Tag: women

Explaining Gamma

Do you know the story of Snow White? Then surely you remember how the seven dwarves took her in when she was homeless, provided her with food and shelter, and cared so much about her that they shed tears for her and built her a spectacular crystal pedestalbier.

And of course, you will recall that she ran off with Prince Charming at the very first opportunity.

Dwarves are Gammas. Alphas are Prince Charmings. Most men, being Betas and Deltas, fall somewhere in between and therefore face a choice about how to comport themselves in their interactions with the opposite sex. But we can draw two important conclusions from the fairy tale. One, behaving like a dwarf won’t get you the girl. Two, Prince Charming doesn’t stick around to ask twice; if Snow White doesn’t want to get on the horse right away, he rides on without her. It’s a big forest and there are plenty of girls on the girl tree.

You wanted it, you got it

If this woman’s lament doesn’t put an amused smile on your face today, well, you’re probably not a man under the age of fifty:

Let me tell you, dear ladies: the age of chivalry is dead.

Yesterday, I drove out of a car park in ­Kensington, London, to find the power-steering on my BMW had gone. The car wouldn’t move. Thankfully, I was in a cul de sac, not a motorway. I stopped and tried to pull over. My car was one foot from the kerb. I put my hazard lights on. Next to me was a building site full of men in fluoro ­jackets standing doing ­nothing. They could see my distress when I began ­peering under the bonnet. I got back in the car, and on my mobile phone to call the BMW breakdown ­service to get the vehicle recovered. I was in tears. Still no one ­bothered to help….

I had thought it was just my ex-husband who used to allow me to put petrol in the car while he sat warm in the passenger seat, but if my ­experience yesterday ­morning is anything to go by, it’s a generational phenomenon. As Top Gear’s James May said this week, young men have lost their masculinity, in that they can no longer fix things. And this loss of manners is far worse. Young working British men: you should be ashamed.

Be ashamed of what? The “f****** cow” is totally in the wrong here. And I wonder, were those nearby men really “doing nothing” or did she simply neither realize nor care how they were occupying themselves thanks to her female solipsism?

Women demanded legal and political equality and our great-grandfathers were foolish enough to grant it to them. So they used that equality to force the last three generations of men to spend between 12 and 16 years being drenched in feminist propaganda about how women were strong, independent, and equal to us, except of course for their intrinsic emotional and moral superiority. Once they had achieved sufficient political power, they then set about redefining the concept of equality in a successful effort to strip men of their legal rights and render them legally inferior in an extra-Constitutional court system where men are guilty until pronounced innocent. And then, after all this, they’re surprised when we don’t treat them like our great-grandfathers treated their great-grandmothers.

I am confident that I speak for many, if not most of the men of my generation in my instinctive response to this woman’s petulant demand that men be at her beck and call: F— you and fix it yourself, Ms Strong Independent Woman. It’s not my problem.

I suspect that these days, the average man is probably more likely to help a male stranger than to help women he doesn’t know. At least a man is likely to have the decency to be grateful and not take your assistance as some sort of rightful homage. As for chivalry being dead, I think it is pertinent to quote Isaac Asimov on the historical conventions of the concept.

“This is Helen as viewed through the eyes of courtly love. By the convention of the troubadours, a woman need not deserve love, she need merely be a woman.” And don’t forget, a woman’s chivalric champion was ideally supposed to be her adulterous lover. It is little wonder, then, that modern women lament chivalry’s death.
(HT: SB)

Hardly

Carrie Lukas thinks the election results prove that women don’t favor security over freedom:

Women voters have also defied traditional stereotypes about skewing liberal. While it will take some time to get complete exit poll data, polls taken shortly before the election suggest a major shift in women’s voting habits. Early reports suggest women split nearly evenly in this election. As Mary Kate Cary reported in U.S. News, a recent New York Times poll showed undecided women breaking heavily for the GOP. In fact, women went from favoring Democrats by 7 points last month to giving the GOP the edge by 4 points in the New York Times’ latest polls. In other words, the famed gender gap — which somehow always refers to women’s tendency to vote disproportionately for Democrats rather than men’s tendency to vote Republican, has vanished.

Pundits will spend the next two years debating the meaning of the 2010 Election. But a few things are clear. The conventional wisdom that women all prefer government-provided safety over freedom has been put to rest, and female political leaders do not come in one mold. There are strong, unabashedly conservative women throughout the country who are prepared to fight for limited government and greater freedom. And they can win.

This is amusing. Remember, the “limited government” for which these supposedly freedom-loving women are fighting is one that is all of 2.8% smaller. They cling to their entitlements and “national security” spending as firmly as Linus clings to his blanket. And perhaps more to the point, it is possible that it is finally beginning to penetrate through many women’s skulls that there is no reliable security in the government spending money it doesn’t have in the first place.

Either way, I tend to see this as less reflective of a positive evolution towards liberty in women’s political consciousness and more reflective of the larger societal trend towards matriarchy and grass huts. Insty notes in response that the Tea Party is majority female, which is one reason I believe it has been so easily coopted by the Republican establishment.

Don’t get me wrong. I would very much like to believe that for the first time in human history, women have genuinely begun to value freedom over security. I just don’t believe this is credible interpretation of the recent electoral events. (HT Dr. Helen.)

Let’s you and him fight

An example of how failing to keep your woman’s tongue under control can get you killed, even if you’re a Marine:

A 23-year-old Marine who lived in Metairie was fatally stabbed following an argument with a man who defamed the Marine’s wife. The suspect yelled derogatory comments at Ryan Lekosky’s wife as the couple walked about 3:30 a.m. near the intersection of Dauphine and Iberville streets in the French Quarter, police said. Lekosky tried to intervene in the altercation between his wife and the suspect. The suspect turned on Lekosky, stabbing him several times. The suspect then returned to his vehicle and drove away on Dauphine Street, toward Canal Street. Lekosky died from his wounds.

The root problem is that men haven’t really figured out what they can and cannot do in defense of women’s honor anymore. In the days of yore, the Marine could have simply killed the guy out of hand and few would have thought twice about it; back then, defaming a man’s wife was a killing offense. Now, most women would be horrified at a male companion who, at the first derogatory word directed her way, immediately pulled out a .357 and fired six shots into the offender’s face. At the same time, not considering themselves proper targets for physical violence, most women won’t hesitate to escalate a verbal situation and if a man shrugs off a verbal assault directed at a woman with him, he is often going to be attacked by her for not coming to her defense.

So, what to do? It’s hard to say and it’s somewhat of a catch-22. All we can really conclude from the limited amount of information here is that it is a very bad idea for the man to assume that because he is not party to the verbal altercation, he will not be attacked first in the escalation. Once the situation transforms into a violent altercation, an attacker can be expected to attack the potentially more dangerous opponent first, which means that interceding in a manner that leaves you open to the other guy is a bad idea. The two-fold challenge is a) how to prevent the situation from developing into a violent one without causing your wife or girlfriend to develop contempt for you simply because you’re not foolish enough to fall for the old “let’s you and him fight” game, and b) how to extricate the two of you from an escalating situation without either of you getting hurt.

All of this presumes, of course, that you’re not dumb enough to escalate a verbal situation to a violent one on the basis of your own emotional reaction.

The first thing to do is to encourage her to blow it off. What do the words of some drunk idiot with an 85 IQ have to do with her? Of course, this is probably much easier to pull off if you’re carrying; she’s unlikely to accuse you of being a coward who won’t stand up for her if you ask her how many times she would like you to shoot the guy in the skull with your .40. Faced with such an offer, she’ll likely do an immediate 180 and start trying to encourage you to move along. Women are excited by male posturing and fisticuffs, not blowback and brain matter.

However, if a woman is feisty and responds by getting in the idiot’s face, the best thing is probably to physically withdraw her while keeping her between you and the opponent and keeping your focus on him. You can explain later that you were concerned about the bad guy hurting her and so forth; it’s better that she be angry with you for forcibly extricating her from a potentially dangerous situation than be contemptuous of you for failing to act at all. And if she does get hurt, well, she’s an adult and she bears the responsibility for her decision to confront the idiot, not you. But the likelihood that she’ll be attacked in a lethal manner is quite small since she won’t be perceived as a serious threat so the worst that’s likely to happen is that she’ll get punched or slapped. Undesirable, but she’ll live.

Of course, the biggest problem is that men in general, and white knights in particular, usually respond in a pompous and unprepared manner, paying more attention to the woman than they do to the potential opponent. That’s understandable, since most of what they’re doing is a chivalrous show for the woman’s benefit anyhow, but it’s not the best strategy in the event that the other guy isn’t posturing.

Of course, it’s perhaps worth recalling that chivalry was the show knights put on for other men’s wives.

Women oppose freedom

There is no way to avoid this obvious conclusion. The vast majority of women are absolutely and diametrically opposed to every form of freedom unless it happens to align with what she happens to want to do at the moment. One of the latest feminist calls to arms is this direct assault on the freedom of speech:

Whistles, catcalls and lewd come-ons from strangers are all too familiar to New York City women, who say they are harassed multiple times a day as they walk down the street. Now lawmakers are examining whether to do something to discourage it. A City Council committee heard testimony Thursday from women who said men regularly follow them, yell at them and make them feel unsafe and uncomfortable. Advocates told stories of preteens and teenagers being hounded by adult men outside city schools and pleaded for government to address the problem.

Problem? What problem? A man is merely exercising his Constitutional right to free speech in a public place that happens to make a woman feel unsafe and uncomfortable is a problem that the state must solve? I feel a lot more than a little unsafe and uncomfortable when a man is exercising his Constitutional right to free speech in a public place in order to advocate higher taxes, more bank bailouts, more gun laws, and more government intervention. If we’re going to throw out the freedom of speech and ban the dangerous sort, let’s ban that kind of talk first and then we can worry about whistles and catcalls.

Men who value human freedom must staunchly oppose all forms of equality, particularly sexual equality, for three reasons:

1. Equality does not exist in any material, legal, or spiritual form.
2. Equalitarianism is the primary reason for the material decline of the quasi-democratic West as well as its decreasing freedom.
3. Most women do not believe in equality themselves and have historically used the concept as a stalking horse for imposing statism in order to ensure privileged female status through government force. For example, consider the female opposition to DNA-based paternity testing:

“DNA tests are an anti-feminist appliance of science, a change in the balance of power between the sexes that we’ve hardly come to terms with. And that holds true even though many women have the economic potential to provide for their children themselves…Uncertainty allows mothers to select for their children the father who would be best for them. The point is that paternity was ambiguous and it was effectively up to the mother to name her child’s father, or not… Many men have, of course, ended up raising children who were not genetically their own, but really, does it matter…in making paternity conditional on a test rather than the say-so of the mother, it has removed from women a powerful instrument of choice.”

I should be very interested in seeing anyone attempt to make a rational case for how human freedom can be expanded by ensuring that a sizable portion of the electorate is vehemently opposed to nearly every aspect of it.

Brothel or burqah: the reality

You can’t say I didn’t warn you about the choice an increasing number of Western women are presently making:

Tony Blair’s sister-in-law announced her conversion to Islam last weekend. Journalist Lauren Booth embraced the faith after what she describes as a ‘holy experience’ in Iran. She is just one of a growing number of modern British career women to do so…. According to Kevin Brice from ­Swansea University, who has specialised in studying white conversion to Islam, these women are part of an intriguing trend. He explains: ‘They seek spirituality, a higher meaning, and tend to be deep thinkers. The other type of women who turn to Islam are what I call “converts of convenience”. They’ll assume the trappings of the religion to please their Muslim husband and his family, but won’t necessarily attend mosque, pray or fast.’…

For a significant amount of women, their first contact with Islam comes from ­dating a Muslim boyfriend.

Although this may be shocking to the typical half-sapient and maleducated secular mind, numbed as it is from between 12 and 27 years of unmitigated feminist and multicultural propaganda, it was entirely predictable. And was, in fact, predicted by numerous parties. The primary reason neither the Greeks nor America’s Founding Fathers permitted women to vote is because they are much more intellectually malleable than men. Even the most fervent feminist will enthusiastically embrace the submission of Islam if a man is able to inspire her rationalization hamster to spin in that direction.

Osama bin Laden was correct in stating that Islam is the strong horse in comparison with secular post-Christian America. Secular post-Christianity is both rootless and pointless; it has neither raison d’etre nor does it provide anyone with objectives beyond the momentary and the material. While the abstract thinkers of the cognitive elite can come up with higher purposes of their own, (most of which involve placing themselves in control of other people and wind up getting a lot of people killed), such self-serving intellectual ephemeralities are incapable of satisfying the spiritual hunger of the masses.

In turning away from its historical identity as Christendom, the West has created a vast spiritual void and already the weaker souls are drifting into the pagan madness that Chesterton, Lewis, and other Christian savants predicted in the previous century. There will never be an atheist society, because human society can no more abide a spiritual vaccuum than nature can abide a material one.

In defense of double-standards

Donna Reed complains that women are criticized for the same behavior in which men indulge:

Her wanting to explore and have her fun before she settles hardly qualifies as a tramp. Tons and TONS of men do this same thing but what do we call them?

That completely depends upon how “fun” is defined. Considering that the woman concerned a) needed to break up with her boyfriend, b) was by her own admission envious of her single friends being able to go out with other men, and c) Ms Reed claims that “Tons and TONS of men” are doing “this same thing”, it is perfectly clear that what the little would-be tramp wanted to do was exactly what I described in the original post, namely, spend a few years riding the carousel before settling down.

But that’s obvious and one requires a furiously spinning rationalization hamster in order to claim that the young woman merely wanted to break it off with the perfect long-term relationship guy in order to spend time “taking trips with best friends, dancing, and doing anything silly and fun with your pals”. (Of course, as has been pointed out before, “taking trips” aka “travel” is femalespeak for “have sex with strange men”, so I suppose the assertion is not so much incorrect as an incompetent attempt at camouflage.) There is simply no question that the young woman very much wants to go out and get herself ravished a few times by a few different men. It is the bestial temptation that is there to either be resisted by her reason or justified by her hamster.

The more interesting question that Donna Reed raises is this: how and why can anyone object to a sex-based double standard? There is no double-standard if we are discussing morality; fornication and adultery are considered sins for both sexes alike. Therefore, to assert the existence of a double-standard inherently takes the discussion completely outside the subject of morality and puts it in the realm of mere social acceptability.

Now, the supposed double standard is that men who have sex with many women are studs whereas women who have sex with many men are sluts. But different labels for men and women with similar attributes are not a double standard; is it a double standard that attractive men are called “handsome” and attractive women are called “pretty”? Of course not. The labels derive from the observable fact that men’s attraction to women has a negative correlation with her sexual experience while women’s attraction to men has a positive correlation with his sexual experience.

Note that we’re talking about attraction here, not the reasoned pursuit of a life-long mate. As is usually the case, what a woman says about the men to whom she is attracted is irrelevant as the fact of the matter is that the virginal adult male is a figure of scorn in modern society whereas the virginal adult female is despised only by her fellow women in the same manner that they hate beautiful women.

So, the female standard for men is that men with less sexual experience are less attractive. The male standard for women is that women with less sexual experience are more attractive. This is not a single double standard, but rather two distinct standards held by two different groups of people about two different groups.

Warning: hamster at work

This is what it looks like when a woman’s rationalization hamster is actively at work:

I’m 23 years old and have been dating my boyfriend for just over two years. I love him, and I love spending time with him. He’s everything I’ve always wanted in a long-term partner: caring, intelligent, thoughtful and hardworking.

But lately, I can’t seem to shake this “antsy” feeling…. I’ve been thinking maybe it would be good for us to take a break so I could clear my head and figure out what I really want. Is that a disastrous idea?

This is precisely why men should pay very little attention when women, particularly young unmarried women, tell them what they think they want. What they want is very often mutually contradictory; shockingly few women fully grasp the basic concept of opportunity cost: IF you do X, THEN you cannot do Y.

Consider the “advice-seeker”, who isn’t actually seeking advice but rather permission/rational cover to do what she intends to do regardless of what anyone says. She is at the peak of her attractiveness to men, she has already landed a man who provides “everything she wanted in a long-term partner“, but she is unable to shake an “antsy” feeling. No doubt those familiar with Game theory were laughing when they read that, instantly recognizing what is quite clearly the usual desire to spend a few years riding the Alpha carousel.

Gammas and Deltas, note that it doesn’t matter in the least how perfect you are as a potential husband, gentleman, and provider. In most cases, a woman’s decision about pursuing a long-term relationship has very little do with your own behavior within that relationship and everything to do with what holds the tie-breaking vote in her individual case, reason or the rationalization hamster. Whereas reason will vote for a happy married life with the “caring, intelligent, thoughtful and hardworking” delta, the rationalization hamster is furiously throwing out one irrational “reason” after another to justify allowing herself to be mounted by a series of passing Alphas. (Note: women seldom come right out and phrase it this clearly, they usually describe it as “being young”, “having fun”, “enjoying myself”, and occasionally “taking a break”.)

What the woman really wants is to spend the next four years riding the Alpha carousel, then to come back to her current boyfriend, who will of course have spent that time loyally pining away after her and will happily marry her when she is no longer sufficiently attractive to command the level of Alpha interest to which she has become accustomed. It’s not an impossible dream, but it is a highly improbable one. On an anecdotal note, I have NEVER seen any woman of my acquaintance over the age of 27 end up with a higher-quality, higher-status man than the highest-quality, highest-status man with whom she was seriously involved prior to that age.

Is “taking a break” a disastrous idea? It all comes down to a woman’s time-preferences. If peak short term pleasure is her absolute priority, then obviously the carousel is the way to go. If greater long-term satisfaction is her objective, then yes, throwing away everything she’s always wanted in a long-term partner is almost criminally stupid. (The complete uselessness of the female advice columnist goes without saying, which is why there is no need to comment upon what passes for her “advice”.) And while it is certainly possible that marriage to her ideal delta may not work out as well as she imagines, it is also true that the carousel rides on offer may not turn out to be of the status/quality that she hopes for either.

This leads me to contemplating a related email in which GK asked about my acceptance of evolutionary psychology:

My impression from what I’ve read of your writings is that you don’t believe in evolution but agree with some things that could fall under the umbrella of evolutionary psychology. E.g., the whole “game” thing — if I’m understanding you correctly — sounds very much like the kind of stuff you hear from the EP folk.

EP has a mechanism for explaining why a character trait that provides a selective advantage (e.g., women wanting to mate with the alpha male) would be passed on and come to dominate the population. Do you accept that general notion? Of course it’s entirely possible to believe in evolutionary psychology and reject macro evolution. Is that your position?

No, my belief in the utility of Game theory has absolutely nothing to do with evolutionary psychology, which I completely reject. In fact, I outright reject evolutionary psychology whereas I am merely skeptical about evolution by (probably) natural selection. The key phrase is “mechanism for explaining”, which means that evolutionary psychology is nothing more than creative fiction. It has a scientific basis no stronger than the Biblical “Curse of Eve” and represents the confusion of “could” with “is”. Is any one scenario posited by an evolutionary psychologist correct? Perhaps. But the total inability to provide any metric to determine the probability of the correctness of any given scenario renders it no more scientific or useful than 17th century Basque poetry. The history of science is littered with many commonly accepted “coulds” that weren’t; for example the idea that tribes of European hunter-gathers adopted agriculture from the Middle East rather than being supplanted by Middle Eastern immigrants is now being called into question. Plus ça change….

This isn’t to say that it is worthless to attempt to discover the whys and wherefores behind the operation of Game. But accepting the idea that something works is not tantamount to accepting every idea attempting to explain why it works. It’s important to recall that the operative theory of Game preceded the attempts of amateur evolutionary psychologists to retroactively explain it. At times, it appears that no few male scientists have little white rationalization lab rats of their own.

Mailvox: Game and the Christian man

AG asks for advice on dealing with the cold equations:

I’m a 22 years old Christian male. I’m by no means a natural alpha, but I’m a pretty bright guy and it is quite easy for me to make myself attractive to women. Social reticence becomes “aloofness”, not knowing what to say (and not saying anything) becomes “mysteriousness” — you get the idea. Maybe it’s not that simple, but from experience I know that attracting women is not tough for me. My dilemma is this: every Christian male I know seems to either be a reformed badboy (like you) or very beta. With the court system completed stacked against men, a failed marriage can completely destroy a guy. What’s a guy like me to do? Let out my inner badboy for the next 8 years and then beg God for mercy or just be the nice Christian beta and hope everything works out? Neither option seems appealing at all. You’re one of the few people I can think of that is a Christian and views women and modern America in a realistic way. I can’t figure out what to do and I would really love to hear your thoughts.

Paul is quite clear on sinning that grace might abound and it is no wiser to indulge in rampant sex for a few years with the idea that you’ll eventually set it aside than it is to decide to spend the next eight years in a coked-up state before getting clean. I remember one evening at the Digital Ghetto when the White Buffalo, Big Chilly, Horn, and Micron were all happily ensconced around Bongzilla. (I stayed very far away from the herb after an unpleasant experience with a PCP-laced joint at DV8.) Micron had cracked a joke about how they were all killing brain cells, but Horn protested that he had read a study reporting that it took ten years of regular marijuana usage to have a negative impact on one’s brain.

At which point, Big Chilly smiled – he had gone to high school with Horn – and said: “And how long have you been smoking?” At that point, he had three years left, but that was more than 15 years ago and he certainly hasn’t quit. So, the point is that you’re kidding yourself if you think you can simply dive into the corruption of the world and expect to come out clean on the other side according to your schedule.

But no one said you have to be the nice Christian beta either. Alpha isn’t the notches on the bedpost; they are merely the consequence of the attitude. If you are a leader, a woman will follow you anywhere, including to church. I have seen it happen. And a Christian man shouldn’t consider himself bound to act like a beta, let alone gamma, around women, in fact, he should be totally indifferent to the opinion of the scarlet women of the world, which is a fundamentally alpha quality.

I think you are confusing Churchianity for Christianity in equating betatude with faith. If you’re afraid to correct someone because it might hurt their feelings, if you can’t open your mouth without deprecating yourself, if you are more afraid to tell a woman not to gossip or stuff her face than tell an adulterer that his behavior is wrong, you are a Churchian using Christianity as an excuse for your inner gamma. You’ve already learned that you don’t have to be an arrogant bastard in order to get the girls’ hamsters spinning madly, trying to figure you out. Now you just need to take the next step and learn how to open your mouth without taking three steps back.

The reason Game works is that it is a pale, corrupted reflection of the truth. But what is its most central message? It sounds like one of Paul’s most important themes! For neither God nor Game have given you a spirit of fear. The Christian man should approach a woman to whom he is attracted with the same total lack of fear as the most hardened master of Game; if she’s not the one, then what do you care if she rejects you? The sooner she does, the better!

The limits of human attraction

In response to Retha’s attempt to protest that sin is not attactive to Christian women:

Are you trying to say you know me better than I know myself? Vox, when you make comments about women in general, you speak a lot of truth. But do not assume to know how any one particular women you never met will react or have reacted to something. I know from experience that this was not how I reacted to a serial fornicator who tried dating me.

Retha’s response reveals some interesting aspects of the differences between the male and female minds here. First, this is a spectacular example of female solipsism; she is attempting to rebut the concept that Christian women are not immune to female hypergamy by citing a single example of her own failure to be attracted by a sexually successful suitor. Second, it is an blatant theological error to claim that Christian women are not attracted to sin, indeed, the fact that the Bible bans women from positions of leadership within the Church and household make it rather clear that they are to considered more spiritually susceptible to sin, and therefore presumably more attracted to it, than men. Given that all men and women alike are fallen, it is absurd for her to claim that she, or any other Christian woman, is immune to the appeal of the world. As Billy Graham is once supposed to have said: “if you don’t think sin is fun, you’re not doing it right.”

With regards to the question of whether I know her better than she knows herself, I can only answer that because her response is a very conventionally female one, there is little reason to believe that she is a behavioral outlier beyond her creditable commitment to her faith. In other words, given a reasonable portion of the information that she possesses regarding any situation involving male-female interaction, I believe that not only me, but many men of sufficient knowledge of Game would be able to predict her future actions better than she can because they have no rationalization hamster nor hormonal cycle clouding their perceptions.

Women are not static creatures. They are extraordinarily dynamic, which is one of the things that makes them so fascinating and so unpredictable to those who do not recognize the primary motivational factors involved. As economists are gradually coming to accept, human behavior is seldom rational by any exterior metric. And the interior metrics of women tend to vacillate greatly, and more to the point, often without them consciously realizing they have changed. Some of these vacillations are predictable, which is why male predators are able to anticipate and take advantage of female dynamism with such reliable success.

The fact that Retha found one serial fornicator unattractive doesn’t indicate that it was his success with women alone that turned her off unless he was significantly higher status than her. Hence the “a little bit of beta” that is advised for alphas who are slumming. (In such cases, the woman’s rationalization hamster can’t spin its wheel fast enough to convince her that she’ll be able to hold his interest over time, so she rejects him first in proactive self-defense.) Given that Retha has, according to her, rejected literally every man that has ever expressed interest in her throughout the course of her life, it should not at all surprising that she rejected the serial fornicator too. Was the unattractiveness of sin the sole reason for that particular rejection? It’s doubtful, especially since he is neither the first nor the last male sinner she will encounter.

But Retha is not wrong in stating the completely obvious. There are always statistical outliers and when you play the probabilities, you will certainly lose from time to time. It is certainly within the realm of possibility that Retha is one of the few women to whom the bad boys genuinely hold negative appeal and that she would be more sexually attracted to a meek and virginal omega than an arrogant and experienced alpha. I don’t buy it for a second, but it is at least possible. Thanks to the Internet, we know the limits of human attraction are disturbingly wide, perhaps even boundless. (You know that somewhere out there, there is a site for people who are deeply attracted to molluscs. With pictures.)

In summary, the answer is yes, unless you happen to be a statistical freak of some sort. One should always assume that a woman is going to behave like a normal woman unless one is in possession of reliable information indicating otherwise, just as one should always assume that a man is going to behave like a normal man. Now, we are not mere animals. We have the capacity to rationally control our behavior. But the very fact that we need to exert that control over our irrational instincts indicates that they a) exist, and b) influence our feelings, thoughts, and behavior in a potentially predictable manner.