gdp's Comments

Hooking Up Smart : Why Feminists Want You to Get Herpes

Tue, 27 Apr 2010 18:21:06 +0000

Women HERE, who are made to feel guilty about using contraception because the Catholic Church defines it as a sin. Well, but that is an issue for the Catholic Church to decide - it doesn't have much to do with feminism per se. What I mean is that there are plenty of Christian churches, including very conservative evangelical fundamentalist ones, who do not object to contraceptive use in the context of, say, marriage. The Catholics have their own view, which they are well entitled to have as a matter of religious freedom. Wouldn't the feminist thing to do be, using the independence they have, to opt for another church if one disagrees with the Vatican position on contraception? I know the arguments against doing that, but frankly given the wide diversity of religious communities available in the US, I just don't understand the feminists who are thinking that they are going to use the same methods the feminists did to change the law and culture in the US and be effective in changing the Vatican's mind about contraception. It really is odd to see it listed as a main contemporary feminist issue. If people don't like the Catholic position on contraception and think that the Vatican is wrong, you can either dissent from it and remain in the Church (which is seemingly what most American Catholics seem to do) or find a new religious community. I don't have a dog in that fight (I am not a Catholic), but making the internal dogma of the Catholic Church the subject of feminist agitation is a recipe for epic fail.

Hooking Up Smart : Who Would You Do?

Thu, 22 Apr 2010 20:09:59 +0000

We'll see as the comments develop. The storyline so far, as far as I can tell, is that Obsidian has a long-running feud with the so-called "HBD" blogger community, which he says (rightly I think) tends to harp on the nexus of race and IQ, talking specifically about black disadvantages in that area. Obsidian has pretty consistently countered this by saying that white guys with high IQs are generally laggards in today's sex/mating/dating market, and particularly lag black men, so at the end of the day the "advantage" that the HBD crowd talks about when it discusses IQ is a false one, since the black guys are the ones who are getting laid and reproducing, while, according to Obsidian's theory, the white guys with high IQs are like the horse and buggy -- an anachronism that the dating/mating market is now weeding out of the gene pool. So I take this post as a means to gather data which supports that view. As I say, we'll see what the comments say, especially the comments from Obsidian himself.

Hooking Up Smart : Who Would You Do?

Thu, 22 Apr 2010 15:37:54 +0000

I think the answer to your question over there as to why most of the "comps" are black v white is obvious -- that's the point he's going to be trying to make in his post: black guys are now sexier than white guys, and white guys are in declining favor among women. It's one of his more persistent memes.

Hooking Up Smart : The Backlash Against Hooking Up - Is it Real?

Thu, 22 Apr 2010 15:29:44 +0000

It's not necessarily an implosion scenario. I think that things will change when the pain of the current system becomes high enough such that the incentives on behavior change. I think that tipping point matters much more than the ideology on either side, really. Incentives drive behavior.

Hooking Up Smart : What Women Really Love About Bad Boys

Tue, 20 Apr 2010 20:18:33 +0000

Sweden has a regime like that, with the resulting support payments being based on actual cost rather than lifestyle level support as in the US, because both parents are supporting homes for the kid(s) in any case. I do think that this is a viable approach as well for marriages with children. The main obstacle I see in it is that groups like NOW pretty consistently oppose the idea of default joint custody -- they say because it encourages abusive men to remain involved in the lives of their children and ex-wives (even though every proposal for joint custody has provided exceptions for cases of abuse or other clear unfitness), but in reality I think the reason is because it results in both a loss of control over the process for women, as well as a financial loss. It would be better for children, and better for society (and in an indirect way therefore for women, too), but in a "direct" way it would be a "give" for women in terms of the default setting, which currently has them in control -- hence NOW's opposition to changing the status quo to favor shared parenting arrangements. The politics of family law are really quite troubling, unfortunately. There is a bill currently pending in Tennessee. Let's see where that one goes.

Hooking Up Smart : What Women Really Love About Bad Boys

Tue, 20 Apr 2010 20:05:36 +0000

I'd imagine the groom is under a good deal of pressure to be a guy who is "secure in his masculinity" and "comfortable in his skin" ... which means lump it when it comes to the wording his bride wants. The interesting thing about marriage contracts is that they are quite common in continental European countries, with no real harm done it would seem to divorce rates (lower than in the US). I was chatting with one of my Euro colleagues a few months ago and he explained that due to his recent promotion he'd need to amend his marriage contract. He then smiled at me and said "I know you Americans find it funny, but everyone here has them, and frankly we think you're nuts for not having them". Not the only conversation I've had along those lines with a male European colleague. I suspect that we see them as cynical or self-fulfilling prophecies in the US because we cling to a romantic vision of marriage -- something which is satisfying for us in the shorter term, but which can lead to unrealistic expectations and undermine us in the course of marriage's ups and downs. I do think it at least has something to do with our highish rate of divorce relative to other comparable countries.

Hooking Up Smart : What Women Really Love About Bad Boys

Tue, 20 Apr 2010 16:26:38 +0000

Yeah I think what I have heard at a couple of ceremonies is more along the lines of "for so long as love shall abide between us" or something along those lines. Same basic idea, more flowery language. I think one way to "do" marriage, if we're sure to be stuck with the no-fault regime, would be to allow people to customize the legal/dissolution aspects of their marriages more than they can now, and have courts respect those decisions. That way people who want the "as long as we both feel like it" marriage can have that, and people who want the "till death do us part, barring bad behavior" can have that. Right now we have a one size fits all approach that also happens to be a least common denominator -- and it's having a negative impact, I think, both on expectations as well as on how marriages play themselves out. The Tien article is no more scandalous than the Tsing-Loh article describing how she ditched her kitchen bitch husband and about how her upper-middle class middle aged married girlfriends in Pasadena were all bored with their husbands and envious of their single cougar musician friend who had scads of men in their 20s chasing her for sex. It's a wild world right now, in the institution of marriage.

Hooking Up Smart : What Women Really Love About Bad Boys

Tue, 20 Apr 2010 16:07:50 +0000

The problem is that it permits people to leave marriage on fair or even favorable terms regardless of their behavior in the marriage. That works for both men and women alike, of course, but given that most divorces are initiated by women it appears that women use the benefit of no-fault divorce more than men do. No fault divorce was ostensibly instituted to reduce litigation and relieve people from having to air their dirty laundry in court – save time, money, emotional aggravation and so on. But the problem is that the system as it stands allows people to misbehave in marriage without penalty. That creates very odd incentives for people in terms of how they conduct themselves in marriages. In most contractual relationships, a party who breaches the contract cannot elect to terminate the contract for no reason and exit the contract on equal or better than equal terms – the policy reason for that is that if contract law worked this way, the economic system would be in chaos because no-one could rely on contracts as being binding obligations on people – the kinds of obligations that can only be suspended under limited circumstances, and the breach of which otherwise exposes one to claims for damages. The marriage dissolution system would be more rational and fair, and involve less moral hazard, if we were to limit the grounds for divorce to the big “A”s – adultery, abuse, addiction, abandonment, alienation of affection, etc. These acts by one party should entitle the *other* party to terminate the marriage at their option, and on terms that compensate them for the loss -- that is, favorable property division, in some cases ongoing support and so on. It should not, however, be the case that a spouse simply gets bored, or actually misbehaves (say, an affair) and then gets to terminate the marriage on his/her terms with equal division of assets and even financial support going to the spouse who misbehaved! That creates moral hazard in terms of the lack of a detriment to bad behaviors in marriages. At a minimum I would say that no fault should be reconsidered where children are involved. In many cases involving marriages with children, there will be litigation anyway about the child custody issue due to the huge financially beneficial impact of one parent winning sole custody – so the justification of using no fault to cut down on the hassle of getting divorced is much less applicable to these marriages. In addition, the state has an even stronger interest in having these marriages stay together in terms of positive outcomes for the children, again barring marriages featuring one of the big “A”s which would entitle one to a fault-based divorce in any case.

Hooking Up Smart : Sign Me Up for Male Studies

Fri, 9 Apr 2010 21:39:21 +0000

Of course the feminists, being currently the group that is "in power", is threatened by any serious explanation of inter-sex issues from a perspective that differs from party line feminism. For good reason. They're right to feel uneasy, because people like Tiger, Sommers and Nathanson & Young are quite trenchant in their critiques of the reigning feminist intellectual and media mafia. I find it quite telling that the Newsweek feminist blames boys themselves for their own lagging behind in schools. That's just ... so typical it's priceless. When women have problems, it's the fault of men. When men and boys have problems, it's the fault of men. Women are never to blame for anything, and men are, in turn, to blame for *everything* that happens to *everyone*, whether it involves themselves or anyone else. After all, that teacher who treated Susan's son and daughter differently in school was being controlled by men and the patriarchy. This is why feminism, as a "belief system", is similar to Marxism -- it provides a global explanation for all of the world's ills -- not the "monopolization of the means of production by the bourgeoisie", but rather the "monopolization of structural power by males". It is used to explain all the ills of the world and place them on male shoulders, while women, akin to the socialist notion of the noble proletariat, are pure, snow-white, blameless, perfect and so on. This will develop slowly, and it will be fought tooth and nail by the feminist academic establishment without question. But I think it eventually will come to fruition. Enough people are beginning to realize that when it comes to the hardline academic feminist theory, the emperor really doesn't have any clothes.

Hooking Up Smart : When Female Aggression Turns Deadly

Fri, 2 Apr 2010 13:55:21 +0000

Agreed, hence the importance of social structure. A kind of "free for all" social structure leads to weak male "buy-in" into a self-organizing hierarchy, and much less trust among males. I think that's what the current dating market looks like, really. But you're right that in a closed system the hierarchy forms up almost effortlessly and, interestingly, it permits men at different levels of the hierarchy to collaborate and interact with each other fairly easily. I can remember a recent example of this at work. One of the maintenance guys was going around running temperature checks on the heaters positioned along the windows) and he had to wait for the thermometer to register. So he sat down at my desk and we started chatting about family life and he told me about his son's new business and so on -- it was a pretty interesting 10 minute chat. When the reading was finished, he collected the thermometer and thanked me for the conversation and went on to the next office. We're at two very different points in the hierarchy, and we knew that, and nothing in our conversation *changed* that, but somehow being comfortable with knowing where we each stood in the hierarchy facilitated a fairly easy-going conversation all the same by taking that issue off the table. In most situations, hierarchies work pretty well for males, because they facilitate male cooperation. The problem with the current dating/mating scene is that it is very free-for-all and unstructured, meaning very little cooperation and trust among the males.

Hooking Up Smart : When Female Aggression Turns Deadly

Fri, 2 Apr 2010 13:36:55 +0000

I think what's going on with the sex addiction thing has at least two aspects. The first is that it's a way for someone in a public adultery to save face both for himself and his wife. We live in a therapy culture, and as long as you're getting therapy you kind of have "cover", at least to some extent. The second is that it's a way for the wives to needle the guys, and I suspect that it's going to find its way into non-public adultery as a condition for continuing marriage after affairs more commonly as we move forward -- at least for male affairs --> marriages rarely last female affairs anyway. James is an ass for cavorting around like he did, but at the same time I don't have a whole lot of sympathy for Sandra Bullock. Here you have an upper-middle class, beautiful woman choosing, in her 40s, to marry what is obviously a bad-boy alpha male --> he's a glorified motorcycle mechanic who used to be married to a porn star, for goodness sake. And we're surprised he likes skanks with tattoos? He reeks bad boy alpha male, and I have a strong suspicion that this is precisely what attracted Bullock -- a woman who had her choice of men, and certainly could have picked a much nicer match than James. But that would have been boring. And it wouldn't fit the script of grrlpower taming an alpha bad boy to be her committed, faithful husband. Bullock bought into the fairy tale and it wound up biting her on her ass. I don't have a lot of sympathy for her, even though I think James was a jackass for doing what he did.

Hooking Up Smart : When Female Aggression Turns Deadly

Fri, 2 Apr 2010 13:22:28 +0000

I think it's more that only the most hyper-testosteronic males survive the feminization campaign with their masculinity more or less unscathed, and it's a rather exaggerated, almost cartoonish, masculinity in many cases. In other words, the system tends to make most boys more feminine, other than the ones who are extremely resistant to this -- which creates a small class of hypermasculine boys. It would be surprising to me if this small class of hypermasculine boys was also the socially dominant set, and hence somewhat "attractive" to the teachers and administrators as well, for standing out from the pack of males and being so obviously socially dominant. This is the educational version of the saying "feminism is one big shit test" -- i.e., something intended to separate the masculine boys/men from the also-rans. One extreme way to do that is to subject all males to hyper-feminist indoctrination and see which ones resist it successfully -- the ones who have done so have "passed" the feminist shit test and get rewarded for doing so. It sounds odd to state it that way, and certainly this was not the conscious intent of feminists in putting these educational reforms into place, but it does seem to function that way nonetheless.

Hooking Up Smart : How Obamacare Could Change What Turns Women On

Wed, 31 Mar 2010 02:26:45 +0000

Color me skeptical on this one. I tend to think that attraction is more based on deeply wired inclinations that, of course, play out differently based on circumstances. I don't think they change rapidly, though. For example, a man will always *want* a 10. He can't always get one, so he adjusts. That does not mean he doesn't still *want* the 10 -- he is wired to be attracted to her. But he overrides the wiring by consciously adjusting and calibrating to a more realistic standard. I think women do the same thing. A women with more money feels more empowered, and becomes pickier about a man's physical attractiveness -- because she feels like she has more market power. It's odd, however, because most men generally are not terribly attracted to women for their money or financial prospects, and the ones who are .. well, I think they're kind of along for the ride in a way. So that seems like an explainable mis-calibration, just like the short, fat, bald guy who is financially and successfully professional thinks it entitles him to a hot girl -- not really. The ones who will come along are not worth it generally. But it appears that high earning women are developing the same sense of entitlement to hot partners as high earning men have -- you can only pull that off, earnestly, if you are also hot -- otherwise the folks you will attract, male and female alike, are going to be risky business to say the least. So, an interesting article, but I'm really skeptical of it.

Hooking Up Smart : Only Four Words Stand Between You and the Girl of Your Dreams

Sun, 28 Mar 2010 04:31:50 +0000

Yes, I agree with this. One thing I always advise younger guys is this: find a passion and pursue it. Men *rock* at this, really, once we find something that generates that degree of interest. And I mean other than women, heh. Even if it's WoW or motorbikes or poetry or skiing or whatever. Find something you're passionate about and pursue it. It defines us as men, really.

Hooking Up Smart : Only Four Words Stand Between You and the Girl of Your Dreams

Sun, 28 Mar 2010 04:27:20 +0000

Yes and no. I have never done short-term, never been my interest really. But the guys who do short-term don't care much at all about your interests -- what I mean is that it isn't an attraction vector. Just isn't. Key difference between men and women that we see even well into the 20s and 30s -- career women expecting men to be attracted to their status, which isn't what attracts us, really. For long-term, compatibility is key. I do prefer a woman with her own hobby/passion. My girlfriend, who is finishing up her PhD thesis, has many hobbies and interests -- knitting/sewing; sports (hockey, football, college basketball); cooking; reading. Many of these are compatible with mine (okay, not the knitting part ...), which really drives compatibility and comfort level and, yes, attraction, for me, because I am a LTR type. And I know she cherishes in me my own "mastery" areas that are not shared by her, too. But for me it's about compatibility.

Hooking Up Smart : The Nice Guy Dilemma

Fri, 26 Mar 2010 00:52:32 +0000

Not sure. I think there are women who sometimes pull this off while they are married, too -- sex with the lover, or lovers, on demand, but withholding sex from hubby as a means to exert control, to punish and so on, or providing hubby just enough sex to cover the tracks, but nothing more (and doing sexual things with lover that she would never allow hubby to do). I think that as a mating strategy it's probably not very common, but I'm not sure it's all that hard for some women to pull off, given how much more cued in to nonverbal communication women are than men.

Hooking Up Smart : The Nice Guy Dilemma

Wed, 24 Mar 2010 04:32:54 +0000

It's not really physical dominance (although height helps), but social dominance. The guys I know who are COOs and GCs and investment bankers (or at least who were back in the day before the great collapse we are enduring) were not all physically dominant guys, but were all socially dominant. Not exactly "nurturing". Strong, decisive, convincing, effective -- not soft, nurturing, team-building and so on. They are "alphas" at work. Whether they can parley that into being "alphas" with women depends on whether their social dominance extends beyond work society to sex/mating society -- and that varies a lot. Quite a few of the work alphas I have known have been well-adjusted family guys ... but hardly "beta" in terms of social dominance generally. I think there are quite a few men like this in all walks of life, while there are very, very few men who can get laid virtually on demand (the hallmark of a sexual "alpha" male). The issue isn't that there aren't enough well-adjusted work alphas, it's that there are far too many Dilberts (who really aren't wanted by *any* woman who has options ... and there will be legions more of them in the years ahead) and that young women in particular are regrettably focused on the sexual alphas.

Hooking Up Smart : Divorce American Style

Sat, 20 Mar 2010 13:24:59 +0000

It depends on circumstances very much. A woman who is a single mother and earns relatively less than her ex will probably use more of the CS on the children and children-related expenses. A women who already make a good bit of money, less so. And even less so a woman who makes a good bit of money *and* remarries someone who makes a good bit of money, as in the case above. The more you ratchet the facts in that direction, the more of a windfall it becomes. The basic problem is the insistence of the system on the income tax approach to child support rather than basing it on actual cost. Other government regulated payments and supports are more closely based on cost, but this one uses the alimony standard, which makes it very attractive for the custodial spouse to "game" the system -- the custodial parent directly benefits from that in pretty much exactly the same way she would if she were being paid alimony, only here she can remarry and continue to get the same benefit (whereas alimony ends upon remarriage). It's a broken system, but we're still in the early days of people even realizing that it's broken. Most people don't really know that much about how child support works and is calculated and so on, and just assume that it's based on the cost of raising children -- most don't know that the standard is pretty much the same as alimony.

Hooking Up Smart : Divorce American Style

Sat, 20 Mar 2010 13:19:29 +0000

Yeah with that person it's more the case that she deliberately blocks access to the kids so that it doesn't impact support. This is a woman whose former nanny contacted the ex-husband because she was so upset at how mom and new husband ignore the boys and spend the money and so on. It's a bad case all around.

Hooking Up Smart : Divorce American Style

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 16:31:43 +0000

I agree re: accountability. It's a broken system currently because it lacks that. I know a woman, divorced and remarried. She is a lawyer, her ex-h is a Doc and Hubby 2 is a partner at a large law firm. No lack of funds anywhere, yet she still pockets ~2600 in CS every month. It gets used on trips to the Caribbean and such while the two boys stay with relatives and so on (and definitely not with Dad, because if the kids stay with Dad too much that could reduce her CS amount). My ex used to be friends with this woman, but upon seeing her antics, she simply got disgusted with her and distanced herself from her. No accountability, though. Her ex-h has been in court about this and the court simply told him he has no right to question how she spends the money, because that is in her discretion as the custodial parent. Luckily my ex isn't like that and I know how she spends my CS payments pretty much.