May 17, 2011

Bridesmaids Revisited

From my movie review in Taki's Magazine:
The biggest laughs in Bridesmaids, the Judd Apatow-produced female buddy comedy starring Kristen Wiig, come from the odd man out among the five bridesmaids—the groom’s sister (Melissa McCarthy), a hefty force-of-nature lesbian who dresses like 1950s golfer Ben Hogan. The metajokes are that, first, lesbians are clueless about what most women like; and second, because nobody else much cares what obviously butch women think, the other bridesmaids never react (either positively or negatively) to her inordinately off-target conceptions of feminine fun.  
For example, when the girls are arguing over a motif for the wedding shower, the lesbian interjects her conception of a crowd-pleasing theme: "Fight Club! We get there early, oil up, then when the bride arrives, we beat the crap out of her!" The ladies listen politely, then immediately go back to debating whether the Parisian theme suggested by Wiig hasn’t already been done to death this season.

Read the whole thing there.

That reminds me of a general point: people only get extremely mad at you when you are at least pretty close to being right. If you suggest an April in Paris theme for a wedding shower, the people who favor, say, a Breakfast at Tiffany's theme might attack you pretty relentlessly because your idea is a plausible enough contender to be a threat to the acceptance of their idea. On the other hand, if you suggest a Fight Club-themed wedding shower, well, it's not really in the running enough for most people to spend too much time worrying about.

Thus, evolutionary psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa finds himself widely hated today for posting an item on Psychology Today asking "Why are black women rated less physically attractive than other women, but black men are rated better looking than other men?" It caused such a furor (described here) that the magazine deleted it, so only a screenshot survives. Of course, the reason the whole world got so angry with Dr. Kanazawa is because black women are rated less physically attractive than other women on average.

So, you aren't supposed to say that. If he had said "Why are Slavic supermodels rated less physically attractive than other women?" nobody would have much cared.

By the way, speaking of half-black women whom I've always liked, the bride in Bridesmaids is played by Maya Rudolph. I've always enjoyed her performances on Saturday Night Live (especially "Tennis Talk with Time Traveling Scott Joplin"), but I never looked up who her mother was before. You have to be of a certain age to recognize her mother's name, but it was a very sad event when she died of cancer in the 1970s when Maya was a little girl.

Her white father was a good friend of movie producer Bruce Paltrow, so she presumably grew up playing with Gwyneth Paltrow, then went to UC Santa Cruz. Thus, she can do this huge range of characters from black to white, which makes her invaluable in an ensemble show with a limited cast.

Also, she's a funny person who doesn't appear to be crazy, which is rarer than it seems. Jimmy Buffett argued in Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes: "If we couldn't laugh we would all go insane." But when it comes to making other people laugh, that doesn't seem to hold true all that much.

109 comments:

  1. There are no such things as 'female buddies.' Friendships between women are a myth. As much as show like Sex and the City and Friends try to push the concept, anyone with some experience in the real world knows it's crap.

    Women focus their energy in finding ever more subtle ways to undermine other females in their social and workplace groups.

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  2. good on you mr. sailer for expressing heartfelt sympathy for Maya Rudolph's early loss of her mother.

    very often, you come off as a very heartless person.

    witness your earlier posting "bitter asian man"

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  3. a story about Chinese innovatioN: http://www.salon.com/life/imprint/index.html?story=/mwt/feature/2011/05/17/alexis_madrigal_powering_the_dream_imprint

    but we all know that the Chinese are not capable of innovation, only copying.

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  4. A lot of feminist self-esteem is riding on the success of this movie. So far it's doing well. The Jezebel-blog folks will be happy.

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  5. You should do a post about whether women are funny. The answer seems to be: sometimes, but rarely.

    I made a point earlier about how the female comedians on The Daily Show are diversity hires.

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  6. OT:

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/17/satoshi-kanazawa-black-women-less-attractive_n_863327.html

    ^ just hit the fan!!!
    Psychology Today blogger Satoshi Kanazawa sparked a firestorm with his latest posting entitled, "A Look at the Hard Truths About Human Nature."

    In it, the evolutionary psychologist at the London School of Economics argues that black women are less physically attractive than other women. The article was quickly removed from the site, but not before screenshots made their way onto BuzzFeed. Some excerpts:

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  7. @anonymous

    Yeah, but as I pointed out in the last thread, Satoshi Kanazawa is the Japanese Whiskey in that he also maintains that black men are more attractive than non-black men.

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  8. you haven't yet speculated as to why Maureen Dowd (not of Bridesmaid fame) is no longer relevant.

    Why do you suppose that is?

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  9. re: Maureen Dowd

    With any comic writer, there's an interplay between what they bring as a unique personality and their times. After awhile, though, readers kind of got the joke already. People got sick of Evelyn Waugh after awhile, and he was better than just about anybody.

    Dowd once had a lot of advantages as an attractive young feminist who was actually funny. And she made use of them. Good for her.

    Personally, I think I'm still getting funnier despite my advanced age. But I started late, and I have the advantage that the world is heading in directions that provide me ever more material. I didn't position myself initially for maximum popularity. I figured out what's going to become more relevant as the decades go by, and set up shop way out ahead of everybody.

    Now I just have to stave off going broke in the meantime.

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  10. Actually, Kanazawa is the Japanese Steve. My insights are just openly ripped off from Steve and Roissy. But if you cannot rip off from the best, well you're missing something!

    Black women on average are just not as attractive as White or Asian women. Black men have higher aggression, testosterone, and lower body fat than men of other races. They are as Steve notes, Dark and Tall for the most part. While women the world over love tall and dark, men the world over long for fair maidens. Which does not describe Black women.

    Do most White women find most Black men more sexually attractive than most White men? Sure! But just like Bruce Willis was/is a manly attractive guy -- his daughters by attractive Demi Moore show what a manly man's jaw and forehead look on the female form. Unfortunate.

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  11. Steve, I'm not much of a movie fan, but I think this sentence is missing an "at"?

    That reminds me of a general point: people only get extremely mad at you when you are at least pretty close to being right.

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  12. female buddy comedy

    Uhh, yuk would be my first reaction.

    Those homonymically inclined should read Brideshead Revisited instead. But that'll take longer. So maybe take a reading break and go see the movie.

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  13. Now I just have to stave off going broke in the meantime.



    I swear.... if this country had any common sense, guys like you and Pat Buchanan would be crafting policy in Washingto DC. Instead we get all these buffoons and shysters, who are running the country into the ground.

    Our president wants to amnesty 12 million illegals.... in a time of massive unemployment and overstretched social services. He wants to put more pressure on banks to lend to minorities.... just a few years after such policies lead to a meltdown on Wall Street. He wants to continue to give aid to Pakistan..... you know, the same Pakistan that had been hiding Bin Laden at military facilities for the past decade.

    Want to know what's even crazier? Most establishment Republicans support him in these initiatives.

    To be fair to Obama, at least he's better than Bush, whose genius idea (besides the invasion of Iraq and letting the subprime bubble inflate) was to start a guestworker program to bring over hundreds of millions of foreign laborers.

    Seriously, it's like a madness has gripped our country. I have no other explanation for why all the wrong people with the wrong policies are being allowed to do this. The strongest and most prosperous civilization on earth country is destroying itself. Centuries of hard work and sacrifice are being burned up before our eyes, and there's hardly anybody that'll step up and say no to this.

    I know we laugh about this, but really the situation is dire. The saddest part of all is that beyond being powerless to do anything, we can't even publicly talk about what's happening. If you object to what's happening, you're racist. Xenophobic. Isolationist. Mean spirited.

    We end up with a situation where a guy like Steve Sailer or Tom Tancredo are "extremist" and drummed out of polite society. Meanwhile, the neoconservatives and Obama's wheeling, dealing Chicago crowd are "mainstream" thinkers. So if they want us to drop another trillion on stimulus.... or reinflate the subprime bubble.... or bring in tens of millions of foreigners..... or keep our troops in Afghanistan to fight illiterate goat herders for a few more years.... that's a moderate position to take.

    Damn.

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  14. No one who's participated in a wedding, beyond mere attendance, in the past 15 or 20 years could watch this movie without suffering flashbacks and having to walk out.

    If the last wedding that someone played a role in featured baby-blue tuxedos with ruffle shirts, they just have no idea how psychotic weddings have become, and how crass the events surrounding them. Bachelorette parties, for example, didn't exist at all until the early 1990s.

    "Helloooo! Excuse me... I know this is gonna sound weird, and we're like totally NOT creepy or anything, but can my friend over there give you a piggy-back ride?!?!?! It's part of our scavenger hunt for her bachelorette party -- I mean, it's like one of the things we have to do."

    Mind you, this group of girls approached me while I was browsing a book stand in Barnes & Noble.

    If it's in a night club, the soon-to-be-married gal will have a dental floss belt with candy beads, and her friends will proposition various strange men there to remove the candy pieces with their teeth.

    What ever happened to the good ole carefree days of just getting wasted, maybe watching a stripper, over-sleeping / forgetting the ring, and thereby shorten the duration to a manageable couple of hours instead of a day-long death march?

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  15. I was positive Bridesmaids would blow but I'm hearing from trusted sources it's really funny and good-natured. I'm reeling now because up until this point the only funny woman ever in the world was Laura Kightlinger.

    Now Kristen Wiig comes along and helps make MacGruber maybe the funniest film ever. Rudolph was in that as well- she played MacGruber's bride who was blown up at their wedding by a bomb placed in a bible that a Priest was reading- he turned to the page the bomb was on and it exploded... And that is exactly as funny as it sounds. Also, strange that not one mainstream critic could recognize the genius of MacGruber and especially Will Forte. That pansy AO Scott trashed it as did Lisa Schwartzbaum at Entertainment Weekly- may have something to do with some light-hearted pokes at gays.... actually it definitely had something to do with that but also most critics just don't know funny.

    I'm going to choose to think Adam Mckay and a couple of his buddies "helped" the ladies out a lot on the script..... It's just much, much easier for me to believe that.


    Dan in DC

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  16. Steve writes:

    "a general point: people only get extremely mad at you when you are at least pretty close to being right."

    Facebook's King Zuck donated $200 million to the Newark schools, presumably to support programs dedicated to the principle that there are no innate differences in cognitive ability between individuals or groups.

    Yet here is an NYT story describing how Facebook has been buying up internet startups and closing down their products JUST TO GET THE TALENT WORKING FOR THE STARTUP.

    If you were to point out to Zuck that precisely on the basis of his own company's actions -- its extreme hunger for talent -- his $200 million for Newark schools will almost certainly be nearly entirely wasted (and could have been used to, I don't know, fund a new superlab at MIT or something)... Zuck would probably get really mad at you.

    (Assuming the Newark schools donation wasn't just pure Machiavellian realpolitik, along the lines of his actions vis a vis the Winklevii.)

    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/18/technology/18talent.html?src=me&ref=technology

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  17. Bridesmaids Revisited. Very good. But my gestalt today automatically read that as 'Chambermaids Revisted'.
    Gilbert Pinfold

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  18. Looks like Satoshi Kanazawa, the author of the Psychology Today article, is going to be Larry Summers-ed pour encourager les autres. Without Larry's resources and connections to fall back on, of course.

    http://www.voice-online.co.uk/content.php?show=19692

    If you are in academia, as I am, keep your iSteve-infused opinions to yourself!!! As Steve pointed out in the post, they hate you MORE if they know at some level you are right (black women are on average less physically attractive, people with enough IQ to be MIT mathematics professors are disproportionately male, etc.)

    Here's hoping Kanazawa has some way to get a job in Japan or elsewhere in the Far East, where they are less bothered about realism on these issues.

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  19. To Whiskey ... seriously stop with the black male worship. Instead of looking at the headlines, look at the actual 'report' by Mr Kanazawa and see the charts below :

    http://i56.tinypic.com/jh3cxw.jpg

    Based on the Add Health survey, Black men - in terms of 'attractiveness' - come behind White and Asian men.

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  20. "Women focus their energy in finding ever more subtle ways to undermine other females in their social and workplace groups."

    Some men on this blog know nothing about women. The last contact they probably had with any females was in middle school, so they think women act like 12 year old girls.

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  21. he also maintains that black men are more attractive than non-black men.
    yeah i thought that was pretty silly. "Not as unattractive as black women' would probably be more accurate.

    When these articles quickly get taken down - or, NPR is notorious for its politically correct editing of comments AFTEr they are closed- that skews things to make viewers think everyone was in favor of their idea and only a few morons objected... I always think - do the globalists/liberal neocon alliance putting this stuff up realiaze they are helping maintain a big lie, or do they really buy it.

    As for black men being more attractive than white men, that's just nonsense. find me oriental or white women spontaneously longing after blacks the same way they do after brad pitt, mel gibson, cary grant etc..
    you can say obama, but there's other crap involved there- but in any event, you can't say that you don't find blacks attractive - you can say you find them more attractive.

    If this pyschologist had crossed that race line, well it never would have made it to publication.

    Thus, it continues, the big big lie of post 1960s culture.. how long can we live in a lie and live by lies and still have a functioning society??

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  22. There isn`t anything else that makes black women look bad, except the nose if it`s too big.. For example Somali women who have always straight noses and who are always lean are quite beatiful, if they have good theeth, some make up etc. standard stuff.

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  23. There are no such things as 'female buddies.'

    I beg to differ. Im thinking of two female friends here who live miles apart, work in different fields, and have always stayed friends since university, 25 years ago.

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  24. but we all know that the Chinese are not capable of innovation, only copying.

    We dont all know that at all thankyou.

    What we can do is look at the long periods of settled Chinese civilisation, their vastly larger numbers vis a vis whites plus their recent penchant for industrial espionage. Look at that and say that on the whole they are somewhat less creative as a group than whites are (as a group).

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  25. Now I just have to stave off going broke in the meantime.

    Set up a forum, and charge $50/year to post. You get 6,000 hits a day. A substantial percentage should be willing to spring for the privilege of spouting off about your articles. That should bring in some grocery money.

    I'm speculating your dad used lots of tools when he wasn't being an aerospace engineer. Does he still have them? You're a smart, detail-oriented guy who could learn a trade, like installing water gardens, customized closets, etc., for all the wealthy people in California who are having to stay put in their jobs and focus on home improvement. You seem to be around some pretty high-end folks. What are their needs that they're willing to pay money for you to satisfy?

    Free-lance market research?

    Teach marketing at a for-profit college? Consider doing it overseas, like in Dubai or China.

    On an unserious note, remember all those pyramid marketing schemes in the 70's and 80's that people used to try when they were desperate for extra cash? Amway is apparently still around, and about every 5 years or so I still get somebody mentioning this crap to me. I think day-trading seminars are still being run, of all things.

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  26. That reminds me of a general point: people only get extremely mad at you when you are at least pretty close to being right.

    In a nutshell.

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  27. "There are no such things "as 'female buddies.' Friendships between women are a myth. As much as show like Sex and the City and Friends try to push the concept, anyone with some experience in the real world knows it's crap."

    Really, Anonymous? Well, I guess you know best, but without my friends I thought I would have been institutionalized long ago. I think they were female, but perhaps they were just poseurs.
    For years I was proud to say I had one best guy-friend, IQ 160. Then I later learned he had a sex-change operation and was living in a menage-a-trois with another transsexual (who was an ex-military married man/father), and a biological woman lesbian. Well, if he doesn't feel the loss, I guess I shouldn't pine.
    What was that "real world" you were talking about?

    And this stuff about black men being so desirable--wtf did that happen?
    I think it's HBD's PC achilles heel. Don't get it at all--Andy Garcia or Denzel Washington? Umm--no contest. (hint--Andy would win.)
    Black women? I've noticed the ones that accept their hair seem to be the most comfortable with themselves and the most intelligent. Actually that might be true of whites also. There's something about "big" hair that's been over-messed with that signifies dumb. That goes for men too. Unless of course you lived in the 17th century. Isaac Newton had a very big wig, according to his portraits.

    Oh, and by the way, when women-friends gather there's a lot of laughing at each other's comments and observations. And with also. It's free form. That kind of humor. It's not stand-up or contrived--that's male stuff; and when men are with us, they seem amused. What makes men's humor different (Erica Jong thought it might be due to the actions of their manly parts, but that's another story) is their way of constructing what they think and do and making some kind of profession out of it. Finding out what works, what pays, what gives them status in the larger world, and contriving to work it, whether machinery, chemicals, wood, or humor. They concentrate totally. Women who do that kind of concentration on those kinds of things, are very unusual types. Like Dr. Judy Wood, the physicist who has gone way beyond any of the others in figuring out what really happened on 9/11. But that's another story and that's a movie I'd like to see done.

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  28. Has anyone seen Maya Rudolph's SNL parody of Mariah Carey-like female "diva" singers ruining the national anthem? It's hilarious as well as eerily prophetic of the Christina Aguilera debacle at the last Superbowl.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImCWjbAOXKo

    Also, Steve, what's it going to take to get you to review Thor? It's the most provocative mainstream movie about nature vs. nurture since Trading Places. And the two main characters are acting out familial psychodramas that will be familiar to anyone who's studied our last two presidents. Thor wants to prove himself to dad by launching a massive war against the same enemy dad fought and defeated, while Loki is made so bitter and conflicted by learning that he's actually adopted and was the abandoned son of the king of Jotunheim that he does everything but write "Dreams From My Frost Giant Father."
    Several readers have picked up on the Thor/Bush comparisons, but as far as I know, no one's yet commented on the eerie parallels between Loki and our current president (chameleon-like, tells everyone what they want to hear, a ball of resentment and envy toward the family and civilization that raised him...)

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  29. Black men have the advantage physique-wise but not face-wise or hair-wise.

    Same goes for a lot of black women. With bouncy butts and bigger boobs and longer legs and etc, their bodies can be said to be more attractive than those of Asian women or even many white women. But black women have funny looking faces and hair, like Don Imus said.

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  30. She definitely is a friend of Paltrow. When Paltrow hosted SNL a few yeas back, they did a duet together and showed some childhood photos of them playing together.

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  31. "Yeah, but as I pointed out in the last thread, Satoshi Kanazawa is the Japanese Whiskey in that he also maintains that black men are more attractive than non-black men."

    The data he presents demonstrate nearer the opposite. Add Health participants were rated for attractiveness in each of three different waves. In the first two, there are no statistically significant differences in mean ratings for males of different races. In the third wave, white men are rated significantly more attractive than black men. Furthermore, white men are significantly more attractive than black men on the "latent physical attractiveness" factor Kanazawa extracts combining all three ratings. Kanazawa claims black men are more attractive "net of intelligence", but reality is not "net of intelligence".

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  32. Am I going to be the first one to dare say that Michelle Obama is not attractive?

    The press typically reports on her as if she was a looker. But she has many flaws - prognathism, chinlessness, very dark skin, a boyish frame, and for most men she's too tall.

    Couple that with her nasty disposition and you have quite a package.

    Most political women recently have been quite attractive. Sarah Palin was a beauty contest participant. Michelle Bachman looks good for a thirty year old - but she's fifty. Finally there is the incredible seventy year old Nancy Pelosi. A woman for whom time has stopped.

    Almost every woman is attractive in her twenties - see Cloris Leachman in Kiss Me Deadly. Hardly any woman is all that attractive after say 45 - see Cloris Leachman lately. Political women seem to be an exception - unless you're Black.

    Albertosaurus

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  33. "good on you mr. sailer for expressing heartfelt sympathy for Maya Rudolph's early loss of her mother.

    very often, you come off as a very heartless person.

    witness your earlier posting "bitter asian man""


    Passive aggressive ankle biter.

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  34. Black men have higher aggression, testosterone, and lower body fat than men of other races. They are as Steve notes, Dark and Tall for the most part. While women the world over love tall and dark, men the world over long for fair maidens.

    To the extent that they are deemed attractive, I think the higher aggression/testosterone tell the story, added by the media's constant portrayal of them as paragons of manhood and attractiveness. Feature-wise, I doubt many white women actually prefer their facial features, which, to be frank, are more simian-like than other races. The ones that are deemed most attractive are the ones that have fewer typically African features, much like the African women that are deemed most attractive are usually mulattos or quadroons. I would suspect the same is true of the men.

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  35. Many claim that black men have higher testosterone. Actually, they have higher estradiol and androgen receptors that are more responsive to testosterone.

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  36. That reminds me of a general point: people only get extremely mad at you when you are at least pretty close to being right

    Rather like stereotypes. If they're completely absurd, everybody knows it and they do not remain as stereotypes. If uttered, they'd be regarded as irony, because they lacked at least a grain of truth.

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  37. My wife thinks most black men are ugly; however, her judgement is questionable because she thinks I'm handsome (then again, so did my mother).

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  38. But, are black men rated higher?


    I'd like to see the pics of the black men they used.

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  39. "Do most White women find most Black men more sexually attractive than most White men? Sure"

    No, Whiskey, they do not. The typical response of a white woman who does find a black male quite attractive is, "He has mostly white features."

    This is a reference to the absence of a large, broad nose, wide nostrils, very large lips, and very black skin.

    The Denzel Washingtons? Sure. I mean, there are always exceptions and I can name a lot of them, but they are still exceptions.

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  40. "but we all know that the Chinese are not capable of innovation, only copying."

    The irony is WN's copy this meme from one another over and over and over...

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  41. The reason why black women are less attractive on average is that black men are less selective. They are more likely to have unprotected sex with obese or ugly women of any race (and thanks to the one-drop rule, the child of an ugly white woman and a black man will be considered black).

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  42. Simon in London5/18/11, 10:14 AM

    No one listens to lesbians?! I can tell you're not much acquainted with academia! And academic lesbians have huge influence on public policy. A lot of stuff is done under the rubric of 'women's rights' to make the world better for lesbians.

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  43. http://tinyurl.com/5vucnej

    White teachers sue in Philly

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  44. "As for black men being more attractive than white men, that's just nonsense."

    I think all things being equal--same muscle strength, same build, whanker size, etc--, white men are more attractive than black males in the face and hair.

    But male attractiveness works differently than female attractiveness. It the beauty-and-the-beast dynamic.
    Women are rated and valued for their prettiness.

    Handsomeness, or male prettiness, counts in men too. But sometimes, a man doesn't have to be pretty-pretty to be attractive. Pierce Brosnan is prettier and more handsome than Daniel Craig, but Craig has more animal magnetism.
    Charles Bronson, John Wayne, Lee Marvin, Gian Maria Volonte, Anthony Quinn, and Lee Van Cleef were not prettyboys like Tom Cruise or Alain Delon, but they were manly and attractive. Of course, a man can be both pretty and magnetic, like Clint Eastwood, Sean Connery, etc. There is also a kind of cerebral-manly appeal in some men. Cereballs? Take Michael Caine in IPCRESS FILE and GET CARTER. Or Al Pacino in THE GODFATHER. At the extreme end is David Niven.

    Consider Marlon Brando. Handsome guy but not really pretty. And in some ways, kinda funny-looking. But he had a crazy manly quality which excited a lot of women. I think Newman understood this. While Redford was content to be pretty, Newman sulked and brooded a lot and try to be more than a pretty face.

    So, while a lot of black men are not pretty or conventionally handsome in the face, their ultra-manly or beastly aura can be a turn on. Women are admired for their beauty, while beastliness is part of the attraction in men. Of course, while a woman can never be too beautiful, too much beastiless can be a turn-off. I don't think women go for Hunchback of Notre Dame or freaks like Andre the Giant. But some degree of beastliness gives a man a certain animal magnetism.

    I was watching the documentary TYSON by James Toback, the radical interracist, and noticed that most of Tyson's groupies were white women. I think same is true in NBA and NFL. Women are attracted to top warriors. They may not be pretty but they are victors, and as Kissinger said, 'power is the ultimate aphrodisiac' or in this case, afrodisiac. Of course, there are different kinds of power. Jewish Hollywood moguls get tons of action too. And wasp coeds in elite colleges will put out to supersmart Jewish guys. And young intellectual women will have affairs or marry famous old shriveled up writers and artists. Look at the sex life of Saul Bellow and Harold Bloom and Picasso(even in old age). Shiite.

    Generally, pretty boys who aren't too manly require a stable community of laws to win as the most attractive males. In a stable law-and-order society, the modus operandi is not might-is-right or muscle-and-hustle. So, the pretty boy is left alone by stronger guys and attracts girls who like his looks.
    But in an unstable order, the weaker pretty boy will be reduced to the 'bitch' of rough/tough guys, and women will feel contempt for the prettyboy weakling and go with tougher guys(if only for security).

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  45. "but we all know that the Chinese are not capable of innovation, only copying."


    I wish this was true in cooking. Chinese creativity in cooking has led to boiled cats and skinned-alive dogs.

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  46. Simon in London5/18/11, 10:32 AM

    One thing seems certain: black men are more attractive to black women than black women are to black men. In a farming culture where women do most of the work and men compete with their attractiveness to acquire hard-working wives to support them, it makes sense.

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  47. "For example Somali women who have always straight noses and who are always lean are quite beatiful, if they have good theeth, some make up etc. standard stuff."

    Good point about Somali women. They are quite attractive.

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  48. "There are no such things as 'female buddies."

    This is so obvious that it scarcely needs mentioning. If it gives you pleasure to talk crap about someone behind his or her back, and you do it at every opportunity, then that person is NOT in fact your buddy. By that definition women have no buddies. I know that they often call their most frequent interlocutors "friends", but that sort of friendship is as far from the male variety as female hockey is from real hockey, and as female humor is from actual humor.

    "Sir, a woman's preaching is like a dog's walking on his hind legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all."

    Samuel Johnson

    That can be said about a lot of things besides preaching.

    "There isn`t anything else that makes black women look bad, except the nose if it`s too big."

    They have unlady-like attitudes. Coarse, rough, whatever you want to call it. And even facially, it's more than just noses. Some people have finer, more delicate features than others. There's variation on that both within and among races. Surprise surprise, men of all races prefer women with finer, more delicate features. And yes, Somali and Ethiopian women have finer features overall (not just noses) than West African Women. Not sure about their attitudes.

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  49. Inasmuch as white women find black men attractive, it's usually because of qualities other than their appearance. (And no, I don't mean their private parts.)

    The young black men who showed up in Canadian high schools from the late 1970s on were mostly from the Caribbean and had had both good manners and careful dressing thumped into them by their parents. So they were often a good deal more appealing to women than their white, flannel-shirted, stoner-mannered counterparts of that era. Where black men are successful with white middle-class women, it's usually for reasons like that, not because of some special appeal they see in black skin or features.

    Alias Clio

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  50. "but we all know that the Chinese are not capable of innovation, only copying."

    The irony is WN's copy this meme from one another over and over and over...

    No, the irony is liberals and Chinese chauvanists repeat this strawman argument over and over as if it actually characterized WN views.

    Mr WN.

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  51. Lucius Vorenus5/18/11, 11:03 AM

    Kinda off-topic, but does anyone know anything about Professor Williams's daughter, Devyn Williams?

    One day when he was guest-hosting the Rush Limbaugh show, she called in, and she had the kindest, most gracious voice, and she seemed like a highly intelligent girl, but I was left with the distinct impression that she is never married and has no children.

    Why do the best people always seem to have a Total Fertility Rate of zero?!?

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  52. n/a said...
    Kanazawa claims black men are more attractive "net of intelligence", but reality is not "net of intelligence".

    Exactly, Kanazawa said "net of intelligence", where he was referencing his previous work below :

    “Intelligence and Physical Attractiveness.” http://personal.lse.ac.uk/Kanazawa/pdfs/I2011.pdf

    His theory (which is utter junk BTW) is that the higher your intelligence the more 'attractive' you are. Since Blacks rank below Whites and Asians in the Add Health attractiveness survey (see picture below):

    http://i56.tinypic.com/jh3cxw.jpg

    ... but not significantly enough that when you control for intelligence (Kanazawa's theory, not mine) since Blacks have lower intelligence and Whites/Asians have higher intelligence, Black attractiveness is higher.

    Of course this [Net of Intelligence] 'quote' of his is nonsense.

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  53. A bit more on female "friendship":

    Every man has been in the following situation. In a private conversation with you woman A is badmouthing some other woman B that both of you know. She's being vicious to her behind her back. So far so good. Men do that too sometimes, though of course not nearly as often as women.

    But then you see the two of them laughing it up with each other, being friendly the next day. You think "hm, I wouldn't have done THAT." But wait, they may well be actually laughing at you. And if during the private conversation the previous day, you even as much as nodded your head out of politeness when A was crapping on B, then A will present this to B as you crapping on her, B, without provocation. This happens like clockwork. Why? Because to women those kinds of games are fun in themselves. They don't even have to be a means to some goal, although occasionally they can be that too. That's their twisted idea of fun.

    Well, maybe if I didn't have the ability to get excited about anything abstract - about ideas, art, mathematics, whatever, about this enormous Universe full of wonder and meaning, then maybe such petty stuff would appeal to me as entertainment too, I don't know.

    Big practical life lesson: never visibly agree with a woman when she is offering an opinion on another person. Get through it with a neutral expression.

    And no, a man would not generally have to think of such precautions with his friends. If you can't rely on a guy not to badmouth you behind your back, he's just not a friend of yours.

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  54. This is the better female buddy movie.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhhnum5rzZE

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  55. All things being Equal5/18/11, 11:51 AM

    Kanazawa claims black men are more attractive "net of intelligence", but reality is not "net of intelligence".

    I'm going out on a limb to guess that if of a typical black and white guy save for both having the same intelligence, the black guy is going to be far more attractive to any woman because he will have:

    * graduated from a much more prestigious college (ivy vs state)

    * graduated with less debt (scholarships)

    * have a much better job that pays much more money (AA in hiring and promotion)

    * circulate in much higher social circles, parties and career networks

    * have, even if half-white, kids that are going to enjoy all these benefits all over again

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  56. "'There are no such things as 'female buddies.'

    I beg to differ. Im thinking of two female friends here who live miles apart, work in different fields, and have always stayed friends since university, 25 years ago."


    So do I. My dearest friend and I live hundreds of miles apart, have very different lives and have always stayed friends since high school, 40 years ago.

    I'm also still friends with her college roommate (female), whom I met while visiting her in 1973.

    That said, I know we three are the exception, not the rule.

    We're all also very funny [intentionally so] but then again, we were all close to our dads, all three of whom had terrific senses of humor.

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  57. Maybe it's just me but I cannot stand Kristin Wiig.

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  58. There are no such things as 'female buddies.'

    that comment reveals how far from the real world anonymous is.

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  59. To compare the looks of blacks you really have to go to the actual African tribal types. Many American blacks have short fat ugly a

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  60. I just explained the White women dynamic. Black men are marginally more attractive on average than their White male peers. BUT their masculine attributes are a poor bet for daughters.

    A Black man is a poor bet for marriage absent lots of money, because of the heavy testosterone load makes Arnold like behavior more likely, and daughters are more likely to look like Michelle Obama than say, Mariah Carey. Its the same reason Pretty Boys like say Zac Efron are popular over say, Jason Statham among female audiences. A "hard" guy's physical attributes look great on guys, awful on women.

    It's not worship to recognize differences. All that testosterone is good for aggression (which women of all races crave) but makes for poor fathering, cooperation, and isolated, disciplined study or work. Black men dominate sports that rely on athleticism, but are completely absent in craftsmanship occupations (jeweler, carpentry, etc.) There is no master race, and optimization in one area leads to lacking in another.

    [The NBA exists mainly for women of all races to drool over the athletes it seems. Hence the Odom/Kardashian reality show.]

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  61. As for Chinese not being innovative -- China produced paper money, printing, the compass, gunpowder, and silk.

    All of which ... went nowhere. This suggests that China could innovate, but its social structure prevented continual improvement and widespread adoption. China was a land-bound society that feared the SEA as an avenue for social freedom, and thought of it as a giant moat not an open road for others to come in. Hence no navigation or compass improvement as in the West where Viking raids were historical memory.

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  62. Or look at gunpowder. Both China and Japan in different eras basically ended exploitation of it as a weapon because it threatened social unity. While Europe was willing to bend not break for social unity in exploiting gunpowder.

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  63. Women vary on what they like in a build, but they virtually all prefer taller men; northern European men are the tallest.

    Others have pointed out the problems with black men when it comes to the other physical aspects.
    ______
    Maya was great in "Idiocracy". The scene where she tells Joe she wants to stay in the future is actually poignant.

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  64. "Black men have higher aggression, testosterone, and lower body fat than men of other races."

    Lower body fat? Noppppppppe. Do your homework.

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  65. "Finally there is the incredible seventy year old Nancy Pelosi. A woman for whom time has stopped."

    Sure it stopped...at about 69.

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  66. "I just explained the White women dynamic. Black men are marginally more attractive on average than their White male peers. BUT their masculine attributes are a poor bet for daughters."

    It's like this: lots of guys wanna bang big-boobed plumped-butted blonde bimbos but don't wanna marry them cuz they can't have any kind of conservation with the bims. Just look at Fredo and his blonde bimbo wife in GODFATHER II. Even dumbass Fredo got tired of her.
    And what self-respecting guy would want to marry someone like Anna Nicole Smith? Sure, he'd like to bang her but settle down with her and have kids, etc?
    Just how did things go between Arthur Miller and Marilyn Monroe? This is why Jewish men bang blonde bimbo callgirls but marry smart women they can have conversations with.

    Similarly, lots of white women may have fantasies about big muscular mega-pudded black men who give them super-orgasms, but do they really wanna settle down for the long haul with a jiveass thug? No.

    My guess many men sow their oates with blonde bimbos but eventually marry smarter women. And it could be more white women will sow their oatesses with Negro men before settling down with white men. But what self-respecting white guy would want to marry such a critter? Maybe all white guys should buy lie-detector kits and ask their brides-to-be, 'did you or did your not get it on with a bro?'

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  67. On Kanazawa,

    I feel bad for him. Sure, it wasn't a nice thing for him to say. He would have been better off pointing out who is best as Forbes magazine did once in an article about what science tells us about attraction.

    Per Steve's comment about anger: Kanazawa has also claimed that redheads were considered ugly. It didn't bother me one iota and, sure enough, Scott Barry Kaufmann among others disagreed with the science to back them up. And who could forget Agnostic's spirited defenses of the brunettes at GNXP? :)

    There's a book out I just heard about claiming to be daring about sexuality, "A Billion Wicked Thoughts", and I wonder if they will be so daring as Kanazawa. The duo make me think of the Freakonomics guys for some reason. My gut reaction is that I doubt it.

    Kanazawa shouldn't have written what he did in a mainstream publication, but those ideas should be able to be discussed freely in more academic settings and books.

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  68. Judd Apatow has a lousy sense of humor.

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  69. Black men are marginally more attractive on average than their White male peers.

    Whiskey, you continue to be one of the most clueless commenters anywhere on the internet.

    That's assuming you believe what you say to be true in general. It's possible that what you meant to say was "I, Whiskey, find black men to be more attractive on average the their White male peers". In which case, go for it.

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  70. "Black men have higher aggression, testosterone, and lower body fat than men of other races."

    I don't know of any method of measuring "aggression", but body fat and testosterone levels are easy to measure.

    Go here to discover that black and white males have identical body fat. White women have more body fat than black women though.

    And this study of testosterone levels in different races found that black and white men are also the same in this regard. Black men do have higher levels of estradiol - a female hormone.

    Don't you ever get tired of being wrong, Whiskey?

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  71. "A Black man is a poor bet for marriage absent lots of money, because of the heavy testosterone load makes Arnold like behavior more likely, and daughters are more likely to look like Michelle Obama than say, Mariah Carey."

    This isn't true. Most will end up like Jada Pinket-Whatever or Mariah Carey, who surprisingly are more feminine than the average white woman. I've seen this with other black mixes as well. The fact is, a brother will tend to have 6 pack abs and seriously developed gluts & thighs without much effort. Comparatively speaking, a less than cheerleader/drill team white female won't attract a similarly muscled white guy. Her lighter skin, however, will make all but the nerdiest white chicks attractive to a more-muscular-than-you-could-get-in-real-life black male. So, like the white males who will go for a big boobed, low IQ chick of any race when he's in it for animalistic sex, so the white female will go for the more defined muscularity of the oh-so-appreciative black male for similar reasons.

    6 pack abs = big boobs

    What's good for the goose is good for the gander. Get over it.

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  72. They are as Steve notes, Dark and Tall for the most part.

    Blacks are "dark" by definition, but they are no taller (or shorter) than whites.

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  73. but we all know that the Chinese are not capable of innovation, only copying.

    You know you're doing okay when straw men is all they've got.

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  74. In the South, how common is it these days for black men to date white women?

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  75. Average Joe, you sound as tetchy as the liberals on this subject. If attractiveness was the only reason to get married, I would be married to some gorgeous stripper or playboy bunny. Nuff said?

    The question is relative "attractiveness". There are tons of data, scientific and otherwise, that addresses what people find and do not find "attractive". You (and the liberals who have their knickers in a knot) should do some Internet searching to find the academic studies.

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  76. A Black man is a poor bet for marriage absent lots of money, because of the heavy testosterone load

    Black men do not have a "heavy testosterone load". They do have some, shall we say, behavioral issues, but these are not attributable to massive amounts of testosterone surging through their veins.

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  77. All the liberal hyperventilating and vapors is so very odd.

    Very, very odd.

    Countless black websites agonize and bitch about the exact issue, particularly black female websites: why do bruthas chase after white wimmin so much?

    Given this deep and abiding black interest in studying racial attractiveness (and the failure of white men to chase black womes, and the lack of black fenale interest in white men) it is strange that white liberals would declare this subject taboo for an Asian dude, and a scientist at that, to reflect on the self-same question.

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  78. " 'did you or did your not get it on with a bro?'...

    ..."Yes? Well just to be sure you're telling me the truth, DO YOU HAVE A DVD OF THE EVENT I can peruse, preferably high def..."

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  79. Truth, are you a bleek?

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  80. "Countless black websites agonize and bitch about the exact issue, particularly black female websites: why do bruthas chase after white wimmin so much?"

    They really need not worry cuz the product of black-male/white-female mating will be a black person, someone like Obama. So, it means the white women will produce more black people and it will spell the end of her white line. So, it's not like black women are losing black men to white women but gaining more black people from the womb of the white women.

    In contrast, when a white guy loses a white woman to a black guy, he's not only losing the white woman but losing everything for the children she'll have will be black.

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  81. "So, it's not like black women are losing black men to white women but gaining more black people from the womb of the white women."

    And that's just so significant when one is 27 and sitting at home alone on Friday night.

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  82. "Same goes for a lot of black women. With bouncy butts and bigger boobs and longer legs and etc, their bodies can be said to be more attractive than those of Asian women or even many white women"

    Once read a paperback about the underbelly of NYC. One character was a resourceful (white I think) pimp who could get any kind of unlikely prostitute desired and surprise. The examples of such rare birds were a "An Asian (he might have said 'chinese') with tits; or a black whore with good legs." OTOH, whites are always complaining about their legs being too, well, white.
    Along those lines I remember an article from the National Geographic in 1920s or 30s. The explorer was in central Africa and was delighted by a black tribe with women whose curves accorded with "Rockettes" proportions preferred in the "West", especially their legs. He stated that in most African tribes the women had legs like "poles." Won't find that kind of bluntness these days, in the National Geographic.
    Dark skinned people tend to have thin, bowed legs. Maybe it's the lack of D.
    Black director Micheaux remarked during the 1930s, that blacks needed a place to go where they could see pretty faces and pretty legs. Black floor show producers, of whom there were quite a few, carefully selected their very mixed-race performers with those requirements in mind. Perhaps the quadroon and octoroon show girls combined well shaped legs with a light natural tan.

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  83. "There are no such things as 'female buddies.' "

    Horsefeathers, sourpuss. I have several best friends all female and all of many years duration. We have in common a love and concern for each other (despite differences), for our families, for spiritual growth, for literature and good films; alternative health and deep politics; and animal welfare. We're not that exceptional. Most of the 4 billion females in the world have friendships.

    Some men have never forgiven feminists for the false claim that men don't have real friendships as women do. They discuss their resentment on men's issues blogs. Of course they have friends, and to deny their capacity in that area was callous and arrogant; I feel your pain.

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  84. Just how did things go between "Arthur Miller and Marilyn Monroe? This is why Jewish men bang blonde bimbo callgirls but marry smart women they can have conversations with."

    Marilyn Monroe was intelligent, according to many people who knew her, and fairly well read. Unfortunately she was mentally ill.

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  85. "I have several best friends all female and all of many years duration. We have in common a love and concern for each other (despite differences), for our families, for spiritual growth, for literature and good films; alternative health and deep politics; and animal welfare. We're not that exceptional. Most of the 4 billion females in the world have friendships."

    "Deep politics"!!! Yes, I agree, women have real friendships to exactly the same extent that they're interested in deep politics.

    All 4 billion of them, too. Well, it's actually less than 3.5 billion. Which reminds me of something!! Women are able to experience real friendships with each other to exactly the same extent that they're comfortable with numbers. And logic.

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  86. "Just how did things go between Arthur Miller and Marilyn Monroe? This is why Jewish men bang blonde bimbo callgirls but marry smart women they can have conversations with."

    My two best friends look as good as Bachman or Pelosi for their respective ages. Political men should go for plastic surgery too. I will never forget Don Imus (who else) mocking the triple chin of whoever was running against Bush in 2000. And that was a man mocking a man's elderly appearance.
    People who live in glass houses....

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  87. "Some men have never forgiven feminists for the false claim that men don't have real friendships as women do."

    This comes as a surprise to me.

    With all the misdeeds committed by feminists that men have yet to forgive them for, I would have thought the false claim that men don't have real friendships would have been pretty far down the list.

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  88. "Deep politics"!!! Yes, I agree, women have real friendships to exactly the same extent that they're interested in deep politics.

    All 4 billion of them, too. Well, it's actually less than 3.5 billion. Which reminds me of something!! Women are ableexperience real friendships with each other to exactly the same extent that they're comfortable with numbers. And logic."

    god--Anonymous thy name is Lame. Forget me -- do YOU have any friends? Male? Female? Other? Squirrels?

    I'd originally put 3.5 billion but just decided to pre-empt the next increment with a round number because I've been reading so much about the rapidly spiralling pop. growth. Some are predicting 10 billion in the not too distant future. The important idea is half the world's population. 50% Get it? As the Brits say, easy as lemon squeezy.

    This is not a conspiracy website, except as regards feminism and HBD (the latter is why I'm here.) On these subjects, the gentlemen constantly invoke the mysteries of conspiracy, and they may be right.

    Surely you know "Deep Politics" was a book by Peter Dale Scott, inspired by the enigma of the JFK assassination; for me the term is short hand for a host of other books and media on the subject--the government within a government. The reasons behind the stated reasons. http://www.deeppoliticsforum.com/

    Most of my friends agree to some extent. Taking all this seriously is not a requirement for friendship, but most are at least open to getting more information. When we are among friends regardless of their biological characteristics, we wish to be understood and communicate openly.

    If that seems "illogical" to you--well, I'm not surprised.

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  89. Not Norman Mailer5/18/11, 7:37 PM

    I think this will be the near future of movies, and cable dramedies. Maya Rudolph is more of a pre-Title IX comedienne, with the aforementioned versatility and a faint quality of outsiderness (I'm not saying awkwardness) that had to come from somewhere although perhaps not upbringing in this case; whereas this Kristina Whig person is the new wave--fleetingly amusing, nice to look at, sometimes just mugs manically but leans hard on the "overly knowing" shtick. Or that might just be SNL generally. However I feel next to zero copaceticity with such performers. And I really dunno about the box office for passive-aggressive femininity but, as history is ever written by the writers, have to figure this style of entertainment is what achiever alumnae of well-ranked postsecondary institutions (n.b. apparently doesn't include Ms. KW at all) really want put up on the screen when they seize/are-provided-with the opportunity, and whether it settles some Conde Nast-level argument or merely serves its niche is moot cuz I drearily suppose this is type of thing routinely gets remade through the next 10-15 years. Now they're fixin' to install a woman into the IMF chair, is nothing sacred? (cf. highly SWPL article in tomorrow's NYTimes, complete with "The Daily Show" seal-of-approval) p.s. I don't not find Mrs. Obama attractive but may just be mixed up by her natural resemblance to her handsome devil of a brother, Craig Robinson (who was of course was rapturously received in the local press that I read in Rhode Island, during his far-too-brief stint there)

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  90. Kylie "Some men have never forgiven feminists for the false claim that men don't have real friendships as women do."

    This comes as a surprise to me.

    "With all the misdeeds committed by feminists that men have yet to forgive them for, I would have thought the false claim that men don't have real friendships would have been pretty far down the list/"

    I have read it mentioned fairly often, but probably more as an aside with other complaints. I don't know how seriously most men who have ever paid attention to feminist assertions feel about this particular "accusation" but some have sounded bitter about it.
    What is on your list of really major feminist "misdeeds?"

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  91. "What is on your list of really major feminist 'misdeeds?'"

    In the context of this discussion, my list is irrelevant. I'm not a man.

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  92. FWIW, I've got a number of gal friends who've been friends with each other for over 30 years. It's true that they snipe, backbite, feud and gossip about each other a lot more than guys do -- and only a really idiotic man would get involved in any of it. But they've also stuck it out with each other through thick and thin for a long, long time -- much longer than many guy-friendships have. Guys, I find, often drop their guy-friendships once they marry. They're still buds if/when they get together .. it just doesn't happen very often.

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  93. Also FWIW: I think guy-humor and gal-humor tend to be very different, and I think this tends to confuse the discussions people have about humor and the sexes. Guys tend to be drawn to showoffy, confrontational, jokey stuff while women tend to be more into malicious-insight and character humor. There aren't many women who can do standup comedy with the best of the guys -- but there aren't many guys who can do dizzy character stuff with the best of the girls. Lisa Kudrow, for instance, is an amazing high-style comedienne. My wife is a writer who has published a lot of humor pieces. They're pretty darn funny, but they're joke-free. In fact, I don't think I've ever heard her tell a joke.

    Most gals just aren't drawn to joke-telling ... Which leads me to suspect that joke-telling is a bit like shooting guns, running into things, and launching things -- a pretty direct expression of (or outlet for) testosterone.

    Final hunch: many guys, because they associate humor with jokes and belly-laughs, simply don't recognize it when women are being funny. (And god knows in everyday life women can be moody, tormented downers.) Yet actresses and other gal-performers routinely make large audiences laugh, and women routinely send each other into hysterics.

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  94. I think the issue with body fat is not that black men have less body fat than white men, but that the black men with the lowest body fat have lower body fat than the white men with the lowest body fat.

    In other words, for example, the leanest 1% of black guys are leaner than the leanest 1% of white guys.


    Is that your hunch, or do you have studies backing it up?

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  95. Lucille McGillicuddy5/19/11, 6:10 AM

    Thanks Ray Sawhill. Generally agree with you on friendship/humor. There are reasons I Love Lucy re-runs will soon be entering their third quarter century mark.

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  96. "It's true that they snipe, backbite, feud and gossip about each other a lot more than guys do..."

    My point is that a typical guy would not call anyone who talks trash about him behind his back, anyone who constantly undermines him just for the fun of it, a friend. That would actually be an enemy. So in that sense, by that specifically-male definition of friendship, most women do not have any friends. In my observation they seem to use the word friend to mean "the person with whom one talks most frequently about personal matters", not "someone one wishes well, is loyal to, has affection for". Those are two very different definitions.

    "Yet actresses and other gal-performers routinely make large audiences laugh, and women routinely send each other into hysterics."

    Perhaps a quarter to a third of all the people opining on sports and politics on TV are women. I really, really don't think that this is because a quarter to a third of all the people who are passionately interested in and are deeply knowledgeable about sports and politics are women. The gender representation seems to be politically determined. I'm sure that the same works for comediennes on TV. People in suits have discussions about the scarcity of women on SNL, and then, surprise, surprise, more women appear on SNL. It's not audience- or talent-driven, not at that particular margin anyway.

    Without political pressure, how many famous female comedians would there be? Perhaps as many as female sports journalists if there was no political pressure to include more women in sports journalism.

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  97. I have an impression that black men can go to a lower fat percentage 5-6 percent versus white 8 percent and still be "in shape". It does not mean anything in athletics, though. The reason why the blacks are better athletes (in your sports, that is) is that they run faster (sometimes greater limb lenght also counts). This is because they have narrow waists (like that French runner Lemaitre) which makes them able to run with their tights. White boys on the other hand run with their calfs. I don`t know why our mechanics is like that. Maybe because our ancestors walked in mountainous terrain etc.
    Many black athletes have so-called "chicken legs". Does it matter if you have weak lower legs? I don`t know if this makes them unimpressive swimmers. In MMA it`s also not so good, because lower legs can be kicked.

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  98. "This is because they have narrow waists (like that French runner Lemaitre)"

    Not waists, I meant hips.

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  99. "My point is that a typical guy would not call anyone who talks trash about him behind his back, anyone who constantly undermines him just for the fun of it, a friend."

    I think that sort of relationship is actually fairly common between men in elementary school, high school, even college, and sometimes even in adulthood. Unless "behind his back" is the key phrase - these dominant/weaker (I almost broke my vow never to say alpha/beta) "friendships" often include open mockery to the weaker one's face.

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  100. Grr. I can't believe that the most obvious points about women's humour have been, once again, neglected by the silly men who write these pieces.

    Here are a couple of rejoinders to the idea that men are funny and women are not.
    - 1) Men are funny to attract women (after all, everything else they do is a courtship behaviour).
    - 2) This fact presupposes that women have at least enough of a sense of humour to laugh at men's jokes.
    - 3) If women are able to laugh at men's jokes, there is at least a possibility that some of us can tell our own jokes.
    - 4) Why do we not do so? Well, it is at least a possibility that we don't tell jokes BECAUSE MEN DON'T LIKE FUNNY WOMEN. No, really, you don't. Oh, you might laugh at a few jokes told by women if the laughter was positively squeezed out of you - but you wouldn't dream of finding such women attractive. (C'mon, I dare you - which of the men reading this is going to say "I love funny women"?)
    - 5) Humour from women is not only not sexually attractive to men, it is a positive deterrent to men's sexual interest in a woman.
    - 6) Naturally, under such circumstances, no woman is going to display the fact that she has a sense of humour to any man - except when she is laughing at HIS jokes.

    Alias Clio

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  101. Hey, I like funny women, and I even married one. Humor is very very sweet 'n' sexy, as far as I'm concerned. What can I say, I like a woman with some sparkle.

    Just for the heck of it, I'll repeat my contention that women don't tend to cultivate the whole "telling jokes" thang. But they can be extremely funny, malicious, mischievous, and hilarious anyway, in their own way.

    My wife, for one example, frequently says things that make people laugh. She has these daffy, hard-to-explain flashes of insight and malice and inspiration, and they come out of her with bizarrely charming and fresh emotional colorations. (She even comes out with oddball and funny lines when she's half asleep and unconscious of what she's saying.) She just has an effortlessly skewed and surprising way of seeing life and expressing things. Yet she never, ever tells a joke. She's rather disdainful of jokes, to be honest. I think she sees them as a lame, mechanical, crude, easy way of trying to get laughs. That said, she has a lot of respect for anyone who can give people a lot of pleasure by making them laugh.

    I wouldn't argue that women don't tell jokes, of course. But it seems plain as day to me that they aren't generally as driven to formulate and tell jokes as guys are.

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  102. "BECAUSE MEN DON'T LIKE FUNNY WOMEN."

    This is complete nonsense. I've also heard unintelligent women say that men don't like their women to be intelligent, I've heard older women say that men don't like younger, inexperienced women, etc. Transparent self-rationalization.

    The average straight man's dream is a woman who looks like a woman, but who's emotionally built like a man, meaning that she can get and make jokes, can be excited about typically male hobbies, isn't bitchy or flighty, is capable of being loyal, etc.

    So yes, most men would love their women to be funny.

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  103. "Humour from women is not only not sexually attractive to men, it is a positive deterrent to men's sexual interest in a woman."

    Are you joking no question mark.

    If I weren't funny, I'd've died cherry.

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  104. I wouldn't argue that women don't tell jokes, of course. But it seems plain as day to me that they aren't generally as driven to formulate and tell jokes as guys are.

    I don't think that guys are as driven to tell jokes as you and some other commeters here are suggesting. I'm a guy, and I'm not a joke teller. Most of the guys I know are not joke tellers either. Which is not to say that we can't be funny, but we're not into the whole routine of memorizing and retelling jokes.

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  105. Men are funny to attract women (after all, everything else they do is a courtship behaviour).

    Humour from women is not only not sexually attractive to men, it is a positive deterrent to men's sexual interest in a woman.

    Honey, you have some serious issues with men. Dial down the misandry a notch and you'll find we're not such bad people.

    Side note: The spell check function knows about the word "misogyny" but is unaware of "misandry". That seems telling, somehow.

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  106. many guys, because they associate humor with jokes and belly-laughs, simply don't recognize it when women are being funny.

    I never, ever, get a belly-laugh from a formal "joke", complete with careful setup and punch-line. I think a large part of humor stems from the unexpected, and the calculated and memorized "joke" can never be unexpected. In fact I hate it when when somebody tries to tell me one of those stories-with-a-punch-line type efforts, because I know I'll never be able to respond with more than a forced smile.

    And I'm a guy. A more than usually masculine guy.

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  107. "The average straight man's dream is a woman who looks like a woman, but who's emotionally built like a man, meaning that she can get and make jokes, can be excited about typically male hobbies, isn't bitchy or flighty, is capable of being loyal, etc."

    Who looks like a woman. Does this wet dream include ANY feminine non-phsyical traits that you admire? Any nice things you ascribe to women other than the proverbial bosoms and bottoms? Or just a guy in a female body so you don't have to be called a homo? Perhaps a transsexual would be ideal.

    Still, the only word that really baffles me is "loyal." While I dno't dispute the loyalty of some men, a male researcher who had studied prison culture, noted that men in prison are visited by their various female relatives and paramours on a regular basis, but women in prison are never visited by men. A woman in prison is forgotten by any man she may have had, Lenny Bruce's wife being a notable exception to that.
    While i have a hard time believing that no men ever visit them, i never forgot that observation. Something about it rings true. I don't think one has to go to prison to find out the truth.

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  108. "Humour from women is not only not sexually attractive to men, it is a positive deterrent to men's sexual interest in a woman."

    This is one insecure man. Please--stay deterred. We can stand the loss.

    A guy who never ever laughed (sincerely) at my little jokes that others found funny, would just be too weird. Bye bye. Humor you share. My happiest moments have been making people laugh.

    Historically there were "classes" of women trained in the arts of love and entertainment, whose duty and profession was to humor the depressed or manic pasha, to make him laugh, or at least smile and feel benevolent. In the case of Sheharezade it was a matter of life and death, lest she end as his previous wives. Her stories had all the human elements, including humor. Humor was a crucial element in the success of any saloniere of the 18th century, and poets and philosophers paid tribute to such women.

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  109. this article is oh predictable... Black women are rated the least physically attractive...by whom may I ask?

    most black men prefer black women, so who is rating black women the least attractive? could it be already biased/brainwashed people, such as yourself?...

    Im a black woman, I personally wasn't offended by the article, I found it funny actually and I took it as a teaching opportunity. it was an opportunity to demonstrate what ignorance looks like and how 'science' or pseudoscience can be manipulated to prove a point just like anything else...you know all about that...

    http://www.dawnali.com/lovinmysistas/index.php?topic=50.msg209#msg209

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