The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Sex: What If We Stopped Pretending We Don’t Know What We Actually Know?

Posted on | November 24, 2018 | Comments Off on Sex: What If We Stopped Pretending We Don’t Know What We Actually Know?

 

Rhett: “Has the war started?”
Scarlett: “Sir, you should have made your presence known.”
Rhett: “In the middle of that beautiful love scene? That wouldn’t have been very tactful, would it? But don’t worry, your secret is safe with me.”
Scarlett: “Sir, you are no gentleman.”
Rhett: “And you, miss, are no lady.”
Scarlett: “Oh?”
Rhett: “But don’t think I hold that against you. Ladies have never held any charm for me.”
Scarlett: “First you take a low, common advantage of me, then you insult me!”
Rhett: “I meant it as a compliment. And I hope to see more of you, when you’re free of the spell of the elegant Mr.Wilkes. He doesn’t strike me as half good enough for a girl of your… what was it? Your ‘passion for living’?”

 

What is the secret of Rhett Butler’s charm? In an age of elaborate courtesy, he does not bother pretending to be motivated by idealism. Rhett is realistic, and unafraid to offend others by speaking the truth. He understands the game of romantic make-believe better than those who play it, and amuses himself by flouting the rules of the game.

One of the things I advise young men is never to imagine they can deceive a girl about their motives. When you get down to the bottom line, it’s no secret what guys are really after, and thus the guy who thinks he can conceal his ulterior motive while being “friendly” with a girl is unlikely to deceive anyone — except maybe himself, insofar as he thinks she’s not onto his game. Likewise, intelligent and experienced men are wise to the ways of women, understanding their methods and motives far better than does the sort of young fool who considers a woman’s beauty to be evidence of her virtue. While the female mind seems mysterious or erratic, nevertheless an objective consideration reveals general patterns of female behavior, and the sharing of this behavioral knowledge is the useful purpose of what is known as “the manosphere.”

 

The bad reputation of the so-called “Red Pill” community is, in part, a reflection of the fact that in the social media age anyone can get on the Internet and bloviate endlessly, which means that “Red Pill” forums attract a lot of basement-dwelling fools saying offensive things about women that have little or nothing to do with the legitimate purpose of those forums, i.e., to help men improve their lives. Because certain indisputably bad guys (e.g., Isla Vista killer Elliot Rodger) have had some connection, however minor, to the manosphere, this has damaged the reputation of innocent participants. Furthermore, and most obviously, “Red Pill” discourse is a direct challenge to feminism, which creates a political incentive to tar everyone with the same brush, claiming that somehow the Republican Party is to blame for everything said in pickup artist (PUA) forums. While Roosh V and Donald Trump may have certain traits in common, this kind of guilt-by-association smear would be recognized as invalid if it were reversed to blame Democrats for every controversial figure in any movement on their side. But I digress . . .

Rollo Tomassi calls attention to a post by Dalrock about a feminist’s argument that men should be liable to charges of criminal fraud for exaggerations or lies on their dating-app profiles:

To start with, she is trying to formalize the AF/BB strategy into law, but the strategy relies on denial. Key to the AF/BB strategy is pretending that the woman didn’t shift sexual strategies once her youth and fertility were all but gone. Such women can’t come out and say they are shifting from having sex with the kind of men they are sexually attracted to (sex for pleasure) into a strategy of having sex with men they don’t want to have sex with but think would make a good husband. Otherwise, the man who mans up and marries a woman in her late thirties after she tires of having sex with other men looks like a chump and his bride looks like a whore!

Now, I will not offend readers by explaining what “AF/BB strategy” means, except to say that it describes an observable pattern among certain women who spend their youth as carousel riders, pursuing a series of casual hookups and short-term relationships, before they decide — usually in their late 20s — to start husband-hunting in earnest.

It is absurd to imagine that the reason a never-married woman over 30 is single is because all her previous boyfriends were selfish jerks, unworthy of long-term commitment. Rather, it is more likely that her youthful promiscuity was the result of a more or less conscious calculation on her part, to have fun by throwing herself at any good-looking guy who’d give her a go, believing she would later have no problem finding a husband when she got ready to settle down. This is a fantasy sold by Hollywood — the Sex and the City script — and it is ultimately a formula for failure, as “famewhore” Julia Baugher learned. While decades of cultural revolution may have altered our society’s norms of sexual behavior, what a man considers “wife material” hasn’t changed much. The idea that a girl can start riding the carousel of casual sex as a teenager, bounce around from boyfriend to boyfriend for a decade or more, and then get her romantic happily-ever-after ending with Mister Right, is a delusion.

Even if you think you can point to a “success” story that validates the Sex and the City script as a plausible strategy, you are talking about the exception that proves the rule, namely that youthful promiscuity negatively impacts future prospects for long-term relationships.

On a related note, Rollo Tomassi also calls attention to a 2009 post by Chuck Ross addressing the “sexual peak myth,” i.e., that women in the 30s are more desirable than younger women, and that the “peak” of male sexuality is age 19. I remember when this myth was first popularized by feminists in the late 1970s, and the motives behind it were obvious enough. The older cohort of Baby Boom women, those born in the late 1940s, were then reaching their 30s, and were being discarded or passed over by men their own age, who preferred to pursue younger women. This was a function of demographics, as the Baby Boom had peaked in the late 1950s, so that by 1978 or so, older guys (e.g., Bill Clinton) were surrounded by a bumper crop of females in the 18-24 range. These were the years when TV was full of so-called “T and A” shows like Charlie’s Angels and Three’s Company, when Catherine Bach (b. 1954) was rocking those short-shorts on The Dukes of Hazzard. The “sexual liberation” of the 1960s had produced a culture lacking any moral language to defend monogamy, and the 30-something woman who feared losing out to younger competitors needed reassurance. From this emerged the myth of women reaching “sexual peak” in their 30s.

Chuck Ross’s discussion points out that this myth contradicts everything science tells us about human sexual behavior. From the strictly biological perspective, what is the purpose of sex? Procreation. And when are the peak years of female fertility? Ages 15-24.

“What? Did he say fifteen?” Yes, ma’am, but I preceded this by noting that I was speaking from the strictly biological perspective, and if you’ll research demographics, you’ll find that there are still many places in the world (Mali, Afghanistan, Gaza) where motherhood at 15 or 16 is not uncommon and, indeed, this was true in many parts of America well into the 1960s and beyond. During the 1990s, exaggerated media coverage of a supposed “epidemic” of teenage pregnancy inspired Maggie Gallagher to write a very useful booklet entitled The Age of Unwed Mothers. Gallagher showed that rates of teenage pregnancy, far from becoming an “epidemic,” had declined significantly in the previous 30 years. What had changed was not that more teenagers were getting pregnant, but that fewer pregnant teenagers were getting married. But I digress . . .

 

It makes no sense from an evolutionary perspective that women’s “sexual peak” would occur more than a decade after their peak fertility. Rather, we should expect sexual desire and reproductive capacity to be closely correlated. But feminism is a War Against Human Nature, as I have said, and so despite their atheistic devotion to Darwinism, feminists reject the insights of evolutionary theory in explaining human sexual behavior.

What if we were to stop pretending we don’t know what we actually know? What if we abandoned the zero-sum-game mentality of “social justice” ideology that insists that the absence of statistical “equality” between men and women is proof of patriarchal oppression? What if, instead of making women’s “empowerment” the sole purpose of every discussion of sexual behavior, we instead recognized that the rhetoric of “empowerment” has been employed to encourage and justify behaviors that are ultimately harmful to women’s long-term interests?

The Left’s hostility to Christianity, and to traditional moral values more generally, does not actually “empower” women, except insofar as it licenses them to behave irresponsibly, making them vulnerable to exploitation. When we see the Left defending pornography and prostitution while at the same time proclaiming their devotion to women’s equality, we ought to be suspicious of their motives. Likewise, we ought to be suspicious of the feminist crusade against “slut-shaming.” There are legitimate reasons to condemn promiscuity, and women’s best interests are not served by silencing criticism of hookup culture.

Contrary to the liberal myth of Progress, we are not advancing toward a utopia of “equality.” Nor, contrary to some conservatives, can we magically return to a lost Golden Age of moral purity. No matter what policies we pursue, the basic problems of human nature cannot be eradicated and we should beware of false prophets promising us heaven on earth. (Again I recommend Daniel J. Flynn’s Cult City.) There is no such thing as collective salvation, and men would be fools to emulate the identity-politics formula of feminism, which is why I eschew the rhetoric of “men’s rights.” Regardless of what policy governments may implement, or which way the cultural currents are running, the individual man remains free to pursue his own interests. Indeed, at a time when our civilization is cartwheeling toward catastrophe, it is only the man who refuses to conform to the herd who is likely to survive the destructive forces of chaotic insanity that now prevail in Western culture.

The “male feminist” types who constantly signal their compliance with the cultural status quo may gain some short-term advantage from their conformity, but they are following a path that can only lead to their own destruction. Once women wise up to that game, it ceases to be effective even as a short-term tactic, and the independent thinker — the realist — can laugh at fools who think they can “win” such a game.

Stop pretending you don’t know what you actually do know.



 

Category: Sex Trouble

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