By David Futrelle
The misogynistic men I write about on this blog — whether they classify themselves as perpetually dateless incels or “slayer” PUAs — are forever claiming that dating in the Western world, and in the United States in particular, is worse than ever, by which they generally mean that the women they think they’re entitled to seem to want nothing to do with them.
Women, these men complain, are too picky, too feminist, too … fat.
Not that the women they want to date are fat, they’re quick to add; it’s just that, with the allegedly undateable fat women out there effectively off the market (for these guys), the number of acceptably hot women has shrunk.
In one post on the Red Pill subreddit from a few years back that I ran across recently. a fellow called One_friendship_plz offered MATHEMATICAL PROOF of this fat-lady effect. Well, sort of.
In a post titled “Why fat women are ruining the dating scene for men, and how you should prepare for the future,” he declared:
It is high obesity rates (undateable women) and average girls overvaluing their looks causing the dating problem in the USA.
Really. that’s what’s making dating suck? Not things like, oh, this?
did something happen to men where they forgot to talk like human beings pic.twitter.com/wgMkJlQaj3
— . (@swordsjew) April 14, 2018
Apparently not.
Average girls overvalue themselves because they aren’t fat so have more men after them than what they would in a healthy-body sized country. There is basically not enough healthy-sized women to fill the rounds, and 97% of men want a healthy-sized female.
Never mind that he pulled this stat out of his ass and that most people are likely to disagree with Red Pillers as to what counts as a “healthy-sized female.”
When the obesity is closing in on half the population it is INEVITABLE that close to an equal portion of males are going to lose out on the dating game unless they resort to asian countries or they get desperate and.. shivers
I’m assuming that last bit is a reference to homosexuality? Because in addition to being wildly homophobic that’s just … not how sexuality works.
But back to the main point:
So half of all American men won’t be able to date because American women are slightly more likely to be obese than they are?
Red Pillers like to talk about obesity in America as if only women have been gaining weight. In fact, the rates of obesity aren’t radically different between adult women (41.1 percent of whom were classified as obese as of 2016) and adult men (37.9% of whom were classified as obese).
Even if we were to assume that every obese American was in fact “undateable,” which is very definitely not true, men and women would “lose out on the dating game” in similar numbers.
As long as obesity stays, even if women became less promiscuous and more loyal, the competition would still be about being a HIGH SMV [Sexual Market Value] male when there’s a huge portion of women that are undateable solely because of their uncontrollable consumption of mcdonalds.
And now it’s time for MATH:
An average girl can go up 2-3 points on her sexual value based on the percentage of obese women, and if this number keeps increasing then what you’d define to be a 5 would soon become a 7 because of its scarcity.
I would ask One_friendship_plz to show his work here, but obviously he has done none.
Ugly will become average, and average will become hot. and anything that would be hot would become a unicorn (even if it has a shitload of flaws, betas would be in denial.)
Says a dude in desperate denial of his own manifold flaws, most prominent among them the fact that he posts crap like this on Reddit.
Do not ever stop improving your value men, the game will possibly get harder in the future based on how much feminism spreads to the point six figures might not be enough for a decent looking chick in America.
Well, no, not if you’re a Red Pill shithead that rejects close to half of all women as “undateable” based on their weight and calls the few that meet the standards of your boner “decent looking chicks.”
As for me, I will continue fatting, and dating, as usual.
What even is redpilled math? Don’t do drugs and try to math, kids!
Off Topic WARNING: TMI re sexual escapades of an (A)utonomist Escapist.
The whole discussion of oral sex and the pejorative usage of the word actually strikes a chord with me. As I was growing up, I was, through a variety of mediums made aware of the supposed domination inheret in non-reciprocal sexual acts, and that’s actually lead to me having quite a few hangups about oral sex, but mainly concerning oral sex performed on me. As a cis-male, I was aware of this even before I ever engaged in sexual acts, and I’ve actually always had a hard time receiving oral pleasure, as I thought I would be another selfish man, only interested in receiving.
It did also give me an unconstructive fixation on my partners’ enjoyment, to the point where I could probably be considered chasing their orgasms, sometimes to the detriment of actually having enjoyable sex. In my mind, it was never about me getting marks for effort, it was actually a concious choice that I wanted to do my best to close the orgasm-gap, so to speak. I’ve come to see this as an unhealthy way of looking at sex, as the only end-goal of sexual relations should be the enjoyment of all involved parties, without having a fixed goal or having to nescessarily “finish” in a particular way.
I’ve finally started to unlearn some of this, paticularly with more recent partners, and I credit the commenters on this site, as well as other factors, with bringing me around. So thanks!
Harsh language is fucking great! It’s needed to express anger. There’s a difference between tone policing and asking someone not to use an expression or word that does splash damage to a marginalized group.
I think if someone started showing displays of dominance around here they’d get rightfully mocked.
While the sentiment may be correct, I can’t agree with the language you used to express it.
Won’t you think of the children!?!??!?
/s
@Well traditioned female,
Hi! Welcome – I don’t recall you commenting before? Maybe it’s my poor memory. Welcome!
I think you’re pretty much spot on. As far as we know, our brain structures responsible for social interactions evolved on top of older signal-perception structures – the whole “fight or flight” pathway. In those social situations, our brains don’t really care about right or wrong or even thoughtless or thoughtful, our brains care about for me or against me.
When someone corrects you, your brain is taking it in much the same way as a rival monkey making threatening noises. Stress hormone production increases, autonomic nervous system reactions take place. Pupils dilate, pulse quickens, blood pressure rises. Even through a computer screen.
It’s incredibly hard to fight down that reaction; it’s built into our biology. Notably, the people who say “You need to apologize, take on the info and move on” are almost always the ones giving out the correction and not the one being corrected. It’s another assertion of dominance. This doesn’t keep it from being true of course, but it’s a bitter pill to swallow.
I’ve found a couple of tricks that have worked for me. The biggest one, I think, is to walk through the correction publicly. “Sorry, everyone, I said X, and X is wrong because of a, b, and c. I was thinking of j and k, and I didn’t even consider a, b, and c.” You’re still taking on the correction, but you’re asserting your competence. You don’t need to silently accept the correction of others.
Another thing for me is practice. Pick something that doesn’t have a strong truth value – an opinion – and just change it. You didn’t like electronic music before? You do now. You were wrong. Maybe you don’t like the sounds still, but teach yourself to appreciate the craft or nuance. Change your mind on small things willingly and eagerly, then go back later and say “I used to think X was stupid, but I’ve come to really appreciate a and b about it now. I was dumb before.” The actual thing you’re changing your mind on doesn’t much matter, you’re just training your brain to be familiar with change and correction.
Of course, in the moment it’s hard to see that an outside correction is a valid one at all. We disregard the correction as false and then our crafty forebrains cook up a reason for why it’s false. That’s an entirely different problem, though.
Those are my thoughts on it anyways!
I get defensive too. I think everyone does. But before I act on it, I try to calm myself and think through things. Is the person who wants me to change my language tone policing? Or do they have a valid point? I try to make it not about me but what the other person is saying. This is fairly easy for me to do online. It’s much more difficult out in meat space where there is less time to react to things and compose your thoughts.
@Scildfreja
Thank you for your great reaction and pointers.
I think I’m especially sensitive to this whole thing for a few reasons
a) personal/past stuff, letting people say horrible shit to me and being quiet bc I didn’t know what/how to react back.
b) Having observed dynamics & rhetoric in online SJ culture/spaces. Much good work is done, but (as ever) no group is complete without its SJB’s (Social Justice Bullies), who use worthwhile causes in their own Mean Girls game, and for whom dominance is clearly their actual goal. They use viable and important concepts, yank them out of context, and use them as ammo to silence even the slightest hint of questioning/criticism. This always leaves/left me with a bad taste in my mouth, but no words to describe WHY it rankled me so. Thanks to this discussion I have come closer to its core I feel, so thank you all for indulging me. 🙂
I know I struggle with being corrected or criticised – my brain instantly flips into “welp, guess I’m a reprehensible moron, and these people I admire *know* I’m a reprehensible moron – my only options are to prove I’m not, or go throw myself in front of a combine harvester.” It’s pretty much the opposite of a healthy response, but, hey.
Also now I’m trying to think of new ways to use “fuck” (possibly in a serious screenplay). “Go take a long fuck off a short pier”?
(Matilda and The BFG were Dahl’s last novels, weren’t they? I’ve seen it suggested they represent a late-life mellowing of his misogyny. Either way, dude was messed up.)
So, the response to feminism for these guys is to not change anything, but keep doing what they’ve been doing HARDER? Staying the same when things are changing around you doesn’t always work well. The thing that also baffles me is that they are just encouraging the crappy Sexual Marketplace world they believe in by playing into it. Shouldn’t they be rebelling against it somehow since it’s making them miserable? Oh, of course, it must be feminisms fault, therefore no need for self examination.
I feel like “asshat” is almost too whimsical to work as a serious insult. It sounds as though it was translated way-too-literally from German or something.
I for one agree with him:
Men should improve their value!
First step: Delete your reddit account, get up, go out, treat women like human beings of equal value and live a happy life away from caustic shits on the internet.
‘Douche’, ‘douche nozzle’ or ‘douche-canoe’ work for me. 😀 I’m trying to remove ‘dick’ and ‘dick-head’ from my vocabulary as insults.
Well, this has been quite a linguistically educational thread for me, lol! There’s lots of terms I’m uncomfortable with and I’m never sure if it’s because they’re demeaning to others or just a holdover from religious anti-sex upbringing. Much to think about.
Douche and its variations are good insults because douches are not only completely useless, they’re actually toxic to people with vaginas. That sums up the manosphere and sexist dudebros very well.
@WWTH: I didn’t learn the American/English usage of Douche until a few years back. I always thought it was french for shower…
Also the advantage of “douchecanoe” is that you can increase the size of the craft to match the badness of the behaviour, all the way up to “doucheflotilla” or “doucheaircraftcarrier.”
I’ll stick with shitbags or scumbags, thanks. 😛
This is going back a while in the conversation, but: The way oral sex is constructed in various societies is fascinating, and the Romans definitely had insults for men who go down on women.
This is because Roman masculinity was conceived entirely through the lens of PiV sex. It didn’t really matter what your sexual practices were or who you did them with: The main thing was that a Real Man was only ever the fututor. (I may have the spelling wrong.) Politely, this is translated as “Penetrator.” More colloquially, the position could be phrased “Be the fucker, never the fucked.” Being known as the passive partner was an affront to a man’s masculinity; this is partly why an acceptable way to punish a man you caught sleeping with your wife was to sodomize him with a radish and make sure everyone knew you’d done so. (It sounds funny until you realize how big the Romans grew their radishes, and the fact that it’s horribly rapey.)
Because the definition of sex was framed entirely around the concept of penetration, the roles in fellatio were defined by the penis going into the mouth, whether it involved a woman and a man or two men. I don’t know what they’d have done with two men 69ing, but the person receiving fellatio was seen as the active partner, even if the person giving it was the one doing all the work. (As the saying goes, they don’t call it a blowjob for nothing.)
Logically, this transferred over to cunnilingus. If the person giving oral sex to a man is the passive partner, then inescapably, so is the person giving oral sex to a woman; and in that case it’s even worse because the active partner “ought” to be the passive one, because women are designed by nature to be the passive partners, because they’re the ones who get penetrated in PiV sex.
And that’s why calling a Roman man a “c**t-licker” was as serious an insult as suggesting he enjoyed the passive role in anal sex, or that he liked giving blowjobs. Martial used it more than a few times in his epigrams.
I assume the same sort of logic applies to MRAs, except that their objections to cunnilingus are probably less about dominance and more about the fear of accidentally pleasuring a woman. Oh, and the fact they find vaginas icky.
That’s why in addition to the verb “fellare” the Romans also had the verb “irrumare…”
@ latsot, thanks for taking my point regarding religious disparagement.
Religious commenters here don’t generally act like religious supremacists, disparaging other faiths or atheism, and if they did, many of us would ask them to stop, rather than arguing.
In other places I’m happy to argue because the religious supremacists are acting like trolls. Here, I’d prefer not to cause splash damage to readers who share the troll’s religion but not their bigotry.
@ Well transitioned female:
In my workplace, I am very widely considered to be good at handling aggression, complaints, and criticism, unwarranted or not.
This is, I know, valued by my supervisors and colleagues because they have less anxiety with raising the subject with me – very few people actually enjoy confrontation.
As Scildfreya said, this is something that improves with practice. I think I first learned some things the hard way in my family life at home as a child, so that when I hit the workplace my initial response was not kneejerk defensiveness, because I had already found that didn’t work very well.
My own initial response tends to be to listen and ask questions, to make sure I understand what the nature of the problem is. This alone has a big mollifying effect on people with genuine issues. They are glad that I am taking the problem seriously, and want to address it.
Next step is to establish with them how the problem can be fixed, and show that I am thinking about ways to stop it from happening again. (Root cause analysis, I think its called).
Next step is to take personal responsibility for ensuring the immediate problem is solved, and if there is a systemic problem, I will push for changes to fix that. This is the part where I raise factors in my own defence: it wasn’t me, I wasn’t even here that day, he hit me first, the sun was in my eyes, whatever.
During all of these stages I am also of course evaluating the complainer’s response – do they want to continue to fulminate and rage and dominate more than they want to collaborate in solving the problem?
If they do, that is a second problem, and I generally manage to deal with that with a degree of self assertion I’m comfortable with, knowing my good reputation with my employers for reasonableness is a hard currency. But I don’t start with the assumption that they are trying to dominate me or score points just for the sake of it.
In my family and personal life, I am less good with this process, but I’m working on it and hope it will become as automatic as it is at work, because it really does help.
First the discussion on fallatio related pajoratives. That is an interesting take and I like the perspectives because that is precisely the sort of place I look for to attack where our use of language is causing problems with how we think about each other and our interactions when it comes to sex. It acts like the act is terrible and and turns it into a weapon.
It reminds me of how people taunt homophobes by pretending they are secretly homosexual. Reguardless of intent it’s still pretending that it’s a gross thing and attaching social disgust to what we otherwise claim is ok. Even on the political left.
Reguarding “fuck” and “asshole”, I hope I came across as descriptive and not prescriptive. I certainly don’t think this line of thought is very developed and I appreciate the perspectives. I don’t want to get rid of intense and visceral pajoratives, it’s more like going through the motions of looking for bigotry related problems because I won’t know until it’s thought about and asked about.
I definitely see the problems with “fuck you”. The rapeyness of some uses of fuck are something I’ve wondered about and done some work there.
But the point about “fuck off” and the like is a good one and my “don’t give a fuck” would seem to work there too. It’s interesting to me because without the implication of unconsenting sexual activity there doesn’t seem to be anything inherently negative but for social agreement that it’s bad.
Asshole might fit there too (lol). “Butthurt” and a discussion on Pharyngula separately had me wondering about this. We do attach negative feeling to anatomy but clearly there are more layers to consider.
@EJ
I definitely didn’t express myself clearly because I tend to actively support the use of harsh language by people in the examples you cite. I told my own grandfather they could defriend me if they had a problem with my police directed f-bombs and I question my father’s courage when he decides to focus on something like what you mention out of BLM for example instead of the content of their message. Still, it’s a valuable take in a form more coherent than I’ve managed to put it in so thank you.
@Axecalibur
I honestly didn’t know if there was an asexual perspective on the use of fuck but it seemed worthwhile to check. The image macro definitely made it worth it and I’m already on board with you and kupo reguarding “fuck you”.
***
I might have more but I’m done for the night.
One more thing. I do see the tension between the problematic nature of “fuck you” and my “fuck our racist police”. Thinking more deeply about the use of fuck occurred after Ferguson and I be just as harsh now while avoiding rapeyness, and I’d avoid criticism of others using it that way if it affected political momentum at an important moment (public arguments with racists and such, it’s not perfect but that’s the best I’ve got at the moment).
That Rick and Morty clip I posted still counts as problematic. I didn’t think that through.
@Scild
I have a question about the bolded (and feel free to tell me to fuck off if I’m out of line or anything).
I find myself feeling like I’m opening myself up to abuse whenever anybody takes a dominant position over me. I guess my question is how does a person reduce their defensiveness to criticism while still recognizing and protecting themselves from outright abuse?
I’m seconding everyone else in thanking you for your patience and for your informative posts. I really think that reading your posts have made me a better person, so thank you. 🙂 ❤
@Mooncustafer
Damn. I knew I was forgetting an important detail. Thanks for adding it!