Over on the Men’s Rights Subreddit, PacmanWasALangolier is taking concern trolling to a whole new level. Apparently, according to some unspecified research, the women of today have gotten picky — tragically picky — about the men they date.
It turns out that a lot of women aren’t interested in dating just any dude out there! They cruelly, selfishly, wantonly insist on choosing whom they date and whom they don’t.
The horror!
Mr. Pacman is concerned, “honestly concerned,” for this can only end in disaster, not just for men but for those poor misguided women themselves. And possibly civilization itself.
To drop the sarcasm for a moment, let’s look at his “evidence.” First, that bit about how, historically, only 40% of men have passed on their genes. This figure comes from a paper by psychologist Roy Baumeister that’s a favorite amongst the Men’s Rights crowd, and the claim seems to be true — at least if you’re talking about the whole span of human existence.
Does this prove that women have always looked down their noses at the majority of men, refusing to have sex with decent average Joes in favor of riding that old “alpha asshole cock carousel,” as manosphere assholes so delightfully put it?
Well, not exactly. It merely suggests that in the past, more powerful men had sex with more women than the poor and subjugated, and thus were far more likely to pass on their genes. (Or at least that, however many partners they had, their babies were more likely to survive to produce babies of their own.) The figure tells us very little about the actual preferences of women, because many times the choice about who had sex with whom was made by men. Powerful men collected women into harems; male soldiers routinely raped women on the defeated side; in patriarchal cultures, fathers decided whom their daughters would marry. And so on.
Mr Pacman might also be referring to an interesting post on the OKCupid blog that revealed some interesting data on how the dating site’s (straight and bi) men and women rated the attractiveness of members of the opposite sex. But (if that is indeed what he’s referring to) he’s leaving out half of the equation, and thus totally missing the point.
Yes, it’s true that women on the site rated roughly 80% of the men on the site as “below average,” while men were much more “charitable” in their choices, with “a woman … as likely to be considered extremely ugly as extremely beautiful, [while] the majority of women have been rated about “medium.”
But Mr. Pacman has left out the most interesting part of the findings. Even though men on the site were charitable in how they rated women, with their assessments of female attractiveness falling roughly along a normal bell curve, they were more selective — much more selective — in whom they contacted. As the OKCupid blogger, Christian Rudder, puts it, “when it comes down to actually choosing targets, men choose the modelesque.” Women at the top of the bell curve in terms of attractiveness (at least as rated by site members) get
nearly 5 times as many messages as a typical woman and 28 times as many messages as a woman at the low end of our curve. Site-wide, two-thirds of male messages go to the best-looking third of women. So basically, guys are fighting each other 2-for-1 for the absolute best-rated females, while plenty of potentially charming, even cute, girls go unwritten.
For women, the results are strikingly different. While they tended to be pretty selective when it came to rating men on their looks, in practice they were far more open to dating men they considered average or below average in looks. As Rudder notes,
women rate an incredible 80% of guys as worse-looking than medium. Very harsh. On the other hand, when it comes to actual messaging, women shift their expectations only just slightly ahead of the curve, which is a healthier pattern than guys’ pursuing the all-but-unattainable. … [T]he average-looking woman has convinced herself that the vast majority of males aren’t good enough for her, but she then goes right out and messages them anyway.
Of course, the data here might be skewed by another factor that the blogger doesn’t address: on OKCupid, when someone rates someone else highly, and that someone else has also rated them highly, the site sends out a message informing both of them of a possible match. Women rating particular men as unattractive may not actually think of them as unattractive, but may be simply trying to avoid getting a lot of spammy messages from guys whose profiles they may not have looked at in detail.
So, yeah, once again, the real world is a lot more complicated, and much more interesting, than the world inside the head of the typical MRA.
Ok… that’s really messed up. They love Dickens novels so much that they want to turn the world into a giant LARP of them? But on a more serious note… wow. I mean, humanity did use that model back in the stone/bronze/early iron age, until extensive clans were busted for the most part, but that wasn’t exactly something that worked out all that well. Hell, if what I’ve read is any indication, and it has a strong chance it might not be as I’m an engineering major not a historical sociologist, such stuff leads to massive societal corruption and government nepotism out the ass. In other words, it’d screw them over just as bad as the kids and women even if they got their wish to have that happen. Aren’t social consequences grand?
@ SkyBorn: No, no, the negative social consequences are for OTHER people. They’d be living at the top, in a mansion, with servants and a harem of hot chicks. Duh. I mean, it’s OBVIOUS, amirite?
Hmm. Sarcasm not functioning clearly this morning. My sneering contempt was for the misguided MRAs, not you.
No offense taken, it was pretty obvious anyways. Just you’d think that even an idiot would realize the use of assuming you had NO clue what level of society you’d be at. The Veil of Ignorance or whatever fancy name it’s got in some circles.
Ah yes, have sex with pacman or society will crumble. No fatties or ugmos, though. Prick.
(lurker surfacing)
Leaving aside the already shredded stupidity, this wanker even has his biology wrong. The only way to look at historical male breeding patterns (it isn’t human specific) is through the y chromosome, just as for females it’s mtDNA. The y-chromosome only applies to male children, mtDNA only to female children. Just because a male lineage fails to produce males doesn’t mean they didn’t produce daughters. (Who evidently don’t count as children in MRA Bizzaroland.)
An example that even these idiots can understand: of the 3 founding sires of the Thoroughbred horse breed, one male (the Beyrley Turk) has only a single modern male line breeding… but a huge representation in the lineages of breeding mares.
(lurker submerging)
You know my policy on fatties!
*reveals undershirt reading, “NO FATTIES”*
/JFK
On the ‘minimum standards’ women have to maintain, I really, really hate the idea of it. I’m lucky in that of all the jobs I’ve had, there’s only been one (very) short-lived one where I’ve had to look ‘professional’ (hasten to add that’s not why it was short-lived), I don’t mind wearing office clothes but the idea that I should spend a stupid amount of time hiding what I look like in the morning before I dare to face the world just bores me fucking stupid. I have better things to be doing with that hour.
My past two main jobs I’ve either worked in a bar or from home, so I’m used to looking how I want, and the whole hair and beauty thing just does not interest me one iota. My hair’s currently dyed red and black and shaved at one side, but the last time I dyed it was about four months ago, and I can go a couple of weeks without brushing it (it’s in a plait at the moment because I can’t be bothered doing anything with it), and I’ve been cutting it myself for about seven years. The last time I wore makeup was about three weeks ago, because we were going out with my partner’s parents – but that was just eyeliner and mascara done on the train on the way there, and the last time I wore more than that was probably about three years ago. I don’t shave, and don’t use any products other than soap and deodorant on my skin. I used to do some of that stuff (and feel guilty that I didn’t do more), but since I’ve realised that I don’t have to want to do this stuff and the world won’t end if I don’t, I’ve been a lot happier. It takes me fifteen minutes to shower and leave the house in the morning, even with putting makeup on, and that’s fine by me. And you know, if someone doesn’t want to boner me because of how I look, they weren’t going to get anywhere near my knickers anyway. If a boss wanted to force me to wear full makeup, they had better be prepared to fight about it*.
My sister, on the other hand, is a trainee beauty therapist who enjoys taking at least seven hours to get ready to her going out ‘standard’. So when I go see her to go out I just take a bottle of vodka to share with my mum while I wait. Win-win.
(*not saying that everyone has the luxury or inclination to get into disputes with their bosses or that it’s a smart course of action, but hygiene and an ability to do the job should be all that’s ever required, and I personally wouldn’t back down on that, but having said that I would also be extremely unlikely to apply for the kind of job where me wearing make-up would be an issue.)
I just read the OP again, and I clicked over the read the rest of the thread, too. I’ve decided that these deeply concerned MRA conversations are the ones that chap me the most. Because these are the guys who are sure that what I want in life is wrong for me, is harming me, harming men, is detrimental to the existence of the very human race itself – and that I’m just too damned stupid to figure it out because, y’know, I have a lady brain. If only I will listen to these gentle prophets, I will realize that the best things for me are a legal system where I am given all the rights of a perpetual child, and a social and economic climate and demands permanent dependence on and deference to a male relative. Because these things protect me, you see. All men have always only wanted what was best for women, always! Those historical documents I’ve read about helpless women who were arbitrarily abandoned by their spouses, or forced into prostitution by desperate financial circumstances, or who struggled to feed starving children after the breadwinner spent all the bread on booze – those are just exaggerations used to fuel heated feminist rhetoric. I don’t need a bank account! I don’t need autonomy! I don’t need control over my person! I just need to hope to hell that the dude someone else chose for me will do it for me!
Nope, sorry, not buying it. And if my husband, brother, brother-in-law, and male friends are a reliable sample, I don’t think many men are buying it either.
J-pop artists whom I’ve developed a schoolboyish crush on can count as brain bleach right?
http://youtu.be/yzC4hFK5P3g
@aworldanonymous – J-pop is appropriate for any occasion!
I really like how MRAs will say that women are too picky because of feminism, and at the same time say that women are “riding the cock carousel”, because of feminism.
Apparently the double-think just escapes them!
Women also clog up ALL the jobs while at the same time we categorically refuse to do any hard jobs (sanitation and ditch digging are always the two examples). That one always gives me a chuckle on Thursday morning, when the female trash collector comes through, right before I drive my kids past the nearby construction zone where a woman is running the backhoe.
I assume that, as a dude, I’m supposed to fly into a testicular panic about the concept that only 40% of men throughout history have passed their genetic material.
Then I realize that even if that’s actually the case and not another dose of evo-psych magical thinking, and it’s not due to, you know, high child mortality rates for 99.9% of recorded history, that the Earth’s population has still grown to around 7 billion people.
I think that humanity, as a species, will do okay even if that 40% rate diminishes a bit.
re: “testicular panic”; I really really like the term “testerical” 😀
It makes me sad to see how many of these guys just don’t understand the “I like you, you like me, let’s spend time together” aspect of dating.
@Whataboutthemoonz
But THEN what would they do with all the bitter resentment coins they’ve been hoarding while waiting for a female sex dispensing unit?!?
@Alessandro Masi
It’s because women are having sex with men other than them, who must therefore be alpha assholes, because MRAs are such “nice guys”.
He is clearly having an issue getting laid and projecting as a result. As far as unrealistic expectations go… Of course women want to date attractive men. I wouldn’t date someone I wasn’t attracted to but attractiveness is relative. I don’t care about his power or financial situation. I don’t want to get into a relationship with someone who is jobl,ess and has no aspirations but most women are completely capable of taking care of and providing for themselves.
“Does Pacman think men aren’t picky? Tell that to all the not-so-pretty girls who never get asked on dates. How does that song go? “I learned the truth at 17 that love was made for beauty queens……”
RubyHypatia- thank you, I’m guessing I’m not the only woman who gets annoyed by the MRA myth that all teenage girls find it very easy to get laid and are drowning in cock, while it’s only the boys who struggle to find dates, and that while us women are slut-shamed we should be thankful we’re not virgin-shamed, because of course no women ever are.
Virgin-shaming has certainly happened to me, the most humiliating occasion being during a game of truth-or-dare, which I’m sure is an experience thousands of other women have been through. If anything it’s arguably a bit worse for us- thanks to the idea that any woman can easily get laid without trying, any woman who can’t is seen as a bit of a freak and people start wondering what’s “wrong” with her. We’re seen as having the power to choose not to be single, but should we be single people refuse to believe it could be through choice. “Bachelor” has a lot of positive connotations while “spinster” has none, likewise “crazy cat lady”…
People go on believing women aren’t virgin-shamed even with examples in the public eye- in the US there was endless speculation over Britney Spears’s virginity, and in the UK we have Tory MP Ann Widdecombe- type her name into Google and the first suggested search is “ann widdecombe virgin”. This is especially sad as journalists ridicule her over her alleged virginity and physical appearance when they really should be pulling her up on issues such as her misogyny and homophobia instead.
It looks like love often is made for beauty queens- certainly in the case of an MRA’s “love”.
@thenatfantastic
Are those the male equivalent of tokens for the cock carousel?
BTW, I must have a shit-ton of those things in a personal account somewhere. Or did they disintegrate the moment I turned 26? If they’re still there, and I need them at a later date, can I cash them in then? Can I transfer them to another rider? Why do MRA’s make up all of this stuff, and then never tell us how it works?!!!
Fitzy- that’s “kindness coins” surely?
“Testerical” – what a great phrase. Sort of sums up the shrilling of the whole MRM.
@The Stepford Knife
Is that what they’re called? See, I’m even lost on the verbiage. 🙂
Actually, the MRA in the OP is totally right:
Pacman IS a Langolier.
I can’t believe I never realized it before.
Also, PacmanwasaLangolier’s rant was at least as good as the movie “The Langoliers.”
Fitzy, I think “kindness coins” comes from this tweet: https://twitter.com/naughtynerdy/status/187723749397757952. It was from a discussion about how sexist the concept of “friendzoning” is.