A reader explain why it's so hard to "meet someone" these days:
The reason things are broken is that older married women used to create the social context in which their children could get married and make grandbabies for them, but now they all have mostly completely useless jobs instead.
Some of them knew they were doing this, but most were just doing what they felt was expected of them. Mostly women do what they feel is expected of them. It's expected now that women have jobs. If they don't have a job, they need to be doing intensive childrearing or volunteer work. It's completely unacceptable for them to spend their afternoons playing bridge or touring each other's gardens or shopping for hats or any other ladylike pursuit.
But those apparently useless activities BUILT THE ENTIRE FREAKING SOCIAL WORLD. Just like a world of women would never invent anything useful, a world of men will never have a nice party. You meet your future spouse at a nice party that your mom nagged you into going to because her friend needs more people there. You have total plausible deniability about being there - you're not there cause you're lonely and desperate - you don't need game, you don't need the rules. The biddies took care of that for you. All you need to do is show up and be fertile/virile.
But middle-aged women can't do this, and have jobs, and take care of their elderly parents, and exercise, and worry about their husbands leaving them or have to take care of their children with no husband at all. Impossible.
This is illustrated explicitly in Helen Fielding's very funny Bridget Jones's Diary (which is a blend of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice with a distaff version of Henry Fielding's Tom Jones, but set in the dysfunctional mating environment of upscale 1990s London),
Bridget spends a lot of time in expensive restaurants and bars with her two girlfriends and her gay male friend complaining about how they can never meet anybody. She meets proto-Pick Up Artist Daniel Cleaver (Hugh Grant in the movie) at her semi-glamorous (and mostly-useless) media job.
But she keeps running into the awkward but admirable Mark Darcy (Colin Firth) when she reluctantly drives out of London to obligingly show up at the various old-fashioned suburban parties her upper middle class housewife mother and her mother's friends are constantly throwing and roping their children into attending so that the parties will be a success. Mark is the son of an admiral in Bridget's parent's social set, a top lawyer whose first marriage broke up when his wife had an affair with Daniel Cleaver. Like Bridget, he also hates being dragged into attending the old biddies' parties, but he dutifully shows up because his mother and his mother's friends need more people.
My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer
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92 comments:
Most women do have useless jobs - but there is ONE use for them (that's of benefit to the woman, that is): it pays the husband's taxes!
By contrast, single women simply traded life for work. What a bad bargain. Our cultural ways are destroyed by another -ism. Capital-ism (or so-called capitalism), femin-ism, etc.
I labor under a rather different problem: a 45-year old man in good health, good shape, good looks and a good job but who lost all his equity along with the meltdown of his personal life. So, at an age when I should be, I no longer command alpha status.
I get to choose from the following:
Women in their 40's who have let themselves completely go.
Women in their late 30's still holding out for kids, picket fence, big wedding with a white dress--and without a hint of introspection at why they are completely undeserving of any and all three.
Women in their 40's trolling for someone to keep them and their spoiled brat kids in the lifestyle to which they are currently clinging by their fingernais. (Actually, I'm not really in contention here.)
Oh well.
--Senor Doug
Women are always finding ways to fix people up with each other - it's like a biological compulsion. My mother is a MD and despite being busy with that, she's full of suggestions regarding that lovely girl she knows from here, or that other nice girl who's the daughter of so and so and seems great and so on.
The problem is a) I don't live near my parents or where I grew up, so the middle-aged women who know me best are not in the position to play matchmaker. I live anonymously in a big city and the middle-aged women there focus their efforts on matching young people they actually know and (one would hope) can on some level vouch for.
b) Middle-aged women are not the best judges of what I want in a woman and who I find attractive.
senor doug - no offense, but I'm not sure why you as a 45-yr-old bachelor is somehow superior to late 30's spinsters. If you're a good catch who perhaps made some missteps, surely there are some women in this age bracket who are the same. If you're not a good catch and that's why you're still single,then you can't really expect to have the pick of the litter.
I don't understand the premise. Who thinks its harder to meet members of the opposite sex these days? Internet matching is real.
When I divorced my second wife I started dating women I met on the web. At the peak I was averaging five new women a week. Before I tired of this (after about a year) I figure I had gone out with over a hundred different women. This simply isn't possible with any pre-web social matching system.
I date much less today but I know that if I applied myself I could meet a dozen plausible women to fill out my social calendar for next month. I find that fact very comforting.
One might argue that you only meet lower quality women on the web but just the opposite is true. When I appreciated how many women there really were available, I became more discriminating. After a while I sought out only women who were at least ten years younger than I was, were over 5'9", and had a doctorate.
Personally I took advantage of the brief window circa 1994-1996 when the Internet was inhabited only by academics and students, and met my future wife on a Scottish culture Usenet newsgroup. Couldn't happen now.
Whenever I mention to another female that I love, love, love "Brigdet Jones' Diary," they *sneer* at me!
I don't know why.
It might have something to do with the lesser cachet of comedy in general. But women who will read all sorts of tedious pretentious quasi-autobiographical sensitive soul-searching coming-of-age novels will turn up their noses at this book.
Anyway, I think comic novels are difficult to write, and I admire anyone who can do it successfully.
Sounds kind of idyllic to me. I'm not sure most middle-aged women had much time for bridge and tea parties before the halcyon days of the 1950s.
But the jobs they have now are a whole lot easier than cooking with coal and washing diapers by hand.
albertosaurus said...
When I divorced my second wife I started dating women I met on the web. At the peak I was averaging five new women a week. Before I tired of this (after about a year) I figure I had gone out with over a hundred different women. This simply isn't possible with any pre-web social matching system.
Sounds fun. How many of them were married?
Well, if "meeting people" is the goal, and the success criterion is "number of people met", I'd say albertosaurus wins today's contest.
"You meet your future spouse at a nice party that your mom nagged you into going to because her friend needs more people there. You have total plausible deniability about being there - you're not there cause you're lonely and desperate"
Newsflash, if you need to attend your mother's friend's parties to meet people, you are desperate and lonely.
The matchmaker problem Steve is not the real reason people don't "meet someone." Indeed, Half Sigma covered this very issue with his review of "Crossing Delancy."
The problem is women's desire for status GREATER than their own since they have higher standards of living, equal in status and money, roughly, to most men.
When women become "empowered" i.e. roughly equal to most men, they don't demand equality. They demand superiority. Nothing better illustrates this than "Crossing Delancy" which when I saw it struck me as one of the few honest examinations of this phenomena.
The heroine is Amy Irving, Spielberg's first wife, who has some low-level job at a Publisher, that does not pay well but gives her status. She escorts a famous, jerky author around NYC and hopes to become his girlfriend. He sort of strings her along.
At the same time, her granny forces her into a date with Peter Riegert, who plays a guy who has his own business, a Kosher Pickle shop. Irving likes him but finds him low status since he works with his hands and his hands smell like pickles. She strings the guy along while pursuing the author.
It all comes down to a date, where Irving simply does not show up at granny's apartment, where Riegert entertains the granny, in favor of a final pursuit of the Author. Who reveals he wants Irving as a secretary (who would also be his mistress) but not exclusive girlfriend. Irving goes back to the apartment where Riegert is waiting.
That's the dynamic. Except that in real life, Irving-type women will indeed share the few "author" types of high status, have kids on their own (they can afford it), and forget the Riegert types who are priced out of the market.
Roissy is right, women WILL share, and indeed that other women want the guy is social proof (ala George with "Manhands" on Seinfeld) that he is in fact desireable. Women will share because in anonymous urban centers there is no shame, and the condom and the pill allow them to control both disease and fertility. Good income and welfare means that they can have kids on their own without sacrifices of boring guys who lack high status and power.
Moreover as anon points out, women have men both older than themselves and same age as themselves pursuing them. So they can and do choose only the highest status men. Without social constraints of worrying about what their families and childhood friends and neighbors would want, women WILL share in soft polygamy the most socially dominant and high status men.
This is the future of the entire West. Marriage is simply "dead" or realistically, restricted to really, rich and powerful and important men, who can "afford" it along with a nuclear family.
Having a family of one's own is simply out of reach for most men -- and the social cost that will exact is going to be large I think.
You can meet all the women you want, if you don't have the necessary criteria, it means nothing. Internet matchmaking is rising, yet marriage rates fall every year. It's women's preferences that changed, radically, with the loss of any constraints on choice.
anon,
I'm not saying I'm better. I'm saying, in so many words, that these women are deluded if they think that particular dream should come true for them at an age when they're as likely to develop cancer as be pregnant. Or when daddy is just now catching his breath after paying for princess's college and initial launch into adulthood and ain't about to take out a second mortgage for his spinster daughter's big day. Or when the pool now includes losers who could never get married to begin with and men with their own kids recovering from failed marriages, career setbacks, et al. There are middle-aged alphas out there, but your competition now includes women in the 25-33 YO range as well.
I have asked several women friends in this category what they were thinking when they were in college/grad school and surrounded by marriageable men. The response is either that they thought they had all the time in the world to go out with badboys and choose their solid-citizen breadwinner later, or the men just didn't meet their 325-point checklist. And now that you mention it, I'm not really in contention for this bunch either.
I can take cold comfort in the fact that they are swimming upstream as well.
--Senor Doug
Steve,
That was a very good comment. I remember recently putting down the east coast Victorian women for embroidering all day while their pioneer sisters were working their fingers to the bone. I regretted saying it immediately as I believe the ideal is in between: the virtuous woman of the Old Testament.
BTW, I love your housing and marriage threads. They go on forever and are so interesting! My own brother got engaged finally last week. I didn't realize how much I, a stay-at-home, was "working" on their relationship. I'm the only non-working adult in our family in Florida and, coincidentally, the only one who was constantly on his "case" according to him. His fiance even had a nightmare where my brother acted badly and she threatened to tell on him to me. It wasn't that I was so on his case (okay, may be a little), but everyone else was too busy to do things to make a good impression on behalf of the family and make her feel welcome: taking her out, inviting her over for dinners, calling and advising on how to handle step-parents, etc. In short, being a social lubricant and nice face for what she's getting into.
VERY good points.
Perhaps this is why Orthodox Jews are still very 'communally successful' when compared to many other groups - because the vast majority of Orthodox Jewish women do not work at jobs outside the home and thus have the time and energy to 'gossip' (i.e., matchmaker, matchmaker...), build strong social networks, and help their friends and family raise the community's children healthily.
Worth looking in to.
This is a really dumb post.
Steve, you don't know what you're talking about in this field.
In a country where the greatest of luxuries is acquiring the wherewithal to avoid the wrong type of people, is it surprising we're too busy working to meet the right type of people?
I also don't really agree with the premise. *Who says* it's harder to 'meet someone' these days? The internet seems to have made it easier than ever.
I'm the OP. I met my husband at a Burning Man fundraiser. So it was sort of like meeting someone in an oldstyle social network, except with older gay men doing the social-context-creating.
Here's another observation about the marriages in my social circle that are working. "Working" doesn't mean "providing emotional support" or "providing awesome sex on demand," btw, it means "producing children who are likely to produce grandchildren their grandparents will recognize." Marriages that are doing this happen between people who are the same kinds of people who would have gotten married to each other if the social explosions of the sixties and seventies hadn't happened. When my mother met my husband's father, they immediately recognized each other as the kind of people they had met at parish dances 35 years earlier. My husband and I are basically the same kind of person, the result of the kinds of urban Catholic neighborhood that was destroyed by integration, even though neither of us experienced that ourselves.
But here's the really interesting piece: he was not raised by his father. His parents divorced when he was very small, and he was raised in his mother's Scots-Irish context, a context that is totally alien to me, and a context that completely failed to make any impression on him whatsoever.
I see this all over. Successful marriages are when California Jews marry California Jews, hillbillies marry hillbillies, Scandinavian pioneer stock marries Scandinavian pioneer stock, even when one or both of the spouses are one or more generations removed from any kind of ethnic cultural context and grew up in a household marred by divorce and cut off from one half of their heritage. Human biodiversity is a real thing and it isn't just about intelligence.
@ albertosaurus -
I've heard that online dating has become almost useless for men. Whether personals sites, or services such as eHarmony.com and Match.com, the common theme is far too many men and far too few women.
I can't believe you're promoting the idea that a population of women should stay out of the workforce so that they can garden & throw stuffy parties for uninteresting people linked only because they live in the same area. A sort of social services for dorks who can't find their own dates. Think this through. It won't work except in the movies, Sailer.
"Women in their late 30's still holding out for kids, picket fence, big wedding with a white dress--and without a hint of introspection at why they are completely undeserving of any and all three."
So you're not looking for marriage, Doug? You can negotiate the size of a wedding or the cost of a dress but you have to live somewhere. Wanting children isn't that far fetched either.
I suggest hanging out with Albertosaurus for a week or two. Your attitude isn't sexy & won't get you sex or marriage. So there!
Wanting children isn't that far fetched either.
Ain't the "wanting" part I'm talking about missie. You can "want" til the cows come home but that doesn't make it good science or a good life choice.
I suggest hanging out with Albertosaurus for a week or two. Your attitude isn't sexy & won't get you sex or marriage. So there!
I can pass on the sex or marriage with self-deluded, uppity women.
--Senor Doug
steve, I would be fascinated to know the ways that Portnoy's Complaint helps a reader understand the contemporary world; how Obama may have been influenced by it would also make a good article. additional thanks if you use the "ways PC helps to understand the contemporary world: (1)..." format.
Many Americans, of both sexes, are too narcissistic to be good spouses, even if they do meet and marry.
My own experience, aged 68, is that mothers did not help me meet my future wives.
However, when I first got married, non-working wives did build a social network in our suburbs and there were many parties.
Now most of the wives are working and those "married couple" parties are pretty much non-existent. But there are still book clubs for the women. I'm not sure if the women are happier or not. And the men don't seem to miss them a lot.
If Senor Doug is all the things he says he is: good health, good looks, good job, then I'd say despite having lost equity in what I assume was a divorce, he's still, for a lot of attractive women with their heads on straight, a good catch. Just my take.
Albertosaurus:
"When I divorced my second wife I started dating women I met on the web. At the peak I was averaging five new women a week. "
I'm sort of wondering if Albertosaurus is being facetious here. After your second marriage? Your track record on finding a life partner doesn't inspire confidence. But hey, I guess if you don't mind faceplanting on another marriage, maybe meeting the numerous online chickadees is a good option. As a bachelor, girls you can meet on the Logan's run channel do save me a small fortune on prostitutes. Two cheers for the internet!
-Bachelor
Having a family of one's own is simply out of reach for most men -- and the social cost that will exact is going to be large I think.
The novelist Michael Houellebecq suggests sexual tourism to third world countries as the only alternative left for many single men and women in the West. He shocks by simply suggesting an honest exchange.
“Something is definitely happening that’s making Westerners stop sleeping with each other. Maybe it’s something to do with narcissism, or individualism, the cult of success, it doesn’t matter. The fact is that from about the age of twenty-five or thirty, people find it very difficult to meet new sexual partners…. So they end up spending the next thirty years, almost the entirety of their adult lives, suffering permanent withdrawal….
“Therefore,” I went on, “you have several hundred million Westerners who have everything they could want but no longer manage to obtain sexual satisfaction. They spend their lives looking without finding it, and they are completely miserable. On the other hand, you have several billion people who have nothing, who are starving, who die young, who live in conditions unfit for human habitation, and who have nothing left to sell except their bodies and their unspoiled sexuality.… It’s an ideal trading opportunity.”
Houellebecq's relationship with his mother is similiar to the relationship between Obama and Stanley Ann. She was a doctor who, during the 60's, sent Houellebecq to live with his grandmother in France while she attempted to fix the third world. The really is something contemptible about the covert sexaul nature of white women's concern for the third world.
Steve, ignore the ingrates. These types of posts are great.
Very amusing when the female isteve commenters bring out their mace.
For the OP -- As a woman, you face competition for your favors from men in your own age range and ten years older. For you, "meeting" people means merely widening your interactions with more desireable men.
It's quite likely you were one of the very few attractive women in the fundraiser. And quite probable that your husband had to compete with other men to win you.
Women simply lack any insight at all into men's dilemmas, because men compete over them until they get older. For men it is the reverse, "winning" the competition when it's worth winning. When women have fewer partners, less emotional baggage, less old boyfriends/lovers able (though not likely) to re-enter the picture and sweep the woman away through intense prior emotional connections developed through sex, and when women are more fertile and able to have children.
More Annoyed -- I doubt anyone is suggesting Kinder-Kuche-Kirche. Among other things the productivity of the Western Workforce DEPENDS on women being an equal part of the workforce.
However, the high rate of divorce, about 75% of which is initiated by women, is likely due to the older age at which people get married. A woman who marries in her mid to early twenties, to a man about 6-7 years older, experiences bonding when both are at their attractiveness peak. Hormones work to create lasting bonds, memories, and intrinsic mutual emotional support that ON AVERAGE carry these types of couples forward through aging and life challenges (sickness, loss of income, aging, etc.) ON AVERAGE is how most societies work by the way, human beings being imperfect and all.
By contrast, a woman in her thirties could have so many partners that the ability to bond to the man is limited, both will of course will be far less attractive than at younger ages, and there is limited time to create intense, hormone-driven bonds. [If the man has the same number of partners, of course his ability to bond is also limited, though increasingly the average man has fewer partners than the average woman in this situation.]
Women with the ability to control their fertility and avoid a lot of diseases by the Pill and Condom, and with the ability to move to an anonymous urban center devoid of social censure, demand not equal status/power to themselves but greater amounts of both. They are willing to "share" the few men that have this greater amount, which amounts to social dominance through testosterone-driven aggressiveness, rather than income or earnings (up to a point). This prices most guys out of the marriage market. Increasingly, women are willing and indeed prefer the single mother route to messy compromises with non-socially dominant men.
It is a single mother world, and one of the results is hard-left liberalism by single mothers and single women who dominate the ranks of women and thus the voting. The other is the predictable misogyny and petty revenge that men priced out of the marriage market will and do enact on women. Women will just have to live with this since leaving a lot of men out of the market is the cost for absolute freedom to pursue the Alpha.
But hey, what could possibly go wrong with having lots of guys outside marriage and family?
I'm wondering how this post made it onto the VDare blog. Is it justified because it touches on reasons for the low white birth rate?
Newsflash, if you need to attend your mother's friend's parties to meet people, you are desperate and lonely.
Someone didn't quite get it did they.
Steve,
When our young started to troll for potential mates exclusively in nightclubs by roughly the late
70's, our birthrates were doomed to fall.
Bars are a contentious, competitive place where males and females compete with their own sex, and the opposite sex, in a show-status-competition amongst loud music and blinking lights, encapsulated by darkness. These days, there are courses men can take that help them to appear like "alpha males" (leaders of other men, willing to emote and defend those they care about, socially in-demand, cool) that are very effective in getting women primally interested in them, even against their own will to an extent, or at least interested enough for him to get a woman's phone number for potential dates later. I have hopes that this will enable younger men and women to "get together" earlier in life and mate successfully.
I hope the internet can also play a role for some who live outside cities, or simply hate clubbing.
Meanwhile, the people at churches have no problems arranging marriages and one sees plenty of kids in their parking lots. What right wingers we have left in 35 years might be very socially conservative if the open-mind types dont get it together out there and have some kids, faster please.
There is a blog, Roissy in DC, that attempts to help men along who are predisposed to going out to bars for searching for potential mates. I hope things like this can be helpful for that set. There is nothing more pathetic than seeing people who are too old to be out clubbing, still clubbing. One cannot rely on dumb luck.
The first thing society needs to do in this arena however, is to admit that there is a problem to be addressed, and have an open conversation about it. Birth rates like Spain's (down to about 1.2-1.3 for a while) are simply ridiculous and will end that civilization if they dont turn it around.
However, I do worry that men who take the classes and learn the "pick up" skills (really a very sophisticated mood scam and marketing skill set that works wonders on women, ESPECIALLY pretty ones), is that they will become mega players like some friends that I have were....................for all of their twenties and half their thirties before they were willing to settle down. That is the down side to all of that, if men wholly embrace it, society still doesn't get enough kids. Simply put, men and women BOTH are going to have to be willing to be in families to make this work, otherwise the West's numbers assure its enventual takeover by non-westeners with higher birthrates already residing in the west.
Increasingly, women are willing and indeed prefer the single mother route to messy compromises with non-socially dominant men.
testing99 - what stats are you basing these comments on? Do you have a link? Everything I've seen, most recently the current Census report indicates that the more education & income a woman has, the more unlikely she is to have children out of wedlock (men too) - it's the lower classes, unrestricted by middle class mores and surrounded by unwed parents, that are in trouble.
"I get to choose from the following:"
There is a fourth option Dougie;
You an do what the guy on the other thread did; Go to PUA school, learn how to dress, talk and act like a black pimp and bag an 18 year old 6'2 potential fashion model from South Dakota and have her pay all of your bills.
It seems to work for all of 'Mystery's disciples.
" Except that in real life, Irving-type women will indeed share the few "author" types of high status, have kids on their own (they can afford it), and forget the Riegert types who are priced out of the market."
Yeah, and between these two dudes they spend their Friday nights boning the sensitive lumberjack-looking dork who happens to live next door, just as the posters on the human biodiversity website postulate as to how New York white women are actually chaste instead of insufferably slutty....Oh no, that happened in the movie, never-mind.
"The really is something contemptible about the covert sexual nature of white women's concern for the third world."
There is? Is this in a vacuum or in comparison to the overt sexual nature of white men's concern for the welfare of 14 year old Thai/Philipino/Cuban prostitutes?
For the OP -- As a woman, you face competition for your favors from men in your own age range and ten years older. For you, "meeting" people means merely widening your interactions with more desireable men.
Dude, this was a dot com party in SF in 1998. I was a pretty young thing but for that time and place I wasn't special.
I wanted to get married and have children, so I went to where the men were and I picked one out. I don't need to widen my interactions these days. I don't think you should be telling a married lady to widen anything, mister!
The first thing society needs to do in this arena however, is to admit that there is a problem to be addressed, and have an open conversation about it.
Or we could just not talk about it, get married early in life, and have discrete affairs. What was wrong with that system?
testing 99 saidThe other is the predictable misogyny and petty revenge that men priced out of the marriage market will and do enact on women
Can you explain the petty revenge men are enacting on women.
The first thing society needs to do in this arena however, is to admit that there is a problem to be addressed, and have an open conversation about it
Or we could just not talk about it, get married early in life, and have discrete affairs. What was wrong with that system
I was thinking the same thing. With condoms and birth control a woman can ensure that her husband's children are really her husband's children. I guess it boils down to most men not wanting to share.
Newsflash ... "newsflash" isn't a clever putdown any more, and the reader Sailer is quoting is talking about the past, when going to mother-sponsored parties was acceptable (and white affluent reproduction was acceptable).
I've known guys into pickup. Most just learned dating tips but one became absolutely obsessed. Over time I realized that women weren't really the point. He was trying to be secure in his masculinity.
tr -- if you go to Whiskeys-place.blogspot.com you can find all sorts of data.
If you go to the Census Bureau, they have fascinating stats on marriage, and the ages of marriage. I have lots of graphs, including this one which notes the ages at which men and women get married since the 1930's is getting later, and later, and later.
Demographics is driving this, the Census Bureau is showing the later and later marriage ages. There is little hard data on breakout by marriage and income, and that itself makes me suspicious. But the historical data is pretty suggestive.
There is also the NYT article, which while not statistically valid is suggestive: here Note that the women are all wealthy, they have to be in order to be able to afford IVF treatments. Martha Stewart's daughter is spending IIRC around 40K a month according to Steyn and Roissy, who linked to news reports, on just this IVF effort, in order to conceive.
OP -- My point is that you don't face the same dilemma as guys do. In the Dot-Com bubble of SF, you were probably one of the very few women around all those guys. YOUR entry is easy -- but a guy's entry into the female world, requires status/power/social dominance. What is a guy to do? Women are at the workplace, where they don't want approach, for sound reasons, or at BARS. That's it. Your advantage of being an attractive woman in high demand at that time has ZILCH to do with the problem of Joe Average who must compete with all those other offers.
Men and women's dating problems are not the same. Each sex has little insight into the other's fundamental problems.
Please -- the petty revenge is coarsening language, attitudes, lack of politeness, rudeness, and pettiness in every day life. I've seen men, in their thirties, treat women terribly rudely in a way that would not have happened even twenty years ago. The torture porn movies, the slasher movies, all disturb me greatly. They IMHO fill a need of angry nerdy guys who lose out.
And yes, men won't share. They've killed for far less. Exclusive access to one woman is "part of the deal" that in the main (no system is perfect) has to exist in order for the nuclear family to exist. Otherwise men act somewhere between the PUA or Rappers. They don't invest in women or children, have little concern for them if not contempt, and status for boys is not the result of fatherly investment plus genetics and wealth, but a "race to the bottom" to be the most violent. See West Africa, East London's White Underclass.
The Nuclear family is dead, it is not coming back. Religious conservatives are going to be overwhelmed by the "Janissary Effect" of culture plus the realities of the dating market. Women are going to have to get used to Rappers on the extreme end to hostile nerdy guys being rude to them on the other end as the treatment they will get from most men.
One thing about the PUA. None of them, particularly "Style" aka Neil Strauss, are able to maintain a stable relationship. Mostly because what they teach is concealing the real person and giving an entertaining performance. Which at some point slips and the real, undesirable person slips through.
Does anyone else hate it when Steve who is basically a youngish old fart starts taunting those of us who are single?
The dating scene isn't nearly this bad. He doesn't know. How could he know? As for how the jerk managed to find a wife in the first place...
Don't let him ruin your week with this tripe. He gets sadistic pleasure from making us think we'll be alone forever and that all the white people are going to go extinct.
He's EVIL. Let's break out the torches and gardening tools to chase him out of town!
I do worry that men who take the classes and learn the "pick up" skills (really a very sophisticated mood scam and marketing skill set that works wonders on women, ESPECIALLY pretty ones),
Ya mean those "how to talk to women" ads in the back of Playboy really work? Who knew...
I just dont believe that many (white) men are interested in the welfare of 14 year old Thai/Philipino/Cuban prostitutes.
I think a few are very interested and most others are not very interested at all.
For myself I prefer a sturdy white woman, with a bit of meat on the bone. Just to reassure you liberals I did have a black girlfriend at one time and a jewish one.
I lived in Bangladesh for a time, and I always thought their arranged marriage system, which is a sort of more formal version of the garden party with the carefully picked guest list, had much to recommend it. Impossible here, as it requires both heavy stigma against divorce and more limited social opportunities for women, so maybe not even desirable, but it seemed in that system there were fewer losers: a decent guy with a good job would have throngs of mothers approaching his to arrange for marriage interviews. (If the couple got along after a couple of chats over tea, a marriage would be arranged; I didn't see any cruel forcings, and in general most young people thought -- reasonably -- that their parents both had their best interests in mind and understood what sort of person would be compatible, so were happy to go along with the choices. But I am sure there are also some horror stories. And again, completely impossible here as among other reasons the social worlds between parents and children are probably now too remote.)
b) Middle-aged women are not the best judges of what I want in a woman and who I find attractive.
Perhaps not. But they are usually very good judges of what makes a woman a good wife. They are often pretty good at knowing what you ought to want for your own long-term happiness, too. Married women of the same age can fulfill a similar role. Maybe the dating scene wouldn't be so problematic if it weren't such a hothouse of hormones and ego and were instead part of a larger, more diverse social setting.
The circumstances described in the OP may have been class- and era-specific, but the concept that older people can provide a helpful and stabilizing influence on the relationships of their younger relatives and family friends is valid.
Marriage is simply "dead" or realistically, restricted to really, rich and powerful and important men, who can "afford" it along with a nuclear family.
Really? There sure are a lot of weddings, very few of which involve "really rich, powerful and important men." Most of the 30-year-olds I know are married. And most of the over-40s are still married to their first spouses. These are not religious fundamentalists but rather SWPL professionals in a big urban center.
More Annoyed -- I doubt anyone is suggesting Kinder-Kuche-Kirche. Among other things the productivity of the Western Workforce DEPENDS on women being an equal part of the workforce.
Perhaps, but productivity is overrated. It buys material luxury, but the single-minded pursuit of productivity to the exclusion of other values is socially destructive.
The argument that women ought to have the same opportunities as men out of fairness is reasonable. The argument that we need women to work in order to sustain our material well-being is manifestly not true, since we were already pretty well-off when most women left the workplace while their children were young.
It's an odd thing.
You learn pickup so you can meet a girl and maybe settle down.
Then you realize that the techniques that make one woman fall for you work on pretty much any woman you pick out. Hey, you're still a guy and that drive for variety is pretty strong. Why not indulge it now that you can?
As some commenter on roissy's blog pointed out, success with women is really disillusioning.
-Steve Johnson
"Does anyone else hate it when Steve who is basically a youngish old fart starts taunting those of us who are single?"
I don't. I think such things are a useful goad to people who should stop screwing around with their lives and reproduce.
Modern American women (white ones more than the other kinds) need to be endlessly reminded that they're actually not gay men, if they ever expect to prove to the world that they're not. You should thank Mr. Sailer for reminding you, even if it makes you feel bad. You feel bad because you're making bad choices!
-Bachelor
Marriage is simply "dead" or realistically, restricted to really, rich and powerful and important men, who can "afford" it along with a nuclear family.
Let me guess: you're a divorced man.
Steve, the amount of weddings is on decline, and weddings are later and later. For the first time ... well since the Census Bureau started counting it, single women outnumber married ones.
You see the wedding anouncements, but not the weddings that never take place.
testing99 is right, but who else discusses this? maybe houellebecq, roissy, mystery? most of the girls at my college are interested in only a few guys who display "alpha" characteristics. many of the rest of us males are single, lonely, and reading neil strauss. we're the betas. the other males are enrolled in feminist theory courses. they're the omegas, in roissy's formulation.
Testing99, you are killing me here. You are obviously a smart guy who would like to meet a woman and settle down. Just go to your religious gathering place of choice. You will meet women there. Don't worry about whether you believe in it or whatever. There are nice women there, and you will have opportunities to get what you want there. You are obviously a very intelligent man, and there are women who look for that, even if you are not wealthy. Just don't tell her your theories about gender.
Back to the general topic, Western whites have lost their interest in making babies. Everything else, divorce, PUA, Sex in the City, later marriages, all follows from that.
However, I do worry that men who take the classes and learn the "pick up" skills (really a very sophisticated mood scam and marketing skill set that works wonders on women
Not a scam at all. Basically about not acting like a complete idiot around women, and improving yourself generally (i.e. acting alpha by actually becoming more alpha).
I'm actually surprised there isn't more overlap between HBD-land and PUA-land, given that most people in the former probably aren't getting laid much and the latter remedies that problem largely by applying insights from evolutionary psychology.
Seriously though... read some David DeAngelo and Mystery, develop some game, and you can meet girls anywhere, and have them like you for more than just your wallet (which is all some here have going for them apparently). It's pretty pathetic to see a bunch of grown men sitting around wishing their mommies could just introduce them to a nice girl instead of growing some balls and meeting one themselves.
This post and its comments capture the ambivalence I feel between mournful conservatism and progressive hope. The reader expresses perfectly what is lost when we abandon an old and well established way of life, then commenter albertosaurus throws out a perfectly workable solution, at least to the particular problem.
I have been with the same woman since pre-Internet days and have thus not tested those waters, but I suspect the Internet is a very effective way of gaining experience, discovering one's "market value" and finding a partner.
Just my two cents...
Women have so much power over guys in the social world. Women don't need to go to PUA seminars. They're born with a certain level of attractiveness, they can enhance it or let themselves go but their social worth is to a large extent determined. Pretty much all women have at least some options. Men used to have the advantage of being needed to provide a decent living and the status of being a provider. Some kind of balanced was maintained.
Now that women can provide for themselves and women are taking positions of power that would otherwise go to men the balance is lost and men are emasculated and at the mercy of women. Women also detest these men who they outrank, have power over and don't need.
What is to be done? Feminists often portray the battle as freedom vs. opression but feminism to the extent that we have it in the West has come about through the promotion of the state and cultural brainwashing. There's something wrong when women do worse than men on the SAT but make up 60% of college students. I spend a lot of time around young women and they are often hostile to the idea of child rearing. If such a thing was natural we would've all gone extinct a long time ago. The intelligent ones fall for the women's studies and Sex and the City nonsense while all that stuff goes over the heads of the stupid ones who continue to reproduce.
The affects are dysgenic and poison natural, healthy relationships between the sexes.
the reason people marry less is because people feel that marrying "at their level" would be settling. A 6 will refuse to accept lower than an 8.
testing99 - That data would seem to show the opposite - birth rates are declining because people wait longer to get married. Which is to say, they wait to get married before they have children. I still see no reason to believe that the educated & professional classes in this country are becoming hotbeds of illegitimacy.
help me said...
I was thinking the same thing. With condoms and birth control a woman can ensure that her husband's children are really her husband's children. I guess it boils down to most men not wanting to share.
Women get emotionally involved in their affairs to an extent that men do not. It usually destroys the family, with profound effects on the lives of the children. That's why there's a double standard.
No anon, I had a different idea but went where the Census Bureau data led me.
I would strongly urge anyone doubting me to look into the data itself. The last report on marriage came out in August, it has some historical and current data.
Interestingly, the Census Bureau does not in it's Aug 2008 press release add up the White Illegitimacy rate, but you can do so to get the 41% current figure. Shocking.
The same obfuscation that Steve Sailer noted on the Justice Dept. crime stats is here, but you can tease them out. These are btw significant increases (or decreases in marriage) from historical norms.
What concerns me is not anecdotal evidence but society wide problems -- Dalrymple, Sowell, Kurtz, Roissy, Devlin, Steve Sailer have all written about certain aspects of this, and all have in their own way echoed my conclusion: the nuclear family is in bad straights. We might disagree on the nature of it's distress but that it's in distress to the detriment of our society is certain.
I've heard that online dating has become almost useless for men. Whether personals sites, or services such as eHarmony.com and Match.com, the common theme is far too many men and far too few women.
FYI, this has not been my experience at all. Plenty of interested women.
The only thing I really hate about the "love and marriage" threads on iSteve is that Testing99 inevitably drags his paranoid delusions into it. You know, T99, most men who work on Wall Street aren't sleeping with 5 women at a time, and, yes, there are lots and lots and lots of happily married non-alpha males who wound up with a good catch.
I'm with captain jack - testing99's chicken little postings really don't reflect the world I see and I'm an IT dept. beta. Finding a nice girl to marry is really not that difficult (if that's what you want, and I have a feeling that the most hysterical commenters for this post are looking for much more than that).
Hey, didn't Bridget Jones' mother leave her father briefly for an infomercial guy whom she met while WORKING outside the home?
And, Testing, you are way too serious to get a date.
I actually wrote one of those how-to books, "The Machiavellian's Guide to Womanizing" under the pseudonym Nick Casanova. I wrote it at age 28 in 1983, was able to get it published twelve years later (by Carroll & Graf), and so far that's the least frustrating thing to happened in my writing "career."
All these books, including the ones written for women, are simply about putting your best foot forward. (Mine was written primarily for humorous purposes.) I don't know anything about Neil Strauss, but there's absolutely no one of either sex who doesn't try to make a good impression on a first date.
So what?
Any book of advice about how to deal with others is simply a variation on this theme. It's not as if people who are better at making first impressions have worse at second impressions. In my experience the reverse is true.
Halfbreed
OP here again: You guys are bagging on Steve for the wrong reasons. What you should be doing is demanding he marry his daughter off to one of you, if he's serious about saving the white race. How about it, Mr. Sailer? Or have you equipped your daughter for a dysgenic career, like a good whiterperson should?
Bill said...
help me said...
I was thinking the same thing. With condoms and birth control a woman can ensure that her husband's children are really her husband's children. I guess it boils down to most men not wanting to share.
Women get emotionally involved in their affairs to an extent that men do not. It usually destroys the family, with profound effects on the lives of the children. That's why there's a double standard.
11/11/2008
plenty of women have had affairs and their husbands never find out. A smart woman knows that her husband and children come first and her piece on the side comes last.
plenty of women have had affairs and their husbands never find out. A smart woman knows that her husband and children come first and her piece on the side comes last.
Precisely. Just ask any married Frenchwoman.
I actually wrote one of those how-to books, "The Machiavellian's Guide to Womanizing" under the pseudonym Nick Casanova...
All these books, including the ones written for women, are simply about putting your best foot forward...
There have been reams of useless books on dating for men for a long time. The difference with the relatively recent PUA material is that it is fairly scientific and actually works.
Long-term relationships (including marriage) are really not rocket science.
All that's needed are two people who are capable of being reasonable and who are reasonably dedicated to the idea of making the partnership work long term. (Yes, I know that's a little easier said than done but it's what it all comes down to).
The match doesn't have to be perfect and the people don't have to be absolutely matched soulmates, like horseshoes, close is generally good enough.
The problem is that there's no support for being reasonable in current US culture and both men and women are socialized/pressured into wanting/expecting/demanding more from a prospective partner than they're willing or able to give.
There's also the prosperity trap (my own theory though I'm sure I'm not first with it). Basically the idea is that when people can raise their children just as they want and indulge them as much as they want (this is obviously restricted to the more prosperous countries) they tend to raise adults that are fundamentally unappealing as marriage partners. Japanese and Italian mothers raise pampered mama's boys that women do not want. Since sons are favored over daughters in most cultures it hits men first but as the US shows, it can also affect how daughters are raised - daddy's little princess will probably never by a very good wife.
And the socio-biology of people here is all messed up. The players and PUAs are not socially dominant alphas. Alphas aren't the guys who get more sex or turn females on, they're the guys that turn other males on (not in a sexual way).
Guys like Roissy are gammas who opt out of the struggle to rise in the hierarchy and content themselves with servicing females (in secret in the primate world more or less openly now). They know how to push the attraction buttons but are incapable of inspiring commitment in females or allegiance in males.
You guys are bagging on Steve for the wrong reasons. What you should be doing is demanding he marry his daughter off to one of you...
Steve doesn't have a daughter. However, any reader with an eligible daughter (yeah, right...) might want to arrange a tea with one of his sons.
Guys like Roissy are gammas who opt out of the struggle to rise in the hierarchy and content themselves with servicing females (in secret in the primate world more or less openly now). They know how to push the attraction buttons but are incapable of inspiring commitment in females or allegiance in males.
I agree, and this is one of several reasons I don't aspire to PUA status. Chatting up women I meet during the workday, at church, working out, etc. will suffice just fine at my stage, and que sera sera.
--Senor Doug
Testing99: This is the future of the entire West.
No, not the entire West - just the nihilistic part of it.
As a counterexample, check out the broad that Todd Palin snagged for himself - and Todd is just a steelworker on an oil rig.
But the nihilists are doomed to extinction anyway, so there's not much use in worrying about their fate.
Concentrate instead on your own fate, and in seeking out a chick who hasn't been entirely consumed by nihilism.
Granted, they aren't easy to find nowadays, but there are lots of fish in the sea, and if you're young, then you have plenty of time on your hands to go fishing for them...
Senor Doug: I get to choose from the following: Women in their 40's who have let themselves completely go. Women in their late 30's still holding out for kids, picket fence, big wedding with a white dress--and without a hint of introspection at why they are completely undeserving of any and all three. Women in their 40's trolling for someone to keep them and their spoiled brat kids in the lifestyle to which they are currently clinging by their fingernais. (Actually, I'm not really in contention here.) Oh well.
Dude - lose the defeatist attitude.
The purpose of getting married is to make babies - hit on chicks in their twenties [and even their late teens].
And no, I am NOT being facetious.
Get out there and meet 'em in the flesh - start hanging around an evangelical church, or some young republican groups, or some of those IDF girls.
Seriously dude - life is too short for good seed to be wasted on a barren womb.
Guys like Roissy are gammas who opt out of the struggle to rise in the hierarchy and content themselves with servicing females (in secret in the primate world more or less openly now).
why struggle in the first place when you can go straight to the prize?
i say cut out the middleman.
They know how to push the attraction buttons but are incapable of inspiring commitment in females or allegiance in males.
wrong.
good game can inspire everything from lust to love, and can help keep a marriage or relationship happy.
also, game teaches the sort of social dominance that impresses men as well as attracts women. you'd know this if it weren't for your inherent biases clouding your judgement.
The purpose of getting married is to make babies - hit on chicks in their twenties [and even their late teens].
LV, beyond 20 yrs age difference you're getting into the range where the woman will still be young and fecund enough to start a whole new relationship as Doug's already approaching twilight of virility has been plunged into darkness.
No younger than 25, Doug. Someone's identity is pretty established by then so you don't have to worry about the major transformations that often occur in young adulthood. You don't want to be old and alone maybe with kids that everyone takes for your grandchildren and an ex-wife and new husband they take for your daughter and son-in-law, respectively.
But, hey, hot sex with a 20 yo was fun while it lasted. ; )
There's also the tried and true method of getting a bride from a collectivist culture overseas. This negates much of the flightiness of Eriksonian individuation though you may have to learn a foreign language.
Flip side to every coin, Doug. Good luck.
Problem soleved by EHarmony
"why struggle in the first place when you can go straight to the prize?"
See for a PUA the sex is the prize, for the real alphas, it's a fringe benefit (not necessarily the only or most important one). Silverbacks are primarily leaders and protectors and have responsibilities that go with the sexual access. What responsibilities does a PUA have?
Without great responsibility there is no great power.
"good game can inspire everything from lust to love, and can help keep a marriage or relationship happy."
I'd say it's more likely to inspire crushes and obsessions, both of which either pass in time or are destructive all the way around. Couple play has its place at any stage of a relationship but PUAs run the risk of not being able to engage in any other kind of reaction.
"game teaches the sort of social dominance that impresses men as well as attracts women. you'd know this if it weren't for your inherent biases clouding your judgement."
I suppose I would. Which inherent biases are those again?
"The purpose of getting married is to make babies - hit on chicks in their twenties [and even their late teens].
And no, I am NOT being facetious"
More bad advice from former Senator Vorenus. Young wives with older husbands stray. An age gap of 25 years is not going to work unless Doug is a violent controlling bastard willing to terrorize his young bride into not straying as his sex drive wanes and hers waxes.
I'd say go for the 30-35 set. Look for good basic grooming (not too dependent on makeup and not too vain but with some self-respect). At your age comfort and rapport are what you have to offer not youthful passion so don't demand it when you can't incite it.
Basic rule of thumb: The quicker and stronger an attraction is the quicker (and more likely) it is to fade.
Just a small interjection, riffing off of what Farris said...there seems to be two different definitions of "alphas" at work in this disscussion. There are the ladies' man alphas (do very well on the mating market) and man's man alphas (leaders of groups of men). I'm speaking as one of the later alphas and there is quite a big difference between myself and, say, my metrosexual (and always-dating) roomate. Might wanna use a different term than "alpha" then.
help me said...
A smart woman knows that her husband and children come first and her piece on the side comes last.
Most women aren't smart.
plenty of women have had affairs and their husbands never find out.
Most men aren't smart either.
Given that truth, why would you recommend something so destructive to the typical family?
"there seems to be two different definitions of "alphas" at work in this disscussion. There are the ladies' man alphas (do very well on the mating market) and man's man alphas (leaders of groups of men)"
Well 'alpha' comes from non-human primate studies and refers absolutely to the latter. Primates don't compete in currying female favors, they compete with each other in various ways related to strength and nerve and the winners have improved (though not exclusive) sexual access to fertile females along with some other perks and responsibilities.
There's no primate equivalent to PUAs though some lower ranking males can and do incite females to (for lack of a better word) cheat.
The big difference between primates and humans is self-awareness which makes contemplating and planning (and remembering) sexual encounters almost (or just as) pleasurable as the encounters themselves.
An age gap of 25 years is not going to work unless Doug is a violent controlling bastard willing to terrorize his young bride into not straying as his sex drive wanes and hers waxes.
Now nothing can do much to counteract a massive age gap (except perhaps lots and lots of money) and I'm totally getting into TMI territory here, but...
Weightlifting.
Not just for the muscle and appearance, which is great, but for the testosterone boost, which increases...well...you know what. You'll notice the difference within 2 weeks. And it comes with no prescription required.
Most weightlifting guides recommend every other day, but every 3rd day is just fine. The best 3 hours/week you'll ever spend.
"There's also the tried and true method of getting a bride from a collectivist culture overseas."
I not only did this, I moved to her country, permanently. And she has been the best wife a man could want. I am much happier now than when I was wasting my time on American women.
I have not brought her back to America because I do not want her to become Americanized. I realized years ago that if I wanted to have a traditional family life I would have to leave the U.S. and live in a non-western culture. This I have done. (Although I keep in touch with the old country via the internet.)
My children are not American (or even white), but so what? They are still my children. And when the time comes I will arrange marriages for them with eligible persons from solid, respectable families. That is the custom here, and I agree with it. I have no intention of going back.
"More bad advice from former Senator Vorenus. "
An understatement.
Calling that 'bad' advice is like calling the Hindenberg a balloon.
"My children are not American (or even white), but so what? They are still my children."
So how do you feel about race traiting in others (particularly white women)?
@Truth-Why are you waiting around for a group of women who want nothing to do with you? You can make yourself happy or die sad and bitter. Darker women age better anyway.
bill
I'm not recommending cheating, I am only mentioning that it happens. People who are married for 50+ years have more than likely been with someone else during those 50 years.
Anyone have divorce stats on the French who see extra material affairs differently?
Who the hell said that I was waiting? There are a couple I have to push away.
"So how do you feel about race traiting in others (particularly white women)?"
I don't really have a problem with it. I consider myself a race realist. I believe race is a biological fact, and more than skin deep. There are significant behavioral differences between races.
But there is a lot of overlap, and you have to treat people as individuals. And I don't have an emotional animosity toward other races. I consider them neither inferior nor superior, just different.
As for marrying someone of another race, I think that is a matter of individual choice. I would be unhappy with any sort of law that tried to restrict it.
In my own case, miscegnation seems to run in the family. Two of my uncles married Oriental women, one of my female cousins married an Arab, and I married a South Asian woman. Ironically, in other ways we are all quite conservative, believing in strong families and old fashioned virtues, etc. One of the things I admire about Asian cultures is their basic conservatism, as opposed to what I see as all too common rootlessness in the West.
And I wouldn't be disappointed if one of my half-Tamil children married one of their half-Japanese or half-Arab cousins. It would help keep the extended family together.
Yeah, I know - I'm a walking bundle of contradictions.
"They know how to push the attraction buttons but are incapable of inspiring commitment in females or allegiance in males."
Spoken like someone who hasn't the slightest whit of a clue as to what they're talking about.
There are no exact parallels to Roissy type fellows in primate cultures: primates don't build cities with millions of fertile females in them available for anonymous sex. But the fact of the matter is, in the context of getting laid, Roissy is an alpha. He's a lot more likely to have a high status job telling people what to do than some family clown with a fat wife.
-Bachelor
help me said...
Anyone have divorce stats on the French who see extra material affairs differently?
No, but I can say that there are two different kinds of French. There are the Parisians, whose behavior is more like what everybody here thinks of as "French" (although the Parisians I know are ordinary, decent people), and then there is the more conservative majority that lives in smaller towns and cities or the countryside. I know the French pretty well, and I can say with some certainty that they are no more promiscuous than Americans. Probably less so, in fact.
"But the fact of the matter is, in the context of getting laid, Roissy is an alpha."
I guess so. But that doesn't necessarily carry over into other areas of life (which the term was created for).
"He's a lot more likely to have a high status job telling people what to do than some family clown with a fat wife."
More likely some unholy combination of Gary Coleman and the "O face" guy in Office Spaces.
youtube.com/watch?v=EUVNJgMziR4
youtube.com/watch?v=k6UPR3OdroY
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