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This is an interesting analysis which perhaps pays its subject too much praise. I read Louise Perry's The Case Against The Sexual Revolution a few weeks ago. I found it blooming with inconsistencies. I will attempt to outline them here( this might be long).

Perry takes to task the fundamental male desire to pursue non-committal sex with many partners. But she ignores the fundamental female desire to maintain a committed sexual relationship with the most desirable partner. In many cases, a desirable man can sleep with as many women as he pleases, but the servicing of his desire is only possible because many women will prefer the hope of securing him down to a relationship to settling down with someone less attractive. Half the book is a polemic against polygamous relationships but this is impossible without the hypergamous nature of women. The two desires so neatly coexist which is why they have remained consistent throughout human history.

If men must curb their desires, women must also curb theirs. Indeed, this is why in societies where monogamy is so strictly enforced ( rural India comes to mind), many women are in unhappy relationships with very unattractive men. Eating one's cake and having it is a philosophy one should not possibly believe in beyond childhood

Perry cites many of her examples- the book has a stunning absence of statistical evidence by the way - from anecdotes of porn actresses and college relationships. Suffice to say that that is unrepresentative of the general population. In both categories, the women have made active choices - in the case of porn stars and prostitutes, by default - to sleep with men who have fewer inhibitions about treating women with disrespect. College dating, which is highly mimetic and superficial, also rewards these kinds of men as women of that age are often still in their ' bad boy' phase.

Perry advocates a dangerous idea that consent is not enough. In a particularly memorable passage, she decries that sexual relationships have been transacted in something akin to a free market. Well, if people should not make their own sexual choices for themselves, then someone else must be making these sexual choices for them.

This is not hypothetical. It is pure logic. Eugenicists, for example, obviously would like an eugenics sympathetic government to make those choices. The point is if two people's willing consent isn't enough, then it means people's decisions to have sex and enter into sexual relationships, the very thing Perry treats with such reverence, should be governed by other people. That is an ironic and inescapable conclusion.

It's remarkable that in the chapter titled Consent Is Not Enough, the book mainly advances its case by discussing pedophilia and porn. In fact, these are two cases where sexual relationships are frowned upon precisely because consent is strictly impossible ( pedophilia) or because in many cases, it wasn't obtained ( the unfortunate and widespread abuse of porn stars is well documented). This is like writing a book called Peace is Not Enough and making your case by discussing the awful consequences of World War I and World War II. If this were intentional, it is hilarious. If it were not, it is unintelligent.

Perry does not idolize marriage. In fact, she stoically recommends it as the worst of all possible worlds. I'll not begin to analyse why such an attitude is likely to make marriage an unattractive and depressing prospect to young people, especially set side by side with untrammelled sexual freedom.

There are brilliant insights in this book. The sly comparison of prostitution with slavery is certainly intriguing but half true because while slavery is fundamentally involuntary, prostitution is mostly a voluntary arrangement. Of course, the argument can be made that it is only voluntary because the prostitute lacks better options. Well, of course, it is. Poor people take up all kinds of jobs because they lack better options. The only good takeaway from that is to abolish poverty. That's a takeaway you can get by simply paying attention to our world.

The truth is the pendulum has swung too far in the West. The sexual revolution, like all revolutions, has calcified into a dictatorship of superficial preferences. But that is as much men's fault as it is women's fault, and if any solution were to result, it would be as much women's responsibility as it would be men's. There are many victims of this dynamic. The book's attempt to monopolize victimhood on behalf of women is in fact the principal attitude which led to the sexual revolution in the first place.

Occasionally, The Case Against The Sexual Revolution makes a good case against the sexual revolution. Usually, and perhaps unfortunately, it simply makes a good case against itself.

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Honestly the whole hypergamy argument is bunk. All humans, including men, have a bit of hypergamy in wishes and dreams of easy wealth or fame or comfort... but it surely not just women. MEN can be just as hypergamous, including marrying the bosses daughter, the heiress, the famous fashion model, and so on. Today, assortive mating is vastly more common than either genders hypergamy. (It is also demeaning to women, because the implication is A. ONLY women are hypergamous and B. essentially they are heartless gold diggers.)

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Lol, no. I'll treat your claims separately.

First off, hypergamy is not bunk. It is of course more complicated than the simplistic perspectives advanced by incels and the manosphere, which should not surprise. After all, People are complicated.

But hypergamy is real. There is a wealth of research showing that women prefer to marry men who make more money than they do. See Qian, Y. (2016). Gender Asymmetry in Educational and Income Assortative Marriage. Journal of Marriage and Family, 79(2), 318–336, most recently for more details among other pieces of research I can adduce.

There's also copious research demonstrating that women are more happy in marriages where they have 'married up'. Indeed, this desire is abundantly clear from many women's self reported preferences on dating apps where they express clear preferences for men who are richer, taller, and more powerful.

If hypergamy did not exist, polygamy and similar relationships, especially among elite men, for want of a better term, would be impossible. If many women do not prefer sleeping with men of higher status, wealth, etc in the hopes of securing a long term relationship, these men's polygamous inclinations would be left unfulfilled. This effect is of course more pronounced in societies with greater gender disparity in wealth and status eg third world countries.

In contrast, men are generally happier with marrying down and especially do not mind sleeping with women of lower status or wealth or educational pedigree who they may not want to commit to.

Two, all humans have a bit of hypergamy in their wishes isn't a serious claim. Of course, they do. The point is women have more pronounced tendencies ( see any romance novel ever written) and are more likely to pursue these desires as a result. Revealed preferences through actions are much more important in understanding human nature than mere wishes and dreams.

Three, mating is mostly assortative because of constraints. Men and women grow up, go to work, live and eat, mostly with people similar to them. As such, they usually marry people similar to them. What's important here is the number of deviations from assortative mating to pursue hypergamous relationships ( again, women number here much more commonly).

Four, it is not demeaning to women just like it is not demeaning to say that women are naturally weaker than men or that men often place a higher premium on raw looks than women do. And the only two blatantly inaccurate implications you drew by yourself illustrate binary, black and white thinking.

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Scott Alexander investigated how prevalent female hypergamy is here:

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/hypergamy-much-more-than-you-wanted

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I've read the article. As is usual with Scott, often more thorough than even necessary.

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Wrong. Women date up and across the mate value spectrum. Men will date down just to get laid. Dating up is hypergamy

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Sorry but PEOPLE (male & female) date both UP and DOWN economically.

The mate value spectrum is not some solid, scientific thing... it is mostly in your own head. I am guessing you get your values here from the RedPill community but that is not all men, and definitely not most womens values.

The fact that SOME PEOPLE will date DOWN (economically? looks wise?) to get hookup sex is hardly news.

The real question is how many men or women will MARRY DOWN? and what are their reasons? does it work out, when people have different incomes, educations, morals and values? because those things are pretty darn important in a marriage!

BTW: hypergamy is TRYING to date (or marry) up in terms of income, status, looks, etc. It can be either men or women doing this. Lots of men hope to marry up! Most peoples fantasies are of marrying a partner who is rich, extremely good looking, in high society or a movie/sports star. But for the most part, this is a fantasy.

Most people are just ordinary and average.

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I agree with most all of that. My experience is that men try to date up in terms of looks. They don't care so much if she is poor, as long as she has similar values about money (Bill gates marrying Melinda, not that she was poor, just not as rich). Women will date up in terms of current of potential economics not caring as much about his looks. This would be the typical rich fat guy with the hot trophy wife for example

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At the extremes, I suppose there ARE gold diggers who will attach themselves to the ugliest old fat guys (think: Harvey Weinstein) to get at their money. But then they get cheated on and later, when they are not as cute and hot.... they get dumped.

Though I agree men are attracted to womens looks, they ALSO are provably attracted to women from high status families, with high status degrees (Harvard, Yale), etc. because those things are markers today of wealth, class, etc.

Also, it is a folly to imagine women do not care about mens looks. They certainly do! they discuss it ALL THE TIME. They make the same bad dating decisions as some men, choosing handsome and hot, over sensible and steady.

Melinda Gates was definitely NOT poor; she came from an affluent family and had an Ivy League degree and was a high level Microsoft executive BEFORE DATING BILL. What Melinda was... was HIGH CLASS. Intelligent, decent looking, able to mingle in high society and be a good mother to Bills two children. (Note that he had two kids, not 20 kids despite his wealth!)

You need however, to look beyond celebrities and billionaires ... at how MOST people marry and date. Most educated men do NOT wish to marry some embarrassing bimbo, who uses bad grammar and has 100 tattoos... to bring home to their family, to introduce to their BOSS, to raise their KIDS. He might sleep with her, but he will not marry her.

Now, unfortunately for you, I have to sing:

(to a Calypso beat)

If you want to be happy for the rest of your life

Never make a pretty woman your wife

So for my personal point of view

Get an ugly girl to marry you

A pretty woman makes her husband look small

And very often causes his downfall

As soon as he married her and then she starts

To do the things that will break his heart

But if you make an ugly woman your wife

Ah you'll be happy for the rest of your life

An ugly woman cooks meals on time

She'll always give you peace of mind

Don't let your friends say you have no taste

Go ahead and marry anyway

Though her face is ugly, her eyes don't match

Take it from me, she's a better catch

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I will take your word that Melinda was high class. But she was several rungs below Bill on the pay and status scales. I only use those examples because they are ones that most people recognize.

Yes, very wise words in the form of a song.

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Great, well reasoned comment.

I only take issue with this... "( the unfortunate and widespread abuse of porn stars is well documented)". Porn actresses are paid for this. They can make more money in 5 years than I can make in a lifetime as a wage slave. I would trade places with them in a heartbeat. Work hard for 5 years and then retire on my investments.

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Thank you for the compliment.

Well, I know they are paid for it, and a few of them are paid quite well, but it doesn't make it any less unfortunate.

What it does make it is completely and perfectly voluntary.

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Why would anyone recommend "the worst of all possible worlds" instead of the best bad option?

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Jun 10, 2023
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Thank you. I appreciate the compliment.

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I wanted to address the choking thing. It is pretty new, because it definitely did not exist when I was young and dating (70s) or older, divorced and dating (90s)... by the 90s, there were male requests for things like spanking, anal sex, etc. but never choking.

I think all of these come directly from PORN and porn is overwhelmingly a male endeavor... written by men, directed by men, consumed by men... women are a tiny part of it. (We do like erotica, but not porn.) MEN who see women being choked (and liking it), take this into the bedroom and indicate to their partners that this is hot & sexy, so the women do it. OR the women see the porn, and figure out that this is something their male partner would get off on. The idea that women actively wish to be choked is bizarre and I strongly feel is untrue (not even getting into how sick and unsafe it is!).

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Thanks! Interesting

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I don't know. Women I've dated seem to be more into chocking then I, in fact most rough sex the woman has wanted it more than me.

A quick trip to Barnes and Noble will show plenty of women targeted erotica books with rough sex.

I don't dismiss your claim that things are different with porn (its really the only era I know) but I think we are assuming away darker sides of female sexual desire.

Lastly, the very act of pushing boundries is tied up in sexual arousal.

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Well, that is something I have never heard before. I do know choking is shown in porn, and a lot of folks (sadly) get their ideas of what is HOT or SEXY from porn instead of from real human relationships....

Rough sex is one thing, choking is another. Choking is very dangerous, just like auto erotic asphyxiation is.

I probably know more about womens erotica than most, because I have two friends who are published authors of womens erotic romance novels (via places like Elloras Cave, a pioneer in that genre). So I have read their books, plus others they recommended, and while there is fantasy rape... I have not ever read about erotic CHOKING there.

Does not mean it doesn't exist, of course. I just cannot see it.

Women definitely do fantasize about rape, but it is NOTHING like real rape... it is a fantasy, and about being so desirable, that a man simply cannot contain himself (LOL). It never involves brutality, vaginal tears, hemorrhaging blood, etc. It is about being swept away by desire, and of course, since it is a FANTASY rape... the woman can tell herself that she did not choose it (hence, she is not a SLUT) and typically the man is apologetic afterwards, letting her FORGIVE HIM... typically this is followed by a marriage proposal, LOL.

I am not sure that pushing boundaries is part of female sexual arousal, though it would be interesting to study.... most of the studies were done in the 70s and 80s, so they dont include modern ideas of porn (including CHOKING) nor do they account for influence via the internet.

I can tell you though, that a lot of men get their ideas about sex and what women want (or they themselves want) FROM porn.... and men consume probably 100x as much porn as women (more than ever, as it is so easy to access and even free online now!).... every woman I ever talked to about this, absolutely HATED IT.

So you have to consider women who say they want to be choked, might have seen it in male oriented porn and ASSUMED this is what men want, vs what they want for themselves.

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I think in female-dominated writing it's generally referenced as "breathplay", which sounds less brutal than "choking".

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For what it's worth, choking is considered a dangerous kink by actual kinksters, because there's no safe way to execute it--you always have danger to the carotids or airway.

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Absolutely. It is severely stupid. You can easily crush someones carotid artery! especially if you have no idea what you are doing (which is 99% of people doing this).

I must be a dope or a prude, because I totally have no clue why this would seem sexy in any way....

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It's dangerous. A lot of people find danger sexy. Obviously, danger is dangerous, so this leads to problems.

My pet theory is that lots of women still want dominant men but that's now considered bad, so you have to dress it up with whips and chains and safewords so it feels 'transgressive'.

If you're curious about this you can read Lehmiller's Tell Me What You Want--interestingly, liberals are into BDSM, conservatives into swinging. What do liberals think is evil? Unequal power dynamics. What do conservatives think is evil? Adultery. Maybe Freud was onto something.

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Beats me. I think it is related to auto erotic asphyxiation, which is as much or more male than female. I think the overall category is called BREATH PLAY.

Frankly I like my sex to occur while I am still among the living. I do not find the prospect of choking to be in any way pleasant, desirable or sexual.

Probably yes, the wider association is with all BDSM... to dress up vanilla sex with whips and chains and safe words (LOL). IMHO, if you have to try THIS HARD to be transgressive... you aint transgressive.

I am not sure that swinging is any big whoop anymore, and when it started in the 60s and 70s, it was definitely liberal urban couples... not conservatives in small towns. The idea that there is a group of totally NOT WITH IT people today, in rural areas... is so 20th century. The internet has brought every kink and bad behavior to even the smallest burgs.

I do not see the liberal/conservative split here. Liberals, especially women, also hate infidelity. I do agree they obsess on power dynamics, but what does that even mean in 2023, when virtually all women (yes, even conservative women!) work and have their own money? And isn't adultery, at some level, unequal power dynamics? adultery in an adult relationship is typically driven by one party, mostly (but not always) the male... wanting to stray but the woman is willing to permit indiscretion if he stays with the family.

If you think conservatives are more faithful than liberals... well, I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you. ALL people stray and cheat. LOTS of people (yes even men) desire a committed monogamous relationship (even if they fail at it).

What was Freud onto? did he have anything to say about BDSM or choking?

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Yeah, I agree. I had a couple of requests for it (including quite frequently in one long-term relationiship) and said no every time.

I mean, that's what he found. You can toss a few tens of dollars at Amazon and see for yourself. It more or less tracks with what I've heard. Doesn't mean every conservative's into swinging--I imagine a lot take their marriage vows seriously and never go anywhere near that stuff.

But the smallest burgs are into everything now? Too bad, I was hoping there was at least some place for people who wanted old-fashioned lives to go. I always figured that was sort of the appeal of Mormonism--people who actually want to live in 1960.

I think 'power dynamics' are now a way for Democrats to get votes from liberal women and feminists to make men's lives miserable, but I'm biased. ;)

Oh, Freud's point was 'the return of the repressed'--stuff that's taboo turning people on. A lot of the stuff he said (penis envy comes to mind) was pretty dumb.

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Again: I just dont get it. Maybe that makes me a square (LOL).

No interest in spending $$$ at Amazon for any of this. I find it tedious, frankly. Someone made me read 50 Shades of Grey (which is dimestore BDSM) and it only made me laugh and not in a good way.

As for swinging: it is just SO OLD... it was a sort of cool transgressive thing in the late 60s maybe and had a following in the 70s and then died off... if ANYBODy is still doing it, and thinking it is cool & transgressive, I cannot imagine who they are. I would not say it is conservatives in any way. And I do not mean because they are more moral or proper, just because it sounds like something your grandparents might have done 60 years ago. Not sexy AT ALL. Geriatric, in fact.

Yes, the internet has brought everything from meth and fentanyl and oxycontin pill mills.... 24/7 porn... everything you can imagine, right into the homes of even the smallest hamlets and distant rural areas. This is a fact. There is no place left that is old fashioned, unless you yearn for Outer Mongolia. (And sadly, even there... believe or not, they have smartphones.)

Most Mormons are surprisingly modern in their lifestyles... traditional yes, but in a modern way. The women mostly all work and go to college. Dont mix up FUNDIE Mormons with LDS Mormons... totally different.

Honestly, I am a feminist and have no idea what power dynamics are. Most Democrat/liberal polices are actually very anti woman now, and pro trans and LGBQTIA+. They are alienating feminists by calling us TERFs.

There is a point to the idea that taboos turn people on, but... as always YMMV.

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I first heard of auto-erotic asphyxiation as being something men did to themselves while masturbating (in the wake of some dying as a result), and only later heard about women being (consensually) choked during sex. So maybe some men had the idea that a lack of oxygen enhances sexual sensation, applied it to women, and porn spread the practice.

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That makes sense... there was at least one case of a famous actor DYING in the act of auto asphyxiation. What a stupid way to DIE!

But yes, porn gives people ideas of what others are doing and what their partners might desire or find super sexy... and that is often FALSE. So some sexual behaviors are driven by this. I did not realize it myself, until I was older and dating a man who loved porn and wanted to view it prior to sex because it turned him on. I was polite and willing to watch it, but it really dismayed me. It was either so ridiculous as to be funny (close up shots of swinging balls???) OR upsettingly violent... but I did learn some important things, and that is why some men choose certain sexual behaviors. They had seen it first in PORN films, assumed it was normal (and not staged for video) and so would do it to women... the women either saw it too OR experienced it during sex, so THEY assumed it was what was wanted. A vicious circle.

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You mentioned auto erotic asphyxiation later in your comments but you conclude that it only applies to men. While the phenomenon may be more common in men, it exists in women as well.

My husband's college girlfriend asked to be choked. They were both sexually inexperienced at the time, but she requested it because holding her breathe when masturbating helped trigger her orgasms. They were in college in the early 90s, long before choking became popular in porn. This is of course purely anecdotal, but it's more plausible that a minority of women are sexually aroused by choking than the assertion that choking is solely a porn phenomenon and no women seek it out on their own.

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I have really only heard of it before in men, but yeah... I am sure it is possible that a small number of women ALSO do this.

Unfortunately bad ideas spread fast. However, I think most people who try this, got the idea from porn.

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I think you're right. I also hope the women who try it because of porn and don't gain erotic satisfaction from it refrain or refuse it in future. Personally, if anyone tried to choke me regardless of context, I'd start kicking and punching like my life depended on it!

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I wish, but I think at this point it is a fad... so much sexual behavior of the last 40 years or so, is related to fads in pornography! they filter down through society until you have middle school girls doing things that used to be done only by hardened prostitutes or porn actresses.

It seems like every decade or so, the standard gets ramped up... so that it filters down through first adults viewing the porn, then to young people and then to teens, high schools, middle schools and so on... remember that today, with smartphones, even elementary school age children see porn... I believe studies say by 7 or 8 years old.

If you see this at 8 in 3rd grade, and this is your introduction to sex... rough stuff, choking, etc.... will you come to see that as a normal expression of sexuality? vs. a kink? without the maturity to realize how dangerous it could be?

Like you said, I would refuse it and be angry if anyone tried it. But Im a mature adult. Would a naive kid or teenager be able to set healthy boundaries around this kind of sexual behavior?

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I have 3 children ranging in age from 7 to 17. From my vantage point, the refusal of teens to seek out romantic relationships is just as serious a concern. It's the flip side of becoming sexually blase from porn consumption. Whether porn consumption pushes a teen in one direction or the other probably comes down to personality and upbringing - unfortunately, both paths are bad.

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What you say, and it is a source of grief to me... I see young women especially who appear disinterested in dating (and here I mean straight heterosexual identifying girls) because the culture is so ANTI romantic and it is treated almost like a loserish behavior to want conventional dating. Kids seem to just hangout and engage in what is referred to as hook up sex.... yes, they are blasé and I think it stems from very early introduction to porn.

It cannot be overstated the degree to which young people (say, under 25 or GenZ) have grown up with smartphones and instant access to things like 24/7 pornography. Many parents are in total denial of this; in fact when I suggest that maybe a 7 year old doesn't need their own iPhone... it is ME who gets the stink eye and reminders that if kids do not have smartphones, they wont succeed at school or get high tech jobs as adults (!).

But in fact, it is NOT doing that (preparing kids for high tech) but is a gateway into stuff that no 2nd or 3rd grader should EVER see. And it is not just sexual things, it is also disgusting violent stuff.... recently, I was told by a middle schooler about a video online (since taken down) of a man stuffing a kitten into a garbage disposal.

With the recent issues over Pride parades... many parents objected to the nudity and erotic displays in a public parade, and the DEFENDERS said that :: well it is OK because little kids SEE WORSE STUFF EVERY DAY ON THEIR PHONES and are already aware of sexuality, nudity, erotic dancing, twerking ::.... so a segment of our society is not merely OK with this, but thinks it is a good thing.

<< face palm >>

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Get real. It wasn't men buying 50 shades of gray, one of, if not the most successful books of all time. Women are into degradation play

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I read those books (3 of them!) only because my best friend was an erotic romance author (published, 12 novels) and this was a publishing phenom and she wanted my opinion. (I also had to sit through all 3 movies, cringe!)

No, the books were not aimed at men (though some men did read the books). There is a theory that EL James HUSBAND actually came up with the idea and wrote most of it. Are you aware that it originated as FAN FICTION about the TWILIGHT series?

Though very successful, 50 Shades of Grey did not even touch the sales or value of Harry Potter.

You cannot determine that every woman who ever read 50 Shades OR saw the films, is into degradation play. I read and watched it, and it mostly made me cringe when I wasnt laughing at it! remember, some people HATE watch (or HATE read) stuff.

Also I dont think you really know what the book is about. Yes, there is some really softcore BDSM in the book. But it turns out, it is because Grey (the hero billionaire) was abused as a teenager by an older woman! he has issues! and he gets over these issues with THE LOVE OF A GOOD WOMAN (the heroine).

Over time, she converts him to sweet vanilla sex and fatherhood (even though he objects strenuously at first) and by the end... they are HAPPILY MARRIED with an adorable BABY! (and very very rich).

So despite some softcore BDSM and sex scenes, this is NOT about how women love being degraded in role playing sex as the submissive. Thats just candy coating on a VERY TRADITIONAL romance novel series, where the plucky heroine gets the richest, handsomest bachelor to marry her and turns him into the perfect husband & father.

Now: you do you, but if you go into dating situations with the idea that EVERY WOMAN wants to be degraded because YOU READ IT IN 50 SHADES OF GREY!!!... you are in for a massive kick upside the head.

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Oh that's rich.

"It's really her husband who wrote it."

And:

"Even though the whole thing is BDSM, you can't say that women who read it are into degradation!"

Come on.

Women aren't the purity packages you seem to need them to be.

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@Josh Slocum: I never said women were purity packages. I said I dont think ONE SERIES of 3 books proves that ALL WOMEN want BDSM play. Many women read this series just because it was somewhat graphic and transgressive about such sex play (at least at the beginning; then it goes vanilla!) and because it is a fantasy about MARRYING A BILLIONAIRE.

I just saw the older than old classic film HOW TO MARRY A MILLIONAIRE (early 50s, Marilyn Monroe and Lauren Bacall) and even then (and it wasnt new then!) it was a fantasy about marrying money. So that part is far from original.

I have no idea about the sex life of the actual E.L. James. I said IT IS A THEORY among FANS that her husband wrote all or some of it, or edited it, or came up with the original idea.

Surely you know it started ONLINE as self published FAN FICTION based on the TWILIGHT series? under the pseudonym Snowqueens Icedragon? and called Master of the Universe? to get it into legit print, she had to change all the character names from Bella and Edward to Anastasia and Grey.

Again: if you go to into dating situations and think ALL WOMEN want BDSM because you think THEY ALL READ 50 SHADES OF GREY!... you are in for a massive kick upside the head.

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And don't threaten me lady--wind your fucking neck right back in. I'm not one of these passive men who will take your threats and try to soothe you.

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LOL... doofus, I did not say I was going to kick you. Reread my post. I said IF YOU DO THIS to a woman on a date... SHE will give you a massive kick upside the head... perhaps metaphorically or maybe really! because the vast majority of women hate this stuff.

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Stop shrieking in all caps. You sound hysterical.

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Ah, but freedom of speech means... FREEDOM TO USE THE ALL CAPS KEY!

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There were quite a few gay and lesbian romance novels in the 50s and 60s where the hero or heroine finds straight love in the end. I don't think they were read by heterosexuals--it's a way to avoid admitting to deviant desires, even in your own head.

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Really? those must be outside of my reading experience! I have definitely read older books or plays that feature lesbians... they were a big thing in feminist studies when I was in college.

Do you mean books where the protagonist TOYS with a gay or lesbian romance, then finds it unsatisfying or morally wrong, and so changes back to being straight? Again, I cannot think of one.

I also dont know that gay/lesbian publishing was much of a thing until the 70s, though I could be wrong.

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The term you are looking for is "moral figleaf".

At least in the case of the lesbian novels, a lot of those were written for heterosexual men, sort of like lesbian porn today. "The Price of Salt" by Patricia Highsmith was pretty revolutionary, in that 1. it wasn't written for straight men, and 2. the characters didn't in the end commit suicide, go crazy or become heterosexual.

The gay novels were written for gay men, and I don't know if they had the characters finding heterosexual redemption at the end.

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I did see the film SALT based on The Price of Salt, and that is a pretty unusual and interesting subject for the 1950s.

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What I am saying is that women flocked all of those books and movies, not men. Women love the BDSM, they are the ones dragging men into the choking kink. This comes up a decent amount on Reddit. It's always men writing in that they are uncomfortable with their GF's request to be choked. I've yet to see a woman writing in feeling uncomfortable because their BF wants to choke them

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If you mean the 50 Shades trilogy of books, then films... yes, I imagine most of it was women, because under the BDSM kerfuffle.... it is a pretty ordinary wish fulfillment fantasy of a young, unremarkable girl who manages to first attract and then marry the richest man in the world.

But it ends in a VERY VANILLA way, so it titillates with a bit of BDSM (which the heroine stands up for herself in setting boundaries around) and then ENDS with the couple happily married, with a darling baby and living in a dream McMansion.

I feel pretty sure that the choking aspect comes from men and male porn, and definitely not from 50 Shades... I dont have a copy here (YUCK) but my memory is the BDSM in the book was about doms and subs, and a lot of whippings & spankings... not choking.

I have definitely read from women who said their boyfriends interest in BREATH PLAY was disturbing to them.

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One thing I learned at some point was to ignore what women said they wanted and focus on what they actually did.

I started getting a lot more queens once I learned that lesson.

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Finster, if you have a specific girlfriend who requests this and likes this, and you mutually consent to it (despite the risks, which are real)... go ahead. Nobody is stopping you.

However, if you think you should IGNORE WHAT WOMEN SAY THEY WANT and decide YOU know what they REALLY want... someday, you will get in big trouble for this and no, you will not get queens... you will get SOME passive frightened women and a lot of angry women who never want to see you again.

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You appear to be reading a bit too much into my comment.

For that matter, toms do the same thing, as far as I can tell.

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I’d like to know your reaction to Bryan Caplan’s review: https://betonit.substack.com/p/marry-the-market-reflections-on-the

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Thanks I enjoyed!

He really does come at it from a different angle doesn't he. My main take away is that I may be super neurotic according to him, which is probably true

I obviously agree with him on the hypergamy part - I wrote about in my sister piece.

Agree with some of the other challenges Caplan notes. I've noticed when I read books like Perry's, I tend to brush aside the "duller" disagreements (markets are good!) and focus on the salient questions (does Perry not think women have agency? Wonderful)...

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This is probably the best-written book in the "conservative points in liberal words" genre (a good genre!) Perry is dishing out parental wisdom, almost folk-tales, in modern, politicized language. Avoid wolves on the way to grandma's! Get Rumpelstiltskin's name! Don't build your house out of straw! Perry takes the same tone. Will professors take the bait and become like grandmothers, warning the young (and especially young women) to be cautious in love? I await the results but fear the implementation.

Misha, you nailed my issue with the book. Perry frequently explains why women don't have agency, cordoning it off as you said, and it seems to beg the question of what agency means in this discussion. That being said, I think Perry's fault in describing women is the same she has in describing men. She is not nearly harsh enough!

On men: “They care about youth, and they care about looks, but otherwise they don’t care who they’re ejaculating into, and they certainly don’t care if that person is enjoying themselves. If given the chance, these men will treat their sexual partners as unfeeling orifices…. That is the punter’s view of the matter."

I think Perry writes like this to avoid scaring her readers. Even within the boundaries of the law this isn't the worst case! Pointing out the "embarrass him in front of his friends" threshold helps, but Perry is far, far off the mark in describing cads. A worse case that I think many people have seen: A guy has sex with a girl on a fling, breaks her heart, then brags about it to everyone they both know, humiliating her in front of everyone. Perry mentions bragging as a vice from prostitution, and uses "Sex in the City" as a fictional example where this bragging goes well for women. Writing out the real-life case of someone whose friendships and trust in the world are irrevocably damaged at seventeen would be a complete change in mood, but this seems *far more relevant* to Perry's target audience. The flip-side is, of course, facing up to that agency. Perry has to avoid writing "Please, for the love of God, make good choices, there are some real monsters out there who will happily accept your worst decisions" in order to get the audience she wants, but that seems like the best interpretation of the book. Mean Girls got to this dynamic, and even managed to point out the girl-on-girl violence that Perry never comes close to.

There's obviously a synthesis here that needs better than me to type out, a beautiful essay on the switch that flips in Catholic parents from "Why would you even want to go to the dance" to "Where are my grandchildren?" I think Jane Austen novels perfectly detail the thrilling and romantic process of discerning cads from chivalrous men. Alas, the culture war cannot be driven by personal discernment and age-old wisdom. Perry cannot spend a whole book saying "We, men and women, collectively and individually, must repair community institutions that we are perversely destroying." This would be ignored for spicier takes that argue from universal principles rather than personal advice. Nevertheless, for people who ignore old advice for modern principles, this is a refreshing way of seeing your grandmother's Thanksgiving interrogations and questions about the good life.

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Sorry but Im pretty sure in 2023 there are no school nor church dances for young people... when I mention such things to my GenZ grandkids, they look at me blankly. (Like how they look at my corded landline phones.)

And those Catholic (or Jewish or Protestant or Muslim) parents are not wrong. At 16, you are protective of a young vulnerable teen. At 28, you are getting antsy for some grandkids.

While I love Jane Austen... she is a wickedly funny social critic... that was 1810 (roughly; she died in 1817) and pretty irrelevant to todays courtship... I have written extensively online as to why I think many people interpret Austen wrongly today, and think she is saying it is a GOOD THING to marry money. Men like Darcy are not chivalrous at all!

I dont know about Perry, who goes for pop books, online interviews or podcasts, etc. but YES I want to read that book that says "We, men and women, collectively and individually, must repair community institutions that we are perversely destroying." ... since this is precisely what I think and where we are going wrong.

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I note a consistent oversight in these descriptions of male sexual "psychopathy." It's the cognitive bias sometimes known as the saliency bias. Just as a small proportion of criminals commit a large proportion of crimes, a small proportion of men make up the pool of the "elite men" in Perry's world of the sexual marketplace. The "elite men" that populate her world are elite in their desirability profiles--looks & intelligence--but they are disproportionally lacking in empathy. Some are are so far along that spectrum that they're sociopathic. Some "desirable" men actually do recoil at callously using women for their sexual gratification and immediately moving on. Using other people as instruments to achieve our own narrow ends--sexual or otherwise--could be the definition of immorality. Those men who decline that course don't make it into Perry's anecdotes. They're more likely to get married and disappear from tinder. In other words, Perry's world of male sexual psychopathy is drawn from the pool of men who are relatively high on dark triad traits (Machiavellianism, narcissism, psychopathy) because such men disproportionately populate the successful men on tinder and its ilk. What may be true is that the modern sexual marketplace is a more welcoming playground for such men than the old-fashioned markets for dating and courtship.

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Yes and no. It depends on what you think an elite man is... for many liberal women today (I have spoken with MANY)... they value liberal politics over even money or status (or looks). They value intelligence, but more in the form of degrees and credentials than street smarts.

Empathy can be very hard to judge, as the most clever men (and women) are cunning in hiding this in the initial stages of a relationship... where both parties are high on hormones and excitement. This is a trap that many many PEOPLE fall into.

Not all men wish to use women for gratification and then dump them... many if not most men are capable of very deep emotional feelings around sex and courtship (and yes, marriage). As you say, those men (the good ones!) disappear quickly from dating sites and into marriage (or remarriages). I am very happy to say my husband is one of those guys!

Tinder definteily rewards bad behaviors, like using other people and then ghosting them and moving on. But I hear men complain bitterly that women do this too ... and the sex ratio on Tinder (and OK Cupid and others) is skewed 75% male to 25% female!

While to many WOMEN... it seems the modern sexual marketplace (again Tinder, etc.) rewards men more, with immediate sex and no incentive to commit... MEN say the opposite. They say they cannot get matches, no matter how much they swipe. They say the women are giddy with power over this, use them for their money, drinks, free meals and then may (OR MAY NOT) reward the men with sex... before moving on, in what incels now call THE COCK CAROUSEL (cannot make this lingo up, trust me)... they believe, sincerely I think, that women today are far far more promiscuous than men.

I just report this stuff, as I am far too old to experience it directly.

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Thanks, good summary. I wonder whether the "incel" phenomenon is new, or something just amplified by the new (dating app, social media, etc.) technology. Or alternatively perhaps whether incels have just become more visible because it's easier to form virtual communities that give voice to their members' pain and frustration. After all, as has been pointed out on this very site, most males over the long span of history failed to produce progeny. Doesn't that suggest involuntary celibacy is in some sense the norm for males? (It's also been suggested that monogamy largely righted that imbalance in modern times by making polygyny illegal or taboo.)

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Thank you, Nick R... those are thoughtful and interesting comments.

I do think the incel stuff is relatively new. The first incidence of it was the mail order paperback THE PICKUP ARTIST (*I think the authors name was something like MAGIC) and I believe that dates to the later 1980s. It was more focused on how awkward or unsuccessful young men could LEARN (via lessons) how to pick up girls and SCORE (i.e., get sex vs. a relationship or marriage) by learning clever techniques. Even prior to that, was a sort of pathetic MENS RIGHTS movement (very small at the time) whose leader was the VERY dysfunctional Warren Farrell. His whole schtick was to wear skirts (though he was not gay or trans) and demand women be drafted... that sort of thing. He appeared on shows back then like Phil Donahue.

lt never caught on in any big way back then though... so the observation that the internet brought this to fruition (though did not invent it)... has a lot of truth.

Relatively few Incels are literal virgins like the famous Elliot Roger... when I chat with Incels online, most admit they have had sex, girlfriends, many have even married. So the original dateless awkward guy movement MERGED with the Mens Rights Movement (such as it was), layered over with anger about all kinds of stuff.... not merely inability to find dates or sex... but never married men raging about unfair divorce laws (*that I find they have no knowledge or understanding of!) and the whole Asian Mail Order Bride movement (American women are so awful, I am moving to Thailand to get a proper, virginal Tradwife!).

I am not sure HISTORICALLY how few men had offspring... it would be hard to establish, since until very modern times this would have been hard to trace. We can definitely say that in modern times (20th century)... about 1 man in 4 never has children... which lends a lot of both humor and sadness to the frequent incel claim that WOMEN WILL END UP SPINSTERS WITH CATS. In fact, the ones ending up alone are generally men.

How many men actually cannot access SEX? and are literal virgins? I would say very few, but it does happen. I think it is linked to things like Aspergers Syndrome, general autism, ADHD and other conditions that are more common in males than females. Alcoholism, drug addiction, schizophrenia are all more common in men (historically). Go see any of the truly awful homeless camps we have today, where most are mentally ill or substance addicted... I believe estimates are that 90% are single males.

Does the lack of a partner cause dysfunction? or does the dysfunction make pair bonding difficult or impossible? those are things we just do not know. yet.

Monogamy in western culture is very old, so I am not sure we can blame polygamy for causing men not to be able to find partners. After all: are we talking about SEX PARTNERS? that could be prostitutes... casual girlfriends, etc. Or do we mean pair bonding, as in marriage or long term live together situations? In our own polygamous subcultures (like the Yearning For Zion ranch or various Fundie Mormon groups).... a handful of males takeover and marry all the females, and actively kick young men out onto the street. But those discarded men can rejoin the greater society and find partners.

When we talk about true involuntary celibacy... the complete inability to not only marry but have sex... we really should be talking about WOMEN, no? historically if a woman could NOT find a partner, she had a very low status in society... ending up as a virtual servant to her parents or siblings... poor (no possibly of a career or even a job)... and there are no options for women (EVEN TODAY!) to pay for sex with male prostitutes.

Yet there is nothing remotely like a female incel culture. How do you explain that? (It is just a rhetorical question, but I think an interesting one!)

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And women often find psychopaths more attractive. After all, the love of 'bad boys' is a constant theme in romance novels...though in the romance novel, the bad boy commits to her and stops being a bad boy. In real life, not so much.

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I think that is too blanket a statement, Anonymous Dude. It is also a very old trope.

I dont think most women like bad boys or psychopaths (geez! psychos? violent? hateflled? crazy?)... I think they like the exotic appeal of a rough character, an outlaw... because they see it a lot movies (and books)... but in those fictions, the bad boy IS NOT REALLY BAD.

That is the secret, and I am surprised how many here miss it. In 50 Shades of Grey... Grey (the hero) is changed BY THE LOVE OF A GOOD WOMAN from a pervert who gets off on BDSM into ... literally the nicest guy in the world, husband, marriage, house & baby... faithful and having mostly vanilla sex with his wife. Some bad boy.

Because my best friend was a romance novel (published!)... I met many of her colleagues, her publishers, went to some of her romance writing CONVENTIONS (yup, they exist!) and talked to them about these issues. I personally do not like romance novels, but I read my friends and some of the others as a favor to her. Now by this I mean the GENRE of romance novels... not books that simply have romances in them.

Again, if the bad boy is not really a bad boy, but good inside and it just takes YOU (the plucky heroine) to bring it out in him.... It is a fantasy of REFORMING THE RAKE (rake being an old fashioned work for a bad boy). It is old as the hills and very powerful.... the woman gets her cake and eats it too.

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It's a good modification, I think. Yeah, the bad boy stops being bad in the romance novel--he's not a true psychopath.

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Re:choking/bdsm, data seems to show this is overwhelmingly a female prefence not male. See Justin lehmillers research and aella from twitter

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Well, TWITTER... that has to be legit! I mean, it is so thoroughly peer reviewed, vetted and checked by scientists!

All I can tell you is this: I have observed and discussed this other women, how women see things on porn (much of which they view with a male partner, to get him excited) and then believe (as the man does) that this is normal sex, and they want to emulate these things in bed to get the man turned on. A woman will ignore her own desires in order to do this, especially if she wants to get or keep the man interested.

Now, I am not saying that no woman has ever wanted to be choked. There are lots of strange fetishes in the world. But this whole choking thing is fairly new and came directly out of porn... which is written, directed, performed and watched 95% by men. Mens desires to get get other men turned on, for $$$$. It does not come out of womens erotica.

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Aella's got a heck of a sample bias, though her samples are so huge they're interesting in their own right simply for that fact. I'm just not sure she lets us say anything about people other than horny internet nerds--who are a reasonable part of the population, so this is a worthwhile area of inquiry IMHO.

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"We ask (mainly) men to risk their lives for money all the time"

The reproductive positions of the sexes aren't symmetrical.

https://medium.com/cregox/is-there-anything-good-about-men-by-roy-f-baumeister-d111ba407de3

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Hasn't it occurred to her that she loves marriage because it 1)suits her self-interest tradeoffs and 2)She didn't have to trade of anything in the mate market? The "evil hippies brainwashed women to not know their self interest" is a no more compelling argument than "the evil patriarchy brainwashed women to not know their self-interest". Here is a simpler explanation for the decline in marriage - men in the bottom half of the cognitive distribution control a much lower share of GDP than they used to. bet Louise Perry didn't have to marry a man with less earning potential than her or one significantly less intelligent than her. My assumption is that values changes are cope, not causation. It is so weird how both progressive women and trad con women don't see they are just wanting to rig cultural norms around what adjudicates their tradeoffs better, but structural factors always win. These people who think the decline of marriage is just an example of liberals spreading "misinformation" (no more compelling than when liberals think conservative misinformation causes behavior) should just reckon people just stop doing things when it no longer does the things it used to do at the costs it used to do it. Liberals and tradcons both believe a variety of "the rubes aren't smart enough so they need elites to tell them what is good for them".

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I dont even know Louise Perrys marital status... do you? do you know for certain her husband earns more than she does? is she even married? does she have children?

Are you saying that STUPID men cannot find wives to marry? I am pretty sure that is not true. Also intelligence does not always correlate with income... think of PhD grads who take jobs as adjuncts (part time teaching) and make under $30K a year. Many women would still find that desirable, as the men are intelligent and very liberal politically.

I think if you want to talk about women marrying men who earn less... you should read up on or talk to women who earn more than their husbands!

In 33% of marriages today, the woman earns more than her husband. In another 33%, she earns less and in ANOTHER 33%, they earn roughly the same amount.

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You really need to swot up on both the data here as well as mate market dynamics and what operative sex ratios do to mate markets. I feel like I am talking to a creationist about evolution - so many "first principles" errors that need correcting here it would take a book to do it. Intelligence is highly correlated with income. It doesn't matter what we see when we look at a few pre-selected small groups, it matters what patterns we see when we look at millions of people. Female hypergamy in long-term mating is one of the largest effect sizes in psychology. Your data is way off. See: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2017/09/20/americans-see-men-as-the-financial-providers-even-as-womens-contributions-grow/ There is also data on how low men and women would go in intelligence and other metrics if you choose to find it. This is painfully obvious stuff. Women who can choose, choose based on predictable things and if they can't get those things, they are increasingly not getting married at all. And it isn't because they are brainwashed by feminists. It is because there is an operative shortage of men on the metrics women care about. It would take me way too much time to point you in the direction of more information about mate market dymanics, but it isn't hard to find.

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Not entirely sure what SWOT means here.... but, I am correct. (And no I am not an creationist, but also not a RedPill incel or MRA or MGTOW, so...)

Intelligence can be correlated with income but... correlation is not causation! DUH!

How about inherited wealth? I know some of the dumbest dumbasses you can imagine, who inherited millions.

I am not looking at pre selected small groups, but I think YOU are and from a very biased RedPill mandate. WHAT PATTERNS?

We know that today, women are just as likely as men to be the primary breadwinners and in 1/3rd of all marriages... couples earn roughly the same amount. How is this hypergamy? I think you are just in love with this as a BIG WORD to dump on people, without even knowing what it means.

The fact that men contribute to family income AS WELL AS WOMEN is not some big revelation. Also you fail to see that women often need men to provide while they are incapacitated by pregnancy or nursing small babies... something men never deal with... and which directly impacts female income and health. Remember the last time you were recovering from childbirth? yeah, I didn't think so. Women face financial repercussions from having offspring that men do not face....and many women do not have health insurance, let alone maternity leave.

Hypergamy is absolutely NOT one of the largest effect sizes in psychology, LOL. Not even close. And men ALSO practice hypergamy... why dont you talk about THAT?

People can only speculate on how LOW THEY WOULD GO... would you marry an ugly girl? a fat woman? a woman over 50? a woman who you knew was infertile? you cannot know this until it happens. What if that ugly girl is a wonderful person, funny and charming? what if the fat woman wins the Powerball Lottery? what if you find out your fiancé is infertile ONLY AFTER you propose?

You have to be either very young, or very naive to believe this. Also: please stop getting your information from the RedPill community. They take legit science (sometimes, not often) and twist it to their own ends... the whole MEN HAVE IT WORSE thing.

Who are the WOMEN WHO CAN CHOOSE? do you mean young or pretty or slender women? because they often choose young, and very unwisely. And not always rich guys. I know quite a few who choose the handsome football player or the good looking bad boy.

And isn't the very basis of RedPill MGTOW theory, that men who cannot get what they want ... a 22 year old virgin with no education or career, who just wants babeez!... will instead choose to go it entirely alone? that is admirable in men... there is no WGTOW for women. Why is that? a woman who chooses to go her own way... is a spinster with a lot of cats, cringe about her empty egg carton (LOL) but a man who does THE SAME THING is a brave MGTOW.

There has always been a shortage of rich (or handsome, or handsome AND rich) men... apparently you have never read Jane Austen. I suggest you remediate that immediately. You can get her stuff online, it is in the public domain.

I know all about metrics and the man/woman thing, being married for decades with adult children, thank you kindly. You are correct on one thing only: this is not about feminism. Most young women (millennials) dont even define THEMSELVES as feminists.

You are blaming your own dating failures on the idea that ALL WOMEN want Chad... the mysterious rich and handsome billionaire, who gets to have sex with about 90% of women (even the old ugly fat ones) and then dumps them as sluts .... leaving them without sexual market value (SMV) to the incels. This is pure fiction. Not even good fiction.

What are the metrics women care about? you have no idea, do you? let me tell you a secret... well something I discovered in talking to hundreds of women (probably thousands if you count online)... the most important thing to women is a mans LIBERAL political views. Not his looks... not his money. He can be an adjunct college professor earning $14 an hour, but if he is a hard left liberal... he is in like Flynn. Women (as a group; obviously some outliers) want liberal men. Women skew much more politically left (as a group, in the US) than men do.

BTW: men practice hypergamy too. Lets discuss MALE hypergamy.

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It probably wasn't clear, but I like Louise Perry's book and I think some of her points are quite valid descriptively, but I think she vastly over-rates the influence of "bad ideas" in influencing people's behavior around deep self interest tradeoffs. Culture broadly is the net outcome of people adjudicating tradeoff self-interests between individual needs and social needs and changes to the environment those choices are made in can change those tradeoff structures. An extreme example - I live in a southern town with a large HBCU and we have a large population of black folks with either a 2 year degree from the local community college or a 4 year degree from the HBCU. When you look at the data about women's educational attainment, the insanely high lifetime likelihood of black men being incarcerated (it is like 25%) that stuff is going to influence the mating market and you get exactly what you see - lots of black women in professional or semi-professional jobs, having kids unmarried, because the men in their mate market would be a net drain on their resource. When there is a shortage of men, mate markets shift to male preferences. It isn't because hippies told them that boss bitches don't get married and that having kids is for the patriarchy. Plus, income inequities affect net work differently at different income levels. A spousal split of 100k/150k makes both parties richer. A spousal split of 50k/20k makes one party poorer. The gender split in income question isn't so much who makes more, but are earnings flowing from one party to the other. Marriage has traditionally served two functions - men got more access to sex married than they could otherwise and women got more access to resources than they could otherwise. Women balk at subsidizing men, and for good reason. Marriage would suddenly go way up if every male's income doubled tomorrow and every female's income was halved, regardless of what the hippie free love feminists were telling them. And that too would come with tradeoffs that would be way worse for some people and way better for others. As an aside, I have been married for 25 years, but my and my wife's self-interest tradeoffs around marriage, that is what we get vs what we give up, is different than differently situated people. I could easily assortatively mate with someone else educated with high earning potential. I have no idea what it would be like to be, say, a black woman with a associated degree working with a medical technician in a southern town - the option to assortatively mate to improve her position via marriage just isn't going to be as easy. And it isn't cultural leftists with bad values brainwashing people that caused the problem. It was the mate market - declining importance of male-valent traits to income and rising importance of IQ and soft skills. These things change the operative sex ratio when mate standards aren't that flexible.

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I like the book less than you, but appreciate your insights. I also think it is overly simplistic... people are individual and complex, they have motivations that are not easily determined from a casual observation.

I agree culture is outcome of a LOT of tradeoffs between needs and society and this also vary a lot due to economic conditions... look at peoples behaviors during The Great Depression, WWII or more recent economic collapses.

Your situation in a small southern town with an HBCU... black women are leaps ahead of black men in terms of both educational attainment and not doing crimes, which has caused a really huge marriageability gap. On top of that, there is STILL a very pernicious cultural belief (among black men) that white women are more desirable and a high status marker. Black women have it tough!

However, there is no shortage of men in the US... not black men, not white men, not men in general. We are fortunate that our population is well balanced gender wise, unlike China. It might be that some black women have to marry outside their race to marry at all. Interracial marriage today is at an all time high, for all groups.

The last time there was a legit shortage of men was after WWI (not WWII)...and the result wasnt what you'd think. Single women without prospects of marriage decided to go to college, have careers and this was the birth of what we think of as first stage or generation feminism! this where we start seeing significant numbers of women going into medicine and law, college professors and so on.

IS there a shortage of men, outside of non incarcerated black men? (And lets remember, that incarceration rate doesn't mean 25% of black men are ALL in prison AT ALL TIMES... it is a lifetime risk.) Is a shortage of men causing women to shift to male preferences to get a man? or the opposite?

I am not sure I get the spousal split thing. Sure a $100k/$150 couple are wealthy... but the $50K/$20K couple are also wealthier than either of them ALONE. That extra $20K is the difference between having a nice car, vacations, vs. just getting by. That means something.

I am not sure about the traditional aspect of marriage there... depends on what era. Men have always had options for sex outside of marriage and before DNA testing, could impregnate lower class women and get away with it. Women did not have this option, without any birth control. It made for tremendous gender inequality. Also how much access a woman had (in say the year 1823) is very debatable.... women would not have had access even to money they INHERITED once married. They had no money of their own! so marrying a rich man would give you status, maybe pretty clothes & jewelry but money... nope. Also: you fail to see that marriage gives WOMEN access to regular sex... usually safe sex with someone you know wont hurt you (*outside of abuse of course) and if you got pregnant (which you did ALL THE TIME before contraception)... you would know your children would be cared for.

Women subsidize men all the time. Such as, your example of black women. They still have sex with black men, creating their out of wedlock children (at a staggering rate of 74%)!!! many times they support those men, even spending things like SNAP and EBT on a boyfriend vs. their own kids. As a result some black men make beelines towards women with kids, not seeing it as a negative... such women are cash cows.

Why would marriage go away if mens income were doubled and womens halved? wasnt that the situation, say 75 years ago? yet marriage was much more dominant then! did ou misstate that? did you mean WOMENS income doubled and MENS income halved? so that men had no resources to offer women?

How do you and your wife self interest tradeoffs differ around marriage? what did you give up? are you saying you married (for love, I assume!) a woman of a lower social class and income... but you COULD have someone more educated and high income? how does your wife feel about that?

I do agree black women have challenges that some white women do not... though lower class southern white women would probably say they face much of the same. They work harder than the men in their class, go to school, get jobs and the guys lay around drinking beer, complaining, watching TV or video games!!! in other words, they are not demonstrating their worth as husband material!

So what does such a woman do, black or white? the answer appears to be they take charge of their own lives... go to college, work hard, have careers and support themselves... so they do not need men ECONOMICALLY. Do you really want a spouse who only choose you to better her financial situation... vs. romantic love?

Yes, IQ does play a role because marriage generally involves children. Not many people would deliberately choose a stupid person to have children with... would you want stupid kids? really? this kinda destroy the incel theory that even rich powerful educated men would gladly marry a dumb blonde secretary.... because no matter how pretty she is, you dont want those traits (stupidity, lack of ambition) in your kids!

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This of a scenario where women all got 2 inches taller. You would see an increase in height assoratative mating simply because women are now closer in height to men, not because male preferences changed. And if women strongly avoided marrying shorter men, you'd see an increase in height assortative mating and a decrease in marriage overal l at the same time. This is exactly what we see in terms of the effects of increasing female earning on marriage. And I'll say again, if "love as causation" rather than "love as adaptation" is the operative factor, someone needs to explain to me why women just happen not to frequently fall in love with lower earning men, but men fall in love with lower earning women much more often? Attractiveness is a real thing, traits people find attractive are largely heritable, and it is hard to fall in love with people one doesn't find attractive.

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"How do you and your wife self interest tradeoffs differ around marriage? what did you give up? are you saying you married (for love, I assume!) a woman of a lower social class and income... but you COULD have someone more educated and high income? how does your wife feel about that?" I am not naive enough to think my psychology evolved in such a way to make decisions denovo. Love is an adaptation to make us do things that are good for us. Attractiveness standards are the same. Love is like the taste of sugar - it serves a function and knowing that doesn't talk you out of it. I am perfectly typical of a PMC man - I married a PMC woman and marriage vastly improved both of our financial wellbeing. If love is so pure, why do we see such consistent predictable patterns of who falls in love with whom? I shouldn't be able to predict better than blind guessing if something besides "love as causation rather than post hoc rationalization" was the rule. Is it just a coincidence, for example, that female doctors are many times more likely to fall in love with male doctors than male doctors are to fall in love with female doctors? Or is something else going on?

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When I say a shortage of men, I mean an "operative" sex ratio, not the numerical sex ratio.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operational_sex_ratio

The bottom 30% of men are just invisible to most women - they aren't "marriageable" - they come with costs without benefits. The ratio that matters is men that can satisfy a large mate requirement for women (if you look across large numbers, not any one woman) - that to be acceptable for marriage a husband has to improve, not hurt, my financial status. Women just don't like marriage if it functions to transfer wealth from women to men. To put it bluntly - what would they be paying for that they can't get for free? Marrying laterally improves your financial status, marrying down a little improves your financial status, especially if you are higher income. Marrying down doesn't. Think about another well know female preference (again this is really well documented) - women want to date men taller than them. Imagine women all got 2 inches taller all at once and men got 2 inches shorter. Many more men would be unmarriageable. Even the word "marriageable" is a word women use for men, not men for women. If you need the references, I can show you many lines of evidence for women being pickier on key metrics in long term mating than men are. One of which is that far more men than women die without having reproduced. Now of course, mate preferences are a menu and people will sacrifice some things to get other things. But men aren't compensating for the things they have lost if you look at aggregate data. And most of that is just down to real durable biological gender differences. Again, no moral judgement in any of this. You can't blame people for wanting what they want/liking what they like, particularly when it is likely a part of our hardware.

It doesn't require all women to have these preferences - it just needs to be more than chance (that is, better than guessing) would predict to have sizeable societal effects. If 60% of men are willing to marry 1 standard deviation down in income and only 40% of women are, that will have huge societal effects even though there are plenty of people not acting to type.

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"We know that today, women are just as likely as men to be the primary breadwinners and in 1/3rd of all marriages... couples earn roughly the same amount. How is this hypergamy? I think you are just in love with this as a BIG WORD to dump on people, without even knowing what it means." I referenced research showing this is just not correct. And there are tons of lines of evidence about female hypergamy and it isn't something women hide from pollsters. How about Kenrick et all - http://www.mysmu.edu/faculty/normanli/LiBaileyKenrickLinsenmeier2002.pdf And this isn't remotely the only research on this. Nor is it an insult. Women have extremely good reason to rate male attractiveness on status. Morally judging such a thing would be as silly as judging any other attractiveness standard. One being the one you cited - that women have different tradeoffs than men do - for a minute there I thought you were prooftexting my point.

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I am not RedPill Incel MRA or MGTOW either. Those people don't understand this stuff any better than their polar opposites in the other camp do. I am bored with this discussion because it seems it is mostly motivated by an assumption about what values I hold and are attempting to prooftext than empirical interest in what is going on. I have never voted for a Republican in my life and can't imagine I ever would, volunteered for Obama campaign, voted for Bernie is 2020 and even voted for Biden despite being much to his left on economic issues, althoug no longer in sync with the professional class DNC on identity issues but also hating as always the GOP on these issues..

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Never thought I'd wind up talking about this on a conservative blog but I followed a link from Marginal Revolution and hey, it's Substack.

First of all, marriage is increasingly a bad risk for elite men. With no-fault divorce she can blow up your life and eat half your savings and have a claim on future earnings any time she feels like eat-pray-loving or finding herself. (Paging Honor Jones in the Atlantic.) If women don't want to go through working a double shift at home and work for a mediocre man...non-mediocre men are less and less willing to take the risk. For mediocre men, which is most of us, there's video games.

Also, as Misha says, lots of men take dangerous jobs that shorten their life expectancy and people don't see a problem with that. I don't particularly see why women's lives count more than men's. (I know why, evolution, sperm is cheap eggs are expensive, but somehow evo psych is never an excuse when it benefits men rather than women.) One of the big things that turned me off feminism at a very young age was finding out that women don't have to register for the draft. The USA hasn't drafted anyone in a few decades now, but plenty of countries do (and military service has been an issue behind the rise of men's-rights parties in South Korea).

Also, ah... lot of the kink stuff is a lot less dangerous than choking. *Actual kinksters* (you're a geek, you meet a lot...what is it with science fiction nerds and BDSM?) consider choking dangerous because of the threats to the brain blood supply and airway. Outside the weird stuff you see on TV and in...ah...places devoted to that sort of thing, a lot of the stuff is made to be a lot more dangerous and evil-looking than it actually is dangerous--the whips don't draw blood like the ones used on horses, the cuffs are often padded and can be removed by the cuffed person. Spankings are delivered to the body part with the most padding. A lot of it is to satisfy women's desires to be with a Bad Guy (which, as others have said, are quite common) without actually being a Bad Guy.

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… conservative blog? 🧐

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OK, going through your substack I see a defense of patriotism, a defense of (Jewish) religion, a defense of marriage, comments on how comedy used to be funnier, an interview with Richard Hanania, a defense of heroism...

Nothing wrong with being conservative. Good to have other views out there.

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@Anonymous: that is just regurgitated rubbish from the RedPill (incel, MRA) community. It is not true.

MEN invented no fault divorce (California, 1960s) and they did it to benefit THEMSELVES, not women. Do you even know what no fault divorce IS? I doubt it!

There is virtually no more lifetime alimony and child support is limited by your kids ages. Also, incels claim that women are used up, valueless and hit the wall by 27... so a woman who dumps a secure marriage to go EAT PRAY LOVE would be on a suicide mission... no?

Cognitive dissonance much? No fault divorce does not blow up a WOMANS life? Men cause most divorces (NOT FILINGS...filing proves nothing. Women are forced to file first to get child support for their kids! it tells you nothing about who wrecked the marriage.) through infidelities.

BTW: all divorce is now no fault divorce. It benefits men tremendously; within a year of divorce, their income has risen and 40% of men never pay either child support OR alimony. They run away or hide income.

Also: assuming no pre nup, which assumes the money you earned was WITHIN THE MARRIAGE... by law, it belongs to BOTH OF YOU. How can you not understand that? if you buy a house with a spouse, it is BOTH OF YOURS and both your names on on the deed!

So what you say literally makes no sense. Incels argue that men are desirable forever, and only get better with age, but women hit a wall... that would mean women would NEVER EVER EVER leave a marriage because they would have no chance of finding another. But the super desirable men can marry over and over! That ALONE should prove your theory wrong!

Men take dangerous jobs because their masculine inclinations (and status among other men) depends on that... plus the money is often very good. (Also status.) They want the most desirable women, that takes money (they think).

BTW: are you saying YOU are mediocre? really? because decent women do not value men solely by money. Bill Gates is a billionaire and I find him disgusting... he went to Epstein Island to have sex with minors... he is ugly, unpleasant, promotes horrible social schemes. I wouldn't give him the time of day, despite his wealth.

If you mean by non mediocre men... wealthy men... sure they have more choices (but not infinite choices) and the risk you describe is absurd. Bill Gates (who had a solid pre nup no doubt) gave his ex wife Melissa $2 billion in the divorce... out of a fortune of over $120 billion. Does that sound like HALF to you?

BTW: the vast, vast majority of men in the industrlialized west do NOT do dangerous jobs like coal mining (I believe there are only 3000 coal miners left in the US)... they do paperwork jobs. Middle manager, computer analyst, financial advisor. Boo hoo hoo. That is not dangerous at all.

Womens lives only count more than men, in the sense that women produce the next generation and raise the kids (overwhelmingly, 95% to 5%)... if you kill off the women, your society is screwed. 100 men can produce children with 500 women, if necessary, to rebuild a society but it doesn't work the other way around.

And you turned of feminism due to the DRAFT? how old are you??? the draft ENDED in 1973!!! thats 50 years ago! I would argue that we do not need men to register for selective service anymore, as the all volunteer army has been well proven as a success. Plenty of women serve in the military today anyways.

I do not think this is a major issue in Korea, but I am more familiar with Israel ...where young women ARE PROUD AND HAPPY to serve their nation... as US women would be in any future war. (As they are even today in Ukraine.)

As far as BDSM.... I am sure some women are into it, because it is a big world and there are always a few outliers. I do not believe MOST women like it; I think like in 50 Shades of Grey ... they put up with it or tolerate to excite and turn on a boyfriend or husband... hoping that in time, their LOVE will turn him vanilla (just as Christian Grey turned vanilla at the end of that series).

Let me guess; you are not married and dont have a girlfriend... at least not one who isn't virtual or in a video game?

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I accept most of the redpill model of reality (basically, I think the sexes have conflicting interests) but think they take it too far and feed their acolytes just as many self-serving lies as the woke media, just a different set. I don't think women are worthless or can't find partners at 27, for instance; some people are just getting started then. Men being desirable forever is another redpill cope...no, men's value declines too with age, and if they don't make any money it never rises at all. I don't think women are inferior; whatever their upper body strength and shape rotation abilities, they are far more effective at the infinitely more useful skills of social manipulation and networking. I think they're in a zero-sum game with us.

Women file more. Both parties will make up whatever reasons they want in a divorce filing. Frankly it's a dirty game and I'm sure my side is just as bad. Call it heteropessimism from the other side. ;)

That said, the woman may very well make an unwise decision. (People of both sexes do it all the time.)

As for whether I'm mediocre...I'd say I'm sub-mediocre. My income's above average, my personality well below, as you've no doubt gathered. :)

I grew up when the draft had ended but not been forgotten. We'll see what happens, though I suspect you are right that bit is over.

Israel...well, they've got that whole religious thing going on, someone tried to wipe 'em out and almost succeeded a few generations ago, so they want to make lots of Jews to defeat Hitler. Makes sense.

What percentage of women are kinky? I don't know, and that isn't the sort of thing people answer honestly. Probably fewer than men (men have more paraphilias overall) but not zero. The data I've seen suggests the fantasy of being tied up is pretty common, about 1/3-2/3 for both sexes; not everyone takes it that far. I think Louise Perry overplays the whole kink thing, but that's hardly her worst sin in my book.

I'm not married. I had a few girlfriends from time to time. (You can read that either way, both are correct.) Wasn't as much fun as everyone seems to say, either I wasn't charming enough to attract someone I actually liked or I'm on the asexual spectrum, as the kids say. Probably a mix of both--I will they say they more often wound up nagging me for it so maybe more the second, but the first probably played a role too. I don't have girlfriends in video games. I don't want to give the video game company that much money. ;)

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Women control the sexual market. All they have to do is close their legs and hold out until they get everything they say they want (commitment). Before the 1960's that is what women did and if men wanted sex they had to commit. Now women open their legs to the top 10% of men with the most sexual market value, who are also fucking lots of other women, and then wonder why no commitment is forthcoming. There are plenty of men out there who want marriage and family. But that is not who the women are rewarding. No, they are rewarding the men who hit it and quit it. This is 100% women's fault. Men will do as little or as much as it takes to get laid. Women are simply not demanding enough in the trade

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hahahahahaha... only a man could say that.

How about rape? how about coercion? how about date rape? roofies? getting a girl blind drunk so she doesn't know you have raped her? how about prostitution?

None of that is available to women, is it? to WOMEN, it completely looks like MEN control the sexual marketplace... we have to wait to be asked out. If we try to ask men out, we are too aggressive and ball busters and feminazis.

Were you around in the 50s and prior? I doubt that. You are greatly over simplifying sexual relations in the past.

The idea that ALL WOMEN sleep with the top 10% (or 2% or whatever) of men comes directly from the RedPill movement (incels, MRAs, MGTOWs) who are misogynistic haters of all women and often have Aspergers spectrum... choosing to blame their lack of social skills and dating success on ALL WOMEN.

Just as you do not date supermodels... average women have no more chance of dating a rich superstar than you have! also: the top 10% in INCOME is not what all women want (let alone can have).

I am amazed you avoided the use of the terms COCK CAROUSEL and CHAD.

Sexual market value is a sad joke, by angry incels who do not understand how dating or mating works, and think it is all about money & looks. No, it is not.

I wish you knew that expressing this, is just telling THE WORLD that you lack social skills, dont know how to talk to girls and are insanely jealous of other men.

Women out there tell researchers (and friends and family!) that men do not want to commit, even after years in relationships... that they are more into careers or even video gaming, than marriage or family. So you are 100% wrong.

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This comment is 100% accurate.

This entire article seems to want to absolve women of all the changes, but women are the ones who made the changes. Maybe they were tricked en masse by men? Seems hard to believe. Why didn't parents teach them to hold off for monogamy then? Or did they decide rebellion and personal sexual liberation were just more important? How's that working out, cat ladies?

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What are you even talking about, TerfWar? women didn't make these changes... MEN MADE THE CHANGES.

Men wrote the no fault divorce laws in the 60s; then used those laws themselves to dump their wives of 30 and 40 years to marry young bimbos. This is a fact. Look it up.

Women enjoy sex, dude. Sex is not just something women exchange for money. By thinking or saying this, you are essentially claiming ALL WOMEN ARE WHORES and if you think that way... you will never succeed at either marriage or family.

So what men want is women who refuse sex until their wedding night? hahhahahahaha... uh, no. Not even serious, believing Catholics and Evangelicals do that anymore.

If men dont want sex, than why is the prostitution business so big? OnlyFans? online porn? do you think WOMEN are consuming that?

Why dont men save themselves sexually for marriage? why aren't men virgins on their wedding nights? why dont men agree immediately to having children, stay married, raise their own kids? why do men like Hunter Biden deny paternity... in the light of DNA testing?

More men than women own cats.

Women are almost twice as likely to marry in their lifetimes as men are... 1 in 4 men never marry, but only 1 in 7 women never marry.

EPIC FAIL, video game boy.

NOTE: if you ever attempt to date... I promise you that telling the potential woman that she is a whore for having sex before marriage (while you do the same freely!) and will die a cat lady because no man will want her (due to her lack of virginity)... you will never have a second date. Ever.

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Jun 28, 2023
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That has some truths, but no nuance.

In the US in modern times, it is hard to use the excuse that a woman has to be prostitute to SURVIVE... there are many other options. They are CHOOSING this often because it is easy money or LOOKS easy. I have heard interviews with prostitutes who say why should I work all day at Walmart, when I work for 2 hours and make the same money and then laze around the rest of the day? So thats a choice and priorities.

You can get addicted to easy money and yes, we see it in other professions... those day traders are not breaking their backs mining coal. They have chosen an easy way to make a lot of money (they think).

Coal mining was never the ONLY occupation that anyone could do, certainly not the US in the last 100 years. Even in Appalachia... you might earn less money but you wouldn't starve doing other types of work.

Men do prostitution too; that isn't talked about much. But it is not to serve the desires of women... it is solely for homosexuals. Male prostitutes say the same things about choosing that profession or lifestyle.

Do you actually KNOW any coal miners? I am sure for some it was an awful job; for others it was a good days work for good pay, in an economy that did not have a lot of high paying jobs. But that is a CHOICE. You may wish to read ROCKET BOYS... the novel that the movie OCTOBER SKY was based on... about a young man in the 50s who escaped his destiny as a coalminers son, and went to college and eventually into aeronautics.

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No, it's not.

And in the West, there is no such thing as "she had no choice but prostitution."

Good god.

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Jun 28, 2023
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I suspect a different % of women would have a different response (revealed preference shows this already)

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Penny Adrian: I agree, there is something especially degrading about sex work, because it takes a very intimate activity and puts money into it... PLUS, prostitution is not the cute thing we see in movies like Pretty Woman. It involves pimps, beatings, having your money stolen by your pimp... degrading, awful sex.

I have heard it said that men who use prostitutes (while having a willing and eager girlfriend or wife) do this so they can engage in dangerous, risky or disgusting sex practices that their partner would not agree to.

If you talk to actual coal miners... they may not like the work, but it pays well (actually far better than prostitution) and they have unions and a measure of a dignified life. Few prostitutes can say this. Also coalminers are not slapped around by their pimps.

Is the risk of things like black lung worth it? not to me but people make choices with risks ALL THE TIME. And the coalminers can QUIT and his employer wont MURDER HIM over it.

Relatively few men are prostitutes in the first place, though a small number ARE (they service gay customers, not straight women!)... why is that? why are women so much more desperate for this easy money than men are? why dont men offer to service (say) ugly or older women who are horny for sex? funny how that does not exist.

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