Tag: Alpha Game

The need for “sexism” in literature

In which I address a common complaint concerning female roles in fantasy literature at Alpha Game:

The problem with what Wohl advocates is that by putting modern views
on sexual roles and intersexual relations into the minds, mouths, and
worse, structures of an imaginary historical society, it destroys the
very structural foundations that make the society historical and the dramatic storylines credible – in some cases, even possible.  It’s problem similar to the one faced by secular writers,
who wish to simultaneously eliminate religion from their fictional medieval societies,
and yet retain the dramatic conflict created by the divine right of
kings.  However, it is more severe because the sexual aspect touches upon the
most concrete basis of every society: its ability to sustain itself
through the propagation of its members.

The “sexism” of
which Wohl and many of his commenters complain isn’t cultural, it is
simply the logical consequences of biological and martial imperatives.

He doesn’t care and here is why

John Scalzi proves he doesn’t care what people think about him by writing yet another post explaining his opinion
concerning what people think about his position on the socio-sexual
hierarchy and why he is not insulted by being identified as a “beta
male”:

I think they are less
concerned about insulting me than they are reassuring themselves that
there is no possible way they could ever be beta males, whatever their
definition of ‘beta male’ is. By all indications their definition is
something along the lines of “a man who sees women as something other
than a mute dispensary of sandwiches and boobies” and/or “a man who does
not live in fear of everyone else not continually affirming his
internal assessment of personal status,” gussied up in language that
allows them not to have to deal with these essential facts of their own
nature. But inasmuch as insulting me is part of the mechanism of
reassuring themselves, I am offered the insult.

I’m not insulted because, a) I consider the source, b) I don’t mind
being seen as someone who does not view women through a tangled bramble
of fear, ignorance and desire, c) when I step into a room, I don’t
neurotically spend my time tallying up who in the room has higher status
than I do, and who doesn’t. I am a grown-up, for God’s sake. Paranoid
status anxiety is tiring. 

One has to wonder how John knows that paranoid status anxiety is so exhausting considering that he cares so little about what others think of him.  In any event, I take a more in-depth look at what his response tells us about his socio-sexual status at Alpha Game.

Soldier boy is BETA

I usually keep the Game-related content for Alpha Game, but this intersection of Game and current events simply demands comment:

At some point after Petraeus was sworn in as CIA director on Sept. 6,
2011, the woman broke up with him. However, Petraeus continued to pursue
her, sending her thousands of emails over the last several months,
raising even more questions about his judgment.

It doesn’t only raise questions about his judgment, but about his socio-sexual rank as well.  Petraeus superficially appears to be a handsome, successful warrior, an obvious Alpha in every way, but in addition to being unimpressed by his military performance since 2001, I’ve long felt that he carried himself more like a man dressed up like a soldier than a military commander.

I’ve met a number of top military commanders, including three that were members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.  Such men exude dominance and a palpable sense of command even when they are wearing a t-shirt and shorts while washing the car; you get the impression that they could successfully invade a small South American country with no more than a BB gun, a wrist rocket, and the staff of the local McDonald’s restaurant.  For all his fruit salad, Petraeus always struck me as being much more akin to Hollywood’s notion of a general than an actual fighting man.

What sort of socio-sexual loser sends THOUSANDS of emails to a married woman who has indicated she is done with him?

Game and the election

I try to keep the two blogs fairly separate these days, since a relatively small number of people are interested in both econ/religion/politics/literature on the one side and intersexual relations on the other.  Also, the intellectually ruthless approach utilized here tends to work better on matters more objective than the socio-sexual hierarchy.  However, there are times when the two perspectives come together as one, which was the case with a question from GK concerning why women have suddenly begun turning towards Mitt Romney in the presidential election.

My thought is based around one of the keys to understanding female behavior, which is that it is often
aversion-based.  Men find this difficult to understand because their
behavior tends to be positive, in the sense of “I want X, therefore I
will do Y.”  The aversion-based female pattern tends to be more oriented
towards “I don’t want X, therefore I will do Y”.  The increased female
support for Romney has little to do with Romney himself, much with less
his policies or Obama’s policies, but rather the collective socio-sexual
fury of a group of women duped.

Read the rest at Alpha Game.

Kick back, have a beer

And let her get on with the housework.  You’ll not only both be happier, but you’re less likely to end up divorced:

In what appears to be a slap in the face for gender equality, the report found
the divorce rate among couples who shared housework equally was around 50
per cent higher than among those where the woman did most of the work.
“What we’ve seen is that sharing equal responsibility for work in the home
doesn’t necessarily contribute to contentment,” said Thomas Hansen,
co-author of the study entitled “Equality in the Home”.
The lack of correlation between equality at home and quality of life was
surprising, the researcher said.  “One would think that break-ups would occur more often in families with less
equality at home, but our statistics show the opposite,” he said. The figures clearly show that “the more a man does in the home, the higher the
divorce rate,” he went on.

The idea that the values held by members of equalitarian households are to blame sounds reasonable, but I think the real cause is a natural consequence of men and women having fundamentally different standards.  If you’re going to end up doing it one way or the other, it’s a lot more annoying to have to do it when you thought – however unreasonable the expectation – that someone was going to do it to your liking for you.  A woman who has no expectation of household equality is naturally going to be much happier than one who thought she was going to get it, but didn’t.

The equalitarian households are simply more likely to discover this than the more traditional ones.  If the homemaking isn’t left to the homemaker, it shouldn’t be a tremendous surprise that things don’t go well.  The household is hardly the only place where it is a terrible idea to assign the job to the individual who cares least about it.  The lesson, as always, is that if you care a lot about how well something is done, you should always do it yourself.

On the other hand, I suppose it is possible that men doing too much housework is simply a grotesque DLV and they’re actively repelling their wives by turning themselves into disgusting socio-sexual gamma males.

I found the following to be an interesting conclusion of another study, which does not actually contradict the one cited above, as it is completely in line with the conclusions of a month-long experiment conducted by one of my friends.

The researchers expected to find that where men shouldered more of the burden,
women’s happiness levels were higher. In fact they found that it was the men
who were happier while their wives and girlfriends appeared to be largely
unmoved. 

If it makes you happier, then do more housework.  If not, then don’t.  Either way, don’t think that it’s going to score you any points or make her any happier, because you’re probably not going to do it to her satisfaction and it’s even possible that your well-intentioned efforts are making you sexually repulsive to her.

The descent from dialectic

Over the course of the discussion of female solipsism that took place at Alpha Game, HUS, and other Game blogs, the distinction between dialectic and rhetoric, and between logic and emotion, has repeatedly come up.  Two things have become obvious as a result, which is that 1) men have no choice but to accept the observable female inclination for solipsism, rhetoric, and emotion, and 2) women have to accept that those men who strongly prefer objective perspectives, dialectic, and logic are never going to look favorably upon women’s rejection of those things even if they accept the fact of the female disinclination.

The problem is that emotion and rhetoric are both dishonest, the former intrinsically and the latter practically.  This is not to say that the emotions are bad, only that because they are dynamic and the truth is static, emotion-based reasoning is guaranteed to be false at least part of the time.  Rhetoric, on the other hand, does not have to be dishonest, but because it is designed to manipulate and convince those who, as Aristotle pointed out in Rhetoric, “cannot take in at a glance a complicated argument, or follow a long
chain of reasoning”, it usually has to be at least somewhat in variance with the complete truth because it is designed to appeal to the emotions.

More at Alpha Game… including an argument for gun control and two counterarguments!  But please keep the inevitable gun discussion here at VP.

Trekkie Game

Contemplating the important questions at Alpha Game:

You can always trust a smart, unattractive man in the mold of Isaac Asimov to leap with certainty to the wrong conclusion when women are concerned. Just as you can trust a young woman to have no idea what it is that is tripping her attraction triggers. Granted, Asimov himself knew better – hence his joke about growing his ears out – but men are as deluded about the sex appeal of intelligence, honor, godliness, sincerity, and dedication as women are about educational degrees, snark, and being gainfully employed.

Intelligence is a useful DHV when a man is already considered attractive, but his intelligence is not why Spock was considered dreamy by women. After all, Scotty was plenty smart too and women didn’t think he was dreamy.

Choking on the red pill

At Alpha Game, I consider one of the more problematic Churchian lies, namely, the idea that women of the Church are particularly attracted to men of strong Christian faith:

This may be among the most bitter of the various aspects of the red pill for some men, particularly Christian men, to swallow. It’s a message we hear from Christians and Churchians alike, that women will be attracted to men who are godly pillars of the community, that being “sold out for Jesus” is not merely an attractive feature, but the most definitively attractive aspect of a man for a Christian woman.

There is one serious problem with this. It is not true.

I have no doubt there will be many Christian women who disagree with this. I would simply ask them to honestly ask themselves if their strong Christian husband would be as sexually attractive to them if he was every bit as faithful and godly he is now, but lacked his other attractive attributes.

Nor do I intend to pick on women here – let’s face it, it’s pretty clear when I’m doing that – it is merely that the Church does not teach women it is their faith that is their primary appeal to men. It does, however, teach men precisely that.

A Christian case against Game

1. Game isn’t what you think it is.

2. Game means more than you think it does.

3. Christians don’t need Game.

My short response: 1) Game certainly isn’t what Cane thinks it is. 2) It most certainly does. 3) Yeah, they do.

A more substantive response is at Alpha Game.

Peasant Game

This Alpha Game post is dedicated to my friends at Fraters Libertas:

I would be remiss if I did not mention that there is a much more serious and underlying problem [than the Beer Shield] on display here. By holding a beer, by drinking beer, by even being credibly identified as a beer drinker, a man is signifying that he is an illiterate peasant, of solid, but hearty stock, the sort of man thick-waisted farm girls with red faces and ankles the size and shape of overstuffed German sausages expect to meet out behind the haystacks. Civilized men who attract beautiful women drink wine, preferably red wine, although prosecco and lambrusco are acceptable alternatives in the summer heat or on Friday night with pizza.