A request is not a test

Athol outlines the difference:

If I’m doing the morning routine with the kids, I bring Jennifer a cup of tea. I’m already making me coffee, we have a Keurig thingy so it only takes me a minute to make her something while I’m making my own. She always says thank you and actively enjoys the Act of Service. She also knows that all she needs to do once is say, “Where’s my tea?” in a snarky tone and she’ll get a whithering look and a big cup of make-your-own-fucking-tea.

Something to watch is whether or not small acts of service are also returned to you. I do nice things for Jennifer, but she also does many nice things back to me. For which I also say thank you.

If it’s all a one way flow of your energy into your partner… even if they are being nice and appreciative about it… that just means you’re doing everything they want for nothing but praise. Which is simply talk and not action. If they are performing actions for other people though… hmmm.

The fiery fervor of the convert often leads to overreaction, in Game as in religion or the conquest of an addiction.  For many men, the discovery of Game causes them to start seeing negative female behavior in everything, sometimes when it isn't even there.  For example, when Spacebunny is comfortably ensconced in front of the television and asks me if I'll pour her a glass of wine when I'm in the kitchen making myself a late night coffee, I don't react as if she's angrily demanding that I throw myself down into a puddle so she can walk over my back without getting her shoes wet.  Her request is a perfectly reasonable one and I am perfectly happy to grant it.

A reasonable rule of thumb is this:  If a woman is making a request of a man and it is the sort of request that you would normally grant if one of your close male friends was making it, it is not a test and should not be treated like one.  On the other hand, if a woman makes an uncivil demand of you, it may or may not be a test, but in either case, it is best treated with contempt and ignored.

The fact is that most women know, from a very early age, how to make themselves difficult to resist when they want something.  They flutter their eyelashes, make their eyes big, raise their voices, and say PLEEEEESE.  So, if a woman can't even bother to be civil, if she can't even bother to ask for something, she wants, that is a pretty reliable sign that something has gone awry in the relationship.

Intersexual friendship

Susan argues that it's not possible:

The reason: pure projection by both sexes. Guys want to have sex with their girl friends, and assume girls feel the same way. Girls do not want to have sex with their guy friends, and assume guys feel the same way.

This is largely true, but the logic obviously permits one exception, and it is an exception that I have personally observed.  Men of higher SMV can be friends with women of lower SMV unless they convert the female friend into a harem member.

I've had a few genuine female friends with whom I've never had any romantic involvement, three of whom were even attractive.  But in all three cases, my interest in them was either totally nonexistent or very limited.  In the one instance of the latter case, friendship was possible because her interest in me was equally limited, my being at least 100 pounds too light for her.  She was so predictable in this regard that if she was cheerful about a new prospect, I would quite literally ask her at which major football program he had played.  She would get mad, then, when pressed, reluctantly admit "Nebraska" or "USC".  She very much liked those big, corn-fed linemen.

The reality is that most men aren't truly friends with women, nor can they hope to maintain their friendships once their friend pairs off with another man.  Unless the man's SMV is much higher than the male friend's SMV, he simply can't afford to tolerate the friend lurking about and waiting for his opportunity to make a move.

Regardless, the reality is that even when male-female friendships are possible, they tend to be transient and situation-based.  I don't know a single man or woman who has maintained a lifelong friendship with a member of the opposite sex that is even remotely comparable to their lifelong same-sex friendships.

Shame and the single man

Dr. Helen is more than a little dubious that women will be successful in attempting to shame single men into marriage:

So now that so many men don’t get married, the society will spend it’s time trying to shame them and discriminate to keep those guys in line. I imagine this will backfire. I was talking to a shoe salesman in his thirties the other day where I am visiting in Santa Monica and he asked me about my work and I told him about my forthcoming book. Without any prompting, he said, “I don’t want to get married.” When I asked “Why?” he said, “The risk is too great and there is no benefit. Even if you get a pre-nup, it doesn’t work. There is no incentive to me.” Apparently, he is smart to stay single according to one of the commenters at the article I mentioned who had this to say about marriage:

Was single, had ample money and plenty of very open minded young ladies to spend my time with. Was having the time of my life, met a wonderful woman then got married and we had a couple of kids. Now I’m in a perpetual state of worry financially, rarely see my nearest/dearests for fun, and get a bj on Christmas and my birthday. Stay single boys, keep living the dream!!!!!!!

So just maybe there are rational reasons other than weirdness and “fussiness” that keep men from tying the knot. But then, that would mean a columnist like the one writing the piece mentioned would have to understand more about where men are coming from and less about how she and society want men to fall in line with what women and society expect.

She is correct to be dubious because what we're seeing here are examples of both marginal utility and female solipsism.  The solipsism can be seen in how women frequently attempt to direct shaming tactics towards men because they find shaming tactics to be so effective with women and cannot imagine that men would respond differently.  The marginal utility of the tactic can be seen in how American men have, over the last 40 years, become increasingly indifferent, indeed, in some cases even openly hostile, to female demands and female expectations of them.

The problems Western societies in general, and American society in particular, are already beginning to face were no less predictable than the problems facing Chinese and Indian societies as a result of their massive slaughter of the unborn female population.  These problems are significantly different, of course.  Contra the feminist assumptions, (and by now it should be no surprise to observe that events have proven them to be wrong yet again), just as the slaughter of girls has raised the relative MMV of the surviving women in Chinese and Indian society by reducing their supply, the legal degradation and economic deterioration of men has raised the relative MMV of the smaller number of men still deemed marriageable by women.

It is simple economic supply and demand at work, on both sides.  The female demand for more education and financial success increases, thus raising the price of the desirable men.  However, the male demand for women has significantly declined due to the increased legal risks and increasing age of women at first marriage, among other things, further reducing their supply.  Anyone who has taken Econ 101 should be able to correctly calculate what the interaction of the moving supply and demand curves necessarily implies: women will find it harder and harder to find desirable men willing to marry them.  In September, I pointed out that already, the math dictates "only one-third of women in college today can reasonably expect to marry a man who is as well-educated as they are."  And that ratio is only going to continue falling as time goes on, barring massive social, economic, or political changes.

This change in marriage-related demographics is not the only, nor the primary, reason the West is in decline.  But it is most definitely a powerful factor in speeding up the process of decline and fall... and trying to shame single men responding rationally to the changes in society into modifying their behavior is simply not a credible solution.

The easy marital health test

A small scientific study indicates a potentially reliable test for the health of a marriage, as well as a man's marital ALPHA/BETA status:

[T]he participants' commitment to and satisfaction with their relationships did not seem to change with fertility, the researchers found. But women with less sexually attractive partners seemed to feel less close to their beaus as they moved from their least fertile to most fertile period. Meanwhile, women matched with the most sexually attractive men seemed to experience the opposite effect.

"Women with the really good, stable guy felt more distant at high-fertility periods than low-fertility periods," Haselton explained in a statement. "That isn't the case with women who were mated to particularly sexually attractive men. The closeness of their relationships got a boost just prior to ovulation."

The researchers found the same trends when they repeated the experiment with 67 new participants. In this phase of the study, the researchers added a new questionnaire that had the women rate their partners' flaws, such as thoughtlessness, moodiness and childishness. Women paired with less sexually attractive guys were significantly more likely to find fault with their partners during the high-fertility period than the low-fertility period.

 In other words, if your wife is particularly sexually responsive in between her periods and gets irritable when she's getting them, she probably finds you to be sexually attractive to her and your marriage is likely in pretty good shape.  On the other hand, if your wife is at her most irritable when she isn't about to have her period, and around that time, she has an inexplicable, but dependable impulse to put on a short skirt and go out dancing with her friends on her monthly girls night out, well, there is a good chance she doesn't find you to be particularly hot stuff.

But don't worry, the researchers are careful to assure BETA married men.  The fact that she is regularly drawn to have sex with other men she finds more attractive doesn't mean that she wants to forgo the benefits of a long-term relationship with you.  It's just a pity that these mysterious urges tend to strike at her most fertile time of the month.  Perhaps, if you're lucky, the baby will even look somewhat like you.

Reasons to marry

Dr. Helen asks if any man can name five of them:

This is the question I have been asking men around California that I meet at various blogger and pundit meet-ups for dinner. One dinner guest I sat next to the other night told me he had gotten married last week. We were discussing marriage at the table and I turned to him and asked why he had gotten married. “Can you name one reason a man should get married?” I asked, trying somehow to be polite, but probably failing miserably.

He thought about it for a minute and said “because the woman wants to and he will lose her if he doesn’t.” That sounds more like blackmail to me than a reason. Last night, at another event, I asked other men if they could name five reasons a man should get married. There was silence and then a discussion about the war against men and if that was true or not.

 I am happy to oblige.  In fact, I can even provide five reasons that start with the letter C.

1. Christianity: extramarital sex is sinful and it is better to marry than burn.
2. Children: children require a marital structure for a healthy and stable upbringing and men who want to continue their line are well-advised to marry.  The future belongs to those who show up for it.
3. Civilization: we have an obligation to those who founded and built our civilization to continue it.  Marriage is a vital foundation of civilization.
4. Contentment: a happily-married man is more content, more healthy, and likely to live longer than a never-married man, a divorced man or a widower.  And even an unhappily-married man has the benefit of viewing death as a sweet release.
5. Courage: marriage is a real risk, both emotionally and financially.  It is stupid and dishonest to pretend otherwise.  Men are not women, to live life in a risk-averse manner, and shunning even the possibility of marriage due to the risks it poses is a cowardly, even unmanly, stance.  This is not to say that all marital risks justify the taking, of course, that would be ludicrous.

I don't blame men who are marriage-averse due to the evil family court regime and the way the legal system is stacked against them.  Not at all.  On the other hand, living in fear is no way for a self-respecting man to live his life.  Men need to keep in mind that they do not have to passively submit to the meat-grinding system once their ex-wives-to-be enter into it.  Rather than live as an emasculated half-man in court-imposed serfdom, leave and live as a free man elsewhere.  Join the French Foreign Legion.  Become a pirate.  Become a missionary.  Start a new life in Brazil or Bangladesh or Bangkok.

And remember, marriages do turn out well, and not infrequently.  You may find your wife to be your Biblical helpmeet or your life-partner in crime.  Women may blow up most failed marriages, but they end 80 percent of 40 percent of all first marriages.  That means your marriage has a 2 in 3 chance of avoiding even the possibility of the androsphere's horror stories.

Spaghetti arms and sour grapes

Susan Walsh provides what would appear to be a counter-intuitive perspective on the appeal of male muscles:

I think men get muscled for one another, kind of the way women dress up for one another when they go out. Women like a fit body, but I will take a runner over a bodybuilder anyday. And I am grossed out by male pecs that are like boobs – something Jason was talking about recently. Blech!  I may be an extreme case – for example, I think Nathan Harden’s skinny arm on the CD cover is sexy. I think his jutting hipbones would be sexy. But I’ve always liked the hipster look. I’m not alone – my guess is that skinny, brooding types, who are often called “bad boys” even when they are not, as in Nathan’s case – outperform PUA types by a mile.

Solipsism alert! First, straight men most certainly do not get muscled for one another. That is pure female projection. We muscle up because it feels good to be powerful rather than weak, because we tend to seek improvement and get competitive with ourselves whenever we focus on something, and because we observe that women gravitate towards the stronger, more well-developed men.  It feels great when women eye your muscles with interest and grab at your pecs, your biceps and your triceps.

I never cared about being able to bench more than my best friends.  My high-school tennis partner was the state powerlifting champion, I was never, ever, going to be able to compete with him.  But I cared a great deal about being able to bench 135, then 225, then 315.  Now, I have a naturally delicate build, but managed to put on nearly 50 pounds over the years through hitting the weights. So I have a direct basis for comparison and I can say that women, on the average, react much more strongly and much more positively to men with well-developed musculatures. Furthermore, it tends to be the hottest, fittest women who prefer the hardest men. After all, who is going to pound her harder and throw her around the bed more easily, limp-wristed Emo Boy or strong, fit, Ripped Guy.

It's not that I had any problem attracting girls when I was a slender soccer player. I’m a writer, after all, and I could probably brood for England. But then, I never once had pretty strangers in the street look me over and say “yum” either.  That being said, do some guys overdo the weight training?  Yes, absolutely. But there is a huge gap between a scrawny runner and a waddling musclehead who looks like a stuffed sausage in a suit.  Daniel Craig as James Bond on the beach is much more the norm than Arnold as Mr. Universe posing onstage.

I thought Susan's comment about finding skinny arms to be sexy to be particularly interesting, since I have heard other women declare that they find "spaghetti arms" and "sunken chests" on men to be vomit-inducing.  I have also noticed that adult women who prefer hipster men are either still attracted to the same type of juveniles that first attracted them in their early teens or fall in the 5-6 SMV category.

My hypothesis is that the human mind has an unconscious means of limiting its attraction triggers to the members of the opposite sex within an attainable SMV range. It was always astounding to me when a relatively plain woman would confess that she found one of my average male friends to be hot while genuinely exhibiting no interest whatsoever in any of my much better-looking friends. It’s a very healthy and positive spin on the sour grapes fable.

As for PUAs, no.  Hipsters do not outperform them.  If nothing else, logic would suggest that by the time a skinny brooding hipster has emo’d his way into a girl’s boudoir, the PUA will have plowed his way through six or seven women already. After all, it takes a lot more time to strike poses, simper, and wait to be noticed than damn the torpedoes and proceed full speed ahead.

"Kate Beckett" on Castle may have said it best, grammatical infelicities notwithstanding, upon realizing how many moderately attractive women had been seduced by a dead PUA whose death she was investigating.  "I weep for my gender."

Anyhow, if Susan finds skinny arms to be sexy, no doubt she'll be absolutely enraptured by this video from my old Wax Trax! labelmates, particularly by the lead singer, Milan Fras.  JA!  JA!  JA!  JAWOHL!  I don't know about the sexiness, but Milan is at least 1,000x more totally awesome than Nathan Harden.  I doubt Harden has giant pink caribous... by which I actually mean GIANT PINK CARIBOUS.

How is that better?

A metastudy asserts that PMS doesn't affect women's mood:

Researchers working under the direction of Dr. Sarah Romans of the University of Otago in New Zealand asserted that the correlation between an impending menstrual cycle and symptoms such as mood swings is far more tenuous than previously stated, according to Time Health & Family.

“The human menstrual cycle … has historically been the focus of myth and misinformation, leading to ideas that constrain women’s activities,” authors of the study wrote. “We wished to examine one pervasive idea, that the [menstrual cycle] is a cause of negative mood, by studying the scientific literature as a whole. We briefly reviewed the history of the idea of premenstrual syndrome and undertook a systematic review of quality studies.”

In short, 85 percent of the studies did not observe what is classically known as PMS, and just over half off the studies found menstruation and mood to be related at all.... “Taken together, these studies failed to provide clear evidence in support of the existence of a specific premenstrual negative mood syndrome in the general population,” the study concluded, according to its abstract summary in Gender Medicine. “This puzzlingly widespread belief needs challenging, as it perpetuates negative concepts linking female reproduction with negative emotionality.”

So, what is everyone supposed to conclude, that women behave like irritable grizzly bears whose cubs have been stolen simply because they get off on it?  I understand that Ms Romans would like to unconstrain women's activities, which is a reasonable goal, but this would appear to be a ludicrously counterproductive means of going about it.  I mean, surely a scientist is capable of understanding that failing to find evidence of the explanatory cause does not eliminate the observed behavior.

Given the expressed motivations of the researchers, color me very dubious on this one.  Especially since a relationship found in over half the studies would tend to be evidence in support of the existence of such a relationship.