Rationing Sex is Now Futile and Counterproductive: 01
A lot of blogs suggest that women ration sex because they hate “beta” men. There is no doubt that women prefer to create an artificial and chronic shortage of sex. However the motivation is far more likely to be about maintaining leverage over men. Think about it.. most women can never get the most “desirable” men. They are pretty much stuck with average men, and prior to the 1980s had to make do with them.
Leveraging an artificial scarcity of sex to obtain maximal material gain is a far more straightforward explanation for the behavior of women that evo-pysch vodoo. While this strategy might have worked for a long time, the world that we now live in has certain features that make such behavior counterproductive. Before explaining why such behavior is now counterproductive, let us recap the conditions under which such behavior was not counterproductive.
Rationing sex to increase its apparent value worked in a world where:
1. The majority of men had limited intra-country geographical mobility.
2. Society was not anonymous, and public persona/face was important.
3. Opportunities for international travel/ relocation were very limited.
4. Porn and prostitution were discouraged/punished by effective socio-legal mechanisms.
5. Women were given the benefit of doubt for all their misdeeds.
6. Freedom of speech and expression was tightly regulated and opportunities to communicate with like-minded individuals are limited/ expensive.
For most of history, women exploited the above stated conditions to ration sex and extract maximal resources from men. However there have been a few changes over the last 30 years..
Rationing sex is a viable strategy only as long as men believe they have a good chance at a half decent sex life. Once they lose hope, become cynical, have no emotional attachment or simply do not or cannot care..the gig is up.
A previously workable strategy suddenly becomes counterproductive, and induces negative feedback in the system
A. While geographical mobility increased substantially in post-ww2 western countries, most men quickly “settled” down with one woman or a series of women. Dysfunctional or serial monogamy was therefore the norm for most of the past 60-70 years. Ever wonder how badly dressed/ geeky/ plain-looking guys in previous eras got laid and were having kids by their mid- to late- 20s? If you don’t believe me, look at pictures of couples from the 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s. Now ask yourself- why is that no longer the norm and what are it’s downstream effects?.
Men who have poor experiences with women in their 20s are unlikely to settle down or follow the conventional life trajectory expected out of them. You cannot obtain resources from men through rationing sex if they do not believe a fair deal is possible.
B. Anonymous urban/ suburban living did not start with the development of suburbs or “greater metropolitan areas”. Most people prior to the 1980s were well engaged in communities that they lived in, even if they moved around a lot. It was the gradual loss of job security that created anonymous urban/ suburban living. Nobody wants to contribute to an enterprise that rapes them. A dog-eat-dog society creates adversarialism with little attachment or empathy for such a society.
Enforcing the rationing of sex through reputation/ face/ shaming only works if men have something to lose socially..
C. Prior to the late 1980s, people were pretty much stuck in the countries they were born in. People who interacted and worked with people from other countries were the exception, not the rule. Most people got their country stereotypes from the mainstream media.Then cheap foreign travel and job opportunities happened. Nowadays, living in non-western countries and large cities does not necessitate giving up almost any of the trappings, conveniences or advantages of living in the west.
It is hard to enforce rationing sex if men can live/ work or visit other countries, where they could get a better deal.
D. There have been major changes in attitudes towards porn and it’s availability since the 1980s. The quality of available content and performers now often exceeds mainstream entertainment. Every obscure fetish and preference is now catered to, at competitive rates. A lot of high quality content is now free or peer-generated. You can enjoy any type of porn at a location and time of your choice. I have often entertained myself at airports by watching porn on my iPhone or laptop.
Rationing sex is unworkable if the quality, access and “fit” of available porn exceeds the services provided by an average woman.
E. Men born after 1970 have grown up in a world where they saw the assumptions of older generations of men turn to dust. They have seen the death of lifetime jobs, stable marriages, decent career paths and have therefore rightly become cynical about the old ways. This extreme cynicism extends to their views about women. Unlike previous generations, a significant percentage of men no longer treat women well by default. The use of widely understood words such as mangina, doormat, pushover, white-knighting etc is a signal of larger mindset shift.
Most men born after 1970 have no significant mental connection to their kids, or often.. have no kids. They have far less investment in keeping the peace with women and accepting BS, unlike previous generations. Did I mention that women past their late 20s have a fraction of the sexual bargaining power of their younger selves.
F. Widespread availability of the internet and net based services have changed the nature of public discourse, in ways that were never anticipated. Consider the effects of forwarding webpages, video clips, animations, articles to your acquaintances. Bulletin boards, blogs and social media have had a far larger impact on public discourse than most people realize. These effects are only going to accelerate in the future, partly due to the loss of credibility by the main stream median and press.Cheap computers, net access and AV equipment have removed old cost barriers to promoting various alternative viewpoints..
More in the next part of this series.
a number of us also had those trad’l beliefs, but had them grinded out after a ton of empirical evidence and observation showed us the folly of our ways.
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Yes, and that is precisely what makes rationing sex counterproductive for women.In previous generations, men worked harder to get scarce sex. Now they don’t care.
I agree. I found this blog a few ago using a google search of “women are not worth the effort” or something similar. I love passionate but detached writing.
I’m a little worried about what’s going to happen to populations. I don’t know if it’s just where I live, but it seems like there’s hardly any kids anywhere. Seeing kids is a very rare event. Other countries, like Japan, are already feeling the effects of aging demographics. It’s really saddening because if there are fewer kids, that means there are fewer people to share our legacies with.
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Think of it this way: You wanted to act in good faith, but the women did not want to reciprocate. Therefore it is not your problem.
Thought provoking.
When a girl holds out on me, it just pushes her further down the quality scale because I know she’s not good enough for a LTR so her holding out feels like an insult. Maybe it would be okay if she were worthy of marriage, but no girl is worthy of marriage.
Xamuel mentioned he’s worried about a lack of children in our society, but like you said, I’m not going to prop up an adversarial society that goes out of it’s way to destroy me and keep me down.
Sexual rationing is little more that a variable schedule of reinforcement. This is behaviorism 101 and has long been the foundation of operant conditioning. Think of it as a casino. If all you ever did was pump quarter after quarter into a slot machine that never paid anything out, people would play for a bit and then give up realizing the rip off after a while. Word would get out that no one wins and eventually no one would play.
However, animal behavior is such that even a marginal reward delivered intermittently is enough to reinforce a desired behavior. The trick to reliably predicting and prompting that behavior is to deliver the reward in varying intensities on a seemingly random schedule, all with the promise of a potential jackpot reward.
The points you raise here modify this schedule in some instances, and in others it defeats the value of the reward altogether. However the dynamic will still evolve in response to these new conditions. Look at the backlash to Tiger Woods’ situation for example. Just as a model, here we have a guy who is, for the most, set apart from any feminine sexual rationing due to his status. Yet he still clung (and still clings) to the feminine imperatives with regard to how he would express his sexuality. The feminine sexual imperative (monogamy, provisioning, security) has always been characterized as the correct one in comparison to the masculine (polygamy, variety, frequency). Even female hypergamy is cast in a positive way.
My guess is that in the future there will be a predictable response to what you’re outlining here in the form of new pro-feminine social conventions that attempt to place women’s sexuality and ultimately their imperative for sexual selection back into their favor.
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Repeat after me.. humans are not dogs. Heck even cats, monkeys and apes are more devious than your simplistic models of behavior conditioning.
Conditioning works to a limited extent for very simplistic responses. As an example: how many people would repeatably loose their monthly income on gambling even if were living in vegas? The majority.. or a small minority. There is a reason empires collapse inspite of the best efforts of their ruling class to keep them intact.
Here’s a new concept: rogue breeders.
Men who live in the shadows, off the grid, impregnating women and then vanishing without a trace, no way for the courts to find them and extract payment.
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That is not necessary. The very act of men not forming families is sufficient to kill the beast in less than a generation. No amount of alimony and child support can prop it up.
The west is based on leverage from future growth.. kill the potential for future growth and it implodes after a decade or so.
Xamuel,
Won’t work. DNA testing will find these guys quite quickly unless they are willing to flee the country.
Guys with nothing to lose (no official income), that’s another matter.