Tag: women

Disrespecting strong, independent women

No doubt this patriarchal oppressor got what he deserved for preventing a bold woman warrior from wreaking righteous female fury on a fellow patriarch. Would-be white knights should keep in mind that they are not only risking serious personal injury for a strange woman, but there’s a very good chance she won’t even be grateful.

“I just simply say, ‘Dude, that’s enough,’ [thinking] maybe he’ll back off,” Skripka said. “He got in my face. I didn’t flinch. I said, ‘Dude, back off,’ pardon my French but that’s the words I used. Then I finally said, ‘Dude, what’s your problem?’ The next thing I know is I’m waking up on a gurney. I was knocked out cold.”

In addition to the cuts and bruises, he also suffered a concussion….

“I suppose I got more engaged than I should have,” said Skripka, who was released from the hospital Monday afternoon. “I just wanted to do the right thing. If it was my sister or my friend getting assaulted, I’m going to do what I can. All he had to do was stop, all he had to do was stop assaulting her,” said Skripka, who has had his own brushes with the law, the most recent a burglary charge in 2008 from Dakota County. “Just walk away from the situation, cool off. I don’t know why he had to continue and then turn on somebody else.”

Yes, and all you had to do was mind your own business and walk away from a situation that didn’t concern you in any way. The guy didn’t just turn on somebody else, Skripa chose to interfere with him. Now, Skripa may have wanted to do the right thing, but he nevertheless did the wrong thing. Now I agree, if it was my sister or female friend getting assaulted, I’m going to do what I can too. I would do the same for my brother or male friend. But a random woman on the street who is just as likely to be the instigator of the violence as the victim is neither my sister nor my friend. And more importantly, doing what one can is not limited to posturing and verbal bravado.

As I previously advised, you should never intervene in a violent domestic quarrel or even petty crime unless it is clear that potentially lethal violence is merited. A woman isn’t likely to be severely injured by getting pushed or slapped or punched, so you can’t justify stepping in unless and until there are obvious indications that the man actually intends to inflict serious and potentially fatal harm. As the foolish Mr. Skripka discovered, even men who get physical with women are usually holding quite a bit back; a man who is dumb enough to white knight in these situations is simply offering an already angry and violent man a target upon which he can fully unleash the force he is still partially controlling.

Basically, unless what you’re seeing definitely merits putting someone in the hospital or the morgue and would be considered justifiable in a court of law, let it pass. Based on the statistics, half the time the woman attacked first and deserves the beating anyhow.

Sports Guy Game

Despite being a natural negger, Bill Simmons demonstrates that he’s not only a Delta, but he doesn’t actually understand the concept of Game:

Q: As a female, I usually have a hard time admitting that I read your articles. I have a harder time admitting that I think you’re hilarious. I feel like I should despise you on principle, because let’s be honest, you’re a pig. But I do like you. More than I care to admit. I find myself referencing you in everyday conversation. If I can use you to back up what I’m saying, I think it has more weight. And when guys find out I like you, they love it (thanks for that). So my question is, how do you do it? How have you managed to make a self-respecting woman eagerly await you next column, even though I’ve come to expect you to have at least one disrespectful comment in there?
— Amanda, Richmond

SG: Typical e-mail from a female reader: expresses her disgust, insults me, changes her mind three times and ultimately admits that she can’t live without me. I don’t blame Amanda because she’s been weaned on 20 years of chick flicks, and the one rule of chick flicks is this: “Find the one guy who either drives you crazy or you can’t have, then fall madly in love with him even though you know it’s completely wrong.”

Incorrect. Amanda doesn’t read the Sports Guy because of the chick flicks, the chick flicks are a hamster rationalization of the natural female tendency to be drawn to men who don’t put them on pedestals. Throw in the DHV aspect of fame – the woman wouldn’t find the column so irresistible if it wasn’t by a columnist who has rightly become famous by virtue of taking his talents to ESPN – and it’s quite natural that she would like it despite finding it despicable on principle.

I used to be puzzled when women would send me emails complaining about my columns… accompanied by their pictures. WTF? Now, in light of Game theory, it makes considerably more sense. Of course, it doesn’t happen as often now that my feminist critics of yore are all deathly afraid of provoking public responses to their criticism. It’s been rather interesting to see how the amount of public criticism has fallen dramatically while the daily blog readership has continued to steadily grow.

Rape, ex post facto

If it is rape for an Arab to pass for a Israeli, I imagine that Jews who are mistaken for Italians or Caucasians will have to be prosecuted as well. To say nothing of all those women who falsely claim to be single when they actually have boyfriends or husbands.

A Palestinian man has been convicted of rape after having consensual sex with a woman who had believed him to be a fellow Jew. Sabbar Kashur, 30, was sentenced to 18 months in prison on Monday after the court ruled that he was guilty of rape by deception. According to the complaint filed by the woman with the Jerusalem district court, the two met in downtown Jerusalem in September 2008 where Kashur, an Arab from East Jerusalem, introduced himself as a Jewish bachelor seeking a serious relationship. The two then had consensual sex in a nearby building before Kashur left.

When she later found out that he was not Jewish but an Arab, she filed a criminal complaint for rape and indecent assault.The two then had consensual sex in a nearby building before Kashur left.

This ex post facto claim of rape is both logically and legally absurd, of course, but it does tend to suggest that Israel is as brutally ethnocentric as the European anti-Zionists claim contra the claims of its defenders. Given the apparent precedent set by this conviction, one is inclined to wonder if the American Jews who so eagerly descended upon the South during the Sixties on behalf of black rights will now take their guilt-ridden activism to Israel on behalf of the Arabs.

However, to be fair to the Israeli legal system, it should be kept in mind that this was the result of a plea-bargain, not a trial, so no precedent was, in fact, set. While the ethno-religious aspect of the case is what has attracted the media’s attention, I don’t think that the focus of the deception was actually on his married state is any less potentially problematic.

Sex, lies, and trophy shirts

But apparently not everyone lies about sex. Or perhaps, as I tend to suspect, they are lying about not lying about it.

Research shows that, perhaps unsurprisingly, there is a split between the genders when it comes to answering the potentially embarrassing question. Around a third of women give a false response – and 64 per cent of these reduce the number. Half lie because they ‘feel ashamed’ of the number, while a further 19 per cent don’t want to be seen as promiscuous. A fifth of women would be dishonest about their number of sexual partners if their new partner had slept with fewer people than them.

A higher proportion of men – 43 per cent – lie to their new partner. In these cases, around 60 per cent increase the amount.

I was very surprised by this, because on every occasion I have been privy to accurate information about a female friend’s history and then heard her mention a number, she has lied. But then, it occurred to me that because higher numbers tend to devalue a woman’s relationship appeal, many women have no reason to lie. Consider the CDC report on anonymously reported female sexual history:

15+ partners: 9.4 percent
7-14 partners: 21.3 percent
2-6 partners: 44.3 percent
0-1 partners: 25 percent

Can you find “around a third of women” who might have an incentive to “give a false response”? The majority of the false reporting is almost surely from the 30.7% of women who fall into the Slutty and Frisky categories but are dishonestly claiming to be Normal. The average college-educated woman is disposed to believe that claiming 4-5 previous lovers is going to sound credible and not too promiscuous, (one high school boyfriend plus one fling per year of college), whereas no one is going to believe a claim of near-chastity. This is why a man should call BS on a woman who claims that moderate level of experience while simultaneously providing evidence that it is actually more extensive.

Now, it’s pretty easy for a woman to tell if a man is exaggerating about his experience, since he probably won’t know what he is doing. But how can a man tell if a woman is clever enough to avoid claiming complete inexperience and doesn’t give it away by breaking out bedroom gymnastics worthy of Cirque du Soleil? It’s quite easy if you happen to have access to her clothing drawer. Women attempt to steal status-branded t-shirts and sweatshirts whenever they have a fling with a man. It’s a bizarre form of competitive female trophy-hunting; a Harvard Hockey t-shirt trumps a nice, but generic University of Oregon sweatshirt.* So, you can be sure that every t-shirt advertising a college she never attended, a sporting event she never saw, a military service** to which neither she nor any family member are connected, or, if she actually went to that college, a sport she never played, represents a notch on her bedpost that she doesn’t report as a boyfriend. If she keeps around a few worn-out favorites of the sort she’d never buy in a million years but somehow keep managing to survive periodic wardrobe purges, you can be sure that they once belonged to other men.

And if she has a drawer full of t-shirts representing the entire SEC plus half the Big Ten, Notre Dame, and two Ivies, you had better run, not walk, to the nearest medical clinic.

Male dishonesty makes similar sense, albeit coming from the opposite angle. Because women place a negative value on men without sexual experience, men who lack it have an incentive to make themselves look more attractive via false preselection. And if 17% of men are lying to REDUCE their numbers, that gives some support to the 80/20 rule. Only the Alphas in the most successful quintile can afford to reduce their reported numbers without reducing their appeal to a prospective partner.

UPDATE – It occurs to me that women can find some use in the t-shirt test too. If you’re with a high value man you suspect of being haut alpha, check his t-shirt and sweatshirt collection. If he’s a former college athlete or graduated from an elite school, he should have no shortage of commemorative event t-shirts and team sweatshirts. If he doesn’t have any, then you can probably guess how they managed to walk out the door, one by one. If you want to amuse yourself, try asking him where they are. Most guys are so completely clueless about female trophy-hunting that he probably isn’t even aware they’re missing.

*If you ever feel like upending a woman’s applecart, note the trophy shirt X that she’s proudly sporting. Then, the next time you see her, ask her if she’s ever hooked up with X. While she’s wide-eyed and stammering in confusion, just smile and say, “Yeah, I thought you looked like the type.”

**thanks to AmyJ for reminding us of this one.

Lest you wonder

Why the business and economics coverage at The Atlantic is so abysmal. Megan McClueless, the “libertarian” who voted for Obama, tries another take on Game:

My off the cuff observation was a genuine one; this whole thing sounds like what girls used to do.  And in fact, at some level the PUAs have to know that it’s not really particularly manly.  Why do I think this?  Because if your girlfriend (however temporary) caught you mimicking Tom Cruise in front of the mirror, or spending your spare time trolling message boards for magic tricks to impress women with . . . well, would she be more enamored, or would she slither out of bed in disgust and start looking for her clothes?

I am not against people attempting to upgrade their social skills, nor am I horrified at the thought that “beta” males will somehow sneak into the gene pool; after all, I live in the city often called “Hollywood for Nerds”.  But the combination of artificiality, superficiality, and manipulation in the PUA manifestos makes it really hard not to snicker.

We have certainly reached a nadir of understanding when a method which was originally developed and is still primarily used to have sex with women is denigrated as unmanly.  And to appeal to a hypothetical girlfriend’s opinion is to miss the point entirely.  What horrifies McClueless is the idea that after 40+ years of relentless feminist indoctrination, the men of the West have shattered the pedestal of intrinsic female superiority that had been so painstakingly constructed.  Ironically, it takes the non-economist Roissy to explain the core of the matter to the credentialed economist.

The herculean efforts required of the vast majority of men to seduce women that strike McArdle as unseemly and calculating when compared to the relatively easy go of it women in their prime years have when setting about to seduce men is just a reflection of the biological inequality between the sexes in their value on the sexual market. Sperm is cheap, eggs are expensive, and all that. McArdle is mistaken to assume this disparity in degree of mating effort caused by intrinsic sex differences is proof of men’s venality or women’s nobility.

The CDC statistics indicate that the primary sociosexual problem is that 75% of the women are primarily attracted to only 10% of the men. There is little that can be done about the demand side since women like what they like, so the solution has to come from the supply side. This is in everyone’s interest, male and female alike, since an expansion of the supply of men who are attractive to women will have the effect of lowering the high price women are forced to pay for the privilege of receiving Alpha attention.

But McArdle’s inept critique is a helpful reminder of an important maxim. Never pay any attention to what a woman says about what attracts women. Pay attention to what she does. And more importantly, who she does.

Hmmm

Read this list of personal characteristics:

Witty, i.e. smart
Irreverent
Secure
Sadistic
Perceptive
Impulsive
Narcissistic
A natural at negging
Ridiculous in his peacocking
A terrible relationship prospect

Now, that list could have been compiled 15 years ago to describe me with the exception of the Peacocking and the Impulsive. Probably more smart than witty, more’s the pity, but there you go. Anyhow, based on how things turned out for Spacebunny and me, there just might be hope for Russell Brand maintaining a successful marriage. Or rather, there might have been were he not a Hollywood celebrity. I also think it’s interesting to note how his marital choice of Katy Perry, she of the execrable pop music and the evangelical Christian background, tends to underline the hierarchy of female attractiveness I explained a few days ago. Miss Perry’s expansive endowment notwithstanding, there is no way she is one-half as pretty as at least one-quarter of the girls to whom Mr. Brand has, in the immortal words of Lebronze, taken his talents.

Why church women don’t like church men

Aunt Haley explains how Churchianity hinders happy marriages:

I’ve noticed that it’s fairly common in evangelical circles for a man to more or less prostrate himself at the feet of his wife’s saintly goodness, proclaiming some mixture of the following:

* I don’t deserve my wife.
* I was a mess before I met my wife.
* If it weren’t for my wife, I don’t know where I’d be right now.
* I don’t know what she sees in me.
* I’m an idiot, but for some reason, she married me.

Among Christian women, humility is an ENORMOUS turn-on and is considered an outward sign of inward maturity…. This “my wife is better than me” attitude is sad. It may be humble on the surface, but it’s really just a big fat ugly DLV.

Note that this is an indictment of Churchianity, not Christianity. There is an important difference. In Christianity, the husband is the head of the household. In Churchianity, the husband is the servant leader, by which it is actually meant that he is a servant rather than a leader. And no man who doesn’t know what he’d do without his wife possesses the confident and muscular faith that sustained the martyrs, crushed paganism, ended global slavery, and changed the world for the better.

Men and women are meant to complement each other. Women need men to help them improve themselves every bit as badly as men need women, if not more so. And yet, are the men of the church ever called upon to help their wives develop intellectually, to broaden their interests outside their personal relations, to maintain themselves physically, and to refrain from being caught up in the destructive spiderweb of gossip? Not that I’ve ever heard.

The abject pedestalization of wives in Churchianity doesn’t even make sense in conventionally omniderigent evangelical terms. If God gave you your wife, then who are you to assert you do not deserve her? Women want to be married to a man who is awesome, so it is an insult to her character, her intelligence, and her quality to claim that you’re some sort of lower being that she has kindly deigned to lift up out of pure altruism. And while it’s probably true that you’re an idiot, given MPAI, the fact of the matter is that she is almost certainly an idiot too. It’s no wonder many women of the church are discontent in their marriages, if their husbands can’t see anything of merit in themselves, how do they expect their wives to do so?

False modesty isn’t humility, it’s a deceitful facade presented by whiny and insecure bitches of both sexes and it has no place in a Christian marriage.

Mailvox: the loyalty proxy

Renee 84 sees a double-standard at work:

I find it interesting that it seems as if a man’s sexual history doesn’t seem to serve as a practical proxy for their sexual loyalty.

As a Christian, I know that God never proclaimed that ONLY women should be virgins before marriage, it applied to both males and females. So whenever I hear conversations from men around the blogsphere who have admitted to having casual sex themselves, lost their virginity at a young age, multiple partners at one time, etc, who call women sluts for having casual sex themselves, I pretty much think that they’re hypocrites.

I’m not one to look at a cad (basically a male slut) in a positive light. I hear all sorts of reasons for this type of double standard and many of them make sense. But in the end, in my eyes this doesn’t trump God’s Word and morals. They end of being almost excuses in a way.

It’s not so much that a man’s sexual history doesn’t serve as a practical proxy for their sexual loyalty, it’s that women don’t need the proxy because they place a much lower value on sexual loyalty than men do. It is perfectly clear that women are attracted to men with sexual experience and actively dislike men who don’t have it. It is primarily women who make fun of men who don’t have success with women, they are the ones who label such men losers. Indeed, as has often been seen right here on this blog, attacking a man’s sexual history and implying its brevity is a favored form of female insult.

So women are less concerned with sexual loyalty than with sexual status; on average they are very happy to trade an increased risk of sexual disloyalty for higher sexual status in the short-term as well as the long-term. (The reason that women who have sex with Alphas and Betas eventually settle for Deltas and Gammas is because they possess insufficient value to land the higher status men for anything beyond the short term.) There is really not much room for debate on this as there are legions of men with no sexual history and low sexual status available at every geek-related convention and yet not even the most desperate woman would consider seeking a husband there.

I have no doubt that Renee84 regards studs in a negative light intellectually, but that doesn’t mean that she isn’t emotionally and physically attracted to them in the same way that most women are. If it were true that women were genuinely repelled by studs, they would flee from rock stars and pro athletes in disgust rather than throwing themselves at them in droves. Now, one should never forget that women possess brains and free will and are perfectly capable of surmounting their biological impulses, but that doesn’t change the basic and observable fact that the impulses are there to be resisted.

Men, on the other hand, highly prize sexual loyalty and place a very negative value on women with extensive sexual histories. This should be obvious when one considers the contemptuous male attitude towards prostitutes and porn stars. The modern men of the West may not realize that they still place such store in sexual loyalty, but the instinctive fury that can be aroused when a man’s wife is touching another man or otherwise sends unconscious signals of her prospective sexual availability in public tends to indicate that they do, even if they’re not killing each other in duels over petty insults to a woman’s honor any more.

So, I think it’s a misnomer to describe the situation as a double standard when it’s really two different sets of subjective values that underlie two entirely different standards. If women regarded rock stars in the same way that men regard street hookers, then the double standard would be hypocritical. But given the breadth of the divergence in the opposite sexual value perspectives, it really shouldn’t be regarded that way.

Now, given the Biblical acceptance of multiple wives, I don’t think it can reasonably said that male virginity comes with precisely the same premium that female virginity does, although it certainly comes with some premium given the instruction that deacons of the church are to have only one wife. This lower premium does not excuse premarital fornication in any way, of course; I merely note it as a tangent. I see the secular “double standard” as entirely irrelevant to the Christian perspective because, as is so often the case, the Christian view is fundamentally different than the secular one as it is necessarily driven by non-biomechanic concerns that simply don’t apply to the non-Christian. But as one can usefully discuss gravity and its implications without necessarily taking the Christian perspective on it into account, one can likewise discuss Game.

Mailvox: the hierarchy of female attractiveness

A number of people have been asking me if there is a female equivalent to the Alpha-Omega scale of male socio-sexual attractiveness. I originally replied, rather facetiously, that there is a perfectly useful 1-10 scale that doesn’t strain anyone’s brain to comprehend, but of course, it is obvious there is more to a woman’s socio-sexual rating than her raw physical beauty at a given moment. However, it wasn’t until I read The Sex Risk for Women That No One Likes to Talk About that I realized how the female scale works.

As David Buss says, the modern conditions for mating may have changed significantly, but humans still employ the same sexual strategies. Of the 67 traits men seek in a committed partner, faithfulness and sexual loyalty rank as the most important in every culture ever studied…. While men seek women with promiscuity, sexual experience and high sex drive when selecting for short-term mating, they still retain the preference for a sexually inexperienced wife, or at least one who is less experienced than they are.

In the era of hooking up, this concern is exacerbated as the number of inexperienced woman has dropped dramatically. One of the things I hear most from men like Conflicted is that they have no interest in stepping in to pick up the pieces after women have been “used up” by other men. It’s insulting to their pride for obvious reasons, and many will refuse to marry if they cannot find a woman who meets their requirements.

Now, we already know that men place a high value on female beauty, so if we take into account that sexual loyalty also matters a great deal to them as well as how a woman’s sexual history serves as a practical proxy for that otherwise indeterminable loyalty, we can construct a scale that should reliably describe a woman’s socio-sexual attractiveness to men. The Center for Disease Control reports that women between the ages of 20 to 59 anonymously report their sexual histories as follows.

Slutty: 15+ partners: 9.4 percent
Frisky: 7-14 partners: 21.3 percent
Normal: 2-6 partners: 44.3 percent
Chaste: 0-1 partners: 25 percent

Also according to the CDC, the median number of sexual partners for women of what has lately become the normal age of marriage (25-29) is 4. The report also shows that the sexual history proxy is a reasonable one for future marital prospects; 30.8% of Chaste women are currently married and 6.5% are divorced whereas only 7.4% of Slutty women are currently married compared to 19.1% who are divorced.

To keep things relatively simple, I will next divide women into four categories based on their perceived physical beauty on the conventional 1-10 scale as follows:

Barbie: 9-10: 5 percent
Babe: 7-8: 15 percent
Jane: 4-6: 50 percent
Coyote: 1-3: 30 percent

The key thing to remember here is that men have a very binary approach to women. What they are looking for in the immediate term is almost never what they prefer in the long term. For permanent relationships, which I assume is the hierarchy of interest here, most men prefer to drop down one level on the Beauty side in favor of going up one level on the History side, the possible exception being the Alphas who put a premium on Beauty and for whom the numerical difference between Normal and Slutty is a rounding error in their own telephone book-length sexual histories.

Tier 1: Chaste Barbie, Normal Barbie, Chaste Babe
Tier 2: Frisky Barbie, Normal Babe, Chaste Jane
Tier 3: Slutty Barbie, Frisky Babe, Normal Jane
Tier 4: Slutty Babe, Frisky Jane, Chaste Coyote
Tier 5: Slutty Jane, Normal, Frisky, and Slutty Coyotes

This explains both Conflicted’s negative reaction to his girlfriend’s history and the Hot Wife + Herb combination that puzzles so many observers of human relationships regardless of their sex. Conflicted thought he had scored a Normal Babe, but she turned out to be a Slutty Babe. So, her value declined accordingly in his eyes to such an extent that he is contemplating ending the dating relationship and almost surely will decline to marry her. In the case of the Hot Wife + Herb, it’s most likely an obvious case of a woman having her Beauty value reduced by her History value.

Now, as Spacebunny points out, these are merely general guidelines based on statistics and there are always individual exceptions. But it explains why even the prettiest porn stars don’t marry Alphas and why relatively unattractive women manage to marry highly desirable men like Piers Brosnan and Matt DamonDenzel Washington. It also shows the clear choice that young women have to make between their short-term hypergamous instincts and their long-term marital prospects. And to me, one of the more interesting things is the way women tend to share this hierarchical view of their own sex with men, whereas men are often contemptuous of the smarmier sort of Alpha and simply cannot believe women put such a high value on them.

Flipping the flipped script

A fair amount of what this woman writes about is wrong and even the title of this post is misleading, but she grasps the important issues better than most and her core message here is correct. A woman can “tame” even the most hard core player if he is genuinely ready to settle down and raise a family:

The secret to flipping a player is finding one who wants to be flipped. A pretend asshole. A guy who’s gone from beta to bastard and back again. The truth is, a very high percentage of males understand that assholes get laid. Many don’t know what to do about it. Others work hard to acquire skills with women via Game. But many, many young men just flip into acting like jerks. When in doubt, insult her. Walk away. Never show you care. This is surprisingly effective, and it really doesn’t require a bootcamp to role-play this way. Some of these guys will like the action so much, they won’t ever come back from the Dark side. Some will. You gotta figure about 20% of guys getting laid are jerks. The rest are just acting like jerks. That doesn’t make them fun to be around, but it does mean they are susceptible to being poached.

This strikes me as somewhat of a statement of the obvious; since Game concerns the simulation of Alpha behavior, there is going to be a clear difference between the natural Game player and the simulated one. And, of course, it’s true that the simulated Alpha is less likely to be a complete and unrepentant bastard. Now, I do believe even complete bastards can change from ruthless and cold-hearted cad to faithful family man because that’s precisely what happened to me. However, this only came about through the transformative power of Jesus Christ; a woman can enable such a transformation, but I don’t see how she could possibly bring it about on her own.

I think the problem with the beta to bastard and back concept is that as you act, so you eventually become. Few whores start out thinking to earn crack money on the street; they are more likely to embark upon their descent as a low-rent model or fully-clothed cigarette girl at the strip club. (I once placed a bet with a club owner on how long it would take his new cigarette girl to graduate to the stage. I said a month and lost. Two weeks, or more precisely, eight working evenings.) Experience leaves its mark on men too, even if we don’t tend to get that “ridden hard, put away wet” look that is so easy to see on women with a history of promiscuity. (By the way, women, you may wish to note that observant men can usually estimate how many men have had you with a surprising degree of accuracy. It’s a fun party trick, although not one recommended for dinner parties with married couples.) Once a man ceases to put women on pedestals, he is very unlikely to ever do so again, much less become a shield-brandishing White Knight ever ready to defend a mythical honor.

It’s a dangerous game both ways, of course. On the one hand, even Hugh Hefner wanted to settle down and raise a family for a while, but the sentiment passed and soon he was collecting larger and more visible harems than ever before. On the other, a relapsed Game player whose behavior has been tamed into delta or even gamma behavior is going to generate contempt and disgust in the very woman who tamed him… so she will go off and seek another faux alpha to tame or a real one to entertain her. The irony, of course, being that not long after she leaves the relapsed Game player due to his contemptible gammadom, he’ll be back to his old ways with a bitter vengeance, leaving a trail of women half her age strewn behind him in broken-hearted adoration.

This is why I think it is a massive mistake for women to attempt to play alpha-tamer. A real man only does things for his own reasons, (which should not be confused with his self-interest), and unless he is motivated to change his ways by a higher power, any other externally induced change, be it for reasons of romance, fear, familial pressure, or even boredom, is unlikely to last over time.

And it’s even possible that change for all the right reasons could lead a woman to develop some degree of contempt for even the strongest, most attractive man. There is a saying, after all, that no man is a hero to his valet and the intimate familiarity of family life can’t help but breed the occasional eye-rolling, and perhaps even disgust. I doubt that it’s much sexier to clean up after George Clooney’s vomit than anyone else’s. But it’s always important to remember that men are not monkeys, women are not weasels, and both sexes are at least capable of surmounting our biological instincts in our own long-term best interests. That’s why it is wise to recall that love is a choice and it should never be confused with the short-lived chemical cloudburst that sometimes passes for it.

But in the end, if you want a good man, then stop chasing bad ones.