ex-governor). I mean, can you IMAGINE how much worse Lewinsky’s reputation would be if she sucked DUBYA’s johnson instead of Clinton’s? LOL
~A democrat
Reblogged this on Femination and commented:
Nice debunking from Man Boobz here, though the article hardly needs it. A nice nostalgic look back at some of the more egregious BS this election cycle has seen. Manly man Mitt, carry off the lady vote on your valiant steed! Or not. Just get off the road, anyway.
You claim the concept of masculinity is nonsense. Yet you taunt Romney by portraying him as prepubescent Richie Rich.
Just like Zao using homophobia to fight…homophobia?
So full of shit.