Savaged by statistical sheep

Well, that certainly didn't take long. After successfully detaching herself from the androsphere, Susan Walsh appears to have been unfortunately and unduly influenced by her lack of contact with the rigors of male criticism.  She attempts to attack what she describes as "male wishful thinking" with a combination of conventional female shaming, ad hominem, illogic, and an appeal to authority.

Below is the target of her criticism, Rollo's sexual market value over lifetime chart.

Now let's look at the flaws in her critique, which she titles "The Myth of Plummeting Female Sexual Market Value".  Susan begins right away by begging the question and demonstrating her own personal bias with regards to the matter.

A. "A reader shared this bit of male wishful thinking about female sexual market value. It was apparently cooked up by a typically disgruntled and sexually frustrated older male licking his mating wounds."

In addition to begging the question, Susan commits failure of logic known as "the genetic fallacy". Her problem is that "The Godfather" is a great movie regardless of whether Al Pacino says it is or not. In like manner, women observably decline in sexual value regardless of whether it is "a frustrated older male licking his mating wounds" or "a hot young man who turns up his nose at overweight matrons due to his preference for 18 year-old swimsuit models" who mentions the fact.

1. "Since, male attraction cues are directly tied to female fertility and define female beauty, a female’s sexual value should not decline at all before her fertility does."

Provably false assumption.  If this were true, the average age of a Playboy Playmate would not be 22, it would be the mid-point of menarche (12) and menopause (51), or 31.5. Even if we assume that male attraction cues are tied to female fertility, it should not need to be pointed out that a woman who can have many children will be valued considerably more for her fertility than the woman who can only have one. As a Wharton MBA, Susan should not be unfamiliar with the concept of time value, as the time value of money is deemed the central concept in finance theory.

2. "Fertility declines very gradually between the ages of 27 and 35."

Irrelevant. See above. It is readily apparent that Susan has made the mistake of assuming the correlative connection between fertility and male attraction is a causal one.

3. "Notice how the male sexual value begins its precipitous drop at around 36, after declining gradually for five years. Not much difference."

Irrelevant. A decline in male sexual value cannot possibly make the decline in female sexual value a myth.

I will address why Kelly's mathematical objections are similarly irrelevant in a future post, but in summary, simply citing MATH isn't going to cut it here. The decline of women's sexual value is no myth; it is, to the contrary, absolutely undeniable. Even an unattractive 22 year-old woman has more sexual value than every single 88 year-old woman on the planet.

Rollo himself notes: "[L]ets put it this way, the cosmetics, fashion and plastic surgery industries didn’t become the multi-trillion dollar corporate juggernauts they are today as the result of an overwhelming demand to make women appear older."

Given that, the question that obviously follows is if men and women possess equivalent sexual value at all ages or not. Unless Susan wants to stand on the extremely shaky ground of asserting that the sexual value of men and women ascend and decline in unison, all she is actually quibbling about is where the curves happen to be drawn in what appears to be little more than an attempt to engage in a feeble ad hominem attack.

And why would any man wish for declining female sexual value anyhow? Has Susan really forgotten that men are the individuals who will be expected to have sex with those aging women? And who could possibly be more aware of that declining value than a older male who has witnessed his female age peers decline from their physical peaks?