Sex and The Pareto Principle

• September 14, 2010
309 Comments

Do 20% of the men get 80% of the women? I’ve come across this claim repeatedly, though the application of the 80/20 rule varies. Sometimes it’s stated that 20% of the men get 80% of the sex, which is actually a very different claim.

I felt the need to understand exactly what the data says, if anything, in support of the Pareto Principle as it applies to the distributution of sex. Are we talking about 80% of all women? Sexually active women? Women in their 20s, when they are at their peak of fertility and beauty? Or, as in Hollenhund’s version, is it just a question of the frequency of sex, even with one partner? In that case, how to incorporate the male preference for sexual variety?

Are 20% of the guys getting all the nookie?

The Origin of the Claim

I. The Pareto Principle

The Pareto Principle (also known as the 80/20 Rule) states that, for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. Business management thinker Joseph M. Juran suggested the principle and named it after Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto, who observed in 1906 that 80% of the land in Italy was owned by 20% of the population; he developed the principle by observing that 20% of the pea pods in his garden contained 80% of the peas. It is a common rule of thumb in business; e.g., “80% of your sales come from 20% of your clients.” The Pareto Principle is an observation, not a law of nature, but it holds roughly true in many areas of life.

II. The Fallout of the Sexual Revolution

The anonymous essay There is No Longer Someone for Everyone lays out succinctly why the 80/20 Rule applies to the sexual marketplace. It is this explanation that I found so intuitively obvious when I first encountered it. Excerpted from the essay:

The Attractiveness Hierarchy

In the monogamous marriage system of the past, the majority of men and women found mates and got married. In that system, singles knew roughly where they were ranked in overall attractiveness and married a mate of roughly equal rank as soon as they could, usually by their early 20’s.

In today’s society, birth control [means that women] can have sex without marriage, engaging in temporary physical relationships…while they wait and hope for Mr. Right. Men have a greater evolved desire for unfettered sex, and generally prefer more sex partners rather than a commitment to marriage and raising children. Because women are willing to have premarital sex, the attractive men who have ready access to many new sex partners have little incentive to pursue marriage at all. They generally prefer to circulate among women rather than settle down.

Circulating around the Pool

The promiscuous system allows very attractive men to avoid commitment and be continually available for sex. Because these men can have more sex, women have sexual access to more attractive men than they would have been able to attract as marriage partners under the monogamous system. For most men, [this] means that the [most] desirable men…can monopolize many of the women. By having many relationships, many sex partners and even multiple wives in serially monogamous fashion, the most attractive men can consume the prime reproductive years of multiple women…When some men consume more than their share of women, there will necessarily be other men, lower on the attractiveness hierarchy, who will have no suitable women available for marriage at all. This also means that all of the men who are not at the top of the hierarchy must lower their standards.

Women who are accustomed to having sex with highly attractive men don’t want to “settle” and marry the kind of less sexy man that would be willing to marry. Men don’t want to to be settled for, either. This means that both men and women remain circulating in the dating pool for long periods without settling into marriage…As promiscuity increases, marriage declines and fewer singles can find lifelong partners.

It’s a rather grim tale, and one that I continue to find compelling. It works from an economics standpoint. What is not clear is how severe this disequilibrium is. Even a slight imbalance – say 45% of the men getting 55% of the women, would wreak havoc in the SMP, explaining great frustration on the part of many men. And what of the frustration of women? If the 80/20 Rule holds up, then the vast majority of women can be assumed to be getting what they want – short-term sexual liaisons when they’re at their physical peak. However, it also means that they’re acting against their own best interests if marriage is their long-term goal. If the Pareto Principle doesn’t apply here, then we’re talking about a very different distribution of sex, one in which a much smaller group of promiscuous women is having sex with a roughly equivalent sized pool of promiscuous men.

Furthermore, if we define the 80/20 Rule to mean that 20% of the men are getting 80% of the intercourse, we may be describing the sexual advantage inherent in committed sexual relationships, rather than a string of casual hookups, each one of which requires some investment of time and energy, even for the most attractive men.

Surprisingly, I cannot find a single study addressing this question. However, there is data available, most notably from the CDC:

The Data

CDC (2007)

1. Partners in the Last Year

012+3+*
%M (20-59)15.467.916.710.4
%F17.772.310.06.8

* (age 15-44)

2. Lifetime Sexual Partners

0-12-67-1415+Median
% All Males16.633.820.728.96.8
% All Females25.044.421.29.43.7

3.  Partners in the Last Year by Age


012 or more
20-29 M15.753.231.1
20-29 F15.166.019.0
30-39 M15.669.614.8
30-39 F9.479.611.0

4. Lifetime Sexual Partners by Race

0-12-67-1415+Median
Mexican American M23.838.218.119.94.7
Mexican American F45.141.58.74.71.7
Non-Hispanic White M16.634.821.327.46.2
Non-Hispanic White F24.244.122.19.63.7
Non-Hispanic Black M6.422.225.246.212.5
Non-Hispanic Black F13.047.227.312.55.0

5. Age First Had Sex

Ever15-1718-2021+
% F96413016
%M96412713


6. Total Number of Sex Partners ABC News Poll (2004)

“Overall, women report an average of six sex partners in their lifetimes; men, 20. But a better gauge of sexual activity for most people is the median, the midpoint between the high and low: Women report a median of three sex partners; men, a median of eight.

The averages are higher because a small number of individuals — especially men — report a very large number of partners. Five percent of the men in this sample reported having had 99 or more sex partners, including four who reported 200, three who reported 300 and one who reported 400. Among women, one percent reported 99 or more partners; the high was 100 (reported by two women).”


Median
All5
Men8
Women3

7. Married Sex vs. Single Sex (ABC Poll)

“Older singles (age 30 and up) are much less likely to be involved in a sexual relationship (29 percent) and much less satisfied with their sex lives.”

Married < 3 yrs.Married > 10 yrs.
% Have sex at least several times a week7232
% Sex life very exciting5829
% Enjoy sex a great deal8770

8. Frequency of Sex During Previous Year (ABC Poll)

NeverFew Times Past YearFew Times Past Month2-3 Xs/week4+ Xs/week
% Unmarried M232526197
% Unmarried F322324155
% Married M11343367
% Married F31247324

What Can We Conclude From the Data?

1. 90% of women have 0-1 partners within a given year, compared to 83% of men. Defining promiscuous as 3+ partners per year, only 10% of men and 7% of women aged 15-44 fit the criterion. (1)

2. About half of all men will have 7+ sexual partners in their lifetime, compared with less than a third of women. (2)

3. In a Pareto Principle distribution, the male median for lifetimes sexual partners should be lower than the female median. In this case the reverse is true. (2)

Female: Negative Skew

4. About 29% of men will have 15+ partners in their lifetime, compared with about 9% of women. This is a considerably higher number than the 80/20 rule would suggest, assuming that one defines men with 15+ partners as sexually successful. (2)

5. Nearly a third of men in their 20s have 2+ partners a year, compared with half that for men in their 30s, most likely reflecting a shift in marital status. The same pattern is true for women, dropping from 19% to 11% in the same age period. Proportionally, women curtail the number of partners more than men do from their 20s to 30s, probably reflecting the younger average age at marriage for women. (3)

6. Only 16% of men in their 20s have gone without sex in the last year, and that number stays steady in the 30s. This belies the notion that a large majority of males has zero access to sex. Conversely, only 19% of women in their 20s have had more than one partner in the last year, and two thirds had one partner. This belies the notion that the majority of women are “riding the cock carousel” while in their prime. (3)

7. Race is a strong predictor of the number of sexual partners. Breaking down stats by race tells a very different story than the composite by sex alone. (4)

Note: It is unclear whether the forces are cultural, religious, or based on the marriage rate. Comparing three economic strata (poverty level, 1-2 x’s poverty level and 2+ x’s poverty level) did not materially affect results.

  • Mexican American women are significantly more chaste than other women, with a full 45% claiming 0-1 partners, compared to 24% of white women and 13% of black women.
  • The intraracial median ratio is .36 for Mexican Americans, .60 for whites, and .40 for blacks. This suggests that white women are the most promiscuous relative to their same-race counterparts, though they have fewer overall sexual partners than black women do.
  • The median number of sexual partners for black males is double that for white males, and 2.7 times greater than for Mexican American males.
  • The median for black females is 1.4 that of white females, and 2.9 times the rate of Mexican American females.

8. The average age of the loss of virginity is very similar for both men and women, with women skewing slightly older. The number of lifetime virgins is the same for both sexes: 4%. (5)

9. The mean and median number of sex partners for men are more than triple the number for women. (6)

10. Marrieds have far more sex than singles. Only 29% of unmarried people over 30 are involved in a sexual relationship. A third of married men have sex 2-3 times per week, compared to a fifth of unmarried men. Only 7% of men have sex four or more times per week, whether married or unmarried. Not surprisingly, 87% of people married less than three years enjoy sex a great deal, compared with 70% who feel the same way after 10 years of marriage. (6,7)

11. A third of unmarried women have not had sex in the past year, compared with less about a quarter of the men. About 20% of single women have sex two or more times per week. (7)

 

What are the limitations of the Data?

1. Interpretation of the data will depend on how you define sexual success for males. However, we may say that even if 14 partners in a lifetime represents abject failure in the sexual marketplace, 29% are successful in surpassing that number. Obviously, the definition of success will vary by age, sex drive, moral values and personality.

For example, in a recent post, Roissy claimed that 10% of men aged 15-44 having had three or more partners in the last year was evidence 90% of women are eagerly riding the cock carousel in a frenzy of unrestrained hypergamy. Commenter MQ questioned Roissy’s interpretation of the data, suggesting that if anything it proved the reverse, especially in light of the fact that less than 7% of women had that many partners.

Roissy’s reponse:

Nice strawman, gaywad. Maybe in your beta world, action means monogamous pairings, but in normal man world, action means having sexual access to lots of  babes.

2. The data is factual, but should be considered in context relative to the history of the SMP. From the NYXs Tierney Lab blog, Roy Baumeister, evo psych god, in 2007:

While it’s true that about half of all the people who ever lived were men, the typical male was much more likely than the typical woman to die without reproducing. Citing recent DNA research, Dr. Baumeister explained that today’s human population is descended from twice as many women as men. Maybe 80 percent of women reproduced, whereas only 40 percent of men did.

This suggests that the number of men practicing involuntary abstinence will never drop to zero. It may even be true that more men have greater access to sex today than they did in previous eras.

3. There is no consistent definition of sex (Kinsey):

There is wide variability in what people consider included in “having sex”. In a recent study at The Kinsey Institute, nearly 45% of participants considered performing manual-genital stimulation to be “having sex,” 71% considered performing oral sex to be “sex,” 80.8% for anal-genital intercourse. Considerations of “sex” also varied depending on whether or not a condom was used, female or male orgasm, and if the respondent was performing or receiving the stimulation.

With participants ranging from 18 to 96 years, the oldest and youngest groups of men were less likely to consider some behaviors as “sex”.

4. People lie when they answer questions about their sex lives. This is true for all studies pertaining to sex, whether anonymous or not. It taints the data, but its effect is impossible to gauge exactly.

5. The data does not speak to motivation or intent for either sex. One commenter at Roissy’s suggested that the numbers represent sexual access for men, and sexual willingness for women. That is, the system of rewards and punishments is different for each sex, creating different incentives, which are not addressed in the data.

6. There is little evidence quantifying the sexual behaviors of college students as a discrete population. One 2001 study found that 39% of women enter college as virgins, and a third of those (13% total) graduate as virgins. A study by Kathleen Bogle, author of Hooking Up: Sex, Dating, and Relationships on Campus, found that the number of sexual partners per year for male students dropped from 2.1 in 2000 to 1.6 in 2006, though the cause was not determined.

Summary

I. The numbers do not support the claim that most women have casual sex with impunity through their 20s, then seek a sexually inexperienced male to settle down with. Rather, the data supports the idea that the numbers of promiscuous men and women are similar, though there are more promiscuous men than women. Most likely, this population is sexually active with one another. For the vast majority of Americans who do not have a high number of partners either lifetime, or within the last year, the numbers are also similar, though again, men are more promiscuous.

II. The data does not refute or confirm the concept of female hypergamy, which is the desire of the female to pair with a male of equal or higher status than herself. Within the ranks of promiscuous males and females we may still conclude based on anecdotal observation that some women are more willing to have sex with the attractive men they would otherwise not have access to as a way of increasing their social status. However, that number is a minority, though perhaps higher than the 6.8% for all women aged 20-29 who had 3+ partners in the last year.

III. A relatively small number of promiscuous men is having sex with a relatively small number of promiscuous women.

*Methodology:

52 million unmarried American males (45%), 63.5 million married American males (55%)

Weighted formula using Table 7, Frequency of Sex During Previous Year

  • Never = 0 acts of intercourse
  • Few times past year = 6 acts
  • Few times past month = 72 acts/year
  • 2-3 times per week = 120 acts/year
  • r4+ times per week = 208 acts/year

Result: 2,994,160,000 acts unmarried intercourse per year in U.S. (35%) 5,683,250,000 acts married intercourse per year in U.S. (65%)

The demonstrated applications of the Pareto Principle to the sexual marketplace suggest that marriage is the most effective way of getting regular access to frequent sex. It also confirms that the vast majority of American women and men are conservative in their sexual habits.

The population is effectively divided into two groups:

  • A promiscuous minority of both men and women.

  • A majority of both men and women having sex with a small number of people during their lifetimes.

 

Whether you consider this good or bad news depends on your sex and your appeal to its opposite.

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  • Joe

    Interesting data, Susan, and well presented. Thanks.

    The data will take time to digest, however, and there are also observational selection effects that are going to affect anyone’s subjective experience. (Yeah, I’m a relatively successful 56 yr. old, happily married grandfather. It’s an odd fact that I’ve probably never been more attractive in my life to the opposite sex at precisely the moment I have the least interest in forming another relationship. Quite a change from my college days.) It’ll be hard to not think that “more and more women are having sex with fewer and fewer guys” when a lifetime of experience says different.

    The data may be saying just that, though.

    • @Joe
      Welcome, and thanks for leaving a comment! I’m not suggesting that your observations are invalid, obviously. This data presents the big picture, but certainly there is room for considerable variation in micro-settings. I appreciate your open-mindedness in any case – personally, I suspect that the squeaky wheel gets all the attention. That is, the promiscuous men and women are loud and aggressive in their behavior. The media finds this kind of character endlessly fascinating (see Jersey shore or Sex and the City) and before long we’re all thinking that we’re the only ones who weren’t invited to the party. What the data says is what researchers have been finding for a while – we tend to grossly overestimate how much sex other people are having.

  • Interesting to see a numbers break down about it. i also think it is a very valid point in saying that certain behaviours will sometimes be considered sex by some people, but not by others.

  • “The population is effectively divided into two groups:
    A promiscuous minority of both men and women.
    A majority of both men and women having sex with a small number of people during their lifetimes.”

    Finally someone gets it. Thank you.

    • @Athol
      Very relieved to hear you say this. I’m aware that the 80/20 rule is sacrosanct in some Game circles, and I was sort of afraid that some might want to shoot the messenger.

  • Brendan

    A key little fact, though, is who the partners are.

    In other words, even though women have lower mean and median partners than men do, it would have to be the case, wouldn’t it, that the really high outlier men (the guys with 100-200+ partners) are accounting for sex partners not only with the most promiscuous women (too small of a pool to rack up those numbers), but are also having sex with women who are less promiscuous but will, once or twice in their lives, have sex with one of those supercads? In other words, your average woman may have 4 sex partners, but one or maybe even two of them in some cases may very well be the guys who are screwing up the mean among the men. So, there could very well be the same issue raised which is that the supercads have sexual access to a wide swath of women, whether the women they are sexing are actually promiscuous *overall* or not.

    I do wonder about the median for men (8). Very high, in my personal experience. I’m wondering about self-reporting biases here — which tend to lead to under-reporting for women and over-reporting for men (I would think). I wonder if the real numbers would be higher/lower if we fitted people with cameras for 5 years. I’d wonder how that breaks down by socio-economic or region (town/city/megacity). I wouldn’t be surprised if there are some major differences there based on specific demographic.

    In all, however, this information doesn’t surprise me much. It isn’t surprising that married men have more sex on average, but that isn’t quite the kind of sex being discussed in the SMP discussions (because you’re already married).

    • @Brendan

      it would have to be the case, wouldn’t it, that the really high outlier men (the guys with 100-200+ partners) are accounting for sex partners not only with the most promiscuous women (too small of a pool to rack up those numbers), but are also having sex with women who are less promiscuous but will, once or twice in their lives, have sex with one of those supercads?

      Actually, I’m almost certain that this is true, based on anecdotal evidence I hear. Also, studies that show many women try hooking up as freshmen, but far fewer are still hooking up by junior year. When you add an inconsistent definition of sex, it’s very likely that some women have had sexual encounters with cads, been burned by the experience, and become more discriminating.

      However, I don’t think this is necessary to explain the data. Take a Duke basketball player, for example. He has regular access to groupies for sex. The number of groupies is small as a percentage of female students, but large enough to make the rounds among the best players. In addition, each freshman class brings in a new crop during a player’s four years. If he is fortunate enough to go into the NBA, the same dynamic continues indefinitely. I suspect that Wilt Chamberlain didn’t deflower many virgins – rather, he moved around to find the promiscuous groupies in each and every location. Even a regular cad could make use of the same strategy – 3+ partners per year in college is nothing. Then graduate and hit the bar scene hard, where his natural alpha demeanor will draw the most promiscuous women right to his side with little effort on his part. In this way, a cad could rack up great numbers in a metropolitan area without ever going outside the small percentage of promiscuous women.

  • Obsidian

    Ms. Walsh,
    As per usual, interesting stuff!

    I think what’s stand out and interesting to me, is the simple fact that what *isn’t* a heck of a lot of ink, is the growing cohort of *Single Men* out there. There’s a kind of “meta-assumption” out there in the culture, that Men who are singletons *want to be*; we simply nevr consider any other reason(s). Since you tend to discuss Hollywood quite a bit, I know you’re aware of “Single Ladies” type films like Sex & The City, or Bridget Jones Diary, etc et al, but it’s hard to come up with any Male equivalents that don’t treat the subject/topic like a buffoon or a loser. Perhaps there are good reasons why we have such a view of such Men, but I do think your piece here gives us all pause to consider a growing phenomenon on the social landscape.

    Holla back

    O.

    • @Obsidian

      the growing cohort of *Single Men* out there. There’s a kind of “meta-assumption” out there in the culture, that Men who are singletons *want to be*; we simply nevr consider any other reason(s).

      I assume that you are speaking here about men who would like to get married but are unable to attract a mate? With the marriage rate declining, it’s difficult to say who is opting out and who is being left out. As Baumeister pointed out, historically as many as 60% were left out. The number of men being left out today may be significant, but I’m not sure if that cohort is growing. The data would suggest that it’s much smaller than 60%. Obviously, it’s still a problem for those men who have no options, but the data supports the idea that most men and women settle into monogamous pairings.

  • ExNewYorker

    “The demonstrated applications of the Pareto Principle to the sexual marketplace suggest that marriage is the most effective way of getting regular access to frequent sex.”
    .
    This is an interesting point, but one very important thing to note in this and age is the “costs” of marriage, and by that I mean, more specifically, the costs of the dissolution of a marriage. It’s all nice and fun to have regular access to frequent sex, but that assumes the marriage is a stable working one, as we can imagine one that ends in the courts may negate all the past regular access to frequent sex. It also makes it very very important to make sure that marriage partner is the right one.
    .
    Which scarily brings up Athol’s latest posting (The Big Bad Wolf). If those stats are reflective of reality, it underscores that playing in the SMP may be like day-trading internet stocks back in the age…not a lot of winners. I’m not sure how to combine those results with what Susan has posted. Maybe Susan can follow up in the future… 🙂

    • @ExNewYorker

      It’s all nice and fun to have regular access to frequent sex, but that assumes the marriage is a stable working one, as we can imagine one that ends in the courts may negate all the past regular access to frequent sex. It also makes it very very important to make sure that marriage partner is the right one.

      .
      Good point. The data suggests a strategy for maximizing the number of acts of intercourse in a man’s year. However, individual experiences are going to vary considerably! As you say, a careful cost-benefit analysis should be undertaken, with the potential costs of 2.0 marriage providing significant disincentives. Game gets some guys into the promiscuous minority who can have sex without commitment. However, the data also suggests that it grants access primarily to promiscuous women.
      .
      The application of Game concepts as employed by yourself, Athol, Dalrock and others is so promising, in my view, because it has the potential to connect less promiscuous men and women. I’ve always suspected that there’s a large pool of frustrated women who are not in fact seeking cads (though they may appreciate some cad qualities, such as dominance). The data appears to confirm this – now the question really becomes one of finding a strategy in this SMP that benefits that majority.

  • Höllenhund

    Thanks for the article and the citation, Ms. Walsh. It was time someone carefully analyzed the 80/20 rule.

    • @Hollenhund

      Thanks for the article and the citation, Ms. Walsh. It was time someone carefully analyzed the 80/20 rule.

      Well, I’ve owed you this one for a while. In the end, it took me quite a few hours of research and two days to write – which is why I procrastinated for so long! It was a satisfying exercise, though – I feel much more comfortable discussing this concept now that I have a handle on it.

  • Höllenhund

    ENY,

    I guess the cited sentence mostly refers to Marriage 1.0.

  • ExNewYorker

    @Höllenhund : “ENY, I guess the cited sentence mostly refers to Marriage 1.0”
    .
    Are there any of those anymore? 🙂
    .
    @Brendan,
    You raise some interesting points. I wonder what the distribution looks like for men and women (separately). It wouldn’t be surprising to see a distribution suggesting “supercads”, with relatively low count women having one or two such cads in their past. But, if the stats Athol talked about are really true, even one or two of such encounters could be problematic for guys looking for access to regular sex via marriage.

  • Höllenhund

    “Are there any of those anymore?”

    Obviously not.

  • m.m

    Scary. But since when do we allow data to determine our actions?

    I wonder how much conservatism is derived from people having conservative beliefs, and how much is derived from lack of ability to score.

    • @m.m
      Welcome. I had to laugh at this – why do you find the post scary? Is it because it suggests a smaller percentage of promiscuous women than you’d hoped for?

  • escarondito

    LOTS of info here. A lot to think about and hit back on. But you know what made me chuckle ya’ll. Even with the slight distortion whenever people talk about sex, all the HBD-ers, Roissy’s and MRA components who whine about going ghost and hate on black folk. They need to hush up about not being able to get women and be mentored by a black guy, cause we GET IT IN!!!

    OK. Now that that’s out I’ll come back with intelligent convo after I eat.

    • They need to hush up about not being able to get women and be mentored by a black guy, cause we GET IT IN!!!

      Dude, seriously. That number – 46.5% of black men going over 15 partners? That blew me away. The numbers don’t lie – and the aggregate most definitely does not tell the story.

  • Mike

    Aarggghhh…the blog ate my lengthy comment.

    Short version. Brendan has it nailed. My personal life experience (both myself and some buddies I used to hang with in my 20s, one a very good looking model) supports the notion that there is a pretty good segment of women, not highly promiscuous, who probably have casual sex/one-night stands with alphas with significantly higher SMVs. After they get burned 2 or 3 times (no relationship or in many cases not even a follow-up date or phone call) they probably don’t go down that road anymore and switch exclusively to relationship sex with guys in their league.

    • After they get burned 2 or 3 times (no relationship or in many cases not even a follow-up date or phone call) they probably don’t go down that road anymore and switch exclusively to relationship sex with guys in their league.

      This pattern is obviously not ideal, but it beats women disappearing into the black hole of being repeatedly pumped and dumped. As long as the “boyfriend” can tolerate an indiscretion or two (assuming he knows about them), this can have a good long-term result.

  • PJL

    Great post, Susan.

    @Brendan,

    The data allow for absolutely no valid inference about who is having sex with whom. Your conclusion may be “intuitive” to you but “intuitive” often just means “things I thought before thinking.” A man could easily have sex with 400 sluts in a lifetime. Or, you could be right. Point is, any speculation is moot.

  • Brendan

    @Brendan,
    The data allow for absolutely no valid inference about who is having sex with whom. Your conclusion may be “intuitive” to you but “intuitive” often just means “things I thought before thinking.” A man could easily have sex with 400 sluts in a lifetime. Or, you could be right. Point is, any speculation is moot.

    Yes, but the data doesn’t answer that question, and the question is not irrelevant. That’s my point. Whether it explodes the “alpha cads are getting sex with most women” meme is not proven nor unproven by the data. My point.

    • Whether it explodes the “alpha cads are getting sex with most women” meme is not proven nor unproven by the data.

      .
      Even if a significant percentage of women had sex once or twice with cads, that would still not support the claim that 80% of women have sex with 20% of men. I just don’t see how the numbers could allow for that scenario, at least in the data provided here. Of course, your earlier point about inaccurate self-reporting is valid. The question is, do people fudge their numbers a bit, or dramatically? I don’t think anyone knows, but in the absence of better data, we’re left to work with this information.

  • nothingbutthetruth

    Vicent Ignatius, please find that paper. A power law implies a Pareto distribution so if it is like you say, this settles the issue.

  • J

    Roissy’s reponse: Nice strawman, gaywad. Maybe in your beta world, action means monogamous pairings, but in normal man world, action means having sexual access to lots of babes.

    Roissy IS the master of the ad hominem response.

  • J

    It’s an odd fact that I’ve probably never been more attractive in my life to the opposite sex at precisely the moment I have the least interest in forming another relationship.

    It’s odd, isn’t it? I’m a bit younger than Joe and 20 years ago I would have assumed that at my current point in life no one but my husband would be attracted me. That’s been far from the case. In fact, my being married seems to make me more attractive to men.

  • J

    Athol: “The population is effectively divided into two groups:
    A promiscuous minority of both men and women.
    A majority of both men and women having sex with a small number of people during their lifetimes.”

    Finally someone gets it. Thank you.

    J: Ditto. I’ve always found the 80-20 rule really hard to believe in this context.

  • Vincent Ignatius

    There was an article published in Science that showed number of sexual partners followed a power law distribution (characteristic of the Pareto principle) in Sweden. If you really want the reference, I can probably dig it up and send it to you.

    It would be interesting to compare the 80% of women with few partners to the 80% of men with few partners. I intuit that the men would divide into two groups,betas and very young men, while the women would consist of three groups, the young, the sexually undesirable, and the desirable chaste girls.

    • There was an article published in Science that showed number of sexual partners followed a power law distribution (characteristic of the Pareto principle) in Sweden. If you really want the reference, I can probably dig it up and send it to you.

      I’ve heard something similar about Norway, actually. My guess is that the Scandinavian countries exhibit a much higher degree of promiscuous behavior in general, by both men and women. It may be that Americans might behave differently with a different set of cultural influences. I imagine that men like yourself looking for chaste foreign wives would do well do avoid Scandinavia.

      I intuit that the men would divide into two groups,betas and very young men, while the women would consist of three groups, the young, the sexually undesirable, and the desirable chaste girls.

      .
      I don’t think the data supports the claim that this is age dependent, except that the men in their 20s had the highest percentage (31) of 2 or more partners in the last year. For women, there’s a slightly older mean for loss of virginity, but data for women in their 20s is the same as for the guys – only around 15% had zero partners within the last year.
      .
      If you define alphas as guys getting a lot of sex, then it’s a tautology to say that betas are the guys who are not getting a lot of sex.
      .
      Finally, there are clearly some sexually undesirable people of both sexes – and all things being equal, the woman will have an easier time getting laid, for obvious reasons.

  • J

    @Mike and Bendan,

    My experience in listening to women’s tales of woe tells me that most non-promiscuous women have at one time or another fallen for a cad or two, learned a painful lesson and moved on to more stable guys.

    @Susan

    The numbers do not support the popular “cock carousel” meme, which says that most women ride the carousel with impunity through their 20s, then seek a sexually inexperienced male, i.e. chump, to settle down with.

    Thank you, Susan, for restoring my faith in my own sanity and perception of the world. I have heard the carousel meme in the manosphere so much that, even though I had never seen it IRL, I was beginning to believe it. I even tried to check it out with college students of my acquaintance and their parents. While everyone acknowledged the existence of the hook-up culture and that sexual mores had indeed changed since my college years, the dire situation portrayed in these blogs was not a part of the experiences of anyone I spoke with.

  • clarence

    This has been discussed before.

    The fact is the male and female medians should be the same if there is perfectly equal assortive mating.

    Since they aren’t, someone is lying. My experience with reading tales of false rape accusers tells me its probably women. Take the Hoftstra woman, for example. She wanted to avoid telling her boyfriend she cheated on him so she made up a tale of rape that was only disproved because one of the men had a video camera.

    Until such studies take into account females propensity to under-report, I will continue to view them with extreme skepticism. I also believe that the 80/20 principle applies more to big cities and college campuses anyway, so since these studies don’t really address local or social enviroment they don’t tell us very much. Susan, you’ve been doing this long enough, I expected better from you.

    • @Clarence

      Susan, you’ve been doing this long enough, I expected better from you.

      Ha! I just saw this. Gimme a break. I’d say I put about 20 hours into this post. I did my best, and if it doesn’t measure up to your standards, Clarence, well…
      I don’t have a political agenda. I tell it like I see it. I never claimed “perfect equal assortive mating.” I certainly don’t think we have that in the SMP. I looked at the data, and I felt that it didn’t support some of the claims I’ve heard. As for college campuses, there’s a lot of data on sexuality there, which mirrors the CDC stats. You can certainly refuse to consider it, but personally I found it worth looking at, on the grounds that it’s better than either total ignorance or claims with zero data to support them.

  • Demonspawn

    I do wonder about the median for men (8). Very high, in my personal experience. I’m wondering about self-reporting biases here — which tend to lead to under-reporting for women and over-reporting for men (I would think). I wonder if the real numbers would be higher/lower if we fitted people with cameras for 5 years.

    The numbers would be wildly different.

    Never trust a sex survey. Everyone lies on them. If you want data which can’t be faked, go pull up VD infection studies.

    One of the more interesting ones was the recent NY study which found that 25% of New Yorkers had herpes, up from the national average of 20%.

    But then break down the rates via gender (and/or race):
    A majority of women have herpes in NY, a minority of men do. White men were down around 15%, black women were up at 80% infection rates. Now I understand that it is less likely to pass herpes from woman to man, but on the other hand it’s impossible to catch herpes from men who don’t have it.

    A majority of women sleep with a minority of men, as proven by VD infection rates. All the above studies show is that women drastically under-report sex and men slightly over-report it.

  • VJ

    Some random thoughts here.

    1.) All of this depends heavily upon ‘self reporting’, and what the respondents think the ‘natural expectations’ are of the interviewers and/or the survey officials or uses put to the information. Hence differences between the ABC (media) generated survey & the CDC ones. So as always, women here & elsewhere (especially in Mexican culture) are expected to be more ‘chaste’ than their male counterparts. Still much of these ‘statistics’ are also belied by the large disparity in our Teenage Pregnancy Rates which are & still remain the highest in the industrialized world. One thing about self reporting, it can not weed out all the ‘normative lies’ we tell one & another. Teenage pregnancy is something we might follow a bit better, and that’s yet another area where we’ve got young nubile gals getting pregnant by often much older males at rates that continue to be far in excess of any of our European counterparts. So the trick is to try and reconcile these differing sets of data: [To use a brief obvious quick example: http://www.guttmacher.org/datacenter/profiles/US.jsp%5D

    It’s my guess that many of the numbers are biased downwards in some instances for women, and perhaps a bit upwards for some men. (400 Partners dude? Really? Did they all sign the guest book/FB profile page??) For women, the severe negative skew really does not make a whole lot of sense rationally. About half (or just under) of all marriages fail, right? How many partners might it take for the average female to try and ‘replace’ hubby 1 with ver. 2, or 3? (Or LTR equivalent?) At the moment, my eyeball estimation of that says about 1 but certainly less than 2! Does that ‘jibe’ with anyone else experience here? No not really. And we might not rationally expect that of oh say a 30 something divorcee out on the town looking for ‘new experiences’ & to explore her new found freedoms. And many folks get divorced multiple times too. And it takes no time or additional partners at all to ‘replace’ your former ‘whomever’. Yeah. Not exactly ‘pretty lies’, but comforting ones nevertheless.

    But reliable hard data are very hard to find & assess.

    2.) If this is true: “The demonstrated applications of the Pareto Principle to the sexual marketplace suggest that marriage is the most effective way of getting regular access to frequent sex. It also confirms that the vast majority of American women and men are conservative in their sexual habits”? Boy oh boy are you/we/us screwed! Because after 10 years? Only about 1/3 are getting regular sex or ‘very happy/satisfied’ about their sex lives! And here’s the darker secret here. On the marrieds? The skew is actually more biased to the far left. They’re many ‘sexless’ or nearly so marriages. There’s stats on that too. It’s thought to be about as high as 25% (for all causes & reasons). For their definitions? The Clinicians treating impotence or sexual dysfunction that is? They define ‘sexless’ as more or less fewer than 4-5 ‘events’ at intercourse a year. So the infamous once a quarter plan, might not really count here. That would tend to throw off those stats too.

    So overall? On average, Marrieds are getting most of the sex. Certainly most of the ‘regular’ partnered sex too. Most of that’s happening in the 1st 10 years. Likely before the kids too. So really? A few years before & after. And commonly then a longish drought like condition for child rearing issues & time constraints due to job pressures. Then if you survive, semi-retirement (or near it) when the kids are finally gone and things might ‘start up again’. And no really, that’s the optimistic scenario too. Sure even ‘occasional’ or ‘infrequent’ sex during the child rearing desert crossing is likely better than the average single male chump is likely to secure on a regular basis. And that’s where the wonders of ‘compound interest’ pile up the returns here.

    But thanks for the thoughtful presentation of the stats here Susan. Very helpful for discussion. It’s not as bad as imagined. Sometimes it can always be worse! Cheers, ‘VJ’

  • VJ

    More random finds. The ‘hottest college Profs’ via The Daily Beast. Here:
    http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-09-12/hottest-college-professors/?cid=hp:beastoriginalsR6

    And like Obs was saying, the college educated must have weird tastes. Only 20% of these are truly ‘hot’ too! Cheers, ‘VJ’

  • Höllenhund

    Demonspawn,

    “Never trust a sex survey. Everyone lies on them. If you want data which can’t be faked, go pull up VD infection studies.”

    I’m glad someone pointed this out. Ms. Walsh said that women are more susceptible to contracting VDs for biological reasons. This partially explains the different infection rates but it would be nice to know to what extent.

    • @Hollenhund @Demonspawn

      That is a valid point about STD infection rates. It’s very difficult to get to the bottom of that data for the following reasons:
      1. Female genital tissue is far more prone to microscopic tears than the penis is, so the likelihood of infection is considerably higher for women. Anal tissue is often traumatized during anal sex, which is why gay men contracted AIDS so easily.
      2. Men are often silent carriers for several STDs. Herpes is a prime example. Men are more likely than women to carry the virus without ever getting a sore. Not infrequently, a woman will contract herpes from a partner who accuses her of cheating because he “doesn’t have it.” In reality, only a blood test can detect the presence of antibodies for herpes, and very, very few cases of herpes are diagnosed with a blood test. Most of the surveys about VD infection rates reflect diagnosis based on observation of an active herpes sore, which skews the data heavily toward women. Many men do have herpes, and don’t know it. The same is true for HPV.
      3. 75% of new herpes cases are thought to come from oral sex, and most of them are being diagnosed in women. A guy with a cold sore goes down on a woman, and if there is any microscopic tear in the vagina, the virus finds entry. This is far less likely to happen in reverse.
      4. It is not understood why, but black women are more prone to infection than other women. Researchers have ruled out differences in behavior as an explanation. The reason appears to be biological.
      5. Anyone, especially a woman, can easily contract an STD from only one partner. So a woman who has sex with one guy – not necessarily a cad – may have herpes. In fact, herpes is not at all uncommon among non-promiscuous college students.
      .
      In the final analysis, the STD stats do not prove that a large number of women are having sex with a small number of men.

  • Mani

    Sociology nerd comment here —

    With all of this data presented, it really fascinates me how society seems to only focus on this promiscuous minority. I feel like Hollywood takes partial responsibility of portraying ATTRACTIVE teenagers and young adults as nymphomaniacs, which may have influenced the behavior of real teenagers and young adults (self fulfilling prophecy, perhaps?)

    Ohhhh the attractiveness Hierarchy 🙁 as if we didn’t have enough problems. One big problem is that there will ALWAYS be a never ending stream of attractive women continually offering themselves up to attractive men (vise versa too, I’d say) so there’s just no incentive at all to settle down and look further for personality. “Why buy the cow if you can get the milk for free?” The only difference I’d say is that women are valued highly for their looks at a young age, but it begins to work against them as they grow older (unless you become a cougar or milf or whatnot) and society eventually rejects them as desirables cause there will be a fresh new young crop of hot girls for these attractive men to pursue. If that’s the case, that makes us average looking people ten times more SOL in finding a mate!!! But we can also look past the “attractive people” and date within our own pools I guess…unless the men in our pools rise the ranks of status and only want to date 9’s and 10’s. Then we ARE SOL. We can’t compete with the 9s and 10s who are willing to sleep w/ men easily, so not only will our looks not be up to par but they won’t even give us a SHOT at knowing our personalities…college culture has ESPECIALLY become breeding grounds for this kind of hook-up culture.. 🙁

    I still have hope…certainly there must be exceptions to this theory.

    • @Mani
      If the analysis of the current sexual marketplace is correct, then the promiscuous women, in aggregate, are less attractive than the promiscuous men. Those women are able to get access to more attractive men precisely because they are willing to put out – which makes up for their being less attractive physically. This is why every generation has its coyotes, brown baggers and butterfaces. As a guy said in a recent post, “Beauty is only a lightswitch away.”
      .
      So – why should you have hope?
      1) Because the men who are promiscuous will settle down over time and will cast their nets considerably wider. This gives non-promiscuous women an advantage, as they exercised good judgment early on and do not carry the baggage of dozens of sexual partners. You may also be wrong about what is attractive to men – a lot of the women you deem 9s and 10s in college are likely easy 6s or 7s from a male point of view.
      2) There are plenty of good-looking men who are not cads by nature, and have less sex than they could probably get if they were aggressive in nature. The best advice for women in college is to stay far away from men who are known to be promiscuous, and seek out men who have no such reputation.

  • J

    the 80/20 rule is sacrosanct in some Game circles,

    That’s because the idea sells game seminars by:

    1) creating a drastic view of the situation in order to get men to by products
    2) putting the blame for the situation on a “natural law” that absolves individual men from feeling bad about themselves
    3) encouraging men (especially the STEM guys who like systems and have cash) to think that “natural law” can be overcome by exercising solutions to the problem based on science. ((Like understanding Bernoulli’s principle can help you build an airplane.)

    Caveat–I’m not saying that learning game can’t help. I’m just saying that the mania for applying applying scientific methods and citing countless studies that may or may not be vaild is a way of appealing to a particular sort of man, of marketing social skills to systematizers.

    • @J
      I’d never considered the profit motive, but that makes a lot of sense. Searching for information about this topic, I only found it discussed on Attraction forums and sites selling products. As I said in the post, I could not find one single academic source. This alone doesn’t make the concept invalid, which is why I took a shot at investigating the data. The 80/20 rule as explained by Hollenhund makes sense – but that interpretation does not promote Game in the same way, or perhaps at all.

  • PJL

    @Brendan,

    That’s fine, so long as you realize that the question is entirely speculative with relation to this data. Your hypothesis seems, however, on target. That said, I’ve been surprised before.

  • J

    Logically, this statement Maybe 80 percent of women reproduced, whereas only 40 percent of men did. does not necessarily follow this one: Citing recent DNA research, Dr. Baumeister explained that today’s human population is descended from twice as many women as men.
    .

    There are numerous studies that state that modern humans are descended from very small numbers of people. That we are all descendents of the African woman nicknames “mitochondrial Eve”” does not mean that she was the only female of her generation to reproduce. A recent study highly cited all over the HBD-sphere says that all Askenazi Jews are descended from four women; again we can assume that more then four Jewish women in any generation had sex. With the way genetic lines tend to cross and re-cross each other, it’s not surprizing that the majority of people can trace themselves back to a handful of people in common. That’s not to say that those are the only peole who reproduced.
    .

    Additionally, for those of us who believe the “Out of Africa” theory, Baumgartner’s finding can be explained by the fact that whole continenents are filled by people descended from the handfuls of men who left Africa in various waves.
    .

    Finally, when the Baumgartner post originally appeared at Roissy, a poster named Polymath, a professional statistician, did a numerical analysis that debunked that only 40 percent of men reproduced. His final calculation was low enough to bring the number of men who did not reproduce in line with the natural male death and infertility rates. I’d encourage people to read that thread.
    .

    Interestingly enough, shortly thereafter Poly wrote a few posts asking why posts of his were in moderation or if he’d been banned. He no longer seems to post on CR.
    .

    It may even be true that more men have greater access to sex today than they did in previous eras.

    This statement is not only true, but it is easily lost in the emotionality surrounding this discussion.

    • @J

      With the way genetic lines tend to cross and re-cross each other, it’s not surprizing that the majority of people can trace themselves back to a handful of people in common.

      This must explain why every time there is a new president, we hear of some extremely unlikely common ancestry with another famous person. For example, Obama’s grandfather Stanley Dunham is related to: James Madison, Harry Truman, Lyndon Johnson, Jimmy Carter, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush.
      I haven’t ever been able to figure out how this works!

      I was intrigued by your reference to a discussion of this at Roissy’s, so I chased down the thread:
      http://roissy.wordpress.com/2010/07/27/proof-of-the-modern-american-harem/

      From Polymath (btw another commenter named AHE is also good with numbers – he had some good observations in the 80/20 rule discussion as well.):

      If 10 women each pick one of 10 men at random to have a kid with, independently of how the other women pick (so no hypergamy at all, all men are equal but random) then (if I have not made a mistake, I haven’t checked the work)
      .
      P(all 10 men will be fathers)=0.04%
      P(9 men will be fathers)=1.63%
      P(8 men will be fathers)=13.61%
      P(7 men will be fathers)=40.64%
      P(6 men will be fathers)=34.5%
      P(< =5 men will be fathers)=9.57% . Each man has an average of 1 child, but for any given man, . P(0 children)=34.87% P(1 child)=38.74% P(2 children)=19.37% P(3 children)=5.74% P(4 children)=1.12% P(5+ children)=0.16% . If you assume that every woman has children with exactly one man and they pick the men at random, and assume an equal and very large number of men and women, the fraction of childless men will be 1/e = 36.79%. . So the 80-40 rule is not actually so shocking. With random mating but women only get one man ever, if 80% of the women reproduce then the chance of a man remaining childless is e^(-0.8) = 44.93% — based on the Poisson distribution where each man has an expected number of lifetime fertile mates of 0.8. . Thus 80-55 would be expected with no hypergamy, and 80-40 really isn't so bad — only 15% of the men got omega'd out of the game compared with random mating. . The bottom line is that assuming random mating and each woman has children with at most one man, and 80% of women have a child, then only 55% of men will have a child, not so much different from 40%.
      .
      And then further down in the thread:
      There is some misunderstanding about my mathematical assumptions. Many people assumed things that are unnecessary for my conclusion. My only assumptions are: equal numbers of men and women, 80% of women reproduce, each woman has her children with only one man, women pick the man to father their children at random.
      .
      Under those assumptions, only 55% of men will be fathers. 36% of men will be fathers chosen by exactly one women, and 19% of men will be fathers chosen by more than one woman, just from random choice.
      .
      Also, an interesting comment there from Jeffrey of Troy, who comments here too:
      .
      re: 80% / 40%

      I am the only one here who’s read Robin Baker’s “Sperm Wars”? Monogamy + cheating, and the men’s sperm fight it out inside her.

  • J

    Take the Hoftstra woman, for example. She wanted to avoid telling her boyfriend she cheated on him so she made up a tale of rape that was only disproved because one of the men had a video camera.

    A truly unfortunate and unfair incident, yet the stats I’ve seen on false reports suggest that false reporting of rape is unusual. I also find it telling that fear of her boyfriend was her motivation. Obviously, she feared him more than a perjury charge.

  • J

    If you want data which can’t be faked, go pull up VD infection studies.

    Agreed.

    One of the more interesting ones was the recent NY study which found that 25% of New Yorkers had herpes, up from the national average of 20%.

    But then break down the rates via gender (and/or race):A majority of women have herpes in NY, a minority of men do. White men were down around 15%, black women were up at 80% infection rates.

    Given the fact that BF/WM pairings occur far less often BM/WF or same-race pairings, I think you are comparing apples to ornges here.

    Now I understand that it is less likely to pass herpes from woman to man,

    Any STD is easier to pass from active partner to passive partner. Gay catchers are also more likely to contract diseases from gay pitchers than vice-versa due to the receiving of bodily fluids and the anatomy of the penis. A friend of mine used to say that all men should have sex with a beer in their hand. The length of the urethra and the ability to flush it out by urinating really work in a man’s favor.

    • A friend of mine used to say that all men should have sex with a beer in their hand. The length of the urethra and the ability to flush it out by urinating really work in a man’s favor.

      I’ve never heard this! Makes sense, tho. Women know well how important it is to pee after sex to avoid getting a UTI – STIs are another matter, unfortunately.

  • Aldonza

    *stands and applauds*
    .
    I had a strong suspicion that the 80/20 rule was just another one of those oft-repeated stats that had almost no basis in reality. Further, I think a lot of guys, particularly sexually successful guys reject this notion because they don’t like the idea of passing around a fairly small proportion of uber-sluts.

    • I think a lot of guys, particularly sexually successful guys reject this notion because they don’t like the idea of passing around a fairly small proportion of uber-sluts.

      I agree, I’ve encountered exactly this kind of resistance in previous conversations about this topic. One form the discussion takes is when women say that not all females are equally vulnerable to Game, or that Game works best on women in bars and other nightspots, i.e. promiscuous women.
      .
      The data would suggest that not all women are equally enslaved to their hindbrains, as the guys like to say. I regularly argue that many women can and do regularly exercise restraint in their sexual choices. We may be attracted to cads and players, but many of us make mating decisions with the aid of our cerebral cortex.
      .
      This doesn’t make Game invalid – it just says that short-term Game (into bed within 7 hours of effort) is not equally successful on all women. Personally, I think that’s obvious.

  • J

    Esca:T hey need to hush up about not being able to get women and be mentored by a black guy, cause we GET IT IN!!!

    SW: Dude, seriously. That number – 46.5% of black men going over 15 partners? That blew me away. The numbers don’t lie – and the aggregate most definitely does not tell the story.

    I’d bet that if the numbers were further broken down by SES, we’d find similar numbers for lower income, less educated whites. I’d also better that as black men gain in income and education, their number of partners decreases.
    .
    Promiscuity is often related to inability to delay gratification which is in turn linked to social class. Middle class people, regardless of race, tend to be more sexually conservative as they have more to lose from promiscuous behavior. The very rich and very poor have less to lose. In fact, I’d even guess that mostg maladaptive behavior clusters among the very rich and very poor.

  • J

    As long as the “boyfriend” can tolerate an indiscretion or two (assuming he knows about them), this can have a good long-term result.

    Given the prevalence of casual sex in our society, I can’t see how a reasaonable man wouldn’t an indiscretion or two.

  • J

    This must explain why every time there is a new president, we hear of some extremely unlikely common ancestry with another famous person.

    Exactly. That’s a great example. Basically, everyone in the world is a distant cousin to everyone else.

    I was intrigued by your reference to a discussion of this at Roissy’s, so I chased down the thread:

    Thanks for doing so. I was too lazy!

  • clarence

    Ohhhhhh J:

    Are you claiming she feared “domestic violence” from him? She never claimed that. She’s not a victim. I suggest you educate yourself on the case.

    http://falserapesociety.blogspot.com/p/lamb-to-slaughter-hofstra-false-rape.html

    As for your claim about false rape claims being rare, I’d really love for you to try to clarify what you mean by that. 2 percent? That’s no longer the “accepted” figure. Try 8 to ten percent. And given that the majority of the studies ever done on this come up with numbers around 20 percent with some as high as 60 percent, excuse me if I don’t think you are right.

  • Escarondito

    One other point that hit me in all this. The fact is married people have much more sex than their unmarried counterparts. Yet, it is admitted that in our current SMP it is not seen as beneficial for a man to marry. Also, considering that men increase in value as they age, (wealth, status, confidence) their desire to marry will most likely diminish. I think the current adjustment in the SMP is the aspect of pools and the highest status males taking advantae of them. From this data it doesnt fully remove the 80/20 rule for me in total male/female relations. Just lets me know the the 80/20 rule is not over all but varies amongst the different “pools of attractiveness”. Ultimately, entering erratic levels when it comes to the ndesirables of both sexes.

    Now here is my question, judging on the idea that this system will continue into the near future where does this leave us? An America in which marriage is a complete after-thought? Where an ever decreasing percentage of children are born into stable homes? I’m finding it very odd lately that feminism in female sexuality was supposed to create an equal status with men but seems to drive a wedge through compatibilities between the two. The essay “There is no longer someone for everybody” IS a grim tale indeed. My worry is that in as quickly as my lifetime it will no longer become a tale.

    • @Esca
      I agree with you. The No Longer Someone for Everybody still strikes me as intuitively sensible, even obvious. As I tried to get across in the post, I personally believe that female hypergamy is strongly at work in the hookup culture. I just don’t think that most women are indulging those impulses. Whether that is due to moral fiber or lack of opportunity, or something else entirely is impossible to say, at least from looking at this set of data. It may be that the women who are not promiscuous, and who don’t want to be, would still like a shot at the cads. Or put more accurately, they’re hoping for a guy as attractive as a modern day cad, without the cad mentality. For my part, I think it’s easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a handsome, gregarious man to be monogamous under the age of 30.

  • Demonspawn

    A truly unfortunate and unfair incident, yet the stats I’ve seen on false reports suggest that false reporting of rape is unusual.

    Which stats would those be?
    “An authoritative law review article debunked the canard that only two percent of all rape claims are false — the author traced this number to its baseless source. See http://llr.lls.edu/volumes/v33-issue3/greer.pdf.”
    “every impartial, objective study ever conducted on the subject shows false rape claims are a serious problem. As reported by “False Rape Allegations” by Eugene Kanin, Archives of Sexual Behavior Feb 1994 v23 n1 p81 (12), Professor Kanin’s major study of a mid-size Midwestern U.S. city over the course of nine years found that 41 percent of all rape claims were false. Kanin also studied the police records of two unnamed large state universities, and found that in three years, 50 percent of the 64 rapes reported to campus police were determined to be false, without the use of polygraphs. ”
    “In addition, a landmark Air Force study in 1985 studied 556 rape allegations. It found that 27% of the accusers recanted, and an independent evaluation revealed a false accusation rate of 60%. McDowell, Charles P., Ph.D. “False Allegations.” Forensic Science Digest, (publication of the U.S. Air Force Office of Special Investigations), Vol. 11, No. 4 (December 1985), p. 64.”

    From http://falserapesociety.blogspot.com/p/prevalence-of-false-rape-claims.html

    Obviously, she feared him more than a perjury charge.
    No, she recognize that her chances of getting charges were far less than 0.1%. She cared less about the future of those men than her reputation.

    Given the fact that BF/WM pairings occur far less often BM/WF or same-race pairings, I think you are comparing apples to ornges here.
    Those were just the ones I remember off the top of my head (the post with the analysis is long gone). White women were 40-ish% and black men were 30-ish%.

  • Hope

    Slightly off-topic:

    http://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/ddvwr/mit_women/c0zj0ww

    From one of the comments:

    “Most of them are not attractive by any standards.”

    Another comment:

    “I love when guys QQ about how they can’t find girls who are into the stuff they like (because women are all about shoes and Taylor Swift), but when presented with a group of girls that are probably into the stuff they like, they act like dicks. Or the culture of the Downtrodden Nice Guy, where there’s all this moaning that chicks don’t want nice guys, and it’s because women are shallow…”

  • Sox

    Where there’s smoke, there’s fire. If we’re agreeing that:
    a) hypergamy is alive and well
    b) casual sex is more and more becoming the norm
    c) women sleep with men that have little to no interest in actually dating them
    d) promiscuous men benefit from social proof and become more attractive (up to a point) with more success…
    …then how can the 80/20 rule or some form of it (60/40? 70/30?) not exist in reality?
    .
    I think any guy who’s been on both sides of this will see it for what it is immediately. Why would a woman not leverage the sexual power she’s got to try to snag a guy she finds the most desirable? The more empowered and entitled she is, the more she’s likely to go for it! Hell, I’d do the *exact* same thing in that position.
    .

    The data would suggest that not all women are equally enslaved to their hindbrains, as the guys like to say

    No, but empowerment + entitlement + narcissism + encouragement to delay marriage and have all the casual sex one could want is tantamount to saying, “give in! indulge! you’re entitled to the pleasure of following your hindbrain to your heart’s content!” I will agree that many women go through phases where they quickly learn the dangers of said supercads, but the above equation (call it E3N?) is extending that experimental phase.
    .
    I’m just saying this is all tied together. Men in the Game community love the 80/20 rule because it fairly accurately ties together a string of phenomena that they’ve long observed and many women in their lives have long denied. As far as the data is concerned, I’m only concerned about the trends of women I actually find attractive…

    • @Sox
      E3N scores vary quite a bit among women, depending on everything from birth order to socioeconomic status during childhood, physical attractiveness, emotional health, political orientation of parents, etc. etc. The women who feel extremely empowered, extremely entitled, and are highly narcissistic will undoubtedly behave differently. They will delay marriage, but so will women with opportunities (empowerment), but a low sense of entitlement and low narcissism.
      .
      No doubt some form of the 80/20 rule exists in reality, but 60/40 just doubled the number of guys women find attractive, and that’s really not very far from 50/50, which is equilibrium.

      Why would a woman not leverage the sexual power she’s got to try to snag a guy she finds the most desirable?

      Perhaps because she is more comfortable being evaluated on terms other than sexual ones? Because she’s learned that men who aggressively demonstrate their sexual attraction (Hey, I’m Jim, you wanna come back to my room right now?) are the least likely to make a commitment?
      .

      Men in the Game community love the 80/20 rule because it fairly accurately ties together a string of phenomena that they’ve long observed and many women in their lives have long denied. As far as the data is concerned, I’m only concerned about the trends of women I actually find attractive…

      Which is exactly the same thing as saying that women could easily date nice guys, they just don’t like them. The 80/20 rule only makes sense if, in fact, you want only the women who are slutting it up with the cads. In other words, if you want in with that promiscuous bunch, then you’re really looking at a 20/20 rule, and you’re not a member of the 20.

  • BDS

    Ah, “How many sexual partners have you had?” Is there a question more likely to produce an answer designed exclusively to serve one’s own interests? The answer one gives, and even the answer one has convinced him or herself is true, has more to do with self-image than reality.
    .
    Most men think other men are doing better than them, so they’ll count the drunken makeout/boob fondling as one. Women, on the other hand, generally want to appear virtuous and will lower their number. Is there anyone who hasn’t heard a woman say, “That doesn’t count, because I was drunk/on the rebound/it was my birthday, etc.”
    .
    A study of self-reported numbers is likely to be wildly inaccurate, because not only do most people deliberately lie, they also convince themselves that something other than the truth is the case.
    .
    My take on all of this is that men and women can each be divided into three categories. For guys, the simple Alpha/Beta/Omega division is an apt enough description. For women, the three categories are the sluts, the virtuous and the “usually virtuous.” Sluts will generally drop their drawers on the flimsiest of pretexts. Virtuous girls nearly always require a significant period of exclusive dating. “Usually virtuous” girls are those that aspire to the standards of the virtuous, but are sometimes swayed due to a combination of being in the right mood + a few cocktails + being exposed to good game. These are the girls that will convince themselves “that didn’t count,” and will underreport their numbers, even convincing themselves the number they give is actually case. Because afterall, the alternative is that you’re a slut, and who’s going to admit to that (yes, I know, there are a few who will).
    .
    My conclusion? The truth lies somewhere in the middle. A man with game will often sway the usually virtuous while a man without it almost never will. Over the years, those numbers add up, for both men and women.
    .
    Baring that in mind, I think one variable that is totally overlooked is the amount of time one stays single. It’s best demonstrated by what one girl in her late 20’s said to me: “When you don’t have a boyfriend and are looking for one, you usually end up hooking up with an average of two per year.” Of course, we counted back and she had been with five in the prior year, but that fact had escaped her until we counted back, so case in point.

    • @BDS

      “That doesn’t count, because I was drunk/on the rebound/it was my birthday, etc.”

      Haha, true! I know one woman who doesn’t count “mishaps”!
      The accuracy question has been around since Kinsey first appeared on the scene. Anonymity helps, but does not prevent self-delusion, as you note. On the other hand, the alternative is to throw up our hands and decline to study sexual behavior. Not happening. So we live with imperfect – perhaps very imperfect data.

      A man with game will often sway the usually virtuous while a man without it almost never will.

      Well, now, there’s an admission about what some men value. Get a girl in a good mood, then get her drunk, all the while gaming her like crazy. PUMP. DUMP. Disregard collateral damage. Nice.

  • J

    You’re making the mistake of assuming that many blacks fall under the label of poor and low income.

    No, not really. I said that SES was more important than race. If perhaps I was unclear, my point was that, if you factor out race, you’ll find that promiscuity–game or nor game–is a lower SES behavior, not a racial behavior.

    I’ve witnessed the arguments between Doug1and Obs regarding who has more game, black or white men, and I don’t care to have that argument. Feel free though to have that pissing contest among yourselves. I personally don’t find it attractive or interesting, just racist and stupid.

  • Brendan

    I’ll agree that the 80/20 rule is not likely. I’d still be interested in seeing who the partners are, however — which is very hard data to get, really, in the context of studies like this because it’s too personal.

    I’ll also agree that it’s possible that in a large enough overall pool, there could be enough uber-promiscuous women being passed around among uber-promiscuous men to account for a good portion of the 100+ club, but that depends on the overall size of the pool as well. If you live in Manhattan, the pool is quite large (and so the resulting smaller pool of uber-promiscuous women would still be large enough, even if it is a relatively small slice of the overall pool, to drive the higher numbers among men), and that would make sense, I think.

    In the end, I think that the most prominent Game purveyors themselves admit that they are talking about what works most readily on women who frequent bars and clubs. The question then becomes: which slice of women is this, and it is disproportionately the most promiscuous slice, in relative terms? Perhaps it is, which would explain much of the success of bar/club Game in that context.

    I think that the 80/20 rule was always an exaggeration. To me, based on my own personal experience, it felt more like a combination of the following: (1) a small number of men having well disproportionate access to sex with a wide range of women, (2) another tier of men who “does okay”, meaning has a girlfriend every now and then and maybe, if he wishes it, a one-night stand every now and then if he can pull that off contextually and (3) another tier of men who are not getting very much other than the odd off-chance something every 2-3 years. The men in groups 2-3 are focused on what is happening with group (1) men, and the women they are bedding. As to who is more frustrated between (2) and (3) it’s hard to say. Many (3)’s just drop out and opt for Warcraft, and even in a pre-1950s setting, my guess is quite a few of the (3)’s just wouldn’t mate, or would mate very late comparatively — some people are not made for relationships. So some portion of the (3)’s has made its peace with the situation. Of the (2)’s, some are satisfied with their “doing okay”, and some are not. That probably depends on a number of factors, including the context of friends and social relationships in general (and how one is “doing” relative to that context), whether the attraction vectors are properly calibrated and tuned to match his own SMV, overall levels of ambition and entitlement and so on. I think that most of the guys who are “80/20 fundamentalists” are the discontented (2)’s, and perhaps a small amount of the (3)’s. The more contented (2)’s are satisfied enough with their own experiences, so are less inclined to see things as an 80/20 situation.

    • The men in groups 2-3 are focused on what is happening with group (1) men, and the women they are bedding.

      I think this is true for both sexes – those in groups 2 and 3 identify themselves as “have nots” in the SMP. This is a result of what they can observe with their own eyes – Joe Frat is making out with a new chick at the bar every night – and the popular media portrayals of these kinds of antics. The problem is that this creates a much higher level of dissatisfaction, which often leads to resentment. The biggest potential opportunity lies in getting 2s with 2s, but it won’t be realized if both men and women view that as “settling.”

  • clarence

    Hope@11:43

    That is rather sad. Most of those women can give me wood now and would have given me even more wood when I was that age. Yes, there are some fatties and a few downright unattractive ones (though I didn’t see a single one that would need a bag over her head), but are those comments coming from a bunch of guys who think all girls have to look like anime chicks? Ironically, I like the more maternal and feminine ways that even strong anime female characters tend to act, but their bodies are easily as unrealistic as anything in porn.

    Maybe I’m not geeky enough, but I swear to you I can’t imagine those girls deserve those comments. Prehaps there are some deliberate trolls on that thread?

  • clarence

    Brendan:

    No need to backtrack too much. If you read that thread, Polymath hardly managed to end the dispute partly because he/she never made a coherent argument about how their numbers were derived. And in the end it doesn’t really matter: I think its quite obvious that historically the “average” woman was more likely to reproduce than the “average” man in part because of all those things brought up by later commenters. I also think it’s obvious that womens choices were severley constrained in the past either being forced into a harem of some rapacious “alpha” male with STRONG and REAL asshole game (Ghengis Khan) or being forced into marriage and maybe h aving a pick of only a few suitors or even no pick at all.

    This stuff is complicated but I really think the 80/20 rule applies much more in big cities and closed social environments like college campuses. It’s not meant to describe life in Preoria, and as much as people here like to bang on Roissy, he rarely makes such unnuanced assertions.

    • as much as people here like to bang on Roissy, he rarely makes such unnuanced assertions.

      Funny you should say that. When I went to the thread that J had referenced, I found him saying that he has received some complaints from readers that he doesn’t back up his assertions. His response:
      Commenters sometimes complain I don’t bring the science to back up my personal observations, honed as they are by a very keen eye, a finger on the pulse of cultural trends, and an empathic understanding of human psychology. If you want a steady stream of backing science, feel free to open an institute in the Chateau’s name and hack away. Meantime, I’ll be skipping the lab work and enjoying myself with the best pleasures of life. You can sleep easy that about 80% of my observations are eventually corroborated by scientific evidence.
      .
      So…basically he’s getting too much poon to take the time, but there are nerds doing that work, and he is confident that all of his predictions will be proven by science at some future date. OK. I’ve always maintained that JW is a very smart guy, but recently he’s been either intellectually lazy, intellectually dishonest, or both.

  • J

    @Demonspawn and clarence

    Interesting articles. I skimmed, but I don’t have time right now to really research the rate of false reports. That’s a day’s work. I’m sure there are plenty of conflicting data and opinions on both sides of the issue and, since much of what you cited comes from a site dedicated to fighting false rape, I need to keep that bias in mind. The studies I am familiar with are 2-8% that you two discount.

    Looking at the quotes from feminist press cited in the Hofstra article and the version given by the False Rape Society article, I do feel that it will never really be known what exactly happened there. Putting two and two together, it seems to me that a rather repressed girl from a traditional immigrant background got drunk and stupid and did something she regretted. She got caught, panicked, came up with a lie and then tried unsuccessfully to backpedal but caught up in the legal system before she could figure a way out. In looking at the story, I think you are right in saying that she wasn’t afraid of the boyfriend, but I’d bet she was afraid of the story getting around campus and back to her family. I sincerely doubt that “she recognized that her chances of getting charges were far less than 0.1%. ” Who would have a figure like that at their finger tips at a moment like that? More likely, she was drunk, panicky and thinking unclearly. It’s unfortunate because the false charge obviously will follow the young men around.

    I’m not going to blame the “rape culture” because, just as I don’t believe a lot of the male paranoia I see on the net, I also disbelieve the female paranoia. OTOH, I do thinhk a conflict of cultures is to blame. Put an immigrant girl from a traditional background (my assumption based on her last name and the interviews with folks who knew her) on a college campus, pressure her to succeed academically and put in the drudge work and time that success takes, and then dump her into the hook-up culture. She decides to cut loose and look what happens. It argues, IMO, against the hook-up culture.

  • clarence

    J:

    WTF do you mean it won’t be known “exactly what happened there”?
    There was video evidence and the girl herself admitted she lied.

    What more could you possibly want?!!

  • J

    @Esca

    Seemed like you were saying blacks get more ass because they are in the low-income bracket and people in the low income bracket have more sex because they have less to lose.

    No, I do realize that there is a rising black middle-class. I do find, in my personal experience, that they have pretty middle-class mores though, often more tight-assed then their white neighbors. But the black lower class probably does skew the numbers with class being more important than race.

    My LAST comment wasn’t about who had more game, just that the situation black men in the middle class with game are in explains for their high number across the board. If you are talking about my original comment about HBDers and MRAers dissing black guys yet complaining about women and game where I said they shoudl stop complaining and follow the black guys I never mentioned doug1 or obs. So no possing match here. The only reason I mentioned doug1 was in regards to his stats on the black lower class. Perhaps that was unclear?

    Taken all together, it did look that way to me.

    • @J
      There’s not a ton of economic data, but there was this in the CDC data:
      I don’t think it tells much of a story.

        # Partners:————-0-1—-2-6—7-14—15+—Median

      % Below Poverty Level:
      F———————21—–47—–23—-10—–4.3
      M——————–21——33—-18—–29—–6.3
      % 1-2 X’s Poverty Level:
      F———————20—–52—–19—–8—–3.8
      M——————–13——31—–21—-35—–7.4
      % >2 X’s Poverty Level:
      F ———————26—–43—–21—-10—–3.5
      M———————17—–34—–22—-28—–6.7

      Sorry this is such a mess. WordPress can be very difficult to work with.

  • Escarondito

    @J

    “I’d bet that if the numbers were further broken down by SES, we’d find similar numbers for lower income, less educated whites. I’d also better that as black men gain in income and education, their number of partners decreases.
    .
    Promiscuity is often related to inability to delay gratification which is in turn linked to social class. Middle class people, regardless of race, tend to be more sexually conservative as they have more to lose from promiscuous behavior. The very rich and very poor have less to lose. In fact, I’d even guess that mostg maladaptive behavior clusters among the very rich and very poor.”

    As obs is fond of saying, don’t fall for the Jedi Mind Trick. You’re making the mistake of assuming that many blacks fall under the label of poor and low income. In fact, as of 2003, with the numbers growing yearly, 48% of blacks are middle class with the low-income to poor being in the range of 12% – 25% with the 25% under suspect cause it came from Doug1 and there are issues witht he study. So this whole “less to lose” applies for a small percentage of very rich and very poor.

    In reality, it touches on this. If you are Black middle class and have some semblance of game, you are a hot commodity. Black women who are middle class and looking to settle down are constantly complaining that there are no good men at their level. Which is false. There are, they just have a plethora of options. And not just with black women. Cool, confident, great sexual stereotypes, money to dress well, and other factors allow him to have a choice at a sexual life that many whites can only dream of. This is not boasting but a reality.

    @susan

    Two qoutes I’ll give you that describe the modern college enviornment:

    “Men can’t be whores, only opportunists”
    “Pussy has no face, but my dick has pride”

    • “Men can’t be whores, only opportunists”

      Disagree. It’s true in moderation, but guys definitely fight the manwhore rep on campus. There was a recent bit about this on bro bible:
      If your circle of friends is full of loud mouths, be more discrete with how you go about your fucking. The last thing you want is to one day really like a girl and have her not like you because you’re touted as the campus man-whore.
      http://www.brobible.com/story/5-keys-to-hooking-up-with-incoming-freshmen

      “Pussy has no face, but my dick has pride”

      Not sure what this means – is it “Beauty is just a lightswitch away?”

  • J

    WTF do you mean it won’t be known “exactly what happened there”? There was video evidence and the girl herself admitted she lied. What more could you possibly want?!!

    I acknowledged that she lied. What I’d like to know is what the exact circumstances were: what led up to the incident, what exactly did she tell her boyfriend, who called the cops, is the tape continuous or did things happen that weren’t taped, etc. The tape gives you a slice in time. You probably have enough of the event to get the guys off the hook, but what’s not on the tape is of interest as well.

    The mere existence of the tape is bizarre. Yeah, it’s great that the falsely accused guys had evidence, but I can’t say their participatiuon in this pig party and taping it for posterity makes them the sort of guys I’d want to sons to hang around with.

    Not to raise yet another controversial subject, but do remember the news coverage of the Rodney King incident? The media showed 30 seconds or so of a savage beating, but the cops who did it got off becaue there was more videotape that didn’t make the news. I’d have like to have seen that tape. The jurors said they were convinced that King escalated the situation. I don’t know if it’s true or not, but I’d love to see the tape in it’s entirety.

  • Hope

    Clarence, a lot of those guys are younger, and attitudes toward “average” looking women have really changed. A “5” or “6” is basically never considered girlfriend material, even for a lot of guys who complain about not getting any.

    A lot of guys would rather stay single and hold out for the 20% of very attractive girls. Or, in the case of some (nerdy) guys I know, they will string along the less attractive girls in not very good relationships just for sex, basically never really love them, and always keep an eye out for “better” opportunities to come along.

    It’s not just 20% of men are getting the attention of 80% of women. 20% of women are getting the attention of 80% of men as well. This isn’t necessarily the number of people who are actually hooking up. I’m just talking about who’s “wanting” whom and their actual desires.

    There are lots of average guys who have girlfriends. But deep down many of these guys really would trade their plain looking girlfriends for a super hot girl in a heartbeat. And girls, knowing this, aren’t inspired to give a whole lot of love or loyalty either.

    Someone in another conversation once compared me to a Hyundai, and says most guys want the Mercedes. I was lucky to find a guy who prefers me over the super hotties, but I am well-aware that overall, this statement is true. I can’t even imagine how it is for girls who are less attractive.

  • Sox

    @Hope

    It’s not just 20% of men are getting the attention of 80% of women. 20% of women are getting the attention of 80% of men as well. This isn’t necessarily the number of people who are actually hooking up. I’m just talking about who’s “wanting” whom and their actual desires.

    Not entirely true. Men in general are attracted to/pursuing a larger range of women. Maybe 40%? 55%? It’s come up before and other posters might do a better job at adjusting it. Guys generally have lower tingle-thresholds.

    • Guys generally have lower tingle-thresholds.

      That’s only relevant if you mean relationship tingles – is it happening beneath your shirt or your pants?

  • Demonspawn

    Female genital tissue is far more prone to microscopic tears than the penis is, so the likelihood of infection is considerably higher for women.

    Understood and accepted. At the same time, you can’t catch herpes from someone who doesn’t have it.

    Men are often silent carriers for several STDs.

    I’ll have to look into the methodology of the study again. This is a possible valid point.

    It is not understood why, but black women are more prone to infection than other women. Researchers have ruled out differences in behavior as an explanation. The reason appears to be biological.

    I’m not buying this. There is a strong correlation between declining marriage rates and increasing VD rates across time and cultures. In our current US culture black America has a much lower marriage rate than white America, which (to me) would easily explain the differences between rates. I believe that behavior has to be the difference.

    Anyone, especially a woman, can easily contract an STD from only one partner. So a woman who has sex with one guy – not necessarily a cad – may have herpes. In fact, herpes is not at all uncommon among non-promiscuous college students.*

    In fact, herpes is not at all uncommon among college students who claim to be non-promiscuous. FTFY. But, again, I’m so much talking about who’s promiscuous vs who’s not, I’m stating that a minority of men have sex with the majority of women. And unless the “silent male carrier” rate is +200-300%, we can tell that a majority of women have had sex with that minority of men.

    I’ve personally watched the 80/20 rule work, both in my younger live and now while living on a college campus. I recognize that evidence is anecdotal, but the VD rates tend to back my experiences. As traditional marriage breaks down (into hypergamy-fueled polygamy or serial monogamy) VD rates increase and less men get more women. And I’ve also learned that you never trust a woman’s self-reporting on sexual history. She KNOWS that part of her market value is based on her prior level of promiscuity, and she “adjusts” accordingly (and dramatically). For men, their value isn’t as much based on previous history but instead on current status and tend not to adjust their numbers as much.

    • @Demonspawn
      If you live on a college campus, then you must be able to see that most of the students are NOT having promiscuous sex. There is so much data on this, from so many different sources. Even with a generous handicap for exaggeration, you can’t rewrite that. College kids graduate with a mean 4 year total of <2 partners. Double it. Triple it. You’re still nowhere near the territory of that 20% of men you cite.
      .

      And unless the “silent male carrier” rate is +200-300%, we can tell that a majority of women have had sex with that minority of men.

      Help me out here. I don’t understand how you calculated that. Some questions about herpes for you:
      1. Are men or women more likely to seek treatment for herpes?
      2. Who is more likely to suffer outbreaks?
      3. Which sex is more likely to lie about herpes in order to get laid?
      .
      I looked up some relevant stats:
      1. 80% of the population has antibodies for HSV1 (oral).
      2. HSV1 is responsible for approx. 40% of genital infections via oral sex. HSV2 is the remaining 60%.
      3. 60% of herpes sores are not diagnosed correctly due to an atypical presentation. 20% of cases have no symptoms at all. Thus, it is estimated that only 20% of real cases have been diagnosed.
      .
      Obviously, it only takes one infected partner. It is estimated that 1 in 5 women age 14-49 are infected, compared with 1 in 9 men. The CDC attributes that to biological factors.
      .
      From the CDC:
      The latest HSV-2 data – announced at CDC’s National STD Conference in Atlanta on March 9, 2010, and published today in CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) – indicates that overall national HSV-2 prevalence remains high (16.2%) and that the disease continues to disproportionately burden African-Americans (39.2% prevalence), particularly black women (48.0% prevalence), who face a number of factors putting them at greater risk, including higher community prevalence and biological factors that put women of all races at greater risk for HSV-2 than men.

      While these findings may be surprising to some – they are, in fact, an accurate representation of the prevalence of HSV-2 infection in these populations and are consistent with prior data on the scope of the problem. CDC stands firmly behind these statistics and the methodology used to develop them. The data come from the National Health and Nutritional Examination Survey (NHANES), a nationally representative survey that has been continuously conducted by the National Center for Health Statistics since the early 1960s. The survey is one of the most reliable sources of data on American health available today, providing representative data on dozens of major diseases, including cardiovascular disease and diabetes.

      This analysis provides data on the percentage of Americans who are infected with HSV-2, or genital herpes, based on the number of people who tested positive for HSV-2 antibodies.

  • clarence

    J:

    Some of your questions are valid. Others are answered in that article I linked you too. And I don’t see what’s so “weird” about surrpetiously using your cellphones vid to record a possibly once in a lifetime gangbang. But then, I was a horny young man once, and so I can sort of put myself in their shoes. It may sound like its such a rude thing to do, but I’m glad he did it -nowadays its probably for the best from a “protect your ass” standpoint.

  • Hope

    Sox also confirmed what I said about men only going after a small percentage of women:

    “many women in their lives have long denied. As far as the data is concerned, I’m only concerned about the trends of women I actually find attractive”

    Why do many women deny the 80-20 rule? Because they don’t fall under the small group of women whom most men automatically consider “actually attractive.”

    They are the women who basically are invisible. It’s not just the “alphas” who dismiss these women. It’s something like 80% of men dismiss 80% of women. In turn, 80% of women dismiss 80% of men, too, because women tend to be passive and wait for the guy to make the first move.

    Yes the overweight/obesity epidemic has a lot to do with it, eliminating something like 50-60% of women from immediate consideration, and another 20-30% of women who don’t dress well, put on makeup, or don’t have a certain “look” of cute/pretty/hot will also be on the sidelines.

    If guys were honest with themselves, they’d realize that in a given day, they probably only find 20% of women they see “attractive.” And those are the 20% of women they keep complaining about as well. As for the rest, well, I don’t think most men really care.

  • Escarondito

    @J

    Was slightly unclear. Seemed like you were saying blacks get more ass because they are in the low-income bracket and people in the low income bracket have more sex because they have less to lose.
    Also:
    “I’ve witnessed the arguments between Doug1and Obs regarding who has more game, black or white men, and I don’t care to have that argument. Feel free though to have that pissing contest among yourselves. I personally don’t find it attractive or interesting, just racist and stupid.”

    My LAST comment wasn’t about who had more game, just that the situation black men in the middle class with game are in explains for their high number across the board. If you are talking about my original comment about HBDers and MRAers dissing black guys yet complaining about women and game where I said they shoudl stop complaining and follow the black guys I never mentioned doug1 or obs. So no possing match here. The only reason I mentioned doug1 was in regards to his stats on the black lower class. Perhaps that was unclear? 😉

  • clarence

    Oh BUNK, Hope.
    80 percent of men DO NOT dismiss 80 percent of women, not even for girlfriend material, let alone for a one night stand!
    Ask any of the men here, heck any of the men in your life if they’d turn down sex or even refuse to DATE 80 percent of the women they see and they’d show you different. It’s true that probably standards have changed to an extent these days given a “hook up” culture but then alot of the men being quizzed on preference are the same sort that tend to hang with sororities and other places. In other words, alpha’s.  The highest and most stringent specs I see for a “dateable” woman is from the PUA community and even they have considerable variation when it comes to REAL sex. I know many of these guys personally and its not all Roosh and Roissy. An average guy will LAY an average girl. Sure he might wish in his heart of hearts he was laying a supermodel but quite a bit more guys go without any attention at all then women. Like it or not the majority of women on college campuses can get sexual attention,  much easier than the majority of men.

    • Like it or not the majority of women on college campuses can get sexual attention, much easier than the majority of men.

      This is true, but you fail to account for the fact that many women do not seek sexual attention, especially as a starting point! The women holding out for relationships are often besieged by drunken gropings, but they realize that there’s nothing in it for them. The women on campus seeking sexual attention are the women who show up as promiscuous in the data. They’re a minority, though probably a larger one than in the 20-29 group. I’d say 20% sounds about right for college.

  • Demonspawn

    <i>You’re actually wrong on this one buddy. Races are effected by diseases different;y according to biology. See” breast cancer, AIDS, prostate cancer, autism.</i>
    The only communicable disease you’ve mentioned there is AIDS.  I recognize that there are diseases which affect races and genders unequally, but I’m talking about transmission rates of communicable diseases.  If you can point me to any good study that various races are less/more likely to catch a disease I’d be interested in reading it. As for AIDS, everything I’ve read indicates that behavior is a huge factor in transmission rates… if you don’t engage in male homosexual behavior, don’t share needles, and don’t live in a culture which rapes virgins as a “cure” your chances of infection are rather slim.

  • Sox

    Thanks, Clarence.

    Male attraction is fairly inelastic, in the sense that a guy who’s a 7, 8, 9, or 10 (male equivalent that accounts for overall desirability) will still be attracted to a female 6.  All that changes as men move up and down the scale is who they commit to relative to their own perceived value and the options they have.

    Female attraction is more elastic- why? Because female attraction draws more on other qualities, with looks being second or third down the list, and her own perceived value will automatically cause a corresponding shift in what she finds attractive.

  • Demonspawn

    I sincerely doubt that “she recognized that her chances of getting charges were far less than 0.1%. ” Who would have a figure like that at their finger tips at a moment like that?
    I’m talking about the “knowing” not the “figure”.  Look at any of the multitude of cases which involved a false rape allegation.  Virtually all of them end with the judge/prosecutor saying something along the lines of “we won’t charge [this girl] because then real rape victims will be less likely to report”
    That word eventually gets around…

  • Hope

    50% may be the percentage of women that men are willing to “settle” for, as in “will get sex from but not put in much effort,” but most men dream of an 8+, and would not want to commit to below a 6. While most guys are okay with just getting sex, most girls still want the permanence of a relationship.

    And again women have part of the culpability, too, for letting themselves become more and more overweight. So the situation becomes 60% of women are 5 or less, a woman with a normal BMI is an automatic 6, but then take away points for having bad skin, or weird nose, or not being white (yes some men are into other races, but the truth is most men including blacks and Asians want white girls).

    Once again, you said it perfectly Clarence. “The average guy will LAY an average girl.” But just lay, not be her boyfriend and certainly not fall in love with her. The average girl wants and craves more than just being laid, as many surveys and conventional wisdom would indicate. So OF COURSE they turn down the average guy going up to them for Just A Lay. That’s the reality of it.

  • J

    @Esca and Demonspawn

    Differing disease frequencies and susceptibilities are part of what has come to define race in the last 30 years or so.

  • Demonspawn

    @Hope
    80% of women are invisible… to the men who they are attempting to attract (the 9’s and 10’s).
    80% of men are invisible… to the women who they are attempting to attract (anything above a 5).
    As long as you rate yourself over a 4 (I’ll even go that low) and have a male friend who isn’t a 10, try a little experiment:  Go out to a bar, separately, and with you are both there have him yell out “I want to get fucked tonight”.  Count the number of seconds it takes him to get kicked out.  Then go to another bar and you get to yell out “I want to get fucked tonight” and count the number of men who indicate they are willing to accept the offer.
    I’ll bet the second number is higher.
    In a related note: http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/c3370d5275/are-women-as-horny-as-men [NSFW]

    • Go out to a bar, separately, and with you are both there have him yell out “I want to get fucked tonight”. Count the number of seconds it takes him to get kicked out. Then go to another bar and you get to yell out “I want to get fucked tonight” and count the number of men who indicate they are willing to accept the offer.

      Haha, this cracked me up. Actually, there are quite a few frat houses where guys are indeed rewarded with booty for doing exactly as you describe! Of course, a guy must have enormous social dominance to pull this off. If a woman were to yell such a thing in the same setting (and I’m sure that too has been done), my guess is that would quickly become a group project.

  • J

    Virtually all of them end with the judge/prosecutor saying something along the lines of “we won’t charge [this girl] because then real rape victims will be less likely to report”
    That word eventually gets around…

    I find that notion surprising.

  • Demonspawn

    <i>Differing disease frequencies and susceptibilities are part of what has come to define race in the last 30 years or so.</i>
    COMMUNICABLE diseases.
    Even in the case of malaria (which is not communicable… it’s transmitted via mosquitoes) where blacks have a higher resistance: blacks still “catch” malaria, it’s just that their bodies fight it off before it causes presentable damage.  The same thing even with inoculations: you still “catch” the disease, you just fight it off quickly (hopefully before it reaches the transmissible state).

  • Demonspawn

    I find that notion surprising.
    You find it “surprising” that when word gets around that a crime goes unpunished that people become more likely to do it?
    You have much to learn about human behavior.

  • J

     And I don’t see what’s so “weird” about surrpetiously using your cellphones vid to record a possibly once in a lifetime gangbang.

    OK, wow, you got me.  I admit that’s a great “once in a lifetime” opportunity.  Now let me ask you, would you want any of those four men to date your daughter?  Would you hire them to work for you?  Want them at your dinner table?

    nowadays its probably for the best from a “protect your ass” standpoint.

    I would advise my sons to stay away from drunken, crazy skanks and uncivilized male friends in order to “protect their asses.”  I can sympthathize with false accusation, but I’d hardly say these guys were morally exempt.  What’s the nicest thing say about them?  That they engaged in consensual though disgusting behavior?

  • Hope

    Demonspawn, you are arguing against a strawman. I never said 80% of girls cannot get sex by going into a bar and shouting “have at me.” But this is not what the vast majority of girls really want. This kind of casual sex is awful compared to a loving relationship, which most girls desire.

    My point is, 80% of guys don’t want a relationship with 80% of girls they see on a day-to-day basis. Sure they’ll merrily go for a bedroom session, but not more. They only want to “get to know” and put in more effort for a minority of girls.

    If men are “invisible” to girls then it’s because most of the time they are transparently after sex and nothing more. I’ve turned down a ton of guys who went after me for sex only, which means I also turned down a bunch of so-called “alphas.” I did this because I was after love and relationships, which I know most girls want.

    The guys I gave my time of day to all got to know me as a person and had established an emotional connection with me — and had fallen in love with me. Tell me how many girls most men typically do that with… versus how many girls most men would just have sex with. It’s a night and day difference.

  • Aldonza

    80% of women are invisible… to the men who they are attempting to attract (the 9′s and 10′s).
    80% of men are invisible… to the women who they are attempting to attract (anything above a 5).

    80% of women are invisible to *all* men.  I know, I’ve been part of the 80% on more than one occasion in my life.  We aren’t just talking alphas, I’m talking alphas, betas, omegas, zebras, dishwashers…whatever.  Men would literally let the door slam in my face, avoid my eyes, brush past me to talk to a more attractive woman near me.  Betas just befriended me so they could talk to my hot friends.
    It isn’t just women who want attractive mates.  Men do too, it’s just men narrow down their qualifications to the physical for most interactions while women have a more diverse set of qualifiers.

    try a little experiment:  Go out to a bar, separately, and with you are both there have him yell out “I want to get fucked tonight”.  Count the number of seconds it takes him to get kicked out.  Then go to another bar and you get to yell out “I want to get fucked tonight” and count the number of men who indicate they are willing to accept the offer.
    I’ll bet the second number is higher.

    All that proves is that men are far more willing to engage in casual sex than women.  They’ve done studies of this on college campuses as well, with nearly all men agreeing to casual sex and almost none of the women, even when the man asking was very attractive.

  • J

    You find it “surprising” that when word gets around that a crime goes unpunished that people become more likely to do it?

    I find it surprising that someone would risk prosecution for a perjury because “word got around.”  I find it even more surprising that someone would weigh consciously those options in her situatuon.  I think she was in a drunken and shamed panic.  And as the article noted she tried to backpedal when her boyfriend wanted to report the incident.  She wasn’t thinking.

  • J

    COMMUNICABLE diseases.

    No genetic diseases, like sickle cell or Tay-Sachs. 

    Gotta run now, bye for now.

  • clarence

    Aldonza:
     
    You just disproved your own point.
    At most, you might be right about 80 percent of women being invisible to most men for relationships, though as a man who once went nearly 5 years without even a hug from the opposite sex (mom doesn’t count) I don’t think you are. But you are definatly wrong about 80 percent of women being invisible to most men in terms of just pure sex. It’s much easier for most women to get laid. Their problem is getting laid by someone who will commit. For alot of men the problem is getting any attention at all. The only girls under 40 who have to worry about a total lack of attention are those who are either grossly obese or deformed.

  • clarence

    J:
     
    You seem to show lots of sympathy for her and very little sympathy for her victims. Remember she may have been initially wary of “going in” but once she was in, she was in all the way until she was told there might be a video.  These poor young guys were going to serve multiple decades to cover for her reputation.
    You ask me if I’d hire them, if I’d want them near my daughter, etc?
    I’d hire them. As long as my daughter was an adult, I’d warn her, but it would be her decision. I don’t think any of them would RAPE my daughter. As for the young lady, I’d never hire a liar who would put people in a place where they would waste decades of their lives and possibly get sexually or physically assaulted themselves. That you could have sympathy for such a person , and compare her lie to the “crime” of being young, stupid, and horny does not say very much good about you.

  • Escarondito

    @ Demonspawn

    You’re actually wrong on this one buddy. Races are effected by diseases different;y according to biology. See” breast cancer, AIDS, prostate cancer, autism. The list goes on. It is now noted as well that we all cannot be medicated the same way for the most effective results. It’s actually a new area of medecine opening up that is absolutely amazing and I read it awhile ago in popular science. Too summarize a great article, in the near future we will have medicine that is grown, metted out, and created individually. You can have a pill that you take for bronchitis or something that will never be the same dosage or ingredients that I will. And both will work the absolute best for our respective bodies. Crazy Crazy ish man. But to your argument. It’s not behavior it’s biology.

  • Demonspawn

    I find it surprising that someone would risk prosecution for a perjury because “word got around.”  I find it even more surprising that someone would weigh consciously those options in her situatuon.  I think she was in a drunken and shamed panic.  And as the article noted she tried to backpedal when her boyfriend wanted to report the incident.  She wasn’t thinking.
    1. There’s virtually no risk.  They know there’s no risk because of “word getting around”  It’s like driving.  Yes, accidents can happen but they are so rare that the rewards are outweighed by the risk.  Had these guys not videotaped the incident, she never would have faced the possibility of prosecution (and even though the did, she didn’t).
    2. It’s an unconscious decision based on what the person already knows.  It’s a matter of “holy shit how can I get out of this and keep my reputation” and several solutions come into the set.. one of those being claim rape.  Other solutions go by the wayside quickly due to risk/availability (say, having the guys knocked off) but the “claim rape” solution sticks around because it’s low risk and easily available.
    3. If false rape allegations were highly prosecuted and had real penalties, she would have done more than just “try” to backpedal.  See point #2

  • Demonspawn

    My point is, 80% of guys don’t want a relationship with 80% of girls they see on a day-to-day basis. Sure they’ll merrily go for a bedroom session, but not more.
    So you define “invisibility” as “he sees me but won’t live up to this higher standard I demand”?  Nice sense of entitlement.
    Most guys don’t want a relationship because most women have little to offer.  Once women became men, the major differences between having a male roommate or a female partner in a relationship is snuggling and sex.  Women aren’t women anymore, have only sex and affection to offer for a relationship value, and still demand preferential treatment in a relationship (and often outside of one as well).

    • Most guys don’t want a relationship because most women have little to offer.

      Come on, are you denying the very real fact that men prefer sexual variety, and that as long as they have options for sexual access, they’re unlikely to commit to a monogamous relationship? Women grant access to sex, men grant commitment in exchange. That’s been true since the dawn of time. What’s happening in hookup culture is that men perceive that they can get sexual access without commitment. What we’re discussing here is what percentage of men are in that boat, fueled by sex from what percentage of women.

  • Brendan

    0% of women are invisible to *all* men.  I know, I’ve been part of the 80% on more than one occasion in my life.  We aren’t just talking alphas, I’m talking alphas, betas, omegas, zebras, dishwashers…whatever.  Men would literally let the door slam in my face, avoid my eyes, brush past me to talk to a more attractive woman near me.  Betas just befriended me so they could talk to my hot friends.
    I don’t think it’s 80%.  Probably more like 50%.  It’s also calibrated to some degree by the guy’s own sense of his SMV (and whether that sense correlates to reality as well).  In other words, there are the 20% of women that every single man on the planet will find hot — they’re objectively attractive females, full stop.  Beyond that, there is another slice of women — whether it’s 20% or 30% or 40% probably depends on the guy, his own value, his own sense of entitlement, his own ideas about what he finds attractive in terms of quirks and so on — which the specific guy will find attractive, but others might not.  There is more variance there among guys than is often admitted.  And then there are the rest of the women who for various reasons are simply invisible.
    The different situation of men and women, of course, pertains to the casual sex thing.  The difference is this:  the women in that second tier 20%-40% that are attractive to some guys more than they are attractive to other guys can nevertheless get the sexual attention of the top 20% of men if they put sex on the table.  Men observe this and it pisses them off, because the equivalent level men have no way to access the equivalent level women — because the sex market doesn’t work that way due to the different preferences of men and women (variety vs. hypergamy) in a raw, casual sex setting.  There is an imbalance there among the mid-level attractiveness people.
    Below that, you have mostly men and women who are invisible to most of the opposite sex and have limited mating opportunities (let’s call it the lower 30-40% of men and women) due to various handicaps they may have — appearance, persona, prospects, history and so on.

  • Demonspawn

    No genetic diseases, like sickle cell or Tay-Sachs.
    And is herpes a genetic disease or a communicable disease?
    Ok.. I highlighted “communicable” not because I thought you were talking about differences in communicable diseases, but because I knew you were talking about genetic diseases and the disease in question was a communicable one.  I thought that would have been evident, but I guess not.

  • clarence

    Hope:
     
    Respectfully, I think you are wrong.
    Men are invisible to women who are NOT ATTRACTED to them.
    This is before either a girl OR guy gets to “know ” each other, let alone have sex.
    That’s where game can help in moderation because it enables a guy to get NOTICED. I couldn’t get NOTICED before, so no women were turning me down because I was “transparently after just sex” because the thought that I could be attractive enough to “just get sex” never entered my freaking mind. To be fair, I didn’t do much asking for a date or anything either, though when I did I invariably got turned down.
    You can gain attraction to someone online, which seems to be how you got into your current relationship  and which is how I met the 22 year old Swedish girl before I got to know her in r/l.  My point is, though, you still h ad to be attracted to your current partner in some way before you would even give him the time of day. Perhaps at one point , a single phrase could have steered things differently, but maybe not since IIRC you said you met him as part of a group on World of Warcraft or some such.

  • clarence

    Susan @ 2:40:
    You don’t have to get a girl drunk to get her consent. And if you do get her drunk, you can often get her consent without any game whatsoever. Please give the gamesters more credit.

    • @Clarence
      Sorry, I was just referring to what BDS himself said:
      “Usually virtuous” girls are those that aspire to the standards of the virtuous, but are sometimes swayed due to a combination of being in the right mood + a few cocktails + being exposed to good game…A man with game will often sway the usually virtuous while a man without it almost never will.

  • BDS

    Susan, you’re generalizing and kind of placing women in the victim chair.  I think the mindset a good portion (if not a majority) of guys using game (which is really just applied social skills) go into it thinking, “Hook up now and decide if she’s relationship-worthy afterwards.”  That’s a lot different than the pump and dump mentality.  Also, not every woman who is normally virtuous feels bad about an occasional casual hookup.

    • I think the mindset a good portion (if not a majority) of guys using game (which is really just applied social skills) go into it thinking, “Hook up now and decide if she’s relationship-worthy afterwards.”

      Very true. This is why women do in fact hook up on college campuses – hookups are the primary pathway to relationships. Of course, if a guy is settling for the night with a woman he’d never want to be seen dating, her chances are zero. But that’s the real risk a woman takes if she has sex early on.

      Also, not every woman who is normally virtuous feels bad about an occasional casual hookup.

      Also true. In fact, women with a very low number may even feel like they’ve got some wiggle room. And if she doesn’t count it unless it’s P in V, she’s got even more wiggle room.

  • BDS

    “I’ve always maintained that JW is a very smart guy, but recently he’s been either intellectually lazy, intellectually dishonest, or both.”
    .
    Actually, I think lately someone else has been writing it.  It’s really gone downhill in the last couple of months.

    • @BDS
      The whole “Chateau” thing has me puzzled. I admit to not being a regular reader, so I haven’t tracked the developments there. But suddenly there are references to a group writing and reviewing incoming mail? There was all that purging of posts after the Lady Raine debacle. Then a renaming to Citizen Renegade and the Chateau – but for what purpose? And now new and different writers? I can’t really grasp the strategy behind all this – all on a blog that doesn’t even run ads. Revenue is zero. It’s all just very odd.

  • Sarah

    I’m sorry, but this data is wildly inaccurate. I’m not even going to touch your conclusions for now, because the data can’t be trusted!
    You say that the average women reports having 6 sex partners, and the average man 20? This is not possible, assuming a closed group of mainly heterosexuals! The averages must be similar. The means could be different sure, but the averages must be similar, unless gay men are having sex with hundreds if other men and throwing of the data.
     
    Because the data listed shows wildly different averages, then either people are lying or defining sex wildly differently. In either case the data is BAD.
    Not to mention the fact that it’s a little old. Three years isn’t that much, but you often claim that culture has been changing significantly to support a greater hook-up rate within recent years, so to effectively back your claims you really need more recent data.
     
    I’ll dig a little deeper into some of your conclusions later, but this average thing always bugs me.

    • I’m sorry, but this data is wildly inaccurate. I’m not even going to touch your conclusions for now, because the data can’t be trusted!

      This is actually hilarious. You’re questioning 3 year old data from the Center for Disease Control. This is the best health care data available in the United States and 3 years is nothing. As far as I know, the data does not reflect sexual preference. I’ve linked to all of it – please do check it out, and if you find inaccuracies, please notify the Secretary of Health and Human Services immediately.
      .

      The averages must be similar. The means could be different sure, but the averages must be similar, unless gay men are having sex with hundreds if other men and throwing of the data.

      .
      Sarah, if you are still in school, might I suggest a statistics course? I think you will find it extremely useful – every day.

  • Demonspawn

    Well, now, there’s an admission about what some men value. Get a girl in a good mood, then get her drunk, all the while gaming her like crazy. PUMP. DUMP. Disregard collateral damage. Nice.
    Can you explain what the collateral damage is?

    • @Demonspawn
      In this context, collateral damage is the emotional injuries that women sustain when they are used for sex and then discarded.

  • Sox

    Which is exactly the same thing as saying that women could easily date nice guys, they just don’t like them. The 80/20 rule only makes sense if, in fact, you want only the women who are slutting it up with the cads. In other words, if you want in with that promiscuous bunch, then you’re really looking at a 20/20 rule, and you’re not a member of the 20.

    No, I’m saying I could easily date someone lower to much lower than I am in SMV, but I am not attracted to them/dont’ want to.  My issue is with women ignoring men equal to them or even a single point higher in SMV because they have inflated perceptions of their own, either because of the E3N I mentioned or maybe they just slept with a higher SMV male and derived their value based on that.
    .
    The male ego simply isn’t being artificially inflated by society (and setup for disaster)  to quite the extent that the female one is.
    .
    I’m actually wondering where you stand on all this now- since you’ve seemed to agree on the general presence of hypergamy and unrealistic expectations.
    .
    In other words, if you want in with that promiscuous bunch, then you’re really looking at a 20/20 rule, and you’re not a member of the 20.
    That’s only if one believes it’s the same groups being super-promiscuous with each other, which I don’t…I’ve seen otherwise.

    • My issue is with women ignoring men equal to them or even a single point higher in SMV because they have inflated perceptions of their own, either because of the E3N I mentioned or maybe they just slept with a higher SMV male and derived their value based on that.

      The last part of this statement definitely describes a female tendency. I do firmly believe in female hypergamy. I actually cannot even imagine a woman denying it. However, that is defined as wanting to pair with a man of equal status or higher. Some women will offer sex in order to climb that ladder a couple of steps in the short-term.
      .
      I am not invested either way in the 80/20 rule. As I mentioned in the post, I was already on board and have even written about it, calling 20% of men cads, 80% of men dads, and explaining female hypergamy as the cause of 80% of women going for cads. However, over time, and particularly as I have seen this debated in threads among men, I have become curious about where this belief was derived.
      .
      The data suggests that very few women are promiscuous. And only a small number would qualify as “carousel riders.” That may run counter to what you’ve seen with your own eyes – I can’t say. But certainly I have yet to see any demonstrable evidence whatsoever that supports the 80/20, except when defined as sex, rather than people.

  • Hope

    Demonspawn, it’s funny you call my waiting for love and genuine personal connection before giving a guy my time some “sense of entitlement.” Well, if that’s what it looks like to the majority of men, then yes I suppose so. I ended up not riding the “alpha carousel” and never kissed any man who didn’t tell me he loved me.

    I guess as a girl, it’s damned if you do (put out for casual sex) and damned if you don’t. I chose the path of no casual sex, and I see guys being pissy about a girl choosing this path. I wonder why? On the one hand guys say they want women who are girlfriend/wife material. On the other hand guys say they want women to be easy and to put out for the average guy who just wants sex. You can’t really have it both ways.

  • Sox

    @Hope

    50% may be the percentage of women that men are willing to “settle” for, as in “will get sex from but not put in much effort,” but most men dream of an 8+, and would not want to commit to below a 6.

    Like most women dream of Brad Pitt or Geoge Clooney? Men are generally pretty well aware of their sexual market value.  You know how? By the women they can get.  How do women determine theirs? By the guys that will bang them? The guys that will settle with them? By what society tells them? That’s the essential difference that’s come up in these posts over and over.  Nobody’s saying the system was fair to begin with- I’m just speaking to an especially ridiculous part of it that’s hurting EVERYONE except the supercads and that top 20-10% of women.  If women want to actually KEEP the men they’re sleeping with, they need to look past their SMV to other qualities that many men here have said they desire in a long-term partner.  I’ll be the first to say I’ll take a girl one or two points lower in SMV for a LTR if she’s got the right qualities.  That’s if I’m interested in the LTR to begin with. 

    • If women want to actually KEEP the men they’re sleeping with, they need to look past their SMV to other qualities that many men here have said they desire in a long-term partner. I’ll be the first to say I’ll take a girl one or two points lower in SMV for a LTR if she’s got the right qualities.

      Well said. I will wholeheartedly endorse this – we all make compromises. In fact, when I was researching this post, one thing I kept coming across was articles suggesting that we should be happy if we can get 80% of what we’re looking for in a partner. And that 80% should include the important stuff, like character, values and intelligence rather than biceps and wine knowledge. As human beings, we can probably get 80% of what we need from a partner from just 20% of their qualities. The rest is just window dressing, and a woman who holds out on this score decreases her odds of marrying significantly with every passing year.

  • Escarondito

    We don’t need to get into the manwhore conversation as we know I was an admitted man-whore. Just the fact that that mindset rules the nights thursday-saturday.

    “But my dick as pride”
    Applies to the other argument on the thread that men want to mate witht he higher level of attractive female.
    Womens equivalent could be “Any applicant can fill the position but you better have the right credentials.”

  • Sox

    @SW
    Short way of summarizing my argument: E3N = ~2 point shift to the right in females’ perceived SMV values.  The men in the middle ranges are pissed and the men at the far right are enjoying the increase in sex.
    .
    Game is prescribed as a type of equalizer precisely because it boosts male SMV (which conveniently relies a lot on confidence) while simultaneously chipping away at the female SMV shift (read: negging as an example). 

  • Sox

    Come on, are you denying the very real fact that men prefer sexual variety, and that as long as they have options for sexual access, they’re unlikely to commit to a monogamous relationship?
    That’s acting as if men only ever got married to secure a constant supply of sex, which is pretty reductionist.  Many men will gladly trade commitment if the girl seems worth it.

    • Many men will gladly trade commitment if the girl seems worth it.

      OK, I’m glad to hear it. This is very dependent on age, I think. College guys want to play – it’s understandable. Not a value judgment there at all.

  • Demonspawn

    Demonspawn, it’s funny you call my waiting for love and genuine personal connection before giving a guy my time some “sense of entitlement.”
    It is, because you are not invisible.  You are, instead, visible, but feel you are entitled to more than what they are offering.
    What are you offering in return?  Do you have value other than a smaller number of previous sexual partners than the average woman?

  • Hope

    Demonspawn, I don’t care to qualify myself to a random guy. I’m happily married, and I offer a lot to my husband. Women should certainly give more than sex and loyalty in their relationships, and many of us do.

    But having met a lot of men, prior to my amazing husband, I also know enough of them who offer women very little. They also tend to complain a lot about women.

  • OK, kids, I’ve got a new comment editor in here – you can use the buttons at the top of the comment box rather than HTML tags. In fact, it renders HTML redundant. Let me know if you prefer it the old way.

  • Demonspawn

    <i>If you live on a college campus, then you must be able to see that most of the students are NOT having promiscuous sex.</i>
    Actually, I see otherwise.  A good half or more of women are having promiscuous sex.  Most of the men are attempting to do so, but only a small minority are having any real success.
    <i>Help me out here. I don’t understand how you calculated that.</i>
    WAG 😉  But the thought process goes something like this:
    1. There’s no “herpes commune” where people with herpes only have sex with other people who already have herpes.
    2. The white male rate of herpes is 15%.  That means that 40% of white females have had sex with someone in that 15%.
    3. To state that this isn’t a “majority of women having sex with a minority of men” then that means we need to expand the portion of men who they could have caught herpes from by a significant margin.  If we double it, then we get close to the herpes commune idea which I’ve dismissed.  So we need to triple or quadruple the number of men with herpes to make it not be expressive of the 80/20 (or some variation) rule and not feel too close to #1.
    <i>1. Are men or women more likely to seek treatment for herpes?</i>
    I don’t see why there should be any significant difference here.  If you know/suspect you have herpes, why would the rate of seeking treatment differ significantly (i.e. ignore the difference in rates between the genders).
    <i>2. Who is more likely to suffer outbreaks?</i>
    It is possible, but I have not seen studies to indicate, that men or women are more or less likely to suffer outbreaks (again, based on those infected).
    <i>3. Which sex is more likely to lie about herpes in order to get laid?</i>
    Leading question, but I’ll tackle it: neither.  I’d venture that men are more willing to lie to “just get laid” but I’d also venture that women are more willing to lie in order to “hook a man with sex.”
    <i>3. 60% of herpes sores are not diagnosed correctly due to an atypical presentation. 20% of cases have no symptoms at all. Thus, it is estimated that only 20% of real cases have been diagnosed.</i>
    This leads me to believe (I wish the old post existed so I could get to the study) that the methodology was as I vaguely remember: blind sample and blood tests.  Otherwise, for 80% of black women to have herpes, according to the above data 400% would have to be infected.
    <i>Obviously, it only takes one infected partner. It is estimated that 1 in 5 women age 14-49 are infected, compared with 1 in 9 men. The CDC attributes that to biological factors.</i>
    If you take the gay men out of the male side of infection rates (NYC study it was roughly half, so let me use that), then we can see that 20% of women have had sex with a 5% population of men.  Now that may very well fit into the 20/20 you have presented earlier, but I believe it is more indicative of the 80/20 rule.
    <i>Haha, this cracked me up. Actually, there are quite a few frat houses where guys are indeed rewarded with booty for doing exactly as you describe!  Of course, a guy must have enormous social dominance to pull this off.</i>
    That’s why I said he couldn’t be a 10 =D
    <i>Come on, are you denying the very real fact that men prefer sexual variety, and that as long as they have options for sexual access, they’re unlikely to commit to a monogamous relationship?</i>
    Not denying that at all, but it’s not the sum-total of the equation.  Most men will hook-up or STR with the majority of women willing to have sex with them.  But if you want a LTR/Marriage, you have to bring more to the table.  Most women out there have forgotten how to be women, and instead are men with boobs and vaginae.  They have little to offer other than sex, and demand a lot in return for it.
    <i>Women grant access to sex, men grant commitment in exchange. That’s been true since the dawn of time.</i>
    No, since the dawn of marriage (monogamous or polygamous).  And even then, the woman had to offer more than just sex (slightly relaxed for polygamous cultures).  It’s just back then the majority of women offered real value that most don’t today.
    <i> What’s happening in hookup culture is that men perceive that they can get sexual access without commitment.</i>
    Most men can, it’s just a matter of degree.  A small percentage can get regular hook-ups with various women, to men who have to present some level of commitment to get sex from a woman (STR usually), and down to men who have very few sexual partners over their lifetime (and not by choice).
    <i>What we’re discussing here is what percentage of men are in that boat, fueled by sex from what percentage of women.</i>
    Minority of men fueled by the majority of women.  I wouldn’t say it’s strictly 80/20, but it could easily be 70/20, 70/25, or thereabouts.  I would have to say that the majority of women are promiscuous from my own personal anecdotal data.

    • The white male rate of herpes is 15%.

      OK, I got this far and stopped. This is not a true statement. A true statement is:
      15% of white males have been diagnosed in a doctor’s office with either an open sore or positive blood test for HSV2.
      The rest of the argument falls apart from there.

  • Demonspawn

    In this context, collateral damage is the emotional injuries that women sustain when they are used for sex and then discarded.
    So a woman who agrees to have sex doesn’t really agree to have sex?  So a woman can’t actually agree to sex without expecting more than sex in return?  So a woman’s word when she says “yes” to sex is actually meaningless, because she’s really saying “yes” to sex plus more she’s imagined from the man which he hasn’t offered?
    And _men_ have to change to solve this problem?
     
    P.S. F#$%#$@#@ why does italic tag fail half the time but work the other half?  I prefer tags rather than a rich-text editor.. type open tag, paste, type close tag vs paste, select again, hit I, go to end, hit I again to turn off italics.

    • @Demonspawn (I shudder every time I type that out)

      So a woman’s word when she says “yes” to sex is actually meaningless, because she’s really saying “yes” to sex plus more she’s imagined from the man which he hasn’t offered?

      No, not at all. This describes an honest man – or at least one who hasn’t made promises he doesn’t intend to keep. I should rephrase then – collateral damage requires some behavior from the guy that lacks integrity, at the very least. Out and out lying obviously qualifies. Getting a woman drunk and gaming her hard may or may not qualify – depending. Personally, I don’t think it’s very nice to get a woman drunk with the express purpose of having sex with her, but I do believe she is fully responsible for her own actions.

  • Demonspawn

    <i>15% of white males have been diagnosed in a doctor’s office with either an open sore or positive blood test for HSV2.</i>
    I accounted for that in the very next sentence, so it’s hard for you to state “the argument falls apart from there”

  • clarence

    Susan@5:12
     
    Don’t worry. I love you anyway 🙂

  • Demonspawn

    Suzan-
    I think our real difference of opinion is here:
    2. Who is more likely to suffer outbreaks?
    It is possible, but I have not seen studies to indicate, that men or women are more or less likely to suffer outbreaks (again, based on those infected).
    I haven’t seen anything that demonstrates women are more likely to be visible than men are (yes, plenty to say that women catch it from men easier, but not that they show that infection more readily).
    So if we are to state that the 15% of white men who show and have been diagnosed have another 15% of white men who are infected but not diagnosed, then why wouldn’t the 40% of white women have a similar rate of undiagnosed-because-they-don’t-show addition?

    • @Dspawn

      2. Who is more likely to suffer outbreaks?
      It is possible, but I have not seen studies to indicate, that men or women are more or less likely to suffer outbreaks (again, based on those infected).

      I think it’s true that men are more often silent carriers, but I’ll fold here because I am no expert on STDs. I’d have to keep googling just to discuss this intelligently, and it sounds like you’ve read much more than I have on the topic. I don’t dispute your argument that STD stats can be useful data in examining sexual behavior. However, the data and the means for gathering it are far from straightforward. Just as with the other CDC stats, it may be flawed, but it’s better than nothing, and therefore worth incorporating. I just think a huge leap is required to get from STD stats to the 80/20 rule – I’d have to think about this some more.

  • Hope

    STDs are not to be trifled with, so girls, keep your clothes on! And don’t kiss guys casually either. You can never really know what someone else has or hasn’t done, and you can only control your own behavior.

    This is especially in front of my mind because I’m grateful to be healthy for my pregnancy and have all negatives for the various tests done. As women we have to take care of our body so we can give birth without complications or transmit a terrible disease to the newborn.

    Also remember that condoms don’t protect against everything. The real risk is in casual sex, not in waiting. Think of it this way: that cute guy whom you would jump in bed with might just render you infertile for the rest of your life. It’s not worth it.

  • Jimmy Hendricks

     

    Why do many women deny the 80-20 rule? Because they don’t fall under the small group of women whom most men automatically consider “actually attractive.”
    They are the women who basically are invisible.

     
    Are you speaking of college aged girls, or all women?  I went to a decent sized midwestern university out in the middle of nowhere (hardly a trendy location), and I think a conservative estimate would be that 60%-70% of the girls there would be considered attractive by most guys of any age.  Maybe I was just lucky to choose the right school.
     

  • And yet aren’t many more than just 20% of American men partnered with someone?

  • Mike

    @Brendan,
    The data allow for absolutely no valid inference about who is having sex with whom. Your conclusion may be “intuitive” to you but “intuitive” often just means “things I thought before thinking.” A man could easily have sex with 400 sluts in a lifetime. Or, you could be right. Point is, any speculation is moot.
    I haven’t studied the data in enough detail to make an inference based on the data.  But look, I think guys can use their intuiton here and more importantly their OWN PERSONAL EXPERIENCE to make a determination.
    I know a few triple digit guys.  I work with one, and 2 were buddies  in my going out days in my 20s.  I can say without any doubt whatsoever that their numbers are not 90-100% highly promiscuous women also in the hundreds.

  • Mike

    My experience in listening to women’s tales of woe tells me that most non-promiscuous women have at one time or another fallen for a cad or two, learned a painful lesson and moved on to more stable guys.

    A pretty good MAXIM for ALL of life, mating/dating, job opportunities, investment returns (Madoff) is IF IT IS TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE IT PROBABLY IS.  So if you are plain Jane, or just a 6-7, and a 8-9 is showing an “interest” in you, it most likely is ultra-short-term sexual.
    Same holds true for plain Beta guys who might be affluent.  If a rocking hot model is with you, it is probably for the money and what you can buy, and not genuine emotions or attraction.
    Generally speaking, people would often avoid alot of disappointment in life if they could realistically assess their own “value” whether dating or workplace, and consider what other people’s motivations might be

  • Mike

    Caveat–I’m not saying that learning game can’t help. I’m just saying that the mania for applying applying scientific methods and citing countless studies that may or may not be vaild is a way of appealing to a particular sort of man, of marketing social skills to systematizers.

    Well…the thing is for STEM types (and I’m one, my undergrad is engineering and masters is business) you are essentially taught/trained (and usually your mind works this way anyways) that the “solution” to every problem is an algorithm of step 1 followed by step 2, etc.
    It would be fascinating to me to know the “success rates” of the various seminars amongst STEM types.  I’d bet pretty low and it explains the increasing amount I am seeing or PUA/Game is a scam.  You see it in a few commenters here.
    Here is the sad fact I’ve come to conclude.  A majority of STEM type guys simply cannot remake themselves.  I think you have to have a certain amount of just basic social skills and being a “cool” guy.  I think the guys that have the most success “learning game” often had guy friends who weren’t all STEM types, might have been athletic, etc. but somehow just never learned how to talk to/relate to/approach women.  It is like there are just 1-2 pieces of the puzzle missing,  and it isn’t a herculean task to put it all together.  And then I think there are guys where basically none of the pieces are there.
     

  • rick

    The idea of a bunch of high status guys picking of lots of the “good girls” is probably true.
    Once an average “good girl” gets a taste of dating someone with a bit of alpha, she will spend her nights home alone before she will settle for a beta.
    These women are probably not sluts at all. But they will give the milk for free if they think they can get a better guy than they could otherwise.
    In some ways they are worse than sluts, because they should know better.

  • “Because the men who are promiscuous will settle down over time and will cast their nets considerably wider. This gives non-promiscuous women an advantage, as they exercised good judgment early on and do not carry the baggage of dozens of sexual partners.”

    However, chaste women do not seek out promiscuous men as life partners, even “reformed” ones.

  • Mike

    I’ll also agree that it’s possible that in a large enough overall pool, there could be enough uber-promiscuous women being passed around among uber-promiscuous men to account for a good portion of the 100+ club, but that depends on the overall size of the pool as well. If you live in Manhattan, the pool is quite large (and so the resulting smaller pool of uber-promiscuous women would still be large enough, even if it is a relatively small slice of the overall pool, to drive the higher numbers among men), and that would make sense, I think.

    Well….there is another factor here at play as well that I haven’t seen mentioned.  Look, obviously women have sex drives as well, and let’s assume which I don’t think is a stretch that most well-adjusted women would prefer a relationship and relationship sex over purely casual sex.  But we also know women generally tend to be hypergamous and overestimate their own SMV….OK, where I am going.
    I’m sure at any given point in time you have a decent number of women who have been boyfriend-less for a considerable length of time, and along with that probably celibate.  Eventually, they just say fuck it….I need to get laid.  Now what is more likely?  That they are going to have sex with the superhot, tight game supercad/alpha they meet or the plain, no game Beta.  So in a sense I think the supercad/alpha types becomes the “slumpbusters” for girls who don’t have boyfriends, and haven’t had one for awhile.
    This seems perfectly logical to me.  If you are at least semi-decent looking girl who hasn’t had sex in a long time, you are going to seek out the most attractive male possible, and that is the same guy banging a 100+ girls.  On the flip side, if you are guy looking for a slumpbuster you usually have to lower your standards to the absolute minimum that you can still get hard for although as noted “beauty is just a light switch away”

  • Mike

    Chaste women do not seek to settle down with promiscuous men.

    I would literally bet $100,000 this is NOT a disqualifying factor for the vast majority of women.  Going back to Susan’s Player categories, I suspect most women would jump at the chance with a LTR with Player 1 type (if I recall this was the type who could just basically be a good guy taking advantage of options presented to him without deception, lying, deviousness, etc.)
    Give me a 6’4″ guy, IQ of 130, sociable, good game, good career, fun, financially well set, etc. AND 150 lifetime partners, but he is done with that lifestyle.  How many girls say NO DICE, I’ll pass.  Seriously????  Please no bullshitting.
    Reverse it.  5’9″ supermodel, 25, smart, sexy, flirty, intelligent.  150 partners and was in a 5 guy gangbang.  How many guys pass on marrying her?

    • @Mike

      Give me a 6’4″ guy, IQ of 130, sociable, good game, good career, fun, financially well set, etc. AND 150 lifetime partners, but he is done with that lifestyle. How many girls say NO DICE, I’ll pass. Seriously???? Please no bullshitting.

      Zero girls say NO DICE. Even the daughters of evangelical pastors will jump at the chance. Oh wait, one did that with Russell Brand!
      Seriously, here’s how I think it works: When a woman sees a guy whoring around in a social circle – college, small town, regular in a bar, whatever, she’s more likely to think he’s gross. She’s seen him hitting on super skanky ugly women and she’s disgusted by it. I’ve heard women talk about these guys, saying, “ugh, just think of all the dirty vag’s he’s been in.” As I’ve said before, this is probably tied to STD rates, especially herpes. But in general, the guy has demonstrated that he is not selective – no man whore is selective, that’s what makes him a whore. So any potential bump in status for the woman has been nullified by his demonstrated lack of standards.
      However – fast forward 8 years. Now the guy is everything you describe, and does not have a bad reputation in the woman’s social circle. No one will make fun of her for responding to his overtures. He appears to be pretty much everything a girl could want. As a girl dates him and things start really clicking, he says, “Listen, I need to tell you something. I was a real manwhore in college. I regret the way I treated some of those girls, and I’ve changed. I respect you and promise to never lie to you. I’m willing to wait for sex until you think the time is right.”
      Her response? His value has jumped even higher in her eyes. She’d be smart to see his medical paperwork, but other than that he is most definitely good to go.

  • Rum

    The best way to think of the 80/20 issue is to focus on what kind of man gives women true gina tingles instead of who their fore-brains decide would be a good bet for long term stability/herpes free nest building. For the former, it is 80/20 for sure.
    That underlying truth is not really new and is not going away; it just was well hidden in the days before young women could act out their hind brain instincts.

    • The best way to think of the 80/20 issue is to focus on what kind of man gives women true gina tingles instead of who their fore-brains decide would be a good bet for long term stability/herpes free nest building.

      I’m not sure – women are most definitely attracted to different types of guys – as we saw in the male archetypes thread. I think it’s obvious that all women like men who are self-confident and take the initiative, but not all of these men will have social dominance. Yes, the George Clooneys of the world appeal to just about everyone, but there are very, very few of those men around. In fact, even George Clooney isn’t George Clooney – every woman projects her perfect man onto his face and demeanor. If self-confidence is enough to produce tingles in some women, and I think it is, then there are many more men who are tingle-worthy than we’ve previously assumed.

  • Mike

    @J
    I think you are right in saying that she wasn’t afraid of the boyfriend, but I’d bet she was afraid of the story getting around campus and back to her family. I sincerely doubt that “she recognized that her chances of getting charges were far less than 0.1%. ” Who would have a figure like that at their finger tips at a moment like that? More likely, she was drunk, panicky and thinking unclearly. It’s unfortunate because the false charge obviously will follow the young men around.

    Unfortunate?….Unfortunate?….Unfortunate?  Is that really how you would characterize this sort of behavior.  You know, I’ve read enough of your comments to think you are a pretty level-headed poster, but something like this really scares me when it comes to the female perspective on things.  What if it is was one of your sons who faced 20+ years in jail, because some “panicky” girl decided she needed to sacrifice another human beings freedom to “save her reputation”.
    I call total, complete, utter bullshit.  Women want to be equals.  Fine.  Then man up and take full responsibility for your decisions.  Honestly, no offense, but women really need to get their heads out of their @$$es when it comes to the reality of some of these situations.  When you go to a guy’s room or place at midnight, you are going there to f*ck.  If you don’t want to f*ck, then don’t go.  You aren’t going there to play parcheesi.  If you are going there to “watch a movie”, you are going to f*ck.
    A false rape charge is pure unadulterated evil, not a mistake, or oversight, or panicked response.

    • When you go to a guy’s room or place at midnight, you are going there to f*ck. If you don’t want to f*ck, then don’t go. You aren’t going there to play parcheesi. If you are going there to “watch a movie”, you are going to f*ck.

      I have to say, I agree with this. Last spring a student at American University in DC pretty much said this in the student newspaper and got totally flamed for it by the feminists on campus. He rode that scandal all the way to the morning talk shows, explaining himself to Katie Kouric along the way. And I agree with him 100%. Women need to be smart to stay safe. A woman is responsible for her own actions – and if she carelessly puts herself in harm’s way, she should expect harm.
      Here’s what he said:

      Let’s get this straight: any woman who heads to an EI party as an anonymous onlooker, drinks five cups of the jungle juice, and walks back to a boy’s room with him is indicating that she wants sex, OK? To cry “date rape” after you sober up the next morning and regret the incident is the equivalent of pulling a gun to someone’s head and then later claiming that you didn’t ever actually intend to pull the trigger.

      http://www.theeagleonline.com/opinion/story/dealing-with-aus-anti-sex-brigade/

      By the way, AK is a gay male, which made it especially difficult for the pro-sex types to attack him, but they did it anyway.

  • Hope

    @Jimmy Hendricks, I was speaking about the general population of women.
    Again slightly off-topic: women like men with low cortisol levels.
    http://www.livescience.com/culture/stress-free-male-faces-cortisol-attractive-100914.html

  • Mike

    The averages must be similar. The means could be different sure, but the averages must be similar,

    Sarah, are you a math major? 🙂
    Mean and average are the same thing.  It is median that refers to a different calculation/metric.  The overall male and female average must be the same unless someone is hooking up with goats.
    One interesting question is the numbers at the extreme right tails.  My guess is you have more men in say the 50-300 range, but the super right tail is probably more women (the article on the girl with a 1000).

  • clarence

    Mike@ 7:56

    I’m sure at any given point in time you have a decent number of women who have been boyfriend-less for a considerable length of time, and along with that probably celibate.  Eventually, they just say fuck it….I need to get laid.  Now what is more likely?  That they are going to have sex with the superhot, tight game supercad/alpha they meet or the plain, no game Beta.  So in a sense I think the supercad/alpha types becomes the “slumpbusters” for girls who don’t have boyfriends, and haven’t had one for awhile.

    Thank you for saying something so eloquently that I was going to put into a longer post. And I like how you segue into the experience of the typical girlfriendless guy: he has to lower his standards. Indeed, I suspect if he was like me and couldn’t get a girl to save his life, he has to lower his standards ALOT. Of course I never thought of it in those terms: I’m pretty consistent over at Roissys for adding a point or two more than the “average” when he does one of his “hot or not” posts, so I’ve always found a majority of females attractive. Trust me, Susan et al: I couldn’t score with the plain Janes and the slightly tubbies (meaning anything under double chin territory I’d “hit”), I certainly wasn’t  trying for the models with ONE exception. Ironically I got my first kiss from this girl even though we only dated twice.
    For the longest time I thought it was pity, but since she continued to talk to me for quite a while thereafter, I think she might have let me go that far before putting me in the friend zone because I had the guts to approach her. This girl was a 9, and literally had one small pimple on her face.  And I got to kiss her.  Too bad I took the wrong lesson out of the whole thing and ended up celibate for nearly 5 more years. And I never have hit on a near model or model again, though with game and if I wasn’t with my girl..

  • “I would literally bet $100,000 this is NOT a disqualifying factor for the vast majority of women.  Going back to Susan’s Player categories, I suspect most women would jump at the chance with a LTR with Player 1 type (if I recall this was the type who could just basically be a good guy taking advantage of options presented to him without deception, lying, deviousness, etc.)
    Give me a 6’4″ guy, IQ of 130, sociable, good game, good career, fun, financially well set, etc. AND 150 lifetime partners, but he is done with that lifestyle.  How many girls say NO DICE, I’ll pass.  Seriously????  Please no bullshitting.
    Reverse it.  5’9″ supermodel, 25, smart, sexy, flirty, intelligent.  150 partners and was in a 5 guy gangbang.  How many guys pass on marrying her?”

    Mike, the man and woman you describe above are rarities.  Bring it back down to us regular, middling IQ folk here and I find the assumption that a woman who takes pains to avoid the promiscuous lifestyle and it’s concomitant dysfunctions and diseases would or should somehow be happy to settle for a possibly diseased and emotionally damaged promiscuous man INSULTING.

    • I find the assumption that a woman who takes pains to avoid the promiscuous lifestyle and it’s concomitant dysfunctions and diseases would or should somehow be happy to settle for a possibly diseased and emotionally damaged promiscuous man INSULTING.

      I already addressed the question of possible disease, but I want to comment on the question of emotional damage in promiscuous men. I don’t believe that men suffer the same emotional damage women do, because they have far less (possibly even zero), emotional investment in casual sex. If they’ve lost anything, it’s respect for women, and that can be problematic but should be evident in the guy’s attitudes and behavior. This applies to the Player I type that MIke referred to earlier. If a guy has been deceitful or callous in his treatment of women – pumping and dumping, pretended she no longer exists, etc. then I do think that takes a toll on a man with a conscience and capacity for empathy. Not all men have those things, and they are the most likely ones to behave that way.
      I do think it’s legit to question whether a guy with that much sexual variety in his past will ever be happy with monogamy – one reader here said that after he learned Game and got a lot more women, he wants more variety. He loves his gf, but said sex with her is like eating chicken for dinner every single night. So I do think men with that kind of history are probably more likely to cheat in the future.

  • Mike

    Mike, the man and woman you describe above are rarities.
    True, but sometimes you have to use extreme examples to demonstrate a general principle
    Bring it back down to us regular, middling IQ folk here and I find the assumption that a woman who takes pains to avoid the promiscuous lifestyle and it’s concomitant dysfunctions and diseases would or should somehow be happy to settle for a possibly diseased and emotionally damaged promiscuous man INSULTING.
    Well…I didn’t mean to insult you so I’m sorry about that, but I would note that you did in fact artfully dodge the question.  Instead of going for the winner, you just tried to keep the ball in play.
    My point remains the same.  Given enough other compensating positive factors such as good looks, intelligence, wealth, whatever, I would bet a great sum that few women will consider sexual history has a final disqualifying criteria.  In other words, a sort of “I just can’t get over this” and need to move on with someone different.  In fact, I suspect most women “could get over it” without much problem.  Again, to restate it, I just don’t think a man’s sexual history is likely to be a Go/No Go factor by itself.
    The reverse is not true, and is indicated by a few of the letters you’ve seen guys write in questioning their prospective wife’s sexual history, and quite clearly being distraught over “what they should do”.  I have yet to see a comparable letter from a woman that says “I love my boyfriend, he is great, smart, fun, handsome, etc. but he fucked 50 girls”.  I’m not sure I can go through with marrying him.  Please, if you can, provide just one link like that.
    I’m not making a value judgement, or saying this is fair.  I’m just describing what I believe to be the accurate depiction of empirical reality.

  • I have yet to see a comparable letter from a woman that says “I love my boyfriend, he is great, smart, fun, handsome, etc. but he fucked 50 girls”. 

    Because MOST womens’ boyfriends have in fact, NOT fucked 50 girls. 

  • Lurky Lu

    @sox
    “My issue is with women ignoring men equal to them or even a single point higher in SMV because they have inflated perceptions of their own, either because of the E3N I mentioned or maybe they just slept with a higher SMV male and derived their value based on that.”

    Just because a woman ignores or refuses a man who is equal to her in SMV, that doesn’t mean that she is looking for someone with a higher SMV.   If she’s a “beta” girl, then she just might be looking for a certain kind of  beta guy.   Guys may seem less selective because they’ll sleep with someone with a lower SMV, but when they are relationship minded, they get choosier about the qualities they are looking for, not only for “superficial” qualities, but for other compatibility qualities.  Likewise for women who are relationship minded — they are looking for someone who is their “type”.  

    Also, men exercise selection all the time by choosing not to go after every woman they meet.  Because men are the initiators in the relationship market (feminism didn’t change that one iota), women exercise selection by actively saying yes or no to whatever is offered to them.  Because women are in the position of having to overtly refuse the ones they’re not interested in, it can look pretty heartless to an observer — and feel even more so when you’re on the receiving end, I’m sure.  But it’s only fair, because when it comes to relationships (and not just sex), men have the first perogative of selection via pursuit, and women have the secondary perogative of selection via refusal (which limits female options much more than you’d think).  

    Sexually frustrated single men often miss that this is a “one down” predicament that women are in, because all they can think about is how easy it is for a woman to get laid if she wants to, like “women are so lucky…they have ALL the power!!”  But as I have shown, this is not the case for most relationship minded women, who if they are to exercise that power, stand to loose respect, from others, self…and probably both.  To exercise that power is to lose it.
     

    • @Lurky Lu

      Sexually frustrated single men often miss that this is a “one down” predicament that women are in, because all they can think about is how easy it is for a woman to get laid if she wants to, like “women are so lucky…they have ALL the power!!” But as I have shown, this is not the case for most relationship minded women, who if they are to exercise that power, stand to lose respect, from others, self…and probably both. To exercise that power is to lose it.

      Welcome, and thanks for leaving a comment. It’s a good one. A woman never has more power than the moment before she consents to sex.

  • Mike

    Because MOST womens’ boyfriends have in fact, NOT fucked 50 girls.
    TennisPro,
    First, it might be easier to follow your responses if you turn the italics off with your own response.
    OK. are we going to try and be honest here and genuinely address points or engage in sophistry and misdirection.  Your statement above is obviously true MINUS the “Because”.  The because has absolutely nothing to do with my point.
    It is also ABSOLUTELY TRUE that most men’s girlfriends have in fact, NOT fucked 50 girls.  That doesn’t change the FACT that there are real-life examples of guys being sufficiently distraught about their girlfriend’s or fiancees high partner count that they were motivated to write to columnists questioning the entire relationship when they found out.  One was posted here not too long ago.
    I have yet to see a comparable example from a woman.  You say MOST, that leaves some minority of men with girlfriends who have in fact fucked a large number of girls.  It is reasonable to assume that some supercads eventually decide to settle down.  Can you give me a single example where the woman ends the relationship over that single factor?
    I will say I find it frustrating to discuss a point with somebody who play Lucy’s game of move the ball and engages in constant misdirection, shifting the discussion, and never addressing the main point head on.  You’ve done that so far.  I’ll just stop replying after this comment if you persist in that?
    My central question remains.  Is a high sexual partner count a Go/No Go variable for a woman in a LTR after she is already emotionally vested in the relationship?  Would she end the relationship over that single factor even if there were numerous other positive factors?  Those are fairly simple, straightforward questions to answer.  I suspect you know the answer, know the comparable male answer, view it as terribly unfair, and thus cannot be intellectually honest about it

  • But it’s only fair, because when it comes to relationships (and not just sex), men have the first perogative of selection via pursuit, and women have the secondary perogative of selection via refusal (which limits female options much more than you’d think).  

    THANKYOU!!! for pointing this out!
    Men here seem to think that women call all the shots.  We don’t.  Men are the first choosers and there choices are obvious – it’s who they approach.   Women accept or reject based on who approaches them first.  Although it is not as uncommon as one might think for a woman to actually phone up a guy and ask him to “hang out” provided she already knows him.  Cold approaches in bars, clubs and parties are going to be considerably less easy to come by from women.  
    I’ve been “passed up” by a number of men I was initially attracted to.  With a few of them I put myself in their field of vision again so they were at least forced to speak to me, and then from there I initiated further contact.  It worked with one, not so with the other, whom turned me down.  It’s not easy out here for us either. 
    WRT STDs, I’d like to ask how many people here actually ask people you are dating if they’ve been tested?  How many of you have requested or even required that they do so before you sleep with them?

    • @Tennis Pro

      I’ve been “passed up” by a number of men I was initially attracted to. With a few of them I put myself in their field of vision again so they were at least forced to speak to me, and then from there I initiated further contact.

      I give you enormous credit for this! You get what you ask for – sometimes.

  • Rum

    Susan
    Your last post could serve as a plot synopsis for about 91% of the chick-lit/Romance Novels/Girl Porn ever made.
    There is nothing wrong with that. That is, if those genres produce expectations in their readers that actually help them navigate the reality outside their fantasies.

  • Mike

    Seriously, here’s how I think it works: When a woman sees a guy whoring around in a social circle – college, small town, regular in a bar, whatever, she’s more likely to think he’s gross. She’s seen him hitting on super skanky ugly women and she’s disgusted by it. I’ve heard women talk about these guys, saying, “ugh, just think of all the dirty vag’s he’s been in.” As I’ve said before, this is probably tied to STD rates, especially herpes. But in general, the guy has demonstrated that he is not selective – no man whore is selective, that’s what makes him a whore.
    Well…I’m pretty much in 100% agreement with you.  I think you hit something here which is VERY KEY.  In some sense, it really is NOT the raw high quantity of sex that is the turn-off, it is the IMPLIED LACK OF SELECTIVITY.  In some sense, it is disgust with the other girls (“dirty vags”) just as much as the guy.  No guy talking about a promiscuous women will talk about the “dirty cocks” that have been inside her.  The central focus remains on her the girl, not her male partners, where women bring the “manwhores” other partners into their perspective.  I could go down the psychological rabbitt hole here.  One implication is that women “judge” other women just like guys judge, dirty vags, skanks, etc.  Guys don’t judge other guys although they’ll be bitter and resentful as all hell.  To use the categories earlier, the 2s and 3s will be very bitter and jealous of the 1s but they aren’t going to talk about “dirty cocks”
    I regret the way I treated some of those girls, and I’ve changed. I respect you and promise to never lie to you. I’m willing to wait for sex until you think the time is right.”
    Her response? His value has jumped even higher in her eyes. She’d be smart to see his medical paperwork, but other than that he is most definitely good to go.
    I think you are absolutely right, and this was really my main point which was to call BS on the notion that chaste women are going to reject promiscuous men as a general operating principle.  Maybe they should, but that is a normative question, not a question of empirical reality.  Based on what you said above, and this was my thought, if the guy can honestly and authentically communicate he has changed his ways, most women are probably inclined to let it go and it won’t be a factor going forward.  Right or wrong, I don’t think MOST guys will be able to let go as easily and move forward.  The high partner count factor will always be there like a rock in a shoe.

    • The central focus remains on her the girl, not her male partners, where women bring the “manwhores” other partners into their perspective. I could go down the psychological rabbitt hole here. One implication is that women “judge” other women just like guys judge, dirty vags, skanks, etc.

      Oh, no question! Intrasexual female competition assures that this is the case. Most slut shaming is done by women. As you say, it’s not in guys’ interest to curtail promiscuous behavior, but it’s certainly in women’s interest. There’s a lot less slut shaming that goes on today on campuses, but I do think you’ll find promiscuous women congregating with other promiscuous women, and more selective women befriending one another. There are definitely two camps, and they’re in opposition.

  • Rum

    OK
    The one before last.

    Besides, Clooney acts cool with hot chicks because he is actually lusting after the pool-boy.

  • Lurky Lu

    You’re Welcome, Tennis Pro!

    “Although it is not as uncommon as one might think for a woman to actually phone up a guy and ask him to “hang out” provided she already knows him.  Cold approaches in bars, clubs and parties are going to be considerably less easy to come by from women.  ”

    Even if the guy is initially interested (perhaps motivated by what may appear to him to be an opportunity for easy sex), he’ll probably lose interest eventually, since “the chase” seems to be a key process in order for a man to fall in love and commit to a relationship.  Hence, “The Rules” that advise women to not initiate ANYTHING.  Not that I’d take it that far, but after initiating some thing with a man, if he doesn’t pick up the ball from there, the relationship goes nowhere.

    • after initiating some thing with a man, if he doesn’t pick up the ball from there, the relationship goes nowhere.

      Absolutely. Women need to be very alert – the only time it really works to initiate is when the guy is attracted and did not act on it for whatever reason. If that doesn’t become clear pretty quickly, as demonstrated by his earnest pursuit, he’s just not that into you.

  • jt

    Women don’t call any shots. Never have and never will and that’s the underlying tragedy of it all. Where as in the past they had guidance by their mothers and other women who were wise and pushed them into relationships at early ages, the women of today have no such help. Their sense of independence is actually a hindrance in finding men who will stand by them. And as I’m seeing more and more today, those 20 something women that are described here end up in their 30’s and find out the hard way that they are losing out to their younger counterparts in the dating arena. And what do many of them do to compete with younger women? Give their  sex away. Do take age into account as well as many older single childless women who want commitments or even attention are in fact becoming part of the 80 percentile group.

  • Mike

    I have to say, I agree with this. Last spring a student at American University in DC pretty much said this in the student newspaper and got totally flamed for it by the feminists on campus. He rode that scandal all the way to the morning talk shows, explaining himself to Katie Kouric along the way. And I agree with him 100%. Women need to be smart to stay safe. A woman is responsible for her own actions – and if she carelessly puts herself in harm’s way, she should expect harm.
    Lest I be misinterpreted, I do want to EMPHATICALLY state that no man has any right to physically force a woman to do anything she clearly states NO to regardless of the conditions such as 2AM, in his room, buzzed, etc.
    My point is when you do that, both people know or should know what the unspoken agenda on the table is.  Fact of the matter is most women want to maintain “plausible deniability”.  They need to be able to tell their girlfriends the next day, “It just happened”, “I went to see his card collection in his room and before I knew it…..”, etc.  The guy just cannot say “Hey, you wanna go fuck” and then expect a “Sure thing, let’s go fuck”. This game of pretending something else has to be played, so if a woman “plays along” she is implying she knows how the deal is going to end.  You referenced a gay man.  Interestingly gay culture tends to operate more on the very blunt “Hey you wanna go fuck”, “Sure let’s go do it”.

    • This game of pretending something else has to be played, so if a woman “plays along” she is implying she knows how the deal is going to end.

      There is an exception to this – the college freshman. Honestly, these girls often don’t understand how it works. They arrive on campus – no parental supervision – and they think watching a movie is a legit offer. They have no excuse if this invitation comes in the form of a text at 2 a.m. – that’s just stupid. But many guys have the moves down – they’ll set up a time to hang out, and wind up suggesting a movie in their room. This may be fine if it’s a weeknight and there’s no heavy drinking. But women need to be on high alert so they don’t walk into a trap. Of course, we’re talking about players here – but women who are new to campus either haven’t figured that out, or are tingling like crazy to be getting such flattering attention.

  • Brendan

    I’m sure at any given point in time you have a decent number of women who have been boyfriend-less for a considerable length of time, and along with that probably celibate.  Eventually, they just say fuck it….I need to get laid.  Now what is more likely?  That they are going to have sex with the superhot, tight game supercad/alpha they meet or the plain, no game Beta.  So in a sense I think the supercad/alpha types becomes the “slumpbusters” for girls who don’t have boyfriends, and haven’t had one for awhile.
    This seems perfectly logical to me.  If you are at least semi-decent looking girl who hasn’t had sex in a long time, you are going to seek out the most attractive male possible, and that is the same guy banging a 100+ girls.  On the flip side, if you are guy looking for a slumpbuster you usually have to lower your standards to the absolute minimum that you can still get hard for although as noted “beauty is just a light switch away”

    @Mike —

    This seems very plausible to me, actually.  It’s that imbalance again in terms of who can access “high quality casual sex” more easily, but I think also there are a good number of men who, rather than going too far down (there is an absolute floor for most men, as I think you’d agree), will either opt for porn, warcraft or, in some cases, hookers.

  • “If they’ve lost anything, it’s respect for women”

    That’s exactly the emotional damage I was alluding to.

    Mike, you asked for just one example.  ME.  I was dating a man who I really liked.  I found out after about a month of dating him that he had slept with many women.  Seeing as how this could have been a lie made up about him I confronted him and gave him a chance to give his side of the story.  He admitted that he had but he has long since changed.  I dumped him.  I ran into him a while after dumping him and asked him if he ever got tested for STDs.  He was offended by my question and said, “of course not”.  Got stupid?
     

  • Honestly it never crossed my mind in college that going to a guy’s room alone insinuated sex in any form.   I never went to the rooms of complete strangers but several times I did go to the rooms of guys who were just acquaintances.  Nothing bad ever happened.  I made friends with most of them and made out with a few.  Sometimes a girl just likes to kiss and make out.  It never dawned on me that I could have been in any danger or even that sex would have been expected of me.  Never.  And it never was.

    • It never dawned on me that I could have been in any danger or even that sex would have been expected of me. Never. And it never was.

      You were lucky. Most of the time, though, this expectation occurs when both parties have been drinking – a lot. In fact, research shows that both men and women get drunk specifically for the purpose of having the nerve to hook up with someone they don’t know well. A woman is much more likely to consent when drunk, though many states have laws saying consent is impossible if the woman is impaired.

  • J

    @ Demonspawn

    Ok.. I highlighted “communicable” not because I thought you were talking about differences in communicable diseases, but because I knew you were talking about genetic diseases and the disease in question was a communicable one.  I thought that would have been evident, but I guess not.

    Oh, my bad.  I was rushing to get out of the house while trying to make a few last comments.  I skimmed the thread and  missed that part.

  • Hope

    “WRT STDs, I’d like to ask how many people here actually ask people you are dating if they’ve been tested?  How many of you have requested or even required that they do so before you sleep with them”
    My husband and I had this frank discussion before we were ever physically involved (i.e. before we even kissed).  We had both been tested with all negative results, never had outbreaks of any kind, etc.
    But I do have to note that it wasn’t casual dating, and we were very much in love with each other at that point.  So we could talk about it openly and honestly without “scaring” the other one off.  If I hadn’t had tests done, I would have gotten them done for him, and vice versa I’m sure.
     

  • J

    The whole “Chateau” thing has me puzzled. … There was all that purging of posts after the Lady Raine debacle. Then a renaming to Citizen Renegade and the Chateau – but for what purpose?

    I’ve seen many different rumors about the aftermath of the LR debacle.  From what I’ve been able to piece together from different sources,  JW is no longer in DC or working at FINCA anymore.  I think name change to CR signals two things–the move out of DC and a shift in topics from game to politics.  The name “Chateau”” is a reference to the setting in the Story of O as is the name”” Roissy, ” the town in France where the chateau was located.  There’s a Wikipedia article on the novel.

    And now new and different writers?

    Perhaps JW is burnt out on the blog and writes less. Perhaps he no longer has time for it.   Some people say he is writing a book.

    I can’t really grasp the strategy behind all this – all on a blog that doesn’t even run ads. Revenue is zero.

    He takes donations.

  • J

    @Clarence

    You seem to show lots of sympathy for her and very little sympathy for her victims.

    I think this is a situation with a lot of victims and a lot of perpetrators.  Consensual or not, a gangbang is hardly an “opportunity of a lifetime.”  It might well be something people fantasize about, but I can’t imagine that the reality is anything but degrading.  On some level, I’d say that participation in it even harmed the guys emotionally.  Perhaps that’s why one of the guys just watched.

    Remember she may have been initially wary of “going in” but once she was in, she was in all the way until she was told there might be a video. 

    Not that I’m standing up for her right to be gangbanged, but I’d imagine that taping it against her will is also illegal.

     These poor young guys were going to serve multiple decades to cover for her reputation.

    Multiple decades??  I know of one local case in which  two men beat and raped a women they were giving a ride to and were sentenced to three years each.  One guy got out after 18 months.

     That you could have sympathy for such a person , and compare her lie to the “crime” of being young, stupid, and horny does not say very much good about you.

    I guess we have a difference in values. Your cmpthsizing with the boy’s horniness and considering participation in a gangbang as “a boys will boys” sort of thing or a once in a lifetime opportunity is telling as well.

    As we can see fron the outcome, this didn’t turn out to be fun and games for any of the participants. Everyone’s life will be permanently and negatively affected.  No good could possibly have come from it.   It never should have happened.

    That this young woman, at least initially, was wiling to be used was her fault and her stupidity.  I imagine that in some way she thought that being the center of attention would be hot or gratifying to her. But I can also imagine that once the action started, the fantasy endeed and that things quickly turned ugly.  When she realized that she was being used and treated like a whore, her stupidity no doubt became apparent to her.  Taking advantage of that stupidity and more likely than not some drunkeness shows a callousness and a selfishness that is also repulsive.  The guys weren’t blameless.  If I were the mother of any of those boys I would be deeply ashamed.  And I say that as a mother of sons whom I would hope would have the decency and brains to walk away from such an opportunity.

  • J

    @Tennis Pro

    Honestly it never crossed my mind in college that going to a guy’s room alone insinuated sex in any form.  

    Obviously though, it does to some guys.

     I never went to the rooms of complete strangers but several times I did go to the rooms of guys who were just acquaintances.  Nothing bad ever happened. 

    To some degreee you were lucky.
     
    I made friends with most of them and made out with a few.  Sometimes a girl just likes to kiss and make out. 

    I think that’s true for many women, but there is a cadre of men who will think that your presence in their room and your willingness for some sexual contact is a cue for them to  demand more.  Women do get raped in those circumstances.  Unfortunately, sooner or later, youy will meet up with a guy who is angered by putting the brakes on sex.  It’s not fair, but it happens.  Women should be careful of being alone with that sort of guy just like men should be careful about flashing their cash in bad neighborhoods.  It doesn’t put you at fault, but it’s taking an unnecessary risk.

  • clarence

    J @ 1:17 am:
    “Not that I’m standing up for her right to be gangbanged, but I’d imagine that taping it against her will is also illegal.”
    Way to misunderstand what I said.
    I was referring to her rape lie. She didn’t apparently plan the lie, it happened when her boyfriend caught her. And once she claimed they raped her, she never changed her story until days later when the cops confronted her with the possibility that maybe a video existed. That’s why I said she was in all the way. As for her consent to video recorded, she wasn’t asked, and wasn’t aware that it happened. Had she been, I’m sure she never would have lied. Just as I’m sure the local prosecutor wouldn’t dare prosecute them once that video became known. Like it or not, it was the right thing to do. If you have sex with some strange slut you barely know, trusting her to be adult and honest about it is not a wise thing as your very comments show.
    Multiple decades??  I know of one local case in which  two men beat and raped a women they were giving a ride to and were sentenced to three years each.  One guy got out after 18 months.
    These guys were threatened with multiple counts of different felonies, this was a high profile public case. They were threatened with 25 years, and I think its ridiculous to think the prosecution would go easy on them. No, they were to be made an example of.
    But even if they hadn’t been, it doesn’t take being in prison ten years to get raped or assaulted in there. I’ve read a story a 18 year old guy who raped during a one night stand in a local jail.  Surely this anecdote counts just as much as yours. At least one of them claimed to have received threats.
    I guess we have a difference in values. Your cmpthsizing with the boy’s horniness and considering participation in a gangbang as “a boys will boys” sort of thing or a once in a lifetime opportunity is telling as well.

    Yeah, I’m just not down with putting people in jail for consensual sex and apparently you are. Apparently in your world if the sex is icky or of the type you don’t approve, we should applaud false accusers and not ever punish them. I don’t know what kind of “values” those are, but I’m sure glad I don’t share them.
    When she realized that she was being used and treated like a whore, her stupidity no doubt became apparent to her.  Taking advantage of that stupidity and more likely than not some drunkeness shows a callousness and a selfishness that is also repulsive.
    Hmm. No where is it claimed she was drunk or unconscious and indeed she seemed sober to her boyfriend. But hey, we can’t accept the fact that maybe she was horny herself and decided cheating on the boyfriend would be hot. Or maybe  if we are going to bring in things not in evidence her and the 5 boys were all drunk. You know all impaired by youth, stupidity, and alcohol. Which I guess, instantly makes them slimey. Weren’t blameless? I’d damn say they were as what they did couldn’t have ruined HER life, but what she did could very easily have ruined theirs.
    I just can’t see where being a horny young male is such a crime that I could in any way sympathize with a false accuser. So I’m glad you are not the mother of any boys.

     

  • J

    Most of the time, though, this expectation occurs when both parties have been drinking – a lot.

    I’d add that liquor does necessarily have to be involved.  The scenario where a girl just wants to kiss and  play but stop shortof intercourse used to be quite common, especially when the girl was a virgin.   Susan, you and I are both of an age where we can recall boys feeling teased and led on by that and arguements about why the girl would start something she didn’t plan on finishing.   The hope/expectation was that if you were in a guys room, you meant business.  Now, with fewer girls being virgins and fewer expectations of a relationship developing from sex, I’m sure male expectations, with or without the help of alcohol, are even higher.

  • Now, with fewer girls being virgins and fewer expectations of a relationship developing from sex, I’m sure male expectations, with or without the help of alcohol, are even higher.

    Definitely. However, I’ve been surprised by some studies that show that a pretty high percentage of guys don’t feel comfortable enough going for a hookup without some liquid courage. I think it depends on how well you know the person. Often, a situation where a girl is walking up to a frat house bedroom at 3 in the morning is between two people who have never interacted before, at least not in a physical way.

  • J

    “Not that I’m standing up for her right to be gangbanged, but I’d imagine that taping it against her will is also illegal.”
    Way to misunderstand what I said.  I was referring to her rape lie.

    I got that.  You are misunderstanding me, I think.

     As for her consent to video recorded, she wasn’t asked, and wasn’t aware that it happened.
     
    You know in some states taping someone without their knowledge/consent is illegal.  While the boys were lucky to have evidence, I’d bet that showing the tape around or putting it on the net would have lead to legal trouble.  I’m also confident that that’s what would have happened to the tape had it not become evidence.

     If you have sex with some strange slut you barely know, trusting her to be adult and honest about it is not a wise thing as your very comments show.

    Right, I think I said that I’d advise my own sons to avoid situations like this.  In fact, I’d  advise any young person, regardless of gender, NOT to have sex with strangers and/or crazies.  Isn’t a focus of this blog the idea that causual sex often leads to trouble?  At the core of things, what lead everyone in this incident into trouble was the abuse of one of the most powerful human experiences as fun and games.  The powerful emotions that sex evokes made it inevitable that this was going to turn ugly.  That’s why the “boys will boys” attitude troubles me. 

    They were threatened with 25 years, and I think its ridiculous to think the prosecution would go easy on them. No, they were to be made an example of… 

    Threatened with and actually being sentenced are two different things.  The sentence would have been arrived at after weighing all the evidence.  The case, most likely, wouldn’t have had gotten to court due to lack of evidence. 

    At least one of them claimed to have received threats.

    That’s unfortunate, and the prison rape anecdote is horrific.  But in this case, I think that young men need to realize that participation in iffy behavior has consequences.  If a girl got drunk at a frat partry and was date raped, many of the male posters hear would either feel that she asked for it or at minimum was stupid to put herself in an unsafe position.  What these guys did was similar.  They put themselves in a position were their actions were morally untenable.  Surely they knew that while participation in this gangbang might give them some cachet with some people, many others would find it repulsive, dirty or user-ish.  It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to anticipate that it might well result in someone getting in trouble.

    Yeah, I’m just not down with putting people in jail for consensual sex and apparently you are.

    Wow, where do you think I said that?

    Hmm. No where is it claimed she was drunk or unconscious and indeed she seemed sober to her boyfriend.

    Didn’t this happen at a party?  Is my assumption of alcohol at college party off base?

    Weren’t blameless?  I’d damn say they were as what they did couldn’t have ruined HER life, but what she did could very easily have ruined theirs.

    Couldn’t have ruined her life?  Don’t be ridiculuous.  This is a life-ruining incident for ALL involved.  As I said before, it never should have happened.

    So I’m glad you are not the mother of any boys.

    Actually, I’ve said in at least two previous post that I AM the mother of  two boys.  I’ve wondered what my husband and I would do if our boys were involved.  First, I think, we would get them the best legal representataion we could.  Next, my husband would beat the crap out of them for being such stupid pigs.  And they would deserve it.

    I assume BTW from your inability to understand the longterm effects of this incident on ALL involved that you are not a parent.

  • J

    Mornin’ Susan,

    However, I’ve been surprised by some studies that show that a pretty high percentage of guys don’t feel comfortable enough going for a hookup without some liquid courage. 

    I’m not surprised that the girls need to get liqoured up.  The guy thing is a bit surprising in the aggregate, but if I ask myself would the men I like, love or befriend really enjoy loveless intimacy, it seems less surprising.

    BTW, I like the new text editing function more than using html codes.  And thanks for looking up the economic data.

  • J

    Zero girls say NO DICE. Even the daughters of evangelical pastors will jump at the chance.

    Zero?  I’d say few, but not zero.  “Once a player, always a player,” is what some women would say.  Then add in the risk of STIs damaging your health and fertility… A foremer player is a big risk for a LTR.

    Oh wait, one did that with Russell Brand!

    LOL.  I know you love him, but he’s no Sacha Baron Cohen. 😉  And Sacha doesn’t seem to be a run-around.

  • Hope

    The “expectation of more” from making out is why I personally did not kiss any guy casually. All the guys I made out with had told me prior to that point they loved me, and we had already talked for weeks in a very intimate fashion. These days kissing is seen as not a big deal, when it really should be a huge deal.

    There is no shame in waiting, and guys actually seemed to respect this a lot in my experience. Contrary to what guys on various blogs say, it did not harm my chances at getting committed relationships.

    A lot of good guys want a genuine emotional connection, which is rare, and they would wait for a girl if they feel it. If he would go for another girl in the interim, then he probably wasn’t all that into her anyway. No loss.

    I also never had guys complain to me that I was “LJBFing” them, because as soon as they got to know me, they realized I don’t do anything physical casually, not even touch them on the hand. So since they weren’t in love with me, they had no expectations that I would “put out” in any way.

    Also, a lot of young men are not the crazed horndogs they are portrayed to be all the time. They often have very sensitive feelings, can be prone to depression, and can often be anxious about interactions with the opposite sex. In addition many have self-esteem issues from not getting overt female attention, as other posters have mentioned.

    The few jerks and “alphas” might be immune to the nervousness, but a number of guys don’t like sex sans emotional involvement either. They feel pressured to be more “studly” and use drugs/alcohol to get themselves more able to have a casual hook up. Still, lots of guys do want the good relationship.

  • clarence

    J:
    I think this will be my last post on this subject. I don’t see much point in continuing when you give answers like you gave above.
    For one, there is no way you could have understood what I was talking about and came up with a sentence like the one above. You brought up the gangbang, and talked about taping it. Obviously you weren’t talking about them filming the rape lie, but were instead talking about them filming the sex act.
    Now as for recording : I always recommend it even though I am aware it is against the law in many states. Why? Because usually its a misdemeanor at best,  and beats going to jail with a felony on your record because of some lying crazygirl. As this case shows four guys can all tell the same story, and the accusers story can be riddled with holes or  WTF moments, but that won’t necessarily save you from being fired from your job, being put in the pokey, and bail set at 100’s of thousands of dollars.  Then again, making a false rape complaint is a misdemeanor in most states.  Our society apparently views this kind of crap  as great fun and no real problem. There’s a local case I’ve offered to help on around here.  Supposedly door to door salesman (he’s black, alleged victim is white girl)  is going door to door in a neighborhood with other sales people from his company in the same neighborhood.  He shows up at this ladies door, shows her an ID, and claims he has to use the bathroom. Supposedly , he then brutalizes her and rapes her. Then, and get this…he continues to sell in the very same neighborhood. He was out there working when the cops picked him up.  Yes, here we have a guy accused of a crime who supposedly showed his victim his id and then after a brutal crime hung around the neighborhood and continued to try to sell as if nothing had happened.  Sounds a bit fishy to me. Mr. Warren Spain has been sitting in jail since early this year for this crime which hasn’t yet made it to trial. His bail is way too high for him to get out, he is represented by a public defender, and they’ve had to put motions in place for a speedy public trial. The case made the local papers when he was charged and the papers in his hometown near Chicago.Regardless of innocence I think his life is in a great part ruined. And here’s the kicker: if this case collapses for lack of evidence or for evidence of consent not a damn thing will be done to this woman. Hofstra is not some isolated incident, crap like this happens all the time because people don’t give a crap about the damage done to those falsely accused.  After all, they might suffer repeated rapes or attacks over a period of missed decades of their lives for a crime they did not even commit in the first place.
    Now for your other misunderstandings, possibly based on ignorance of rape laws:
    A. This case was going to go to trial because all you need to charge someone with rape is testimony. You do not need any kind of collaborating evidence, because that’s been disallowed via both rape shield laws (there are many cases I’ve seen where false accusers past lies are not allowed to be brought up in court) and  there is no need to prove use of force. This happens all the time: guys are convicted on testimony alone, with no other corraborating evidence. The innocence project has done a great job freeing some of these guys but there are far many more who need help than they have resources to do DNA and other testing on…and that’s only where DNA is available for the case in the first place. Many times after so many years, the evidence is destroyed. Thank GOD for the video.
    And as far as I know there’s not a lot of rape apologists on this website. No matter what she was wearing, nor what she was agreeing to (no matter how stupid or ill advised) no one ever deserves to be raped. No one ever deserves to be falsely accused of rape.
    I don’t particularly care what you think about gang-bangs, your opinions are your own, but there is no indication they were going to brag about it to anyone, and we don’t know if the young man who recorded it was going to put it on the internet, or merely take it home for “private use”. The other young men  DID NOT KNOW about the video (if you had read, one of them called the young man who recorded it his savior ), so your idea that this is some sort of conspiracy to “degrade” this young woman is ridiculous.
    Since you’ve refused to censure the false accuser here, this is what you are really saying to your sons:
    If you do something stupid or have some sort of sex I find icky or ill-advised you deserve to be accused of rape and have the threat of jail and all the rapes and assaults therein hang over your head. Good job, mom.
    As for me, I’ll simply say that no sex act is ever so degrading morally or ethically as to in any way approach the twin evils of rape and false accusation, and I find your morally conflating your sexual preferences with such horrors disgusting.
     
     
     
     

  • dragnet

    Okay. I’ve read through this post—but not all the comments. With everything taken at face, this data casts doubt on the 80/20 rule. For the record, I’ve never referenced the Pareto principle in any of my comments regarding Game because it always struck me as a bit extreme and simplistic. However, I think the underlying principle—that a relatively small number of men (among singletons) are having most of the sex with a surprisingly large pool of women—is still accurate. To that end, I really think VJ’s critique poses the sternest challenge to the data in this post, namely, the idea that women underreport and that men are more likely to exaggerate. The only question really is to what degree, not whether or not this actually happens. Obviously this is very difficult to model & quantify and I think we will just have to rely on the data as is to some extent…<i>but not to a great extent</i>. Which to my mind leaves a somewhat modified, less extreme Pareto principle as a fully plausible outcome.
    Anyways I believe this still leaves plenty of room for Game. The non-promiscuous girls can still be gamed—by cads, Game-enhanced betas, or whatever. It just takes patience and the right guy.

  • dragnet

    Hi Susan,
    are we not allowed to write our own html code now?

  • @dragnet

    I’ve installed a new plugin that gives you the HTML options in the buttons above the comment box. You can also see how it will look as you type. If people prefer the old HTML tags I can certainly go back to that – I just think this is easier. Clicking the quote box once sets you up for blockquote, for example.

  • Anyways I believe this still leaves plenty of room for Game. The non-promiscuous girls can still be gamed—by cads, Game-enhanced betas, or whatever. It just takes patience and the right guy.

    I totally agree. The point of this post was never to question the effectiveness or even desirability of Game. In my view, the best scenario is one that gives the 80% of guys who are not natural beneficiaries of female attention a real shot with a much larger pool of women, including attractive non-promiscuous ones. If the 80/20 rule does not hold, then that means that there are fewer promiscuous women around in general, which would probably be viewed as bad news by some guys. If that’s what they’re going for, they’ll just need to make sure their Game is tight. Less promiscuous women may respond differently or need a slightly different approach – I’m not sure.

  • Lurky Lu

    “However, I think the underlying principle—that a relatively small number of men (among singletons) are having most of the sex with a surprisingly large pool of women—is still accurate.”

    This is still an exaggeration — and one that leaves out the male contribution to the dynamic.

    It would be more correct to say that a large number of women prefer a small number of men — just as most men prefer the most attractive women.  However, going after your first choice (whether for sex or for a relationship) isn’t usually what most people do.

    Speaking of underlying principles, it seems that men as a rule will have lower standards (ie. looks and other measures of attraction) for casual sexual (hence, beauty is only a light switch away), but will have higher standards when it comes to settling down into marriage and family making.  Whereas, women will have high standards when it comes to casual sex (especially if it’s not something they ordinarily do), but will lower their standards when it comes to finding a committed partner —  out of necessity, of course, because just because you can bed a high beta, doesn’t mean you can get him to marry you.  Women have to select among those men who are actually doing the asking, or stay single (the big dilemma that single women face).  As mentioned earlier by another poster, promiscuity detracts from a woman’s mate value.

    Again, looking at the situation only from the vantage point of who has the most ready access to sex or “sexual power”  only gives an incomplete picture, because most women (and most men) are not promiscuious.  You have to include the real dynamics of how real people get into relationships, rather than generalizing from the bad behaviour of club goers and TV.

  • Whereas, women will have high standards when it comes to casual sex (especially if it’s not something they ordinarily do), but will lower their standards when it comes to finding a committed partner —  out of necessity, of course, because just because you can bed a high beta, doesn’t mean you can get him to marry you.

    I have to disagree strongly with this. First, it depends on what you mean by high standards. If you mean the most socially dominant males – yes, that is accurate. Particularly if a woman doesn’t usually hook up, she is most likely to do so when a total player singles her out for special attention. Of course, he’s the least likely guy of all to ever commit to her, so one might say she is setting low standards indeed – allowing herself to be used for no-strings sex.
    Unfortunately, many women who go this route never do wind up being attracted to a high beta. They spend their 20s and possibly even their 30s having bad relationships with the bad boys. They’re addicted to dysfunctional relationships.
    The key is not for women to lower their standards – it’s for women to have realistic standards to begin with. Women need to decide early on what they’re looking for in a man and a relationship. If that man is one in a million, they need to think again, and zero in on what qualities are truly important to them. And then go out and seek guys with those qualities.

  • @Mike

    It would be fascinating to me to know the “success rates” of the various seminars amongst STEM types.  I’d bet pretty low and it explains the increasing amount I am seeing or PUA/Game is a scam.  You see it in a few commenters here.

    We need to add that promiscuity is genetic.
    It’s like if some redheads started a bunch of websites portraying themselves as “cool” because they inherited the genes for red hair, and calling the majority “losers” because we inherited the genes for brown hair.
    We – the vast majority who did not inherit the genes for promiscuity – should not castigate ourselves for not being like people who did. OTOH, let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater; the basics of Good Game – treat yourself with respect, keep her guessing, don’t be mean – could make many men’s lives better.

  • autumnpari

    A side note about going to a guy’s room in the middle of the night…
    It depends who the guy is.  I did this with a guy I knew pretty well, after a party, when a bunch of us were still up.  I knew he wanted to hook up, but I wasn’t sure where his motivation was coming from since he was a friend of mine.  When I got there though, he didn’t really make a move.  I was attracted to him, and I wouldn’t have minded if he had wanted to kiss me/make out, since I already knew him, but one of the first things he told me was that he didn’t want a relationship.  Once I heard that, I knew that it was time for me to leave, and absolutely nothing happened between me and him that night.  If hooking up is still one of the few ways into a relationship, then you just have to take the opportunities as they come; being picky about time, place, lighting, mood, etc. is just a luxury that college age girls can’t really afford.  But girls DO need to understand what sort the guy is, what they’re willing to do, and when to get out.  He was completely decent until I left, which gave me the impression that although he wanted to be a cad, he just didn’t have it in him, despite having ingested quite a bit of alcohol.
    Which leads to me second-ing Lurky Lu, Hope and Aldonza, who have all said similar things at some point.  Yes, like some of the male commentors have been saying, women may have more opportunities for sex than they do (I certainly could have had sex with this boy if I had wanted that), but that doesn’t mean anything to a woman if what she wants is a relationship.  I’d be more than happy to trade places with a man if he thought being me could get him more sex.  I think the original post, even if there are flaws in the data and the stats, shows that this 80/20 rule is simply implausible because women just don’t operate from the same motivations as men.
    As for the liquid courage…this really is the big thing.  Without alcohol, college would not have nearly as many hookups because both men and women need it to overcome their inhibitions about leaping at the opposite sex.  This might not seem intuitively true for men, but it is.  I go to school with a really great bunch of guys.  They are smart, talented and motivated, but they’re also super horny.  They’ve been told since they were young to respect other people, especially women.  So how do they do have sex and also remain respectful?  With alcohol!  It lets everyone involved feel less culpable for the awkwardness and negative consequences.
    On an unrelated note, I also agree with Mike; no girl is going to say no to a reformed player, if such a thing actually exists in real life and not just in movies.  This is basically a girl’s dream; any girl who says otherwise has got to be lying or be extremely unusual in her preferences.

  • Lurky Lu

    Hi Susan,

    When I was talking about “standards”, I was, for the sake of (the earlier) discussion,  referring to social dominance, looks and other visceral “measures of attraction”.   Maybe I didn’t make that clear enough when I started off saying “it seems that men as a rule will have lower standards (ie. looks and other measures of attraction).  

    I would agree with you that “standards” for mate selection should include go beyond our  animal instincts and include things that are about commitment.  Making choices with some balance between body and mind, heart and head.   I would also agree that women who fritter their years away being used and discarded by men do indeed have low standards for themselves, and need to rethink what they are basing their  “standards” on, as far as their hopes for a lifetime mate. 

  • Lurky Lu

    “The key is not for women to lower their standards – it’s for women to have realistic standards to begin with. Women need to decide early on what they’re looking for in a man and a relationship. ”

    Sure, but most people, men and women, need some degree of exposure and experience in order to get realistic in their standards.  Not that casual sex necessarily has to be part of that.  But in practice, most people, whether for sex or relationships, aim high on those superficial elements of attraction and then adjust over time, and hopefully adding in other criteria that are more about substance.  The problem with the proliferation of casual sex is that it makes that process so much more onerous for a great many people (which seems to be what this blog is trying to say!)

  • @Jeffrey of Troy

    We – the vast majority who did not inherit the genes for promiscuity – should not castigate ourselves for not being like people who did.

    Wow, this is powerful, and so very, very true. Promiscuous behavior is constantly promoted and envied, without any acknowledgement of its downsides. Sex and the City was a good example of this – and finally people started observing that the women were all miserable. People who embrace a diet of casual sex tend to score low on risk-aversion and high on neuroticism – this is especially true for women. It’s interesting to consider from an evo standpoint – the people most likely to reproduce are also the most likely to be diseased and display inferior genes in other ways.

  • @autumnpari
    This is a great comment, and soooo necessary – as it comes from a young woman living this right now.

  • @Lurky Lu
    I just wanna say I’m so glad you de-lurked. You are definitely a kindred spirit!

  • “I guess we have a difference in values. Your cmpthsizing with the boy’s horniness and considering participation in a gangbang as “a boys will boys” sort of thing or a once in a lifetime opportunity is telling as well.
    As we can see fron the outcome, this didn’t turn out to be fun and games for any of the participants. Everyone’s life will be permanently and negatively affected.  No good could possibly have come from it.   It never should have happened.
    That this young woman, at least initially, was wiling to be used was her fault and her stupidity.  I imagine that in some way she thought that being the center of attention would be hot or gratifying to her. But I can also imagine that once the action started, the fantasy endeed and that things quickly turned ugly.  When she realized that she was being used and treated like a whore, her stupidity no doubt became apparent to her.  Taking advantage of that stupidity and more likely than not some drunkeness shows a callousness and a selfishness that is also repulsive.  The guys weren’t blameless.  If I were the mother of any of those boys I would be deeply ashamed.  And I say that as a mother of sons whom I would hope would have the decency and brains to walk away from such an opportunity.”

    I agree wholeheartedly.  These young men were not “innocent”.  Innocents would not participate in something like this.  Nonetheless, they were not “guilty” of rape.  They are guilty are repulisve behaviour, as is the young woman.  I’m sure they all wish it never happened.  Perhaps this will be a lesson to young people to think before they act?  Just because someone is not “guilty” of a crime does not mean they are ethical and just.  I would support laws against false rape charges.  People should not make stuff up.  However I’ve also seen that some men want to repel marital rape laws!  That will absolutely not happen and it MUST not happen. 

  • Kurt

    Sox is a voice of reason in these comments.  I am in my mid-30s and I have observed that a huge drawback of the “hooking up” culture is that many women really do get a grossly inflated view of their own SMV.  I know women who seem to only be interested in the guys who are above them in terms of SMV and for years have ignored the guys who are at their level because those women don’t realize that they are on the same level as the guys they reject.  Of course, by the time they are in their late-30s, they are no longer even capable of getting the guys who would have been equal in terms of SMV a few years earlier.

  • Kurt, nice to see you! Yes, Sox is a total keeper 🙂
    Female SMV inflation is tenacious because many women have come to believe that a guy who sleeps around a lot is a guy who doesn’t hold promiscuity against a woman. They figure he’ll have to settle down with someone at some point, maybe it will be them. After all, they see with their own eyes that he is spending no time at all trying to make moves on the prudes.
    .
    Again and again I see women absolutely floored by the disclosure that a guy cares about their sexual past. Some get quite belligerent about it. And yet….women wouldn’t be lying about their numbers, discounting “that time it was my birthday,” etc. if they didn’t have some sense that a high number is a problem. I’m just not sure why this paradox continues to exist. Perhaps it is as simple as poor impulse control.
    .
    By the way, I would point out that a whole other group of women – those prudes who aren’t really into the hookup scene, suffer from SMV deflation. I have had extremely attractive women tell me in person that guys aren’t attracted to them at all. My suspicion is that meatheads don’t bother with them, and good guys fear they’re out of their league.

  • Lurky Lu

     “I am in my mid-30s and I have observed that a huge drawback of the “hooking up” culture is that many women really do get a grossly inflated view of their own SMV.”

    But can’t that observation be contained to “hooking up” culture only?  It isn’t fair to tar all women with the same brush as the skanky club girls. 

  • Lurky Lu

    “By the way, I would point out that a whole other group of women – those prudes who aren’t really into the hookup scene, suffer from SMV deflation.”

    Bingo.

  • erdos

    This cracks me up. The whole post is basically a strenuous massage of figures and supposed facts to get to Susan’s desired conclusion (which is that there’s only a small cabal of ‘players’ and sluts ruining it for normal folk). American girls are twice as likely to have genital herpes as men, and like someone said above, they’re not meeting at a special treetop Herpes Hideout.

    • @erdos

      How has the data been massaged? Which are the “supposed” facts? I don’t have a desired conclusion – if you read the post, you saw in the first sentence that I’ve previously endorsed the 80/20 rule on this blog. It was dissent within the Game community itself – among men- that led me to investigate where the rule originated. I still don’t know, but I can say that when I searched for it online, all references were on paid Game and Attraction sites. As for the herpes debate, are you aware that men are likely to be silent carriers of herpes? And that 80-90% of those infected with herpes don’t know it? I won’t wait for a reasoned, intelligent response from you. All I’ll say is “Don’t shoot the messenger” and “The PUA doth protest too much, methinks.”

  • Mike

    I’ve mentioned before I’m an investment person, and one of the newsletters I read is Richard Russell’s Dow Theory.  He is considered a market sage, is in his 80s, and fought in WW2.  He often interjects his investment analysis with life wisdom.  I thought an excerpt from today’s note was particularly relevant to the topics discussed here:
    Russell:
    “I’ve hesitated to write about this “hot” subject, but what the hell, I write what I’ve learned and what I think is important, so here goes. There’s more to life than making money, as most youngsters will find out.

    The sports sections of almost every newspaper feature advertisements about male inadequacy. And the inadequacies are all sexual. Do this, grow that, try this pill, thrill her with this, thrill her with a “an unbelievable 24-hour session”; all this depends on the mistaken male fantasy that every women wants more and better sex. Try this yourself, ask any woman what she really wants, and the answer will probably surprise you. What most women want is not “better and wilder and longer sex-sessions,”‘ what they really want is CLOSENESS. And closeness is something that most men know little or nothing about.

    What most women want (and this is the opposite of all those ridiculous and misleading ads) is closeness and an emotional experience without being pressured for sex.

    Many women submit to sex because this is the only way they know of — to get emotionally closer to a man.

    Probably the most wide-spread psychological problem facing the US (and world) population today is depression. I believe that much of this depression comes from an early and maybe later lack of the feeling of closeness. More Americans live alone today than at any other time in US history.

    It’s common today to meet divorced women or single women who live alone. This is made possible because of today’s women working and being able to support themselves — without the “baggage” of husbands or boy friends they’re not crazy about. Today many women would rather live alone than live with a man they feel no closeness with. Many men marry for sex, few women do.

    The ads that we read in the newspapers every day are nutty and far from the truth. These ads drive men both crazy and competitive, and the stupid ads set them on the wrong course. The answer to a man’s frustration and unhappiness is not “male dysfunctioning.” Mens’ problem is failure to know how to be close with anyone, particularly with women.

    Many so-called sexual studs live alone. No woman wants them. Today the idea of love, romance, emotional attachments is ignored or even denigrated. The ads for male super-sexualtiy have taken over. We’re raising a generation of depressed individuals and confused, narcissistic men.

    Today there are more single women in the US work force than single men. It started with women in the defense factories during WWII when that famous poster showed Rosy the Riveter flexing her muscular arm and saying “We Can Do It!”

    In the “old days,” whole families lived together. Fathers, mothers, children, grand parents and even great-grand parents lived under one roof.

    Today kids leave the nest and go out to live alone or to marry for the wrong reasons. No wonder divorce rates are surging. No wonder the phrase, “starter marriage” has come into the language. Hollywood seems to set the standards for the nation.. Read US or Star, and you’ll read about nothing but divorce, depression, break-downs and cheating wives and husbands.

    Today many women dress provocatively — the more skin that shows, the better to attract men on a sexual basis. But ironically, it is not “great and lasting sex” that women want. It is the long-lost closeness that is missing. And what do we have in place of closeness? Often it is depression, and a life of frustration and living alone.

    • Mike, thanks for sharing that. It literally gave me goosebumps. If Mr. Russell is half as wise about investing as he is about women, it’s no wonder he’s revered in his field. Here is the answer to the question “What do women want?” We all want the same thing, even the most promiscuous of us, the most selfish of us, the most foolish of us. We’ve somehow gotten it backwards, using sex to get to closeness, instead of developing closeness to get to sex.

  • “I am in my mid-30s and I have observed that a huge drawback of the “hooking up” culture is that many women really do get a grossly inflated view of their own SMV.  I know women who seem to only be interested in the guys who are above them in terms of SMV and for years have ignored the guys who are at their level because those women don’t realize that they are on the same level as the guys they reject.  Of course, by the time they are in their late-30s, they are no longer even capable of getting the guys who would have been equal in terms of SMV a few years earlier.”

    If they are not capable of getting those guys, who is?  If you say that those guys are going after much younger women, are those much younger even open to dating those guys at all?  Remember, a much younger woman would be in her 20s, an age when women are shooting far about their SMV.   It doesn’t seem to compute that hot women in their 20s with overinflated egos would be willing to “settle” for an average man in his late 30s.  I could be wrong.  Are they? 

  • Mike, I agree with much of what you posted from Richard Russell. However, once in the context of a “close relationship” sexual satisfaction is in fact extremely important to us women.

  • ”  If you are going there to “watch a movie”, you are going to f*ck.”

    NO, Mike. If you are going there to watch a movie, you are going there to watch a movie.  Period. 

    My god.  I’m thinking back to my first year in college when I didn’t know anyone, wanted to meet people and make friends, and in fact went to guys’ rooms to watch movies just to be able to get to know someone and have company.   If you invite someone to your room for a movie and he or she accepts on that basis, that is what it is.

    I also disagree with you on, “if you are a 6-7 and someone 8-9 is showing interest in you it is most likely just for short term sex”.   There is not a whole lot of difference between a 6 and 7 and a 7 and 8, or 8 and 9 for that matter.   They are all 1-max 3 points away.

    I’ve had my longest lasting relationships with men 3 or more points up or down from what I am normally rated.

    I shudder to think what kind of advise you would dish out to your sons or daughters if you had any.  “Son, now remember before you go off to college, if you invite a girl to your room to watch a movie and she accepts, that means she is saying yes to sex, especially if she is 1 or 3 points below you”. 

    Shudder.

  • Demonspawn, it’s funny you call my waiting for love and genuine personal connection before giving a guy my time some “sense of entitlement.” Well, if that’s what it looks like to the majority of men, then yes I suppose so. I ended up not riding the “alpha carousel” and never kissed any man who didn’t tell me he loved me.
    I guess as a girl, it’s damned if you do (put out for casual sex) and damned if you don’t. I chose the path of no casual sex, and I see guys being pissy about a girl choosing this path. I wonder why? On the one hand guys say they want women who are girlfriend/wife material. On the other hand guys say they want women to be easy and to put out for the average guy who just wants sex. You can’t really have it both ways.

    Bingo!  I’ll give my time to a guy who isn’t commited to me, but I won’t commit to him first.  I’ll keep my options open and date other guys.  If he wants exclusivity then he has to ask for it and demonstrate it first.  That’s how I landed my first real boyfriend.  It was driving him CRAZY that I was seeing another guy until he couldn’t take it anymore and begged me to stop and go steady with him.  Not those words but you know what I mean.  I was happy to do so but I’ll never be the one to initiate “the talk”. 

  • Mike

    NO, Mike. If you are going there to watch a movie, you are going there to watch a movie.  Period.
    CONTEXT MATTERS.  Perhaps I need to spell this out in more detail.  Sure, if you have a history as platonic friends, casual acquaintances, or study partners and you come over in the evening to “watch a movie” then YES you are going there to watch a moviie, PERIOD.

    Now if you have previous “hook-up history” and the guy calls at 11 PM, midnight for you to come over and “watch a movie”, you are NOT going over there to watch a movie.
    To your other point, you seem to want to parse my statement to intentionally obfuscate my point.  Let’s make this simple.  A 9 guy is rarely going to be with a 6 girl for anything more then easy convenient sex.  To your personal experience, I would question your ability to accurately rate as your previous comments indicate perhaps a lack of impartiality.

  • Mike

    @Susan,
    A bit off-topic, but somewhat related in that it is data analysis.  Maybe you are already aware, but there is a study (Heritage??) making the rounds of the blogosphere (Roissy had it up today) that correlates divorce rates with sex partner counts.  Not sure if it was just female or male.  I haven’t looked at in detail yet.  I personally would find your take on the analysis useful as an impartial evaluator.  It would appear that this potentially supports the intrinsic male instinct to avoid promiscuous women for marriage.

    • @Mike
      I have been aware of it – Slumlord/The Social Pathologist has done a lot of work with that data. Frankly, it’s shocking – it basically says that a woman who is not a virgin at marriage is a risky bet re divorce. Athol’s written about it, and now Roissy has joined the fray. I’ll try to have a look at the data soon. I don’t know – something seems off about it. Avoiding promiscuous women is one thing, but ONE PARTNER? I’d want to look at marriage age, geography, religious orientation, and a bunch of other stuff, which probably isn’t available. I’ll keep you posted.

  • Sarah

    Look. I think your blog is stupid. On so many levels. Too much more work to explain why. But it IS. SO THERE.
     
    Yeah.

    • Re Sarah

      Look. I think your blog is stupid. On so many levels. Too much more work to explain why. But it IS. SO THERE.

      Yeah.

      That right there, folks, is a sex positive feminist giving the debate her best shot. Yeah. Sarah, poor Sarah, read and learn. The truth will set you free.

  • nothingbutthetruth

    Russell must be an old man: the kind of man who pedestalizes women (à la so-con) and sees them as pure beings that only want love. Of course, any woman who reads his description will see herself reflected, because women see themselves as nice creatures who only look for love. (Women often live in a world of fantasy and the first fantasy is their view of themselves).
    .
    It is not strange that he blames men for wanting only sex and not giving women the closeness they need. This kind of traditional men cannot see the flaws in women. When women were taught to be like “the angel in the house”, when men were taught that women were “the angel in the house”,  things worked better, but the price to pay was delusion.
    .
    But now we know better. Thirty years of feminism, sexual liberation and emotional liberation have had an amazing advantage: we know how women are when they are not indoctrinated, oppressed or repressed to be “nice girls”. In short, we know the true nature of women. Women are not angels, not devils, but human beings, like men.
    .
    If women wanted closeness so badly, if they only wanted closeness, they could have some beta or loser as a boyfriend, the kind that is living in their parents’ basement. Since men dance to the tune that women sing, we will see a race between men to be more tender and more lovely than the other guy. Lots of men will learn romantic songs and have their rooms full of hearts and teddy bears. (I know, I know, ladies, you are feeling the tingle when you read this world of puppy love lovers, aren’t you?)
    .
    Let’s end the BS. Women want closeness FROM THE RIGHT MAN: the one with social dominance, the one with resources, the one with confidence. Of course, being a wealthy man, it is hard for Russell to see this point, because he is very often the right man.
    .
    When I was young, I was very tender and has lots of closeness and love to give. Women used to say: “How lucky will be the woman who lands it” (but I don’t want to be this woman). Of course, while I was this kind of beta wimp (I even wrote love poems, what a loser!), I was celibate and women wouldn’t touch me with a six-feet pole.
    .
    Then I learned game, I became successful and, since then, although I am not a loving person anymore, I have never had problems to have women, even if I was not close to them.
    .
    In short, a cent of closeness from an alpha is worth $1000 of closeness from a beta.
    .
    This is why closeness is a double-edge sword. If a guy is very close to his partner, he eventually ends up being perceived as a beta and this is the kiss of death for female attraction. This happened to me with my first girlfriend (“the one that got away”) who I was going to marry and dumped me before the wedding when she saw how beta I had become (I was an alpha early in the relationship). Unfortunately, I didn’t know game back them and I thought that giving love and tenderness to her was the way to go, haha.
    .
    The push-pull technique works better. A bit of tenderness, a bit of aloofness, don’t return all of their calls, surprise her with an unexpected gift, surprise her with an unexpected absence and so on and so forth. Tiring to be playing this game but this is the only thing that works. My current girlfriend (and quite possibly my future wife) is mad about me.
    .
    In short, men who read this, don’t listen what women say, see what women do and what kind of men they choose. Words are a dime a dozen. Actions speak louder than words.

  • J

    J:It’s unfortunate because the false charge obviously will follow the young men around.

    Mike: Unfortunate?….Unfortunate?….Unfortunate?  Is that really how you would characterize this sort of behavior. 

    J:  Hi Mike.  Sorry I missed your post.  Yes, unfortunate is the word I’d use in this case.  The boys weren’t jailed, which would have been tragic.  They weren’t raped in a jail cell, which would have been horrific.  They weren’t even charged as far as I can tell.  The long-lasting consequence of their actions is that they, and the girl involved, will have a humiliating story follow them around whenever someone googles their name.  (Which ironically is roughly what would have happened after one of those idiot boys posted the tape on the internet had it not become evidence.)  To me, that’s unfortunate despite the bad behavior of all involved.

    Mike: You know, I’ve read enough of your comments to think you are a pretty level-headed poster,

    J:  Thanks.

    Mike:  What if it is was one of your sons who faced 20+ years in jail, because some “panicky” girl decided she needed to sacrifice another human beings freedom to “save her reputation”.

    J: As I told clarence further upthread, I hire him the best lawyer I could, and then my husband would kick his ass for being so damn stupid. 

    Look, I never said I condoned making false charges; I never said the boys were guilty of rape.   I did say that that the behavior of the boys was not blameless, and I’ll stick with that.  I would hope that my sons, if ever confronted with such a situation, would be moral enough to realize that their participation could only lead to hurt for the girl, as well as erosion of their own souls, and be both good and smart enough to avoid it.

    Mike: but women really need to get their heads out of their @$$es when it comes to the reality of some of these situations.  When you go to a guy’s room or place at midnight, you are going there to f*ck.  If you don’t want to f*ck, then don’t go. 

    J:  I agreethat most men are going to see it that way, and I would advise women to avoid being alone with men they do not want intimacy with.  See my response to Tennis Pro about that sort of situation.  I view the  Hofstra situation similarly.  Did these guys really think that this was going to be some sort of fun little romp instead of an emotionally loaded situation that could easily go wrong.  They “asked for it” in the same way that a drunken girl who yells out “I wanna  f*ck at a frat party is asking for it.  Stupid behavior has bad consequences for both men and women.

  • J

    @autumnpari

    So how do they do have sex and also remain respectful?  With alcohol!  It lets everyone involved feel less culpable for the awkwardness and negative consequences.

    Try love instead of alcohol.  It’s more effective.

  • Hope

    “If women wanted closeness so badly, if they only wanted closeness, they could have some beta or loser as a boyfriend, the kind that is living in their parents’ basement.”

    Funnily enough, when I met my husband, he was living in his dad’s basement playing World of Warcraft, with not much of an income. But he is an amazing man (who also wrote love poems).

    “This is why closeness is a double-edge sword. If a guy is very close to his partner, he eventually ends up being perceived as a beta and this is the kiss of death for female attraction.”

    Attraction tends to wane for both men and women in a long-term relationship over time. It’s not the closeness that is the kiss of death for attraction. It’s the happiness equilibrium. People become accustomed and habituated over time to new relationships:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonic_treadmill

    “A bit of tenderness, a bit of aloofness”

    Indeed. As some others have observed, a combination of “alpha” and “beta” characteristics is best:

    http://hvren.wordpress.com/2010/07/11/to-whatever-self-be-true-part-3-the-formula/

    It’s a shame that the aforementioned blogger has disappeared, though. He had some good insights on long-term relationship dynamics.

  • Great in depth and meticulously detailed analysis Susan.  I first found the 80/20 rule in Tim Ferris’s book, The Four Hour Work Week.  It’s interesting how it deems true for relationships.  I always figured that the percentage of males who are actually capable of dating women were less than 20%.  And I believed the 80% of men fall into two categories: too creepy or too friendly.  Most men are either unbearable, angry, arrogant, ignorant, or they lack passion and direction.
    Loved this post Susan, I’m glad I found this site,
    – Jonathan
     
    I tweeted this post.
     
     

    • @Jonathan
      Welcome! I just checked out your blog, and loved the post about Lenka. Come back again, and when you do, sign up for Comment Luv to promote your blog with each comment! Thanks so much for the tweet.

  • clarence

    J:
    I don’t know what world you live in, but in this universe four of the five guys were jailed for several days and the ones jailed were CHARGED. Charges were dropped, only because the fifth guy recorded it. I would have ignored this if you hadn’t seen fit to lie.
    I also don’t know what universe you live in where the only consequences will be a horrific story. What will happen is that some people will refuse to hire them because Ms. Ndonye wasn’t honest enough to fess up to her  behavior and because the criminal justice system and media often rush to inflame things rather than taking the time to do a diligent investigation. As for Ms Ndonye , she’d be better off changing her name because some people will do what they can to punish her financially as well as socially for her abhorrent behavior, esp. since the justice system did nothing at all.
    Yep, nothing to see here, move right on along..

  • Ellen

    Okay, Clarence, I’ll take a stab at this.   I think we can all agree that false accusations of rape are really, really, really awful and should be severely punished.   I think J is saying that there is a difference between the following scenarios:
    1.   Her son calls her from college, in a panic:  “Mom, I was in my room all Saturday night studying, but some crazy girl is accusing me of rape, and the police are here….”
    2.   Her son calls, in a panic, and says “Mom, some friends and I had, uh, well, we were drunk, and it was a bunch of us, not just me, but now she’s saying she was forced, and I know you are going to be mad because that’s not how you raised me, but I’m in trouble here ….”
     

  • nothingbutthetruth

    “Funnily enough, when I met my husband, he was living in his dad’s basement playing World of Warcraft, with not much of an income. But he is an amazing man (who also wrote love poems).”
    .
    Hope, I am glad you find a good man and I see you are a wise woman, but you are an exception. If this was the general trend, seduction seminaries wouldn’t learn game but playing WoW. Men dance to the tune women sing. When women wanted beta providers, men strove to be beta provider. Now, women want alpha-ness and men are learning game.

  • clarence

    Ellen:
    What J seems to be saying to me are two things:
    A. False accusations are minor things. You know, the poor boys just got inconvenienced and all. They weren’t literally in any kind of danger I suppose.
    B. If I think you are too studly or slutty and/or I don’t like the consensual sex acts you participate in, I’m going to conflate your behavior with your victimizers and hold you equally culpable. Yep. Short skirt  is morally equivalent to Ron the Rapist, and if you participate in a gang-bang you are just as awful a person as someone who would lie and put someone away for decades.
    If J had ever came out and said this was a horrible thing and shouldn’t have happened and was NOT an appropriate reaction in any way, shape, or form by the accuser rather  then blaming the boys for consensual sex and saying its some sort of lesson for them,  I might feel differently. And there’s other lessons that could be drawn h ere anyway.  If they come to the conclusion that most women are lying sluts, I wouldn’t half blame them. I don’t agree, but then they at least would have personal experience to back up their opinions rather than mere prejudice.

  • BDS

    Really TennisPro?!

    “I’ll give my time to a guy who isn’t commited to me, but I won’t commit to him first.  I’ll keep my options open and date other guys.  If he wants exclusivity then he has to ask for it and demonstrate it first.  That’s how I landed my first real boyfriend.  It was driving him CRAZY that I was seeing another guy until he couldn’t take it anymore and begged me to stop and go steady with him.  Not those words but you know what I mean.  I was happy to do so but I’ll never be the one to initiate “the talk”. ”

    Tell me if I’m accurate in rephrasing this.  The man must approach (an accepted societal norm).  But also, the man must carry the initial emotional risk as well and always commit first.  If he doesn’t, you will use another guy to make him jealous.  Kinda cowardly, isn’t it? 

    Look, you’re free to use whatever dating strategy you see fit, but here’s the drawback: Most desirable men know they have options and are less likely to play by such slanted rules than less desirable men.

  • clarence

    Yeah, BDS:
    I sometimes have disagreed with Hope’s assertions in the past, but I’ve never had a problem with the rules in which she dates by. But this Tennis Pro woman? I don’t have time for any of that in my life.

  • Deery

    Tell me if I’m accurate in rephrasing this.  The man must approach (an accepted societal norm).  But also, the man must carry the initial emotional risk as well and always commit first.  If he doesn’t, you will use another guy to make him jealous.  Kinda cowardly, isn’t it? 
    Look, you’re free to use whatever dating strategy you see fit, but here’s the drawback: Most desirable men know they have options and are less likely to play by such slanted rules than less desirable men.

    Men committing first has also been the traditional society norm.  Most men, even (especially?), the desirable ones do eventually get married.  A girl being overly eager and signalling that her dance card is free and available should the guy deign to show a concerted interest is not a particularly wise choice.  If nothing else, she is signalling low value compared to his own status.  Most guys want to pursue (for a LTR), and committing first robs them of the pleasure of getting a mate who is highly desired by other males.  That which is hard earned retains value, that which falls in your lap you don’t tend to esteem quite as much.  I think in this case “The Rules” advice is absolutely correct.

  • clarence

    Deery:

    Getting men to COMMIT at all was often an issue in past societies, and its even more so in this one where every rational benefits calculus a man can do tells him marriage is a crap deal for him. I’ve read The Rules, heck I read some of them well before I ever learned Mystery Method. Let me just say that if you are stupid enough to follow most of the rules to the letter, you deserve your cats. You better be showing me some consideration before I deign to be around you. I suspect most men are likewise.
     
    Here’s the ironic thing: The girl I am with now broke just about every one of those stupid rules and she’s done nothing but show me respect and consideration.  AT THIS POINT if someone was to make a play for her, I’d fight him. She’s shown me she’s worth fighting for and not by playing stupid games.

  • Deery

    You better be showing me some consideration before I deign to be around you. I suspect most men are likewise.

    No one is saying that showing disrespect and no consideration are the way to a man’s heart.  However, being way too eager, before he has given any indication of his willingness to commit to you, probably isn’t the way to go either.  The most desirable males, like the most desirable females, already have a surplus of that type.  If a male values you for a LTR, he will become possessive, and want you only to himself.  If he doesn’t value you for an LTR, then there is no downside to dating other people anyway.  Win, win.

  • BDS

    A girl being overly eager and signalling that her dance card is free and available should the guy deign to show a concerted interest is not a particularly wise choice.  If nothing else, she is signalling low value compared to his own status.
    .
    How is this not also true for men?  It really supports my point more than it refutes it: TP’s strategy works only for landing pushovers.  Pushovers tend to be less desirable.
    .
    Thought experiment for women:  You’ve been seeing a guy for a month and haven’t had the talk to define the relationship.  Which statement would be more likely to increase his value in your eyes, and which would more likely decrease it:
     a. “It’s driving me crazy that you’re seeing another guy.  I can’t take it anymore.  Please stop, and go steady with me.” or,
    b. “You’re winning me over.”
    .
    Now, which statement would Tennis Pro’s strategy be more likely to illicit?

    • Thought experiment for women: You’ve been seeing a guy for a month and haven’t had the talk to define the relationship. Which statement would be more likely to increase his value in your eyes, and which would more likely decrease it:
      a. “It’s driving me crazy that you’re seeing another guy. I can’t take it anymore. Please stop, and go steady with me.” or,
      b. “You’re winning me over.”

      Excellent illustration. B is not just neutral either – it’s tingle producing. There are some highly manipulative women who love nothing more than signs of jealousy, but for an emotionally healthy person, A is an absolute ladyboner killer.

  • DS

    Susan,
    I believe you have not replied to Mike’s comment that the mean lifetime numbers of sexual partners for males and females MUST be the same “unless someone is hooking up with goats” (or same sex partners). Think about it. If the total numbers of males and females are approximately equal (which they are), then the mean number of partners must be the same for each gender.
    The means are only reported by the ABC poll: 6 for females, 20 for males. Obviously, either people are lying or two genders have wildly different definitions of sex. Probably, both.
    Since means must be the same, let’s put the numbers on the same scale by multiplying the female data by 20/6. Then, the female mean becomes 20. As for the median, it becomes 3*(20/6) = 10 which is higher than 8 (median for men, from the same poll). The absolute values of these numbers are not important. What is important for your discussion is that, after setting the numbers on the same scale, the median number of partners for women is higher than that for men.
    Thus, an average woman (50% have fewer lifetime partners than her, 50% have more partners than her) has more partners than an average man. This is consistent with Roissy’s point of view.
    What do you think?

    • @DS
      Please forgive the delay, it’s been a busy day and I wanted to do a bit of research on your very valid observation. First, here’s a link you might be interested in:
      http://www.slate.com/id/2172186/
      It addresses this exact question, and in fact refers to the CDC data I’ve provided in this post. You are of course correct that the means must be the same. The most plausible explanation is indeed that people are not telling the truth. However, the “fudge factor” decreases significantly when respondents are asked about the previous five years, and even more when they’re asked about the previous year – suggesting that unreliable memory plays a role. It’s hardly surprising the women would “suppress” some encounters and men would “exaggerate” some. And as you say, the sexes may define sexual partners differently.
      .
      The ABC poll was conducted by telephone, using female interviewers. There were 1,501 adult respondents. It is possible that the differences in the mean are explained in part by respondents having drawn sexual partners not represented by the sample. Prostitutes or people outside the age range are possibilities.
      .
      In general though, the mean is a poor statistic for understanding sexual behavior. The median tells a much more accurate story. Although the methodology you suggest is correct, I see no reason to use the questionable ABC mean as a starting point, when we already have good median data from the CDC. In that data, the median for women is lower in every instance.

  • Sox

    Some thoughts..
    @Hope
    I respect the decisions you’ve made and the advice you give…I’ll echo what clarence said – you’re an outlier/exception.  The majority of women are not turned on by WoW enthusiasts and its scene.
    ——-
    @Lurky Lu
    Just because a woman ignores or refuses a man who is equal to her in SMV, that doesn’t mean that she is looking for someone with a higher SMV.   If she’s a “beta” girl, then she just might be looking for a certain kind of  beta guy
    The type of woman I’m talking about, does.  Ladies and gentleman, I’m stating with absolute certainty that this is a very real dynamic in the 18-30 dating scene, being (in my opinion) most prevalent in the 23-28 crowd.  I’m speaking towards a very specific personality type and I’m not misunderstanding them.  I’ve lived with this type, I’ve dated this type, and I’ve got friends who are this type now.  I’m in the heart of the DC metro region.  Think of if this way- most of the women my age in this area did the “Eat, Pray, Love” thing before having read about it.  Whether you’re going by online profiles or word of mouth, most women around here demand their potential mates to be well-traveled, refined, and as ambitious and accomplished as they are.  I’ve lived abroad and been two over 25 countries  and I and most other guys in my position really don’t give a shit if the girl’s traveled, only if she would with me.  These particular girls are a walking checklist and terribly narcissistic.  Oh yea, they’re generally not very attractive either.  Most are in the 5-7 range. 
    ———–
    @Tennis Pro
    NO, Mike. If you are going there to watch a movie, you are going there to watch a movie.  Period. 
    I refuse to believe that women are really that naive at that age.  It’s plausible deniability, or, if you prefer, convenient selective ignorance that I’ve seen many people employ when they put themselves in a situation that they don’t want to be responsible for.  It would do every female here a disservice to suggest that women are really that terrible at reading subtle hints and social cues when it’s supposedly their greatest strength.
    . 
    A little anecdote- in my first serious relationship in high school, I got a call from my girlfriend one night and I could immediately tell something happened.  She spilled that she’d kissed a guy whose house she was at.  I’d known she would be there, and I knew she’d had a crush on him before, but she’d assured me it was platonic at that point (ha ha).  I was a little naive and the relationship was young; I wasn’t very invested.  Actually for some reason I stayed with her and didn’t really care.  Almost a year later, out of guilt or something else she told me that 2 nights after that first encounter, she went back to his house and more happened.  But she claimed he more or lessmolested her, and gave me such detail that I actually believed her.  I was going to kick his ass; she begged me not to.  A few months later I found out that she didn’t want me to talk because he had no idea he’d forced her to do anything, she was lying about it the whole time.
    .
    I’ve run into this with almost every girl I’ve dated.  With my friends.  My family (2 sisters), my friends’ friends.  Time and time again women complain of the fallout from situations they should never have put themselves into begin with.  This is a predominantly female tendency in my opinion; it would seem that women will go with what feels right in the moment and men will plan for it or at least detach themselves from that impulse before they act on it.  Guys have their own flaws, this isn’t one of them.  I dated another girl that had a penpal she’d “met on a cruise,” who “had found her randomly online” (he admitted later that he tracked her down- duh) and she swore left and right he had only platonic feelings for her.  Yea right.  She agreed with me down the road when things got awkward.
    .
    Unless you’re established friends in advance, heed what Alex Knepper of AU (my alma mater) said.  Don’t be an idiot.  As a Red Sox fan, I know it’s within my rights to go to Yankee Stadium and yell “YANKEES SUCK” at the top of my lungs.  Do I? Absolutely not.  I know that the environment and emotions at play will turn normally reasonable, in-control people into potential antagonists.  Show some good judgment, some wisdom.  Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should.  So if you go to a party, get wasted with a guy, and start making out with him in his room, be prepared to have to unequivocally say no to sex, maybe more than once.  Guys from day one have been trained to push the envelope and operate under the guise of female plausible deniability.  Well, not all guys, feminised spineless betas are slowly becoming the norm who believe that only yes means yes.
    ———-
     A common theme in many girls’ promiscuous phases  is they’re hooking up with guy friends.  My same ex that had the pen-pal had hooked up with almost exclusively guys she was friends with first; a couple who I could easily tell were cads.  She got herself pumped and dumped enough so that she learned and grew out of it.  Don’t underestimate players’ abilities to show up on females’ radars as friends.  This gives both parties the excuse they need to f*ck around conveniently.
    ———-
    @SW
    The hookup scene wouldn’t be what it is right now if it weren’t a relatively large population of women and men being promiscuous per your standards.  I’m willing to bet that the average liberal, attractive (6.5-8) woman has slept with 10-20 guys by the time she hits age 26-27.  College was eye opening for me.  I only attended for 3 years, and I racked up 7 or so notches even having dated one girl exclusively for half that time.  I was a greater beta/lesser alpha at best.  The less promiscuous girls I knew had at least as many hookups.  Just my experience and opinion.

    • @Sox

      First, I just want to say that I am relieved and delighted that your name is derived from the Red Sox. They have been the most beloved team in our family over many trying decades.
      .
      Second, I do agree that many women are walking checklists and very narcissistic. I’ve written about this before, and it makes sense that the 23-28 group would be especially hard-nosed in their expectations. My guess is that this is worst in the Boston-NY-DC corridor, where the culture is quite aggressive and competitive. Most of the spinster lit books have come out of NY, I believe – Hepzibah Anderson is in London, which is probably the same.
      .
      Third, I agree that women, in general, display less impulse control when it comes to emotional decisions. Men are generally more analytical and less easily derailed in the moment, in my experience. I think women are much more likely to act now, think later, rationalize after that. This isn’t always a bad thing – for example, I impulsively talked my husband into buying our first condo – it was a slight stretch but ultimately a very good decision. He’s very analytical, but my impulses wrt real estate have always served us well.
      .
      Finally, I don’t really have any standards for promiscuity. I went over 10 guys by the age of 26 – but that doesn’t tell the story. At 24, my number was 4. I had never been promiscuous. Then I racked up some flings when I got to grad school, most definitely behaving promiscuously for a year. I don’t think that “ruined” or “damaged” me for marriage or fidelity, though I’d be lying if I didn’t admit it gave my husband pause when we met.

  • Deery

    How is this not also true for men?  It really supports my point more than it refutes it: TP’s strategy works only for landing pushovers.  Pushovers tend to be less desirable.

    Hmm, so Game only helps you land “pushover” women?  I think an argument can certainly be made for that.  But dating other people, until the guy decides that he wants to be exclusive, is a sound female strategy.  It is already assumed, by virtue of the female spending  a lot of time with the guy, that she wants a LTR.  However, no such assumption can be made with a guy.  Which is why the onus is on him to spell it out, if that’s what he wants.  It doesn’t have to be “OMG, I’m so jealous, please be with me!”, as people normally aren’t so straightforward with otther people (or themselves).  But if he is knows that other males also want her, and value her, then he will definitely put committment on the table, as a vlue-added option.  And if he doesn’t, then the girl hasn’t lost anything by continuing to date other people in the meantime.

    There are some highly manipulative women who love nothing more than signs of jealousy, but for an emotionally healthy person, A is an absolute ladyboner killer.

    As a huge backer of Game, solely for men I guess, I don’t see why you wouldn’t championa women keeping her options open until she gets some clear committment signal from a guy.  Too-early devotion seems to be a real relationship killer, from the male perspective.  For ladies, the best advice is too not act committed, until he actually shows you that he is committed as well.

    • @Deery

      As a huge backer of Game, solely for men I guess, I don’t see why you wouldn’t championa women keeping her options open until she gets some clear committment signal from a guy. Too-early devotion seems to be a real relationship killer, from the male perspective. For ladies, the best advice is too not act committed, until he actually shows you that he is committed as well.

      OK, a couple of points. My position re Game is that it potentially increases the number of desirable men in the marketplace. Whether a guy is a natural, or has learned to sexually attract women is not important – the more attractive guys the better, as far as women are concerned. I do think there are things women can do to improve their odds of getting an LTR, though I don’t consider that Game per se. A lot of people speak of that as Girl Game, which is fine – but it’s a very different animal altogether.
      .
      I strongly advise women to keep their level of interest in a guy commensurate with the signals they are receiving from the male. This is because women generally prefer relationships and guys generally prefer sexual variety. It’s easy for us to get ahead of ourselves when we don’t understand what the guy is thinking. I also encourage women who want a commitment to delay sex until they know and trust the man. They should feel secure and not be hoping that he really likes them. I do think it’s unrealistic in this SMP for women to expect a firm commitment of exclusivity before any sexual activity. It’s a buyer’s market, and guys will want to ensure sexual compatibility before committing. However, I am not suggesting that women commit and then hope for the best. Ideally, when two people who are open to a relationship are hitting it off, they’re both focusing on one another, not trying to play the field. Keeping your options open is not the same thing as playing hard to get or dating three guys at once. To me, it just means not promising something when you are getting nothing in return, and that goes for both sexes. In relationships that work, the commitment happens for both parties during a conversation, assuming that each has been signaling their interest clearly and not playing games.
      .
      The reason I said that A is a disaster is because the guy is begging. If a man says “I can’t take it anymore” or “Please stop and go steady with me” I’m going to lose respect for him immediately, and that’s what kills the attraction. He should feel secure in his own value, or fake it if he has to. It can and will make the difference between success and abject failure.

  • Sox

    P.S.
    I believe in male/female “friends” the way Harry expressed it in When Harry Met Sally: Men cannot be friends with a woman they’re attracted to.  It often goes in the reverse too, but it works a little different for women.  I’ve hooked up with every female “best friend” I’ve ever had (3).  If a guy’s friends with you and you’re relatively attractive, chances are he’s pictured you naked and he wants to sleep with you.  Double the chances of that if he’s beta and lets you cry on his shoulder.

  • BDS

    OK, “ladyboner” made me laugh.

  • Anonymous

    No offense Sox, but didn’t you say you had trouble in the sexual market before? 7 girls in a span of 3 years is a lot, more than 2 a year. That’s seems high for a supposed “beta” guy.

    Maybe the sexual market is not nearly as bad as the beta guys make it out to be, or maybe beta guys want 100+ women or something?

  • clarence

    Anony @ 5:23:
     
    I agree that if SOX was getting two girls per year before he learned game he wasn’t an omega or lower beta. I didn’t “go all the way” until I was 26, so I can speak from experience.  But if this is all after he learned game, your point is moot.

  • Kurt

    If they are not capable of getting those guys, who is?  If you say that those guys are going after much younger women, are those much younger even open to dating those guys at all?  Remember, a much younger woman would be in her 20s, an age when women are shooting far about their SMV.   It doesn’t seem to compute that hot women in their 20s with overinflated egos would be willing to “settle” for an average man in his late 30s.  I could be wrong.  Are they?
    Tennis Pro, I am not referring to “hot women.”  I am referring to slightly above-average looking women who are in their late 30s who expect the world from men.  I know of women like this who would have rejected the type of guy who was their age and good-looking and successful, but was otherwise somewhat shy.  Those women spent their 20s and early 30s dating guys who were out of their league and wouldn’t commit to them.  Now that they are older it is much harder for them to find guys out of their league who are even willing to date them.  The guys who were equal to them in terms of SMV years ago are successful and more confident and are now higher than them in terms of SMV and are unwilling to deal with the reduced fertility and emotional baggage of those women.  Believe me, those women in their late 30s who spent years playing this game have serious emotional baggage.
    Guys in their 30s or older might want a younger woman and would prefer a hot woman, but they don’t want a hot woman with a bad attitude/overinflated ego.  There are some highly attractive women who aren’t egotistical, but they can be hard to find, especially in big cities.

  • Sox

    @Anon
    That’s why I disagree with a lot of guys about the # that demarcates the slut line. I went through a tough breakup that destroyed my confidence, let my standards go a little, and partied a lot. I also bartended for 2 years. Most of my women woes have come post college. Anyway, I still think I’m mostly beta with some alpha tendencies. It’s the quality I’m looking for, not quantity. My total counts around 15; 12 in the past 4 years.

  • Anonymous

    I don’t know if it’s moot. He probably didn’t learn game in high school, and he was “seriously” dating a girl then. She may have been bad, but again the complaint lodged against women is that betas (80%) get almost no play, while alphas (20%) get almost all.

    I wonder if the typical guy’s lament of never having sexual attention from women isn’t highly exaggerated.

  • Soc

    @Clarence,Anon
    That was all before Game. Most of them were borderline 5-6’s. It’s been years since I’ve had a ltr.

  • J

    @Ellen,

    I think J is saying that there is a difference between the following scenarios:
    1.   Her son calls her from college, in a panic:  “Mom, I was in my room all Saturday night studying, but some crazy girl is accusing me of rape, and the police are here….”
    2.   Her son calls, in a panic, and says “Mom, some friends and I had, uh, well, we were drunk, and it was a bunch of us, not just me, but now she’s saying she was forced, and I know you are going to be mad because that’s not how you raised me, but I’m in trouble here ….”

    That’s indeed what I am saying.  Thanks for clarifying.

    @clarence

    I thought we were done, but please take note of this post.

    And YET AGAIN–I do not in any way condone false accusations.  Look upthread to my response to Mike.

  • Lurky Lu

    “The type of woman I’m talking about, does… I’m stating with absolute certainty that this is a very real dynamic in the 18-30 dating scene, being (in my opinion) most prevalent in the 23-28 crowd…Whether you’re going by online profiles or word of mouth, most women around here demand their potential mates to be well-traveled, refined, and as ambitious and accomplished as they are…These particular girls are a walking checklist and terribly narcissistic.” 

    It’s one thing for a woman to want to be with a man who is her equal (ie. well travelled, accomplished), and it’s quite another to want someone who’s all that and then some (ie. richer, better looking).   I wouldn’t begrudge anyone, male or female to want to be with their equal, even then, not every “equal” that you meet is going to be your “type”.  As for those who want to be with someone with more SMV than their own, those delusional narcissists  are certainly out there, although I’m not convinced that women are any worse than men at setting their sights out of their league.  Having said that, I would agree with you that women seem to have longer checklists than men, although that doesn’t exactly make women more narcissistic and men more noble, just because they have shorter checklists (a shorter checklist can also indicate shallowness).

    If your point is that there are  lower SMV women who bed higher SMP guy and then think conditioned  into thinking that they can marry at that high level, then yes, I would say that those women are definitely out there.  I just think we differ in our assumptions of how prevalent they are, and where our assumptions come from, as far as what scene(s) we’ve been observing.

  • Deery

    The reason I said that A is a disaster is because the guy is begging. If a man says “I can’t take it anymore” or “Please stop and go steady with me” I’m going to lose respect for him immediately, and that’s what kills the attraction. He should feel secure in his own value, or fake it if he has to. It can and will make the difference between success and abject failure.

    I agree, begging, for either sex, is quite unlikely to lead to success in relationships.  But women offering up exclusivity, when he has given no indication that is where he wants to go with it, is not a great idea either.  Date other people.  No one is saying have sex with everyone, or anyone, that you date.  It helps you to know what you like, and in a lot of ways frees you from feeling too invested, or pressured, in the outcome of any one relationship too early in the game.  If a guy wants to become exclusive, most make that clear, and most are usually socialized enough to do it without begging.  If you like him too, then hey, everyone’s happy!  And if he never offers exclusivity, well, that sends its own signal, and you can make decisions from there.  In the meantime, you also have other prospects, and you weren’t wasting your entire time, waiting on him to make a decision.

    • @Deery

      I am in complete agreement with you here.

  •  “The guys who were equal to them in terms of SMV years ago are successful and more confident and are now higher than them in terms of SMV and are unwilling to deal with the reduced fertility and emotional baggage of those women. ………There are some highly attractive women who aren’t egotistical, but they can be hard to find, especially in big cities”

    Well, that’s my point.  If the guys in their late 30s don’t want to deal with the baggage of the late 30s women who rejected them in their 20s, and yet if the highly attractive women who don’t have big egos are hard to find….exactly who is it that these men end up with? 
    I don’t see the problem anyone else has about my comment that I don’t commit to a man before he approaches me with “the talk”.   It’s not a “strategy” at all per se and I don’t do things to make anyone jealous.  I just go out with guys who ask me out, until and unless one of them decides he wants an exclusive relationship with me and I with him, then I’ll consider telling all the other guys that I’m in a relationship and can’t go out with them anymore. 
    What would you suggest?  That I commit to a guy on the first date and not date anyone else?
    And no, a man expressing his desire to commit to me is not a turn off in any way, shape or form.

  • “The guys who were equal to them in terms of SMV years ago are successful and more confident and are now higher than them in terms of SMV and are unwilling to deal with the reduced fertility and emotional baggage of those women. ………There are some highly attractive women who aren’t egotistical, but they can be hard to find, especially in big cities”

    Well, that’s my point. If the guys in their late 30s don’t want to deal with the baggage of the late 30s women who rejected them in their 20s, and yet if the highly attractive women who don’t have big egos are hard to find….exactly who is it that these men end up with?
    I don’t see the problem anyone else has about my comment that I don’t commit to a man before he approaches me with “the talk”. It’s not a “strategy” at all per se and I don’t do things to make anyone jealous. I just go out with guys who ask me out, until and unless one of them decides he wants an exclusive relationship with me and I with him, then I’ll consider telling all the other guys that I’m in a relationship and can’t go out with them anymore.
    What would you suggest? That I commit to a guy on the first date and not date anyone else?
    And no, a man expressing his desire to commit to me is not a turn off in any way, shape or form.

  • nothingbutthetruth

    That’s how I landed my first real boyfriend.  It was driving him CRAZY that I was seeing another guy until he couldn’t take it anymore and begged me to stop and go steady with him.
    Good luck with using this childish trap to land a quality man for a long-term relationship with an adult!! It is the perfect method to distinguish a normal man from a schmuck. You could marry him but you will lose all respect for him very quickly. But this is why divorce is for…

  • BDS

    @ Tennis Pro
    You can say you’re not using jealousy to get what you want, but I don’t see how your approach could be interpreted otherwise.
    .
    I’m not so much trying to argue with you than to point out some shortcomings of your strategy that you may not have considered.  I’m telling you what goes through a guy’s head when you act that way.  Acting that way is a definite DLV to virtually all men.  A man is faced with either losing the good feeling he gets being with you, or self-pride in staying with you.  Men with options are more likely to focus on preserving their self-pride and either a) dump you (which you’re apparently OK with, but I don’t buy unless they’re all guys you weren’t very attracted to in the first place), or b) demote you to fuck buddy without you even knowing it.  Men with less options will beg you to be with them.  If men are a commodity to you and it really doesn’t matter the quality of man who “wins” you, godspeed.

  • DS

    Hmm, the post abobe didn’t come out right. It looks like I can’t edit it here. Please, delete it if you can. Let me try again.

    It’s unfortunate that CDC didn’t publish the means. They should have been more open about it. However, we have circumstantial evidence that the means in this study are also very different for men and women.

    Here is a quote from the Slate article that drew my attention. “Another study, by British researchers, stated that men had 12.7 heterosexual partners in their lifetimes and women had 6.5. These numbers are means, not medians. In this case, it’s indeed mathematically impossible that the numbers are correct. The medians in the British sample? Seven and four, same as in the American study—so you can stop worrying about a transatlantic promiscuity gap.”

    You see, the British medians are very similar to the CDC study. We can expect that means in the studies are similar as well. What does it mean for the  CDC data? It means that you cannot directly compare male and female median numbers as they are reported. They are just not reliable.

    From here there are two ways to proceed: (a) pronounce that CDC data is so unreliable that no conclusions can be drawn from it at all, or (b) try to estimate the correct M/F median ratios by normalizing means for both genders to the same scale. If we go by the British numbers (that are more similar to the CDC data than is the ABC poll), we get the estimate of F median as 4*(12.7/6.5)=7.8 lifetime partners for females versus 7 lifetime partners for males. Again, we get a higher number of partners for an average woman than for an average man. I am sure that had CDC reported its means, we would get the same result from their data as well.

    Thus, I don’t see how you can say “… we already have good median data from the CDC. In that data, the median for women is lower in every instance.” You don’t know their means so you can’t say their data is any good when all other studies suffer from the same problem (gap between means) and there is no indication that the CDC data is any different. So far, all data points in the direction that is opposite to your conclusion that “the median for women is lower in every instance”.

    • @DS

      I’ve posted a couple of comments upthread that relate to our discussion – please see @Hollenhund and @Doug1 for links.
      .
      When you say that the CDC should have been more open, are you suggesting that they deliberately withheld relevant data to suppress the “truth” about women?
      .
      I don’t fault the logic of any of your arguments, and certainly if I had the opportunity to study the matter further, I would definitely explore deriving new medians from adusted means. However, there is nothing “back of the envelope” about these calculations, and I feel slightly uncomfortable with the idea of letting “the tail wag the dog” – that is, using means that have been adjusted to go back and derive new data. We’re getting further and further from the source. Obviously, I can’t speak to the quality of the British study, or indeed any study.
      .
      As evidenced by the fact that scientists debate these methodologies in the New York Times, and sex research continues to be funded and published despite the reporting biases, the only thing that’s clear is that the “real” numbers are extremely difficult to come by. However, a very real factor for me, at least at first blush, is how preposterous it sounds that women overall would have higher median sexual partners. Since society does still exact a toll on promiscuity (it would be interesting to study the marriage rates of promiscuous women) it’s difficult to fathom. We do have lots of data about the number of virgins in college, and that is something that is unlikely to be overreported, as V really has become the new scarlet letter for college-aged women. Finally, sociosexuality scores, as mentioned in my comment to Hollenhund above, are higher for men in at least 48 countries. It’s hard to imagine that sexual behavior is inversely correlated to sexual attitudes.

      • @DS, @Hollenhund, @filrabat, et al
        I just came across this post on Dan Ariely’s blog – it presents the OKCupid data on the correlation between avg. # of sexual partners at age 30 and type of smartphone. The interesting part is that for all three types of phones (iphone, Blackberry, Android) women reported a higher number of sexual partners than men did. I have no idea about causation, but it’s a surprising (to me, at least) bit of self-reporting.

        http://danariely.com/2010/09/10/sex-and-smart-phones/

  • BDS and Nothingbutthetruth, I don’t get you.  Are you saying that when 2 people start dating that means they can’t date other people, despite such stipulations not being put on the table at any point in time thus far?  When did that trend start happening?  Everyone that I’ve ever known has never become exclusive with some until there was a talk about it and agreement for the same. 

  • nothingbutthetruth

    @Tennis Pro
    Of course, I agree with you. You should date other people if the man is dating other people, no doubt about it. If there is not a commitment, there is not a commitment, and women would be fools to be exclusive to a man who is not exclusive to them (although women often commit this foolishness if the man is alpha enough: I have had first-hand experiences with that).
    But the frame is important. It is not the same:
    – to date other people because your keep your options open (as you should).
    Than
    – to date other people to give your man jealousy in order for him to date you exclusively.
    Any man who falls into this jealousy trap deserves what he gets. He has been manipulated one time and he will be manipulated again and again (to get married, to have children, to give the woman whatever she wants). The woman will despise him more and more for being a wimp and lacking spine. Once the woman has what she wants (marriage and kids), it is time for her to divorce him, ass-rape him in court and start looking for a man who she can really respect.
    A men with confidence, a men with good self-esteem,
    – When he really likes a woman, he wants to date exclusively from the beginning so this situation never happens.
    – When he refuses to date exclusively after a few dates, “he is just not that into you”, honey, and he doesn’t give a damn if you are dating other people.

  • First of all, Nothingbutt, I never used the word “jealousy” – you and a few others were the first to employ that term, as well as “strategy”.  I do not have a strategy for making men jealous.  I just date whoever asks me out and let the chips fall where they may from there. 

    “when he like a woman he wants to date exclusively from the beginning”

    Really?  You know after the first date whether or not you want to be exclusive with someone?  Wow.  It takes me longer just to get to know somebody.

  • Doug1

    Susan Walsh—
     
    I think the way the 80/20 observation in the game community goes is more like 20% of the guys get 80% of the hot girls (6s on up for this purpose) who are out in the sexual marketplace. Exactly what that last means varies by whether in college our out of it etc. but it means being open to a sexual relationship without many many dates first. It means being willing to put out by the third or fourth date post college and maybe even sooner. I.e. those cute girls on up (6s on up) open to fast or casual sex.
     
     
    In other words this 80/20 thing within the game community is excluding plain and worse than plain girls in appearance from the 80%, and excluding both guys and girls in long term relationships (numerator and denominator). A lot of 7 (greater beats in Roissy’s terminology) guys do have 6 or 7 girlfriends for example. (But it probably took a lot of work on his part to get her, and does to keep her. Certainly his fidelity etc.)

    • @Doug1
      That interpretation of the 80/20 rule strikes me as very plausible. I don’t think Roissy would agree with it – his post on the topic claimed that 90% of all women want 10% of all guys. However, it makes sense that in that segment of the population where casual sex is the norm, female hypergamy would be in full flourish, as women learn they can bump up their short-term success by having sex with more attractive men. Essentially, we’re talking about what I characterized as the promiscuous minority.

  • Doug1

    Susan Walsh–
    There is a problem behind all these sexual partner surveys though. It now been well established that girls lie about their number of sexual partners A LOT, even in anonymous surveys. A study showed that girls who were hooked up to a fake lie detector they thought was real reported almost TWICE as many partners as when they were told their answers would be anonymous to the outside world but a researcher might look them over. Guys answers changed very little with lie detector or not.
     
    http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn3936-fake-liedetector-reveals-womens-sex-lies.html
     
    Note this effect doesn’t even cover those sex partners she’s successfully managed to forget about “because she was drunk and it didn’t count” or “it happened in a foreign country” or because “it was a mistake and meaningless and she’s put it out of her mind” etc.
     
    Further this was a study of US college students 18-25. These aren’t for the most part girls thinking about marriage and therefore at a peak of not want to be perceived as slutty, or older married women not wanting to thing of themselves as being arguably that either. I.e. wider age ranges and different setting would likely produce stronger tendencies for women to lie down their number.
     
    I believe that other studies may show somewhat more of a guys lying upwards effect than this one. But not nearly as large as for girls.

    • @Doug1
      The more I learn about the data gathering, the more compromised it seems. In this paper, the inaccuracy of self-reporting is addressed, and it was found that in two studies (one including college students, the other all ages) dishonesty was not a distinguishing factor, but inaccuracy was, and men were twice as likely to be inaccurate in their reporting than women were:
      http://www.mindingthemind.com/reprints/Truth.pdf
      One possible explanation is that men with high numbers of partners tend to round off. Most men with a high number of partners gave a number that ended in 5 or 0. Also, older people are less accurate than younger people in recalling lifetime partners. It is believed that older women are more likely to report inaccurately based on greater stigma associated with casual sex in previous generations. Finally, when couples in college are asked about their sex lives together, men report higher levels of sexual activity – this is more pronounced when the male is older and has a stronger orientation to casual sex.
      This particular article focuses on unconscious bias rather than deceit.

  • karen

    This is definitely something to consider.  I’m new here but from what I’ve observed, even beta males give the impression that they are getting regular sex from a girlfriend or have access to sex on a regular basis.  That is why I have never bothered even talking to many beta males because that is the vibe that I got from them.  If what the pareto principle is true, then the pool of eligible bachelors has grown bigger for me in my area.  Seriously, I’m not the type of girl who would even consider flirting with a guy whose affections are already engaged.  Please, single guys,  don’t give off the “I’m taken” vibe if it isn’t true because then females like me won’t even bother trying to even make eye contact with you.  I still can’t quite believe that only 20% of men are getting the majority of available sex right now.  I really enjoy reading the male perspective on this.

    • Karen, welcome and thanks for leaving a comment on this thread. You will find that there are quite a few guys here who speak honestly and openly about the male perspective – it’s incredibly interesting and valuable, so keep reading the comment threads.

  • BobUU

    The reason the 80/20 holds true is because of confidence.

    The 80 % of guys are terrified as they think they are too ugly or because of todays culture their junk is too small or they are too inexperienced.

    So a vicious circle developed. An women perpetuate this all the time because they do dismiss a guy who lacks confidence and are quite shallow for 1st impressions.

    I willing to bet the men in the 20 group are packing and are above average looking. Throw in the ‘social proof’ thing and you have a self perpetuating situation.

    • @BobUU
      Thanks for leaving a comment. I think you’re right – and it is a vicious cycle. Self-confidence is key, yet not easily acquired, and not even easily faked. It’s a real dilemma. I will say that in my experience, the men in that 20% are not necessarily good looking, and many guys in the 80% are attractive. Attitude trumps looks when it comes to female attraction, and there are plenty of average or even ugly guys in frats, sports, etc. who clean up with women.

  • Tupac Chopra

    I willing to bet the men in the 20 group are packing and are above average looking. Throw in the ‘social proof’ thing and you have a self perpetuating situation.

    Nothing succeeds like success.

    Naturals get swept up in an upward spiral, while all others fight the downward spiral — or succumb to it.

  • BDS

    @Tennis Pro
    .
    Look, this is becoming a pissing contest, so here’s the last I’ll post on it.  I understand you never used the word ‘jealousy’ so it gives you plausible deniability in your own mind.  Of the half-dozen or so people who weighed in on this, you had one just agree with you.  The remainder agreed with my key point: that your approach could be problematic for YOU.
    .
    Nobody reasonable would suggest you not date other people in the absence of an exclusive relationship, and I certainly never said so.  When I’m single, I date whomever I want, and I also assume that the women I’m dating are dating others too.  But what I don’t do is talk of others I’m dating or ask about who they’re dating.  I don’t answer questions about who else I’m dating.  By the time “the talk” comes along, whomever brings it up, it’s usually pretty clear that both of us only want to see each other.  So if you get to that point and both you and the guy you’re dating both have the same policy of “I won’t be the first to have the talk,” aren’t you pretty much stuck?
    .
    But before I’ll have that conversation, I need to be pretty sure about three things for compaitability: looks, personality and character.  I’ve had women use the same approach you speak of rather often.  My reaction has been one of two things: 1) no outward reaction, or 2) “I’m not impressed.”  Here’s what I’m thinking inside: “You’ve failed the character test.”

  • DS

    Susan: “When you say that the CDC should have been more open, are you suggesting that they deliberately withheld relevant data to suppress the “truth” about women?”
    No. I am not a conspiracy theorist and I don’t claim any gender agenda on the CDC part. I suggest that they either inadvertently or deliberately withheld publishing the means to avoid extremely relevant discussions about the reliability of their data. Since they didn’t publish the means — while any respectable publication would — their data must be suffering from the same misleading reporting of the number of partners as any other data.

    “I don’t fault the logic of any of your arguments, and certainly if I had the opportunity to study the matter further, I would definitely explore deriving new medians from adusted means. However, there is nothing “back of the envelope” about these calculations.”

    I agree that there is nothing “back of the envelope” about these calculations. Given information available, it is impossible to calculate the correct medians. I could only estimate them and my estimate is most likely closer to the truth (that is, in the first approximation, male and female numbers are similar) than the CDC raw data on the medians of self-reported numbers.
    Had the CDC published the means and shown that they are at least similar for men and women, that would be a different story. At the moment, you can’t say anything about male and female numbers of lifetime partners with the data available. You definitely can’t claim that “the median for women is lower in every instance”. You have no grounds to do that except your belief that this is the case.
    “However, a very real factor for me, at least at first blush, is how preposterous it sounds that women overall would have higher median sexual partners. Since society does still exact a toll on promiscuity (it would be interesting to study the marriage rates of promiscuous women) it’s difficult to fathom.”

    Why is this preposterous? Would you agree that an average woman has much higher chances of sex with a new partner if she wants it than an average man? The difference is likely to be measured in orders of magnitude (like a few hours for a woman versus a few days/weeks for an average man, if he puts in a concentrated effort). This difference in access to new partners can easily conteract whatever stigma is still attached to the female promiscuity.

  • Sox

    This difference in access to new partners can easily conteract whatever stigma is still attached to the female promiscuity.

    Agreed.  Susan, why do you find the idea so preposterous considering the current paradigm of the hookup scene? Riding the coat-tails of what DS is saying, I rarely see my female friends going more than a couple of months without a boyfriend, and when they do, there’s usually a hookup in there somewhere.  My dreaded roommates that I’ve talked about before have mentioned how they can’t even comprehend going more than a week without sex.  My male friends however will go between 3-6 months without sex at times and a year+ without a relationship.  That’s the post college reality for a lot of us.  I can of course think of a few players that clean up, but in aggregate, the guys don’t get laid nearly as often.

  • @DS, @Sox

    Well, for what it’s worth, I did  post a link just above to a data source (albeit limited) where women actually reported higher numbers of partners than men did. I don’t have the ultimate “truth,” and I suffer from bias just like anyone else. I didn’t write this post with an agenda, but a question. As I’ve said a couple of times, I’ve only recently even questioned the 80/20 rule.

    I have no knowledge of the CDC’s data on means, but there does seem to be a general consensus that the mean is not the most useful of numbers in the best case. Also, the means will only be identical in a closed population, obviously. Any given sample of respondents will certainly not be that. The CDC uses the following methodology:

    NHANES is composed of a series of cross-sectional, nationally representative health and nutrition examination surveys of the U.S. civilian noninstitutionalized population.

    My own hypothesis (bias, belief system, anecdotal evidence, whatever), is that large numbers of women are having little to no casual sex. I do believe the majority of women in college “hook up,” which may mean making out, which is the most common, giving BJs, next most common, etc. (Deciding what a sexual partner is will vary by respondent.) I don’t know what the percentage is, and I assume that it decreases with age. In the current SMP, female hypergamy does battle with traditional long-term mating strategies favored by women.  There are many studies that demonstrate that women are unlikely to have sex with a stranger compared to men, and are less interested in no-strings sex than men are. There is also a lot of research that looks at personality traits and other factors associated with women who report having more casual sex. They tend to be higher in neuroticism and risk-seeking behaviors, and are more often from divorced families. They are relationship averse compared with the general population.

    I’ve also pointed to some research here that has looked at the inaccuracy of self-reporting and concluded that men are more likely to overreport than women are to underreport. You may get the same result, but via very different means.

    Sox, I too know of many women who always seem to have a boyfriend, and many attractive others who haven’t had a meaningful relationship in 2 or more years. Some of each of those groups have casual sex, and some don’t. As always, the question of which men women are choosing is a valid one.

    There are many variables, and many of them are poorly defined. I will certainly continue to research this question, and present (hopefully) unbiased reporting of what I learn. I suspect it will be a very long time before we fully understand the SMP in the first decades of the 21st c.

  • lol’polls’

    Anyone that has ever taken a statistics class should know first how just how bullshit polls are. I would love for the CDC to explain how they know how many acts of sex occur each year or how they got their samples at all. You are trying to draw broad conclusions about a 300 million person society with polls of less then 100k, it has no hope of even being remotely accurate with such vast regional differences. “A combined total of 25,316 sample persons”

    • lol’polls’
      I don’t disagree with anything you say about stats, or polls, or stats derived from sex polls. However, that leaves us with two choices:
      Compromised data = 21st century
      No F*cking Clue = Dark Ages
      .
      Take your pick.

  • no more mr nice guy

    Hi Susan, sorry if I’m late.  Thank you to debunk one the lies of Roissy – I don’t like the guy.  Another proof that the 20/80 is false is the percentage men and women infected by VDs.  If it was true it means then the vast majority of people infected would be female and in small minority would be male since according to the 80/20 rule most women are supposed to have sex with a small minority of guys and most guys are supposed to have almost no sex life.   In the case of Syphillis and Gonorrhea, it’s not : http://www.avert.org/std-statistics-america.htm
    ============================================================
    For gonorrhea, the rate among women was 119.4 (cases per 100,000 population) compared to a rate of 103.0 among men. The rate of primary and secondary stage syphilis was higher among men – 11.1 cases (per 100,000) were reported for men in 2008, compared to 1.5 for women.
    ============================================================

    Another way to check it would be to know how many women and men are tested for VDs when a doctor discover one of his patient have a VDs and they need to find all his partners and the partners of his partners and so on.  I don’t know the actual data but in the 1970s, the digits were rather huge, I remember my high school teacher told the class that in many case they had to test more than 500 people and he didn’t say there were much more women than men.

  • Höllenhund

    I was thinking about the 80/20 rule today and it occurred to me that we’re basically comparing apples and oranges here.  We know how it applies to men: 20% of them get 80% of female attention and thus sexual access. Ms. Walsh suggests that it probably also applies to women since judging by the stats only a minority of them are promiscuous. But one should also keep in mind that women an average have very easy access to casual sex and therefore don’t value this access as much as men do and aren’t interested in it as much as men are. On the other hand, it is commonly accepted that they value LTRs and commitment more than men do. Is it possible that the 80/20 rule also applies to women but in a different way: that 20% of women get 80% of the male resources (so to speak) that women value – commitment, protection etc.?

    • @Hollenhund

      Is it possible that the 80/20 rule also applies to women but in a different way: that 20% of women get 80% of the male resources (so to speak) that women value – commitment, protection etc.?

      A fascination notion! I’m going to ruminate on this, but I’d be interested in any other thoughts you have. Are you saying that only 20% of the women are worthy of male commitment? And what is the strategy for getting into that 20%? Is it a question of holding off on sex until commitment is offered? I’d really like the male perspective on this.

  • Höllenhund

    Ms. Walsh,
    it’s just speculation on my part. Some responses to this and Roissy’s linked article got me thinking. They pointed out that a minority of women have most of the casual sex and concluded that this is how the 80/20 applies to women. I think this parallel is misleading. Women aren’t generally judged by their ability to get sexual partners for the simple reason that most men are willing to have casual sex with just about any woman. Hence cads are considered to be the elite among men but sluts are never thought of as the elite among women. Women are judged by their ability to extract resources from men and sex itself is obviously not seen as a male resource, especially not from a female POV (after all, convincing men to have sex isn’t exactly difficult for most women).
    I just assumed that if the Pareto principle, itself a manifestation of the great inherent inequality among people, applies to so many areas of life including male sexual access, it probably also applies to female access to male resources in one way or another. Men aren’t choosy when it comes to casual sex but they are choosy when it comes to having a LTR. General wisdom has it that women are choosy and men aren’t but that’s only because male choosiness only manifests later in a relationship. By and large men aren’t as interested in commitment as women are and therefore men are the gatekeepers to relationships.
    (Finsalscollons explained this well:
    http://www.hookingupsmart.com/2010/03/08/hookinguprealities/my-exotic-destination-theory-of-relationships/#comment-5368)
    It logically follows that male resources aren’t evenly distributed among women either.
    “Are you saying that only 20% of the women are worthy of male commitment?”
    If the Pareto principle applies to male sexual preferences, I guess the result is that 20% of women get 80% of male investment because most men want the same small cadre of high-quality women for LTRs. That’s what I’m seeing.
    “And what is the strategy for getting into that 20%? Is it a question of holding off on sex until commitment is offered?”
    I’d say it’s necessary but not sufficient in itself. Alpha males are mostly born, not made. Most average men could never get into that 20% of male elite. I’m sure the same applies to high-quality women.
    “I’d really like the male perspective on this.”
    Well, people have always competed for high-quality mates. Women nowadays do it through sluttiness, men mostly did it through violence.

  • collegeboy

    I am highly skeptical of the earliest age of first sex for males. Since women tend to have a preference for older men. overall I think males are exaggerating, I know i did, when i took surveys. I’m not sure on females however social pressures can make some under report.

    As for Hispanic women remaining chaste until marriage, yes but with the assumption that they marry earlier than most other women.

    As for anglo women, being somewhat promiscuous. I had already heard that their reputation dates way back, without the need for surveys. Its widely rumored outside of the U.S. I commend anglo women on their honesty( I value that highly, honestly).

    One of my friends who is rich and has had a bad marriage and lot of really bad girl friends told me this: That women who are pressured into staying chaste and marrying early, are more likely to later cheat on their husbands, because they never had the chance to have explore other men, before they married.

    So getting a woman who is chaste may not be the best alternative for marriage.

    Hispanic women tend to be very social. to my observation Anglo women tend to be less social, and more masculine,and I like that so long as they still look like a woman. it makes my job allot easier. Less drama and I’m tired of drama from Hispanic women, they give me quite a work out. Its like they mind read my thoughts and that really annoys me. They don’t know what I’m thinking. I don’t even know what I’m thinking, until I actually think “on the spot” (I try to be spontaneous).

    Although for those seeking feminine women, Hispanic and especially Mexican American women more than likely the best choice.

  • Anonymous

    The key flawed assumption in this article is that promiscuous men and women have most of their sex with each other.  Whether right or wrong, promiscuous men are generally considered high status and promiscuous women are generally considered low status.  Because of this, the fact that men and women are approximately equally promiscuous does not invalidate the Pareto Principle.

    For a simple model of how this might work, the top 20% of men have sex with the top 80% of women.  The bottom 80% of men have sex with the bottom 20% of women.  Thus, the alpha men tend to have sex with a larger number of less promiscuous female, while the remaining beta men tend to “share” the smaller number of promiscuous women.  This means that average promiscuity remains roughly constant, while ensuring that alphas are more likely to reproduce, aligning it with the genetic evidence.  Further, this model also fits with historical and present polygynous societies, where a small number of powerful men monopolize a disproportionate number of women, leaving other men without partners or sharing the remainder in some manner (promiscuity, prostitution, etc.)

  • Paragon

    “Furthermore, if we define the 80/20 Rule to mean that 20% of the men are getting 80% of the intercourse, we may be describing the sexual advantage inherent in committed sexual relationships, rather than a string of casual hookups”

    Or BOTH.

    But, this is an irrelevant conclusion – the point of contention really isn’t one of promiscuity at all.

    But rather the DISTRIBUTION of sex.

    And even if we were able to eliminate prostitution and a demonstrated/documented tendency for falsification(with females
    tending to under-report, and males over-report) as obvious confounders in the data, ethological data, and unifying evolutionary principles would still render some very clear predictions for a general imabalance in the distribution of matings.

    But, even if we were to discount THAT, and (generously) assume an approximate equal proportion of promiscuous males/females accounting for skews in the data, it would STILL be speaking to an imbalance that is rather obvious to anyone with even a trivial appreciation for male evolutionary biology – namely, that any dynamic tending to limit sexual access to females(like a reluctant cohort of induced female ‘carousel watchers’ – who are neglecting lesser males to ‘wait’ on ‘choice opportunities’), is hindering the interests of unmated males MORE than females(courtesy of the male high-rate fitness optima, and correspondingly high male optimal mating rate).

    • @Paragon

      any dynamic tending to limit sexual access to females(like a reluctant cohort of induced female ‘carousel watchers’ — who are neglecting lesser males to ‘wait’ on ‘choice opportunities’), is hindering the interests of unmated males MORE than females

      First, you obviously found your way here from Lackrod’s. I think the carousel watching idea is bogus. It was proposed by an unhappily married middle aged man who hasn’t had a date in 20 years. The only thing that counts is actions.

      I don’t deny your claim that men not having sex are unhappier than women not having sex. On the other hand, any dynamic limiting relationship prospects with males, who are neglecting choice females to mate with lower value females, is hindering the interests of unmated females MORE than males.

  • Höllenhund

    It was proposed by an unhappily married middle aged man who hasn’t had a date in 20 years.

    Yeah. Obviously that’s more than enough evidence to dismiss that claim out of hand.

    • @Hollenhund

      Yeah. Obviously that’s more than enough evidence to dismiss that claim out of hand.

      Would you trust me to give you an assessment of the structural integrity of the Golden Gate Bridge? Qualifications matter. A lot.

      Why on earth would we listen to this man about what’s going on in the minds (not actions, just thoughts!) of 20 year old women?

  • Paragon

    “First, you obviously found your way here from Lackrod’s. I think the carousel watching idea is bogus. It was proposed by an unhappily married middle aged man who hasn’t had a date in 20 years. The only thing that counts is actions.”

    Let’s ignore your irrelevant conclusions for the moment.

    “I don’t deny your claim that men not having sex are unhappier than women not having sex. On the other hand, any dynamic limiting relationship prospects with males, who are neglecting choice females to mate with lower value females, is hindering the interests of unmated females MORE than males.”

    Actually, the only males for whom this dynamic is NOT equally hindering, is that small subset of high-value males who are getting all the casual sex.(ie. which EXCLUDES the vast majority of males).

    But, what is the basis of this dynamic?

    “The authors of “Freakonomics” discovered that 56% of men that create an online dating profile do not even get one single message(compared with 21% of females) while Jupiter Research found that 97% quit within 3 months.”

    http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-04-13/strategy/29998367_1_match-com-site-selection-success-online

    A recent OK Cupid study also found that male appraisals of female attractiveness followed a normal distribution curve, while female appraisals of male attractiveness found a shocking 80% of males to be BELOW average in attractiveness(suggesting that some preconcieved notions are skewing their assessments).

    This is all consistent with the fact that males and females really *do* have conflicting reproductive agendas, courtesy of sexual evolution(females have lower reproductive potential, and thus compensate qualitatively by being more selective – conflicting with the high-rate, reproductive strategies of males).

    Thus, it seems fairly obvious to conclude that female CHOICE tends to be the contrary element in courtship interactions, given that males are not only less selective, but they are pragmatic – deprived of opportunities for casual sex(which most are), they are more than willing to pursue a LTR as their mating strategy.

    Which is why it is likewise reasonable to conclude that if women are, indeed, being deprived of LTRs, it can only be because their CHOICES are unwilling to compromise on their opportunities – where their expectations are presumably fixated on LTR opportunities with the highest value males(which are prohibitively rare, given the abudance of opportunities for casual sex that these males enjoy).

    • Which is why it is likewise reasonable to conclude that if women are, indeed, being deprived of LTRs, it can only be because their CHOICES are unwilling to compromise on their opportunities — where their expectations are presumably fixated on LTR opportunities with the highest value males(which are prohibitively rare, given the abudance of opportunities for casual sex that these males enjoy).

      It is my theory that 80% of both men and women in college are unhappy in the SMP – so why don’t they get together? Because they are separated by a gulf. Opportunities for socialization without sexual pressure are rare. Pluralistic ignorance also has a large effect – both sexes routinely estimate that 75-80% of students on campus regularly hook up, while the real number is about 10%. Exposing the difference between hookup culture and hookup behaviors is the first step in bridging the gulf between non-promiscuous men and women.

      The data confirms this – more than 40% of both males and females in college are virgins, and only 2-3% have more than 5 hookup partners while there.

  • Paragon

    “Would you trust me to give you an assessment of the structural integrity of the Golden Gate Bridge? Qualifications matter. A lot.”

    Credibility matters – but it is the consistency of one’s arguments that speak to that, rather than any personal considerations which are immaterial to the kinds of systemic problems we are supposing.

    “Why on earth would we listen to this man about what’s going on in the minds (not actions, just thoughts!) of 20 year old women?”

    The only relevant consideration is whether he is posing a compelling explanation for what we can observe of female behaviors.

    “It is my theory that 80% of both men and women in college are unhappy in the SMP – so why don’t they get together? Because they are separated by a gulf. Opportunities for socialization without sexual pressure are rare. Pluralistic ignorance also has a large effect – both sexes routinely estimate that 75-80% of students on campus regularly hook up, while the real number is about 10%. Exposing the difference between hookup culture and hookup behaviors is the first step in bridging the gulf between non-promiscuous men and women.”

    What is happening in college is not a special case, but an expression of the same dynamic that prevails throughout the rest of the SMP.

    But, I am not convinced that some tacit fear of hook-up culture is somehow deterring women from seeking out partners(from amongst a pool of OBVIOUSLY non-promiscuous males) – mostly because, there is NO assumption that a majority of guys are part of that culture.

    Now, you can argue against the justification of ‘hook-up’ culture assumptions(which you have), but that still wouldn’t address the convention that only a very select minority of (patently promiscuous)males are held to be part of the hook-up culture.

    So, I think a far more plausible explanation is that the average girl simply has very little interest in an average guy(and has no economic compulsion to ‘settle’ for one either, as did previous generations of women).

    I am not passing moral judgement on that.

    But, I think it is long past time we abandon the pretensions and rhetorical diversions(the cat is out of the bag), and shift the discussion towards the inevitable consequences that these evident imbalances in the SMP pose for the future of developed world populations.

    • @Paragon

      The only relevant consideration is whether he is posing a compelling explanation for what we can observe of female behaviors.

      Compelling? Does that mean an explanation that confirms your worldview? How can any explanation of hookup culture from a man who’s never experienced it be accurate, regardless of it’s narrative appeal?

      But, I am not convinced that some tacit fear of hook-up culture is somehow deterring women from seeking out partners(from amongst a pool of OBVIOUSLY non-promiscuous males) — mostly because, there is NO assumption that a majority of guys are part of that culture.

      Sexually unassertive women do not seek out partners. Nor do obviously non-promiscuous males. If you were correct, then the partner counts for female college students would look very different. Only 9% of women in college have more than 5 hookup partners, and 37% have zero (and that number is rising).

  • Höllenhund

    It is my theory that 80% of both men and women in college are unhappy in the SMP – so why don’t they get together? Because they are separated by a gulf. Opportunities for socialization without sexual pressure are rare.

    The bottom 80% of men rarely try to pressure women sexually in any way. I don’t quite get what you’re talking about.

    • The bottom 80% of men rarely try to pressure women sexually in any way. I don’t quite get what you’re talking about.

      There is little to no socialization on college campuses that does not feature large amounts of alcohol and predatory males. The 80% of guys not in that group are not included in those gatherings, and they are attended by a minority of women as well. No one is observing the 80% of either sex outside that social scene.

  • Paragon

    “The bottom 80% of men rarely try to pressure women sexually in any way. I don’t quite get what you’re talking about.”

    It’s irrelevant anyway.

    Men have always pressed(in a manner of speaking) women for sex – this is hardly a recent development, and thus can hardly account for ongoing trends in the SMP.

    I also, don’t buy the claim that sexualized venues are precipitating some ineffable ‘gulf’ between non-promiscuous men and women.

    Females are the gatekeepers – they set the stage for male courtship.

    If they don’t like the strident sexual ambiance of bars/clubs, then they are free to indulge alternate venues for interacting with men.

    However, knowing this already(as they must), it begs the (rhetorical)question as to why they do not?

  • Paragon

    “Compelling? Does that mean an explanation that confirms your worldview? How can any explanation of hookup culture from a man who’s never experienced it be accurate, regardless of it’s narrative appeal?”

    Because, he’s the one appealing to a plausible explanation.

    “Sexually unassertive women do not seek out partners.”

    Why shouldn’t they?

    I recall plenty of female profiles when I was looking online, claiming to be searching for a partner, but that they were not interested in a ‘hook-up’?

    Were they lying?

    “Nor do obviously non-promiscuous males.”

    Than by your definition, the only people who AREN’T promiscuous, are those NOT looking for a partner?

    By that logic, it follows that non-promiscuous individuals would never find a mate.

    ” If you were correct, then the partner counts for female college students would look very different.”

    Or it could be a case of carousel watching(or any term used to describe a female aversion to their male peers).

    “There is little to no socialization on college campuses that does not feature large amounts of alcohol and predatory males.”

    Just because a man is interested in finding a receptive partner, doesn’t make him a predator, does it?

    But, this is all a trivial obstacle to socialization, which can happen anywhere, in any shared environment.

    So why doesn’t it?

    It occurs, that if males are not initiating interactions elsewhere, it is because women are not receptive to it.

    “The 80% of guys not in that group are not included in those gatherings, and they are attended by a minority of women as well. No one is observing the 80% of either sex outside that social scene.”

    That’s interesting.

    I recall some recent statistics that speak to more than 50% of either sex, getting drunk at least once a week.

    Such a statistic would suggest that the majority of them are frequenting these kinds of venues on a regular basis.

  • BleeS

    I know this blog post is a few years old, but I found this through a news article. I was reading this blog a few years ago and I couldn’t remember the name–I’m glad I found it again!

    I was confused by your two graphs, and ended up doing some math on my own.

    Using the CDC data:

    age 20-29 males: ({# partners, %}, {0-1, 23.7%},{2-6, 33.5%}, {7-14, 20.1%},{15+,22.7%})

    age 30-39 males {0-1, 15.0%},{2-6, 32.2%}, {7-14, 22.3%},{15+,30.4%}

    age 20-29 females: {0-1, 28%},{2-6,44.4%}, {7-14, 19.5%},{15+,8%}

    age 30-39 females: {0-1,19.1%},{2-6,43.5%}, {7-14, 26.2%},{15+,11.2%}

    I made some new graphs: http://imgur.com/H9rmzzD. Rather than having the skews in different directions, both histograms should be “positve skewed” just with a broader distribution for men. I also assumed that rather than a purely exponential decay graph, it was a little bell curve shaped, and that in the 30-39’s there were more people with 1 partner than zero. By finding the area/total number of sex partners per percentile it was possible to calculate an actual number for the pareto value.

    Ignoring all the methods, what I got was that the top 20% of (30-39 year old) men have had about 40-50% of the sex partners. The bottom 20% of men have had ~1% of the sex, in terms of # partners.

    The steeper line is for females, referring to the skew towards fewer partners. What is interesting is that this means their pareto ratio is higher than men’s with a value of 20% of woman having 55% of sex! This makes more sense if you think about how more females have only one or two partners, so those who have 20 have a greater share of the pie.

    The male data is less accurate, because it was harder to calculate the width of the long tale on the graph. I ended up assuming that the top 10% had ~25 partners, the next 10% had 20 partners, and the next 10% had 17. I guessed several different values to get the 40-50% range. For women, since the “over 15” was only 8%, the numbers didn’t change as much when I changed the estimate from 20 to 25.

    I would love to see data on actual sex (as opposed to partners) and see how that compares, especially with the difference between those in LTRs vs those in hookups.

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