Tuesday, November 6, 2012

Aristophanes wrote fiction

It is simply incredible how often women refer to Lysistrata as if it is actual Greek history, rather than something more akin to the Wonder Woman comic from Marvel.  It's as if men were to seriously argue that the legal system should be modified according to criminal justice in Star Trek:
Most of the women I spoke to have resigned themselves to the fact that the hook-up culture is here to stay. They don't see the social and cultural landscape of college campuses changing anytime soon.

One friend tells me that the girls on campus would prefer a culture of dating to one of hooking up, but they would never admit it or ask for it. If girls demanded dating before hooking up, guys would be unmoved, she explained. "There are always going to be other girls for them to hook up with so we'll just get left behind."

These women are looking at the problem the wrong way, I think. They need to realize that, in spite of campus sex ratios and prevailing cultural trends, they hold the power when it comes to the hook up culture. They hold the power when it comes to sex.

This was the insight of Lysistrata, the shrewd heroine of Aristophanes' marvelous play by the same name. Lysistrata was able to diagnose a problem in her society and to take actions and overcome obstacles to solve it.

In the heat of the Peloponnesian War, Lysistrata gathered the women of various Greek city-states at a meeting and proposed that they withhold sex from their husbands until these men end the war. The women, though reluctant at first, agree. Throughout the play, though they desire sex just like the men do, they resist the temptation to break their oath with Lysistrata. The Athenian and Spartan men eventually become so desperate for sex that they begin peace talks. The women's strategy works.

Lysistrata, a tough and independent woman, understood how the sexual marketplace works, and harnessed that knowledge to get what she wanted. Many men want sex with women. As Lysistrata knew, women have the power to say yes—or no (assuming men respect their wishes, of course. There are far too many examples of times men disregard women's "no"s). They set and execute the terms to which the men surrender.
Just to be clear, the Peloponnesian War didn't end with peace talks between Athenian and Spartan men brought about by a sex strike.  One would have to be astonishingly ignorant of Greek culture to imagine that a sex strike by women could have brought the ephebophiles of either Athens or Sparta to its knees.  The war actually ended following a long siege of Athens by Sparta, which ended with Athens having its walls torn down, its navy destroyed, and its empire dismantled.

Ironically, Lysistrata was published only two years after the loss of thirty thousand sailors and ten thousand hoplites at Syracuse, which was the real cause of the Athenian defeat.

As for the hookup culture, feminists are entirely to blame.  The excess supply of women on college campuses and the corresponding increase in male value is a direct and obvious consequence of the decades-long campaign to encourage more women to pursue academic credentials.  Game theory, economics, and cartel history all suffice to explain that although women collectively hold the power when it comes to sex, individual women will never refrain from making themselves sexually available to men in female-majority scenarios.

33 comments:

Daniel said...

What? Next you'll tell me that the growth of Rome was not based on the sex strike of the Sabine women.

Lysistrata is a funny play, and I've met sci-fi gammas who absolutely believe the CJ system in Star Trek is the platonic ideal, not a communist abuse of the law.

But I have yet to meet a man who thinks that Star Trek actually happened.

And Wonder Woman is DC, man.* At least, that's what the geek told me this morning while I was taking his lunch money...

*Although I suspect that you were setting a trap, and boy did that kid with no lunch money sure fall for it!

Mathetes said...

It's a Prisoner's Dilemma. And people don't cooperate in those situations. Sure, if women cooperated they could change things. But that's never what happens. Talking about their poor position is silly - since they wouldn't change their behavior even if there was a crystal ball that showed them in perfect detail the future that would result from cooperation.

taterearl said...

"There are always going to be other girls for them to hook up with so we'll just get left behind."

And yet if these women who hook up ever want to get married...they'll be left behind and living in a cat shelter or will get married to something barely resembling a man.

Roundtine said...

You could also write a play where the evil women refuse their men sex and drive them to conquer and rape neighboring lands.

Russell said...

"One would have to be astonishingly ignorant of Greek culture to imagine that a sex strike by women could have brought the ephebophiles of either Athens or Sparta to its knees."

That made me laugh!

I'm amused that in order to prove that women aren't irrational creatures that need help to protect themselves, the author skipped past history and used a fictional piece of comedy wherein women were irrational creatures that needed help to protect themselves.

Stickwick said...

I didn't participate in the hookup culture in college, because it was against my principles. I didn't wait for the cooperation of the other female students, I just did it on my own. It meant three years of no dating* -- it's true for the most part that chaste girls get left behind -- but if principles cost nothing, everyone would have them. However, the net result was actually a gain in the long term. In my senior year, I met a quality man who probably would not have been interested in making a campus bicycle his wife.

* I wasted that time studying instead.

Anonymous said...

Women are like Arabs...how long before OPEC members cheat the established quotas?

Getting women to co-operate is like herding cats. It's in their nature to be devious. The best part is, if a pact was made to ensure no sex, those that cheat would not feel guilt (since women's morality is essentially based upon how they feel...if it feels right, how can it be wrong)?

- Apollyon

boxingalcibiades said...

Aristophanes would have farted in the face of modern feminists: he wrote Lysistrata to show that even moronic, irrational WOMEN were smart enough to realize that was was bad.

Anonymous said...

On a different note, Devlin references Aristophanes in one of his excellent essays and convincingly argues that he had great understanding of female sexuality and what women view as a sexual utopia. I admit I know nothing about this Lysistrata play and I'm not interested in it, because there's no evidence that sexual cartels have ever worked.

Höllenhund

Jimmydom said...

"I didn't participate in the hookup culture in college, because it was against my principles. I didn't wait for the cooperation of the other female students, I just did it on my own. It meant three years of no dating"

My new wife -one week now- was the same way. She was committed to waiting til marriage and spent many frustrated years having very few to no dates. She finally met me, a guy who was interested in a girl with principles and the rest is history. There is no way I would have married an unchaste woman.

Most of the women who cave arent actually caving at all. They are looking for an excuse to satisfy their sin natures and this is the rationalization that works best for them at this time.

Jimmy said...

I just wonder where are the parents of these hook-up women. Did they learn nothing of interpersonal relationships? Did they learn nothing of morality and sex? Did they learn nothing of courtship and men?

You can't get from hook-ups to relationships to marriage. There are hook-ups OR relationships to marriage.

The sex strike only works (if it actually does) in the context of a relationship. Otherwise there is no leverage between random strangers. Because women have a herd mentality, they think what they do is what really everyone is doing. This isn't true.

Anyways, I think it is a losing proposition to be more selective with hook-ups. They haven't even considered the notion that marriage should be undertaken at younger ages. The hook-upers are still having their fun. it will be too late.

Jack Amok said...

Part of the problem is society thinks it has to isolate 22 year old women from 30 year old men because, well, men are icky and evil I guess.

But 22 year old men are unlikely to marry, especially if they are surrounded by a hookup culture. 30 year old men are more interested in starting a family. Not to mention by that age, there's been a little rebalancing of SMV away from the Players and towards the Achievers.

In addition to a whole bunch of other changes needed to fix this problem, maybe we should be putting women in their early 20's in close proximity to men in their early 30's.

Heh said...

Women had a very important role in the Peloponnesian War. I quote Thucydides"

Mitylene: The Athenians determined... to make slaves of the women and children.

Plataea: The women were taken as slaves.

Corcyra: All the women taken in the stronghold were sold as slaves.

Scione: Athens succeeded in reducing Scione,
put the adult males to death, and, making slaves of the women and children.

Melos: the Athenians... put to death all the grown men whom they took, and sold the women and children for slaves.

Res Ipsa said...

The writer does make a good point; if women started treating their hymen’s as the pearl of great price to be delivered only upon marriage, you’d see the guys come around pretty fast. That would be especially true if the 16 to 20 year old female was actively seeking marriage with 18 to 22 year old male. They aren’t, they are seeking girl power through degrees and social climbing. Guys know they can get laid for the price of a couple of beers or some Taco Bell, generally they don’t even have to make that much of an investment. As long as the price of a commodity is free the demand is unlimited. Raise the price of admittance girls and reduce the cost of ownership. You’ve got it backwards now, and no one to blame but yourselves.

Josh said...

Wasn't the whole point of the play a satire mocking the idea that a sex strike would end the war?

Rollo Tomassi said...

Wonder Woman is DC, not Marvel.

Geek cred established.

Continue,..

Anonymous said...

"Game theory, economics, and cartel history all suffice to explain that although women collectively hold the power when it comes to sex, individual women will never refrain from making themselves sexually available to men in female-majority scenarios."

Might be getting ahead of ourselves here. Plenty of it for sale in Victorian London; a man could still expect to marry a virgin.

http://www.victorianlondon.org/crime/numbersofprostitutes.htm

Daniel said...

anolen, you just contradicted yourself. Read what you quoted again.

CrisisEraDynamo said...

I read the article; she wants a dating culture with hookup culture rules. The men must jump through hoops to get sex, but women are free to dump their devoted boyfriends once the tingle is gone, no matter how much he invested. She can do whatever she wants, but men have to meekly fall into line.

A dating culture cannot exist alongside a hookup culture; a man can just go to a woman who puts out more easily (they're a dime a dozen) if the woman starts demanding too much for too little sex, and if women themselves are not socially shamed for dumping boyfriends who invested a lot in them.

The only way the dating culture could come back is if women start slut-shaming again, and Ms. Smith doesn't want that, since that would mean women taking responsibility for their sexual adventures.

I think this article shows that the betas have caught on to the game; commitment isn't required to get sex. Once the betas learned this, the LJBF gravy train of free stuff came crashing to a halt, and now she's trying to go back to the way it was, when men didn't know any better, falsely assuming that women were pure and angelic.

LP2021 Bank of LP Work in Progress said...

Fave quote: "Just to be clear, the Peloponnesian War didn't end with peace talks between Athenian and Spartan men brought about by a sex strike. One would have to be astonishingly ignorant of Greek culture to imagine that a sex strike by women could have brought the ephebophiles of either Athens or Sparta to its knees."

As for the whorelight/highlight culture of hooks its still F'ism's fault!

Anonymous said...

She talks about how hooking up shares some characteristics with rape. I thought that was interesting. I've heard similar comments in other articles. I think the feminist hive mind is coming up with something. This 'hook up is like rape' theme keeps popping up.

Koanic said...

I think a large part of the appeal of women is the competitive aspect. If no men were getting any, their stock would plummet. Another reason why no such strike has ever occurred.

Steve Canyon said...

Given the profound influence such truthful tomes as Twilight, 50 Shades of Grey, and Sex in the City has upon their "reality", it doesn't surprise me that women view the Lysistrata this way.

Cail Corishev said...

I think the feminist hive mind is coming up with something. This 'hook up is like rape' theme keeps popping up.

Eh, we'll see. These are the same people who said marriage is rape. Basically, anything they think keeps women from being blissfully happy gets called rape. They gave us the hookup culture and called it empowerment, and now they aren't satisfied with it, so they need to blame it on someone else.

LP2021 Bank of LP Work in Progress said...

No one will shed a tear for their regrets or what I would suggest is self destruction. They choose that lifestyle and their beds reflect it. (Think Dorian Grey.)

Anonymous said...

@Daniel

Morning there Daniel. I took your advice. Actually, I re-read it three times. My comment stands.

Maybe you should read my post again? There were virgins in London.

Daniel said...

Strike two anolen. There are virgins in America, too. Victorian whores are an example of the quoted text, not an exception.

So, no, we may not be "getting ahead of ourselves here." You simply provided an example that supports the original thesis. Even in virginal Victorian London, there were individuals who served as funnels for the lusts of a number of men.

A Lysistrata-style sex strike today would look very similar to Victorian London (individual women happily crossing the picket line, so to speak, addressing the volume of thwarted men) vs. what the ancient comedy portrays.

Did you not mean "Might be getting ahead of ourselves?"

chris said...

“She talks about how hooking up shares some characteristics with rape. I thought that was interesting. I've heard similar comments in other articles. I think the feminist hive mind is coming up with something. This 'hook up is like rape' theme keeps popping up.”

She is trying to use modern ideology/social scripts to rationalise why she doesn’t like being used for sex.

http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/008759.html

“We are moral rationalizers who deceive ourselves that we are reasonable.

To the question many people ask about politics — Why doesn’t the other side listen to reason? — Haidt replies: We were never designed to listen to reason. When you ask people moral questions, time their responses and scan their brains, their answers and brain activation patterns indicate that they reach conclusions quickly and produce reasons later only to justify what they’ve decided. The funniest and most painful illustrations are Haidt’s transcripts of interviews about bizarre scenarios. Is it wrong to have sex with a dead chicken? How about with your sister? Is it O.K. to defecate in a urinal? If your dog dies, why not eat it? Under interrogation, most subjects in psychology experiments agree these things are wrong. But none can explain why.”

Or this comment at Heartiste sums it up best

http://heartiste.wordpress.com/2012/10/31/the-necessity-of-relationship-game/#comment-382175

“When nagging, inconsolable women lob heat-of-the-moment accusations at their men, the accusations usually take the form of scattershot wails about one-size-fits-all conventional relationship issues that come straight from therapists’ hackneyed textbooks.
“You don’t care about me.” “You never listen.” “You don’t support this marriage like I do.” “You forgot to go food shopping AGAIN. How many times do I have to remind you?!”
So these beta men, quite reasonably, care harder, listen longer, support stronger, and buy enough groceries to fill a fat housewife’s appetizer plate. He reasons, “This is what she claims she wants, so this is what I’ll give her. And that should make her be nice to me like she was last week.”

Aye, it’s a similar dynamic that peaks around age 3 or so in young children. A child can definitely recognize he’s feeling bad but unfortunately he’s unable to process and verbalize the exact reason why. For example, my niece defaults to a claim that she’s hungry when something non-obvious is bothering her. The issue is usually about something completely different (sadness about her cousins leaving, tiredness, etc.) but since the feeling of being hungry is the clearest feeling of distress she’s familiar with, that’s what she assumes herself to be.

If you try to feed her based on her words (when she’s not actually hungry), she’s no longer just sad, she’s mad at you for a) not understanding her, b) aggravating her confusion about herself c) not taking care of the actual problem. “I’m hungry but I don’t want to eat and you’re stupid! Waaah!”

As discussed in the various female solipsism threads lately, women don’t tend to be as explicitly conscious of their mind’s internal workings as men, so they’ll display more of this behavior as adults too.”

Anonymous said...

@Daniel

Truce! You read 'individual' the way that Alpha Game intended. I read 'individual' as the unit player, r.e. game theory.

Some individuals will deviate withholding sex, yes. Others won't.

You'd have caught my attention earlier if you weren't so caustic. Might want to reconsider that strategy.

Daniel said...

The concession and subsequent clarity is the only important result. I can't help you if you perceived combat, because a straightforward request for review isn't fighting words.

I actually appreciate your link on Victorian culture for reasons other than the unintentionally misleading one you gave.

Truce irrelevant: we are not at war.

Anonymous said...

@Daniel

Great! Than take this as the constructive criticism that I intend it to be.

Any writer needs to be careful when they invoke a subject like 'game theory' to illustrate your/Alpha Game's point. Economics, like many disciplines, has its own set of jargon. The way you use 'individual' invites misunderstanding.

Might I suggest the following alternative ending:

Women who derive more benefit from sleeping with men who would otherwise be out of their league, will break strike. There are decreasing returns to doing this for each woman contemplating breaking strike. Therefore, a completely effective strike will never be possible, assuming sleeping with the best male is valued above the goals of the strike by any female.

RE Victoriana: It is a great link, I like primary-source histories.

JCclimber said...

What's really, really funny about that (besides the fact that as Vox pointed out, the Greek men were not at all averse to seeking sexual relief amongst themselves), is this belief that the men, who were facing literal death in combat, would meekly allow his wife to withhold sex.

Are we sure this play wasn't meant as a comedy?

Daniel said...

No. The play is definitely a comedy. A hilarious one, basically about how stupid war is but also about how stupid women are, and the funniest bit is that the modern women in the audience laugh their heads off, not realizing that it is their virtue and sisterhood that is being lampooned.

Plus the erections are a hoot. Not exactly Monty Python, but for ancient entertainment, as close as one might get.

The study of Lysistrata in feminist circles is actually a study in solipsism, hamster wheels, and wildly missing the entire point. Most women (not all) are fully incapable of even comprehending a straight reading of the play, and if you ever see it performed, make sure you check the gender of the director. If it is a woman, it will be no more enjoyable than a high school play.

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