By David Futrelle
Never before, it seems, have so many men so confidently answered the question “what do women want” with zero input from actual women. At least when Freud infamously asked this question he admitted he didn’t really know the answer.
Not so the men of the Red Pill subreddit today, who regularly deliver up massive walls of text purporting to explain how these mysterious women work. And they are pretty much always spectacularly wrong.
Consider, for example, the gentleman known as bsutansalt, a mod of the Red Pill subreddit, who recently graced his Red Pill brethren with a repost of one of his, er, classic posts, titled “Women Do Not Have a ‘Sex Drive.” In it he argues that, well, women don’t have a sex drive, but instead engage in sex only because it’s a way for them to acquire “desirable male attention.”
As he sees it,
Female sexuality is REACTIVE – it’s not the dull aching horniness that men experience. It is rapid-onset response to desirable male attention.
The price of male attention is sex. Sex is the glue that holds male attraction firmly in place.
Ipso facto women are willing to pay the sex price and a natural feedback loop is created; male attention makes her “sexual”, the sex engenders more attention from the male, the attention makes her FEEL “sexual”, and so on.
They fuck because they want to FEEL sexual. Not because they want sex.
Now I don’t need to tell you that there is, well, a great deal of evidence suggesting otherwise. Like, for example, if you’re a woman, for example, you may have noticed that you do in fact get horny on a fairly regular basis.
Not that bsutansalt really cares what goes on inside a woman’s head. “What do women THINK makes them feel sexual,” he asks himself at one point, offering up the answer
Who cares. Ask 10 of them once a day for a week and get 19182 different responses. Listen to their advice and get 0 sex.
In bsutansalt’s universe, men and women are from planets even more distinct than Venus and Mars. The goal of every woman, he assers,
is to maximally exploit her youth (in other words beauty) for maximal desirable male attention.
Men, by contrast,
want to fuck for fucking’s sake. Some trade resources and their dignity for this (gradually rarer) privilege – we call them beta males. Others learn to exploit the desire for their attention. Be the latter guy.
Hoo boy.
Even if bsutansalt has managed to convince himself that straight women never fuck for fucking’s sake, and are always in it for “sexy attention,” one wonders how he explains it when women’s sexual activity involves no male attention at all. I mean, to point out something that is obvious to everyone except for Red Pill men, women masturbate. Women use sex toys, including some really really weird ones. Women watch porn. Women read (and write) stories about the brothers on the show Supernatural boning each other. None of these things require “desirable male attention” in order to happen.
This may comes as a shock to some Red Pill men, but there are also some women who have sex with one another. Do lesbians somehow exude “desirable male attention” — or even just “desirable female attention” — that they can trade with one another in bed? Do women actually fuck each other, or do they just lie there “feeling sexual” in each other’s presence?
I’m afraid that bsutansalt’s galaxy brain might just explode if he were forced to consider these possibilities.
H/T — Thanks to r/TheBluePill for highlighting this epic OP
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TW: fire, domestic assault
Hi David
Your old friend D.A. Nolan was having a field day, after a man burnt and killed his wife and children. He has been all over pages, telling women that, well, they were asking for it. I am sorry to bring it up, but he is everywhere!
I know this is the least of the stupid, but…what exactly does he think it would prove to ask 10 women the same question once a day for a week? Is he trying to track their sex drive over time? Is he just confirming that it’s still not there each day and not understanding that the reason they’re not horny when he asks is because his presence is a boner killer? Does he actually mean ask 70 different women? Either way, why does he think such a tiny sample size would be convincing?
10 x 7 is not equal to 19182. Even my ladybrain knows that.
@Seraph4377
I think he’s trying to figure out if women have sex drives, but going about it all wrong because he appears to lack a basic understanding of the scientific method (and of how numbers work). Plus, if a random man walked up to me and out of the blue asked me what made me feel sexual, I’d probably run the other way and I imagine I’m not alone in that response.
19182 / 70 = ~124
You ask some women what makes then feel sexual and you get on average 124 different answers daily? I don’t know why this dude seems to think women have no sex drive, being able to list that amount of turn ons daily sounds like it indicates someone who is wildly horny.
The glue-ish-ness that holds MY attention is “intellectual curiosity” and “informed-ness”….
But that’s just me… I’m not even a beta to the manure-sphere, since my goal isn’t to get my end wet….
More like a “pleasant evening n a coffee in good company”
*looks around* I’m sorry, maybe my male horniness is broken, but I’ve never described it as “dull and aching.” If anything, I consider it the spice of life that variety is not (at least not to my Aspie self). Give me the same routine, day in, day out, same food, same commute… just vary the gratification.
I will say this, though, and perhaps because it’s not a question I typically pose to women I know in meatspace (for obvious reasons)… the current “zeitgeist” of pop culture illustrates female sexuality as being one favouring the tension and excitement of courtship rather than of blunt depictions of sex acts. Admittedly I’m going off a couple of Netflix cartoons I’m watching (Big Mouth and Tuca & Bertie), but both shows had an episode dedicated to female arousal and both depicted “lady porn” as being period romance works (one a historical romance novel and the other a Jane Austen style miniseries). Even Tuca, the louder and raunchier of the protagonists, doesn’t talk about what turns her on much during the series, despite being the more sexual character.
Just kinda find it odd, cuz women definitely manifest the same blunt desires as any guy. The parties I’ve attended bear that out. All I can think is that the current gender roles still have a restricting effect on depictions of female sexuality. Probably the bluntest I can think of is Samantha from Sex and the City and she strikes me as an outlier, who even then was often played for comic relief rather than taken straight. I could be wrong though, I’m not the most voracious consumer of pop culture these days.
Either way, if women actually were as open about their desires as these guys claim to want, they’d be branded cock-carousel-obsessed Stacys in no time.
@Katamount
Oh, for sure. It all goes back to the Puritanical view that women should be pure and chaste, and that means no blunt depictions of sex. Research has shown that female sexuality isn’t all that different from male sexuality, it’s just that the culture tries to entrain otherwise through what is depicted and through social stigma around female sexuality.
Hmm…I wonder why the women aren’t as open with Red Pill men? /s
FWIW I like both romance and sex. Not sure if this is common, but I would imagine many people could enjoy both.
It has become much more acceptable for me to be open about my desire for my husband since we’ve got married. Like I can express how hungry I am for him and be more open about my active engagement with sex for him. Even after we had been an exclousive couple for a long time the strange looks I was given when i showed active desire for him or talked about being the one who starts sex most of the time was really surprising. Now my husband gets told he’s lucky to have a wife who actively wants him and is engaging in sex which is really gross to me.
For some reason today it still more acceptable to be a “sex freak” inside of marriage then just in a committed relationship. I’m assuming this opinion of me will change once I have children and I’m expected to be the virgin Mary of mothers
I am a cis het woman who was saddled with a high sex drive in my youth and I never put that on display. My twenties were spent in the 80s and it wasn’t done because it would still get you branded a slut (as in days of old) and sluts weren’t treated well. It also always felt like it wouldn’t be safe to be that way.
Even Chad had to convince me that he was safe to fuck. It was a delicate dance around the edges of lust.
Now I’m nearly 60 and I don’t know how much of that is still true although I suspect much of it is, especially the safety part.
Being more than a bit pedantic – I real something like this and remember that back in the middle ages it was said that WOMEN who were the ones during the lusting, luring the men to perdition with their desires.
The one constant is that it’s never the Men’s fault.
I think bsutansalt is wrongly conflating reactive sexuality, not wanting sex and wanting to “feel sexual”. That is, if I’ve even correctly guessed what all these concepts are supposed to mean.
Reactive sexuality would mean that one’s arousal is triggered only by present external stimuli, and there’s no spontaneous tendency to “feel horny” or imagine sexual fantasies. Usually, at least advanced arousal and orgasm requires some sensory stimulation.
According to a common (not only red pill) stereotype, women are more strictly sexually reactive than men. Also, women stereotypically respond to social/emotional/sensory stimuli while men respond to visual/sensory stimuli.
In other words, a stereotypical woman would be mainly or only aroused when a partner acts to seduce her, and perhaps only within an ongoing romantic relationship. In red pill lingo, all this is crudely lumped under “he gives her attention”.
“Feeling sexual” and “wanting sex” are here somehow artificially distinguished from each other. Perhaps the idea is that when a woman
responds to man’s seduction, she’s not really sexually aroused, but rather just enjoys being the centre* of his sexual attention, and just coincidentally it’s a good moment for her to reward him with sex.
Then again, all this is muddled by sloppy thinking, and the popular notion that women do in fact get aroused when seduced (as opposed to men, who get aroused from merely existing, or at the very least from existing in presence of an attractive woman).
*Is this correct spelling? My spellcheck offers “center”.
Also, I think the concept of reactive vs. spontaneous (?) sexuality used here only concerns partnered interaction and how arousal makes people seek or want partnered sex. Self-stimulation by masturbation and seeking fantasies/porn is excluded from the model, especially for women.
Also, stimuli are perhaps strictly understood to mean a partner’s “attention”. Therefore, when a man gets (more) horny from just visually observing a woman, it’s lumped under spontaneous rather than reactive arousal. If male masturbation is considered at all, it’s seen as a temporary release from spontaneous arousal, rather than an exercise in stimulated arousal.
(Of course, in reality the relation between arousal and wanting/seeking partnered sex isn’t so straightforward, especially in women, as they have to consider all kinds of practicalities in partnered sex.)
@Lumipuna
IIRC in a thread a while ago about semen retainers meditating we discussed the possibility of orgasm without stimulation. It’s never happened to me but it might still be possible.
Re: centre vs center: as far as I know, both are correct but centre is more common in the U.K. and Commonwealth countries, while center is more common in the US. I think people should understand either way, so it doesn’t really matter which you use.
@Lumipuna
My American self was taught “center,” but I know my British friends and many Canadian friends spell it as “centre.”
I like how you’ve mapped out the sloppy thinking of the redpillers.
Of course female sex drive is “reactive”. We react to hormones.
Men, on the other hand, desire sex because …er…they react to hormones…wait a minute, I’ll go out and come in again…
So, Firefox supports American spelling for center … and so does my Word!
I’ve been specifically using Word Spellcheck for “US English” because my job requires writing English in some “consistent” style. However, I used to get the impression that said Spellcheck doesn’t actually flag out Briticisms much or at all.
This really doesn’t explain all those fanfictions about m/m couples that are written by teenage girls and adult women. A lot of them are smut
@Surplus
Of all the anime the Stormfreaks could have used, they just had to use Kumamiko, the show about the talking bear who psychologically abuses the girl he’s known since childhood, didn’t they.
It’s little wonder they deny the existence of lesbians, because it instantly explodes all their theories. Personally, I (a lesbian) am happier the less male attention I get.
@Surplus
Ahhh the old “men are thrown into prison on a woman’s word!” bullshit. But when you confront them with the fact that most rape accusations don’t even make it to trial the tone switches to “in this country we operate on innocent until proven guilty! Why do you want to change that?”
Manospherians, pick a narrative and stick to it.
@sunnysombrera
That’s probably too much to ask of a right wing group. What they lack in sense or quality of arguments they try to make up with quantity, hence their love of the Gish Gallop and similar techniques.
“women do not have a sex drive”
it’s times like this when I really miss being/identifying as a girl/woman so that I could play the “well I am one, and I definitely do” card.
@Surplus to Requirements:
So what you’re saying is that a conservative joke tends to be a threat with a laugh track?
@assorted numbskull menzers:
NOPE. Never have I ever experienced any such thing. Even in the face of desired male attention, NOPE.
O RLY? I had sex with a guy who still dumped me later, so again…NOPE.
Ipso facto NOTHING. Nope, nope, and NOPE.
And you would know this…HOW? Have you spent even one day inside one of our skins? NOPE.
Orrrrr don’t listen, and still get no sex. Because nobody wants to have sex with an arrogant, barely animated trilby.
Youth ≠ beauty. There are plenty of not-so-beautiful young people. There are also plenty of beautiful not-so-young people. The idea that beauty inheres in youth, and dies off after a certain age, is pernicious nonsense. And don’t even get me started on how many types of it there are that have nothing to do with the external and physical, either.
Oh, and the bit about “maximal desirable male attention” is also bullshit, in case you’re wondering.
Orrrrr you can do something truly radical and useful with your cranium, and realize that “alpha” and “beta” are bullshit terms (long since discredited and disowned by the very scientists who initially coined them), and exploiting women for sex is bullshit, and also that relationships are actually built on something other than “trading resources and dignity” for sex. But to do that, you need to step outside the manosphere and actually be your own damn man.
Which is undoubtedly frightening to these machista wannabes, but if any of them ever broke that mold, I guarantee they would automatically improve their chances with women in general.