Sunday, February 5, 2017

9 Things Every Woman Secretly Does In Winter / Buzzfeed





Instead of showing you a comment that was ghosted over on Youtube (which is what I'm been doing on this blog), I'm going to show you a few comments of mine that encountered some sort of censorship over on Buzzfeed. I posted them to a poorly conceived article with the current title "9 Things Every Woman Secretly Does In Winter", written by an author not really worth following. In it, a series of unsexy female behaviors is described by somebody who seems to share in the once fashionable view that whatever revolts or annoys men, must somehow help liberate women. I saluted her success in her chosen task, writing


"Thank you. This article should be enough to kill my libido for at least a month."


Some woman whose username I have forgotten then said that the article had done a great service for women everywhere, after which the inevitable brown nosing male poster (somebody calling himself "direwolf") showed up, and shared this


"do you want some ice water for that burn"


to which I replied


"Seriously, you think that qualifies as a burn? Oh, wait … you think if you laugh at all of her jokes, she’ll put out for you? Good luck with that, direpuppy."


before going out to buy a very late breakfast. I got back and gave the woman a response that somebody didn't like.




"Amy, honey, now that I’m back from buying my kefir, let me explain why your joke falls flat. The reason is because this is 2017, not 1991 and I’m an American, not an Englishman. I’m not even of Anglo-Saxon descent, which given that I’m from Chicago, is not very surprising.

I get the impression that England, like Los Angeles, is currently going through what we in Chicago would call the early 90s. Radical separatist feminism is the latest thing, men are hot, horny and frustrated and overly eager to please and women are setting the terms of engagement, unilaterally. But dear, as much as you might want to think it will be, that will not be a sustainable arrangement, and it’s not going to last.

We went through our version of your current cultural era back around 1991. By the time we got to the mid 90s, even the feminists were laughing about that nonsense. It burned out quickly, and by the time one gets to today, one finds women driving around on a summer day catcalling men merely because the latter have their shirts off - on a day when it is 92 degrees Fahrenheit (33 Celsius) with 80% relative humidity. The men aren’t showing off, they just don’t want to swim in their own sweat as they walk along. They wonder where all of those semi-lady-like (if mildly bitchy) women that their fathers met in their youths went, and why the women their own age can’t just take a few cold showers and behave better.

Snide rejection as humor can only work from a position of power, sexual power in this case, and English women never had much. You are widely regarded as being among the ugliest on the planet, even when young, and you’re not noted for how well you age. Even if I were going to fly over to where you were, or you were going to fly here, why would I want an Englishwoman when I live in a country that is right next to Mexico and the rest of Latin America, to which women from all over the world move all of the time? How do I put this even remotely tactfully? It’s as if one woman came to my door, carting in some bouillabaise, ready to offer it to me, another with some freshly made sushi, and there you are, telling me that I can’t have your bangers and mash and not quite seeming to understand that nobody wants them. Not even the Englishmen, who’ve been eating some French girl’s cooking while you haven’t been looking, because England is a very small country and the chunnel isn’t very long. I think your version of the 90s is going to be even briefer than ours was.

American women, as a group, are far more desirable than you, even if one doesn’t count the immigrants, and even they don’t have much in the way of sexual power, any more. In 2017, in Chicago, we have something called “hookup culture” and sex has never been easier for men to come by. Some of us have even had the experience of having women offer to pay us for the service (not that most of us would sink to agreeing to that). I suspect that the affirmative consent laws (which I understand England now has) might have played a role in this, by curtailing the activity of the promiscuous alpha males, but for whatever reason, one now finds a large number of horny women and an equally large number of men who wonder whatever happened to having a relationship first.

That’s why your joke falls flat. It’s dated. It’s set in a world that doesn’t exist any more. By telling it, you help make the English look like the clueless narcissists that almost everybody has long thought them to be. Sorry (not sorry) if the truth hurts."




While I don't doubt that somebody who is going to call himself "Direwolf" and thinks that this is going to make him a badass in the eyes of his fellow dorks (look at his comments) will be a little thirsty, American men generally aren't. Is this woman or that woman unavailable? Who cares? There are plenty more, as indeed, there always were (for us). As for older men who had a rough time dating a generation ago, I'm not dismissing their experiences, I'm just saying that we haven't had to share them.

In the comment above(which no longer appears on that no effort excuse for an article), I refer to the unsustainability of the arrangement that the radical feminists wanted. There are a few very simple reasons why it couldn't be sustained, one of them being that if one has to give up one's self respect in order to have a relationship, because one's mate is treating one poorly, what one is getting isn't love. What one is getting is a sort of business relationship on terms which the men, themselves, could see served them poorly. If the choice was between that sort of relationship or none at all, the prudent man would choose to live in peace and solitude. But no such choice needed to be made.

As a matter of simple demographic reality, women outnumber men. They have done so for a very long time, and most of the time, they start doing so at a relatively young age, which has made a current female fad as amusing as it is: the phantom boyfriend. Some of us keep running into women who will swear that they have boyfriends that nobody ever sees. Nobody is fooled by this, least of all those of us who don't keep hearing it, because unlike so many of the men around us, we have interests other than videogames and sex. That helps, as does not having a dadbod. Bathing more than once a week - that's a good thing. I keep running into men who don't do that, look like prime candidate for diabetes and then wonder why the women they meet all seem to have boyfriends. Times have, indeed, changed. Men used to make much more of an effort than that, perhaps because they thought that the women were worth it. Some of us still do, without concerning ourselves with the question of whether or not the women are worth it, knowing that if all else fails, we're worth it. Self-respect begins with self-care. We improve ourselves, for our own sakes, and notice that women will often respond positively to that.

But, while times have changed, they haven't changed entirely. Like our fathers did before us, we've encountered narcissistic women whose expectations are in no way based on reality. High school dropouts who expect to get college professors, flat chested girls who think they can get body builders, women who think that all of their fantasies will come true because *vagina*. This won't happen, because the pool of body-building Nobel laureates with model looks (and six figure salaries) in limited, but these girls will dream on, speaking of their own "empowerment" when they really should be thinking about their own childishness.

The rise of the Web (and fall of educational standards) has inspired some to try to salvage their position, as if the now perpetually single women of an earlier generation weren't there to warn them of where such unrealistic expectations shall lead. They will do a search for the statistics regarding gender ratios by age, find them, link to them and (absurdly) say that yes, it is possible for almost all the women their age to boyfriends (their age) while most of the men their age do not have girlfriends, despite the fact that each woman who has a boyfriend has taken at least one man out of circulation, because see! see! there are more single men than single women, going into our ... is it 30s, now? Showing, as they do this, why, when I would grade papers in Probability and Statistics, why I would give out as many failing grades as I did. To simply cite a number without asking where it comes from or what it represents is atrocious methodology.

Even if we take the statistic at face value, without further examination (carrying out the most naïve sort of analysis), one is left with the reality that the male lead in numbers relatively speaking, is fairly slight and couldn't possibly allow for a gross mis-match in the number of men and women paired up. But there is a more interesting problem that can be seen if one follows the figures a few decades back. One finds that before the current (heavily male) wave of migration from Latin America (much of it illegal), women would surpass men in numbers in the population, not in their 30s but in their 20s, those figures skewing in the direction of being male dominated after amnesty for illegals was declared under Reagan, toward the end of his time in office. This means that the argument offered those who wish to pretend that the phantom boyfriends are all real, and want us all to overlook the fact that the arithmetic for that won't work out, boils down to the following rhetorical question.


"How do you know that the young female professional whose boyfriend has never been seen isn't out dating Manuel, the migrant fruit picker?"


to which my immediate response is


"Am I really expected to keep a straight face through that?"


but, fine, let's treat that one as if it were a real question. While I suppose that would explain why we're not seeing her boyfriend (he doesn't want to run into the INS), I'd say that there's a lot to be said for dating "Manuel." I can totally see why a woman would want to. Braving (and surviving) a dangerous desert crossing in order to work long hours just to send money back and support his loved ones - there's something very heroic and noble about that. To Hell with Donald Trump, Mexico is sending us a lot of its best people, who are now living in miserable shacks, fighting off the bugs because their employers don't want to spend money on screens for their windows. If that young White professional woman were flying down each weekend, taking long taxi rides in order to have what moments she could in Manuel's hovel, I'd think more highly of her values, because even if society doesn't value these guys, we should, and let's face it - if anybody has any claim to being superior, it's the person who has endured a harder life. That would be "Manuel", whose Latin good looks probably wouldn't hurt.

But I think we all know that's not happening very often. Even the least materialistic of American women are not seeking out these guys and the hardships that would come with dating and marrying them. But even if they were, they probably wouldn't get very far, because "Manuel", our hypothetical typical Mexican / Mexican-American migrant (and beneficiary of amnesty, if one can call the life he's living a benefit) isn't just a great guy, he's a nice Catholic boy from a culture in which people tend to marry young. He's got a girl (probably his wife) back in Chiapas. She's one of the reasons he works so hard. He sends her money so she won't starve. (In case this isn't coming through, I really hate Trump). Though life will be filled with temptations, "Manuel" comes from a culture in which people still believe in their religion and their values, and he will show a level of self-control that the supposedly more sophisticated ladies and gentlemen of the Anglosphere will usually fail to understand. He could cheat on his wife without her knowing, but he won't, because he'd know and (of course), G-d would know. In even bothering to say that, we say far more about ourselves than we do about him, because our point of view is the one that needs explaining, not his.

That being the case, the figures tell us something less than the whole story. A wave of unavailable young men entering the country under unstable circumstances represents no great increase in romantic (or sexual) opportunities for the young women here. The figures from before the amnesty tell us more about the demographics of the pool of prospective dates from which they actually draw, and these demographics do not favor them for very long into adulthood. While one still meets the young woman who, though she is a "5" (of average desirability) thinks that to date and marry a "10" is her birthright, realistically, she probably can't even get another 5 for anything that will last for very long. Maybe she can get a 4.7 (if one wishes to treat such measures as if they could be precise). Unless she is lucky, she's going to have to do a lot of settling.

The degree to which this is not a surprise for women (even young women) in Chicago can be gauged by walking into a pickup bar (not to partake, just to observe), and taking a good look at the guys and the women around them. I find myself feeling sorry for the women because, indeed, so many of us don't try. So, where did these remaining dreamers get the idea that they would find their prince charmings? Probably because of a dating pattern that was seen in years past. There were these creatures called "alpha males." Having encountered them, later in their still (usually unmarried) lives,I didn't find them to be very bright, but then I'm a PhD student in Mathematics, so maybe my standards in that area can be a little harsh. They're definitely usually not very nice, but I could see that (as an uncle of mine said once) in their day, they would have had "the body of Arnold Schwarzenegger, the looks of Tom Cruise and the spending power of" ... but I don't want to use that name for a second time in the same post.

These guys (under some measures) would be 10s, and they'd capitalize on that, keeping "harems" of women who would date only them, while they would feel free to date around. This double standard would allow women of modest charms to have "boyfriends" who were 10s (and ignore men who weren't), because the boyfriends were shared. When they got tired of this and decided that they wanted families and children, if they were realistic enough to know that the alphas weren't going to be providing them with either, they'd find one of the men at whom they'd turned up their noses in the past, thinking that now that they were ready for marriage, that this somehow obligated the men of their choice to be ready, as well. The men were not always so convinced of this. Chicago, as a number of us have observed, has a great many crazy, lonely cat ladies in their 40s and 50s.

What the earlier dating pattern had created was an artificial shortage of women. This could not be sustained. As that generation aged, it encountered a reality that has been joked about for a long time - the fading of the male libido during a man's 30s (and the strengthening of the female libido); as anybody who has ever dated older women as a young man knows, the late 30-something female sex drive is a thing to behold in awe (and maybe with a little fear). The alphas just weren't going to be able to put out that often. Viagra hadn't even been invented, yet, for most of the 90s, and who is the young (or younger) man who wants to take that stuff, anyway? But then, some years later, the whole thing became a moot point, because the affirmative consent laws showed up. Sexual activity became legally dangerous for men, and the earlier dating pattern could no longer be sustained by any man who wasn't an idiot.

The radical, man bashing feminism of the 90s had carried within it the seeds of its own destruction. It had taken hold during that time of the artificial shortage of women, because thinking that men were a dime a dozen made the women of that era feel more comfortable with the idea of treating those men in an arrogant manner, thinking that they have no personal price to pay for making that choice. The radical feminists gained supporters, they gained power and in Illinois, as I understand, they pushed through legislation that took the "Antioch College rule book" and gave it the force of law, criminal law. For those who haven't heard of Antioch College, it had a set of rules governing dating and sex among its students, under which each and every action had to be verbally agreed to, before one could continue.




eg. "May I kiss you?"

"Yes"

"May I nibble you earlobe?"

"Yes"

"May I take your blouse off?"

"Yes"

"May I take off your bra?"

"Yes"

"May I touch your left nipple?"

"Yes." "May I stroke your right nipple?" "Yes."




Like this, all throughout a creepy sexual encounter that would be left with no spontaneity. Who is the woman who would be aroused by this? Or who would not run screaming from it? At Antioch College, students could be expelled for not doing this thing is that was guaranteed to kill the mood, Puritanism having effectively been written, right into the school rulebook. In Illinois (and anywhere else in which Affirmative Consent has become law), one can not merely be expelled, one can be sent to prison on a charge of rape, there to stay for 20 years or so, and probably really be raped, oneself, repeatedly.

People from elsewhere will ask "so, really, you guys do that." The answer is "no, we don't." Our legislature (as usual) was being insane, and nobody but law enforcement and the courts have taken them seriously. But there is still that reality that in principle, after normal, uninterrupted sex, that one's partner could have one put in prison, and that fact makes sex risky for a man. That was the idea. Radical feminism was (and is) an anti-male hate movement, masquerading as a fight for equality, and this is something that in principle, allows a woman to destroy a man's life. The reason the movement failed was because, being manned as it was by emotionally stunted and morally depraved people as it was, its supporters didn't understand the concept of trust.

For most of us, the solution to the problem is an easy one. Since sex is a dangerous activity for legal reasons, many of us will hold off on it until we've developed a relationship of trust with our partners. We want to know them intimately, and not just on a physical level. We insist on knowing them so well, that we know that they would never betray us by misusing the power that the law has handed them. What this rules out is the option of rushing into sex, but aside from the (cough, cough) "loveboys" on Tinder, few of us wanted that option, anyway. We like the idea of taking our time, of our sexual encounters meaning something and of giving us and those we are with something more satisying than just a tingling sensation and a slightly elevated risk of venereal disease.

But this kills the alpha male lifestyle. While a typical man, having one woman in whom he is deeply interested, only has to get to know one woman before sex takes place, if our latter day alpha male wants to live as his predecessors did, he's going to have to get to know dozens (or maybe, in some cases, hundreds or even thousands) of women on a deep level, in short order. An aggressive bedhopper just hasn't the time to allocate to his sexual conquests to screen out the women who are going to be trouble, so in legal terms, he is playing Russian Roulette, rapidly and frequently. This is not wise, and sooner or later, no matter how many hits to the head he took on the football field in the past, our alpha male will figure that out. While promiscuous men will always be with us, they aren't as numerous as they once were (at least they don't seem to be), and that's not really surprising. By the time one gets to our era, in Chicago (and other major American cities) the very idea of a single man having a harem arouses incredulity among those under a certain age. The women will wonder why the women of that era were so unassertive as to tolerate such a double standard in dating, leaving their aunts sputtering.

It is awkward, is it not? Without the harems and the artificial shortage of women, radical feminism dies swiftly, because it gets its power from a perception of female sexual power and male sexual neediness, but the harems themselves exist in direct conflict with the standards any sort of feminism supposedly upholds. There is nothing equal about the standards to which the harem holder and the woman in the harem are being held. The privileged man enjoys freedoms which the women do not. All that the maiden aunts can do is sputter, as they try to deny that the movement to which they devoted (and on which they wasted) so much of their youth was one from which the hypocrisy could not have been removed, because the movement couldn't grow or even be maintained without it. Without those thirsty, desperate men running around in great numbers, all radical feminism could do was shrink and shrink until it became so small and so insignificant, that those just coming of age could be heard doubting that it had ever existed. That's as close to death as a cultural movement can come. It's not something that British or Australian radical feminists are going to want to think about, because when they look at our bitter, crazy cat ladies and the dead movements that are greeted, first with disbelief and then with derisive laughter, they start to see their own futures, futures they want to pretend aren't real.

They want to pretend that America, the land of Donald Trump, is lagging their own homelands culturally, but in reality it's just further down the road on which their countries are probably headed. People like "Amy" can abuse the flagging and women like Becky Barnicoat can censor comments and go into denial all the want, and the truth will not change one bit. Radical feminism, with its sense of female entitlement and unacknowledged (and yet angrily demanded) male subservience is an unsustainable dead end. The Culture Wars of which a previous generation spoke are ending, and are going to end without society being molded according to the fantasies of our activists, whether we like it or not. As progressives, we can distance ourselves from the social justice warriors and their mania, and craft a new brand of progressive politics, one that has something to offer all decent people because it respects the dignity of all deserving individuals and not just the privileged and fashionable few, or we can end up being as irrelevant as they have come to be seen almost everywhere outside of the Internet, and a few remaining, vanishing parts of the default world offline, while Trump and those like him consolidate their power, because their only opposition has come to be seen as a joke. Either way, it's our choice and our responsibility.