Category Archives: Relationships

Polyamorists of Yore

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Well, whaddya know? Another article – this time in The Guardian – telling us how perfectly normal and mainstream polyamory is (thanks to my research assistant for pointing me towards it. No, not that one. Nor the other one. This one is, erm, heavier.)

How movies brought polyamory into the mainstream

Why, it’s so mainstream you get a free extra partner with every third box of washing powder!

Non-monogamous relationships used to be portrayed as disastrous in film.

Thank goodness for audiences’ ability to suspend belief, eh?

Last week, a very different period drama hit cinemas. Professor Marston and the Wonder Women concerns a real-life love story between a professor and his academic wife – and their teaching student, Olive. From the late 1920s onwards, they begin sharing a workplace, a bed, a home and eventually a family.

Angela Robinson’s biopic of the creator of Wonder Woman, American psychologist William Moulton Marston (Luke Evans), may be the most positive depiction of polyamory – the state of being in love with more than one person – in mainstream film to date. It posits that the comic-book superheroine was inspired by a happy, long-term union between the feminist Marston, his brilliant, acerbic wife Elizabeth (Rebecca Hall) and bright young student Olive Byrne (Bella Heathcote), as well as their dalliances with S&M, a theme that worked its way into the comics. Despite the controversy the latter caused at the time, it is an accessible, occasionally moving film that treats the three-way relationship much like a typical movie coupling. This makes it decidedly atypical in the history of cinema.

Now I’ve had a brief look at the story behind this chap and his two lovers and unless what I could find online has been sanitised, it seems the three of them made a proper go of it. Well, good for them. I’ve never said polyamory can’t work, I’ve just said that it is very unusual and most examples I’ve heard of are based mainly in sex/shagging around and end in disaster after a very short time. In fact, I think it’s telling that in order to make a film about a polyamorous relationship that didn’t end in disaster they’ve had to go all the way back to 1930 to find an example of one. If this was so mainstream one would have thought they’d have used a more modern example – or not bothered to make a film of it at all.

Also, none of the accounts I have read of this particular case indicated there was any sex going on outside the trio, i.e. it was a locked-down version of polyamory. Most other accounts involved one or more of the partner being free to go off and have sex with someone else, provided the ground rules are followed (and they’re often not), which isn’t quite the same thing. The relationship depicted in this film seems to differ from contemporary accounts of polyamory by virtue of it not, at least on the surface, being centred wholly around sex and shagging around.

This line in the article amuses me somewhat:

It posits that the comic-book superheroine was inspired by a happy, long-term union between the feminist Marston, his brilliant, acerbic wife Elizabeth (Rebecca Hall) and bright young student Olive Byrne (Bella Heathcote), as well as their dalliances with S&M, a theme that worked its way into the comics.

An alpha-male with a wife and a mistress who are into threesomes and S&M is a feminist, is he? Wikipedia goes further:

Marston had 2 children each with both his wife Elizabeth Holloway Marston and his live-in mistress Olive Byrne. Elizabeth supported the family financially while Byrne stayed home to take care of all four children. Both Olive and Elizabeth “embodied the feminism of the day.”

Now I have no reason to think this Marston chap was a bad ‘un, and his women appear to be happy with the arrangement so good for all three of them. But two women agreeing to be part of a harem is an embodiment of feminism? Are the multiple wives of Mormons feminists too?

In my previous post I wrote about how modern-day feminists seem happy to let all sorts of weirdos and scumbags into their circles provided they are on-message with the latest progressive pronouncements. We can add to that a bizarre habit of calling anyone a feminist if their lifestyle meets with their approval. No wonder so many of them come across as barking mad.

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The Feminists who Enable Sex-Pests

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I’ve written before about my theory that many feminists take a dim view of men because those they choose to associate with are low-grade scumbags. Only recently we had a woman saying that all men were sex-pests and a few minutes later labelling men who weren’t sex-pests as “boring”, and I have written several posts on how Laurie Penny’s views of men tell us more about who she befriends than it does about men in general. Just in case one or two of you were thinking this theory doesn’t hold water, let me share this tweet from Laurie herself:

Now there’s a surprise, eh? But let’s just bask in the irony of someone who befriends and partners-up with a serial rapist presuming to lecture the world on the dangers of men and The Patriarchy.

So did our gal know what was going on? Did she cover for him? Alas, we don’t know and she isn’t saying:

Frankly, I’mm not surprised in the least that at least one of Laurie’s friends have turned out to be a rapist. She already told us this:

So, I’ve got this friend with a shady past. He’s a clever and conscientious person who grew up in the patriarchy, and he knows that he’s done things which may not have been criminal but have hurt people, and by people he means women. My friend has hurt women, and he doesn’t know what to do about that now, and from time to time we talk about it. That’s how it happened that, a few weeks ago, halfway through an effervescent confession in a coffee shop, the following words came out of his mouth: “Technically, I don’t think I’ve raped anyone.”

And as I said about another former friend of hers:

Why do I get the impression that this individual is not half as normal and decent as Penny is letting us believe. At a guess, I would say he is a slimy fucker of the first water who hangs around lefty circles hoping to get into the knickers of women, usually much younger and with low self-esteem and few morals, throwing out leftist and feminist platitudes to get himself accepted with no further scrutiny. Penny, at nineteen years of age, ought to have stayed well away from him even if she didn’t think he was a rapist.

For a self-declared feminist warrior who pops up in the national media to denounce misogyny and demonise men in general, she seems to befriend an awful lot of rapists and serial abusers. But as I say in the paragraph above, these types will gravitate towards people like her. Consider this tweet I read today:

Erika makes a good point. Abusive people deliberately target dysfunctional communities – such as hardcore leftists and polyamorists – knowing they won’t be turfed out on their ear. Instead, by spouting the right political platitudes, they’ll be liked and respected and can count on the support of the rest of the group if anyone lodges a complaint against them.

All of this is obvious, none of it should be a surprise. It seems a lot of these people complaining about sexually-abusive men are enabling and protecting them. For now I’ll charitably assume they are doing so unwittingly.

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Don’t be that guy

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I bring to your attention this tweet from Iowahawk and two responses, one of which is mine:

On the one hand, you have this batshit insane idea pushed by deranged feminists that unwanted attention such as catcalling, suggestive remarks, or flirting constitutes sexual harassment or even assault, and that all such interactions should be eliminated from the workplace and greater society. If that were to happen, men and women would never get together.

On the other hand, you have this idea that middle-aged men ought to be trying it on with women half their age because a tiny minority of men in highly unusual circumstances manage to do so. In this post, Chateau Heartiste quotes one of his commenters thusly:

[A father] would be delighted with his mid-teens daughter marrying a proper 30-year old man.

Uh-huh. This is a major problem with the red-pilled, manosphere, PUA blogs: the authors may have some experience with women worth sharing, but they induce in their commenters delusions no less idiotic than those of their feminist counterparts.

It is well known that women, in general, like men who are a bit older. How much older? It depends, but not that much older. 18 year old girls like 24 year old men, 25 year old girls like 30 year old men, something like that. There are some exceptions: ageing rock stars, politicians, and other high-status individuals do okay with young women; teenage hookers seem happy to accept customers of any age; there are an abundance of emotionally-scarred girls with deep-rooted daddy issues attracted to men twice their age; and occasionally you come across a genuine relationship with a big age-gap that seems normal. And there’s nothing wrong with any of this.

But that doesn’t mean the average young girl you meet in a bar or on the street is interested in a bloke miles older than them. Sure, they might be interested in a particular guy who’s much older than them, but it is highly unlikely to be you. Whereas it is true that it’s a man’s right and prerogative to try it on with any woman he fancies, the flip side of that is a man really ought to know who’s in his league and who isn’t. That some men don’t ever figure this out is why the category “creep” exists. It gets overused for sure, particularly by women, but it also applies to deeply average guys in their 30s or 40s thinking they’re in with half a chance with the teenage intern. As Iowahawk says, best wait until you’re flirted at before you make a fool of yourself and get branded a creep. I saw a lot of this on Sakhalin, middle-aged men thinking every pretty young Russian girl found them desirable, leading to some excruciating advances which the women didn’t like very much. And a lot did what Carl Gustav warns of, i.e. they interpreted a girl being nice as flirting.

Of course, most men find much younger women attractive and desirable, but this is a big step away from the idea that they should therefore hit on them. Frankly, I don’t know who the hell would want a relationship with a much younger woman anyway, except for obvious physical reasons. I know women of 23 now, and I occasionally meet 18 year olds: they come across as annoying kids. Who the hell would want to hang around them? I’ve often suspected older guys who go for naive, immature women do so because their females peers can see right through them.

There’s a caveat in here, though. The age gap ceases to matter once a woman has passed 28 or 30 or so because she’s probably mature and experienced enough to know what she’s doing. Anyone who thinks a woman of 18 or 20 is mature enough to know what she’s doing in the company of a 40 year old man probably doesn’t know many 18 year old women. Perhaps in the past this was common, but I’d be interested to get the perspective from the women on what their marriages were like. The general rule of thumb, which I think is sensible, is the “half age plus seven” rule, e.g. 27 is the approximate lower limit for a 40 year old man, 22 for a 30 year old.

Exceptions abound in all of this of course, and I’m writing this post mainly to make the point that, while we all roll our eyes at feminists complaining about the natural attraction women have to older, powerful men the other side of the internet is filled with bro’d-up wannabe-alphas thinking young women are just waiting to be “gamed” by much older men. We should roll our eyes at them, too. Knowing your market and avoiding the creep label ought to be top priorities of any man entering middle-age with an intention of dating women.

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Why Some Women Take a Dim View of Men

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As I was saying, gently mocking feminists can be fun:

This conversation was worthwhile – not because I expect this woman to change her mind – but because I got out of her a partial admission of what the root cause of the problem is.

She starts off by complaining that all men are abusive and have little concept of consent, seduction and respect. She ends by saying any men who attempt to demonstrate otherwise, or any women who try to find this out before sleeping with them, are “boring”.

Well, my friends and acquaintances might be boring, but the men aren’t sex-pests and the women aren’t routinely abused by people they are close to. My guess is in their quest for excitement over boredom, many women end up surrounded by low-grade men who, one way or another, hurt them. The reasons they do this are likely varied, but poor parenting is certainly one of them. It is also imperative for any man, when he meets a woman, to ascertain what sort of men she’s been hanging out with over the past few years because this will tell you a lot about the person. For the remaining few who are still interested in my blurb-less book, I cover this subject in quite some detail.

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When Feminists Set Homework

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The following picture was posted on Twitter yesterday by a British dad who said his kid’s school had handed it out as homework:

This surprised me a little because the narrative last week was that men were all-powerful sex-predators who use their patriarchal powers to force women into submission, which is why The Handmaid’s Tale documentary was so popular. But if denigrating and undermining men using any means to hand is the goal, the first casualty will be consistency.

To begin with, I should point out that I have come across men who’ve been utterly feckless, loafing around and going to parties while their women do all the chores as well as take care of him and the children. But they didn’t look much like the chap in the picture. None of them wore a v-neck sweater, for example. In fact, the men who look like the chap in the picture generally spend their days working their arses off to provide a home and secure future for their wives and kids.

But don’t you just love it? The husband is a shambling man-child while the wife is an all-powerful superwoman who does things like unblocks sinks and builds sheds on top of her womanly chores. Because yeah, every woman is just like that. Does anyone know of any woman who’s built a shed on her own? Or unblocked a sink when there was a man around who could have done it? Shortly after I left university I sort of moved myself into a house of five girls, four of whom hated me on sight. I won them ’round in short order by stopping the doors squeaking, bleeding the radiators so the place warmed up, and taking off the sink-trap to remove a lump of rotting hair the size of a golf ball with an ear bud through its centre. One of them was so impressed she even reads my blog almost twenty years later (*waves*).

Also, I have a close friend who was recently widowed, leaving her to raise a couple of kids alone. Among the long list of things she misses about her late husband is the moral support: when told of a problem he would make cool-headed, pragmatic suggestions which cut through the emotional nonsense surrounding it, allowing her to see the issue more clearly and in a different light. This had a valuable calming effect, which she badly misses. She’s mentioned missing this aspect of their relationship more times than she has anything to do with fixing stuff or carrying heavy items about. Do you think this ludicrous cartoon captures this contribution to a woman’s well-being which men so often provide?

Whoever came up with it obviously doesn’t know much about men or relationship dynamics, and it is fun to speculate on the relationship status of the women (for it was surely women) who are responsible. Do they belong to:

Group 1: Young women who complain incessantly that men don’t want a relationship, they just want an easy shag off Tinder. All of them will have Tinder accounts, and all will have provided said easy shag more than once in the past six months.

Group 2: Bitter older women who look forward to reading the cat-buying guides with each new issue of Modern Spinster magazine?

Group 3: Middle-aged women who were busy shagging shitlords in their twenties when they should have been securing themselves a decent partner, and chose to settle with some bumbling omega male nobody else wanted to avoid joining the women in Group 2 (look at the body-language of the woman in the picture). The divorce papers will be served on him once she’s in possession of her anniversary diamonds, and the Group 2 sisterhood will welcome her with open arms and one of these.

Whatever the case, you can be damned sure the brainchild behind this was not a woman enjoying a functioning relationship with a man she loves and respects. I’m not too worried about this because rather than driving a wedge between men and women as they hope, I think these deranged feminists are only succeeding in driving a wedge between them and ordinary, sane men and women. The comments beneath the original tweet are encouraging, suggesting men are wise to the game being played:

The best way to deal with this is to mock it mercilessly. Feminists like a fight, but they don’t like being laughed at. If I had a kid who was handed homework like this, I’d complete the assignment myself being sure to include sentences like “Mummy is brilliant, she does everything, including bringing Daddy a beer when he calls out for one”.

What desirable outcome feminists hope to achieve with stuff like this is anyone’s guess.

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A Profile of a Modern American Woman

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Via Twitter I came across this charming story of a young woman who whored her way across Europe for the summer. There is an awful lot to say, so let’s begin:

This summer, just two days after my divorce, I left for a 10-week solo trip through Europe, visiting 11 countries and dating in most of them.

Note the use of the term “dating”. As we’ll soon find out, that’s not quite the word she’s looking for.

My ex and I eloped to Hawaii when we were 25. But shortly after we started arguing more, and with more intensity. Despite counseling, neither of us was happy, so I moved back in with my family. That was last winter.

So we’ve established she’s emotionally immature (eloping at 25?), makes rash decisions she’s unable to see through, and quite possibly unable to build a lasting relationship. Counseling? If you need that, the relationship is already doomed.

By summer, I was feeling like myself again, but I was falling for a guy I met on Tinder. Will* was a passionate, outgoing PhD student who wasn’t looking for commitment and who was leaving for a summer internship across the country.

Tinder. Classy.

So at 26, single for the first time in my adult life, I decided to spend the summer traveling.

As more evidence of her emotional immaturity, she deals with her marital failure by going traveling rather than engaging in serious self-reflection over her past choices and where her life is going.

And dating men abroad.

“Dating”.

In mid-June, I landed in Edinburgh and started swiping.

I matched with Nicholas* on Bumble, who was 29 and a pianist.

…

On my last day, we hiked to the top of Arthur’s Seat, a hill overlooking the city. I asked for his opinion about Will from home…Nicholas said Will sounded like a prolific dater who’s been moving through girls for years — and that I was too sensitive for quick, casual dating. He might be right about Will, but I didn’t agree with his assessment of me; I’ve dated other guys before and since Will, and I haven’t cared about anyone else.

Hang on. You were single for the first time in your adult life when you got divorced in the winter. You met Will in the summer, then you went traveling and met this Nicholas guy first up. Yet you dated other guys before and since Will? Again, her definition of “dating” is probably not the same as everyone else’s.

Will and I had an instant connection; we’d lie on the couch talking for hours and text daily. I couldn’t get enough of him, and it seemed like he felt the same way.

But when he left for the summer, I asked if he’d want to keep seeing each other in the fall. He responded: “The fall is a long way away, but I can’t immediately think of a reason I wouldn’t want to hang out again.” Ouch.

I’ll save you some time: he sees you as a fuck-buddy, not girlfriend material. At this point we get a pic of the author – one Elise Linscott, a freelance writer – in a bikini:

Okay, she’s young with a good body. Pretty much just the sort of girl anyone looking for a quick, meaningless shag on Tinder would go for, which explains her success. But anyone who thinks this is all that’s necessary to get a decent man to commit to a relationship is delusional.

I was in the city of Faro in the Algarve Region for one night and not expecting any dates. But on Tinder, a guy named João invited me for a motorcycle ride and coffee by the beach; we had a lot in common, and being with him felt easy.

After sunset, we went back to the city and hung out on the roof of my Airbnb apartment — until we got chased off by my host, who was furious I’d brought a strange man there (oops).

The host probably thought you were a prostitute. I’m being quite serious here. You might want to say a little more than “oops”.

Instead, we drove to his beach house and had sex for hours. (And, I learned that, in Portugal, they call spooning the “shell position.”)

We stayed in bed, playing guitar and singing until 6 A.M.

I was sad to leave João, but I couldn’t stop smiling. Those were the kinds of experiences I was hoping to have, and I thought about how much my life has changed over the past year, for the better.

She’s gone from being married to a long-term boyfriend to being shagged on the beach by random Portuguese blokes who ride motorbikes. Apparently this is change for the better.

I texted Will a picture of the view from my terrace and asked if he knew where I was — he guessed right. He said his internship was busy but good, and that he was enjoying Seattle. No sign that he was thinking about me as much as I was about him.

Which is fortunate for Will, given what you’re up to. Sounds as though he has some sense.

There wasn’t much activity on Bumble, but on Tinder I met Pablo*, a biologist from northern Spain with a beard and ponytail and sexy accent. He took me to a hidden “secret bar” for tinto verano (chilled red wine with lemon-lime soda) and vino de pasas (raisin wine) — both were surprisingly good.

That weekend, we went to a music festival with his friends and danced to DJs and bands. His friends were nice, but didn’t really English, and he made little effort to include me in their conversations.

Perhaps you had nothing interesting to say?

His friends seemed more willing to help me translate in restaurants than Pablo, who seemed more interested in flirting with the scantily-clad girl sitting next to him.

So having had sex with you a few times, he’s no longer interested and is giving you every sign he wants you to fuck off and leave him alone. You know, there is a branch of feminism that insists women having meaningless sex with strangers is empowering. Does this woman seem very empowered at this juncture?

My last week in Seville I dated Mario*, who was half Italian and half Spanish. He took me to a rooftop bar with a view of Seville Cathedral and said he’d bring me to the airport Monday morning when I flew to Paris.

Sunday, I texted him. He said he was stuck in Malaga, hours away.

I’m beginning to think this woman has rocks in her head. How dense do you need to be to firstly believe this guy will give you a lift to the airport, secondly actually believe he is stuck in Malaga, and thirdly write about it in a major magazine later?

I was starting to realize I shouldn’t count on men who know they’ll never see me again to keep their word.

This woman is 26 years old.

But, I was still enjoying traveling overall and spending my days sightseeing. And I was optimistic I’d meet more guys like João.

To be honest, they all sound alike to me.

I met Max*, a 28-year-old British Student (a Tinder match), for lunch. The very first thing I noticed was that he not as attractive as his photos.

Can we get Max’s opinion on you?

By dinner, I was out of cash (and the restaurant was cash-only)

Wait, this is in Paris. Where the hell were they eating, the Grand Istanbul Kebab House? Everywhere takes credit cards except the Turkish joints, and even half of them do. I think she’s been taken to dinner at a vending machine.

The next day, he texted, asking if I was free for coffee. I wasn’t interested and didn’t respond.

Because a simple “no thanks” is too much effort.

“We never settled the bill from dinner! And I can’t afford the 22 quid,” he texted. At first, I was confused, until I remembered he paid the bill.

He’s taken you out to dinner and paid the bill, but the next day you can’t even be bothered to respond to an invitation to coffee?

He then asked me to PayPal him the money from my half; I didn’t respond. Funny how he only wanted the money after he knew I wasn’t interested.

It’s equally funny how you only let him know you weren’t interested once he’d paid the bill.

He kept texting, so I blocked him.

Of course you did. I addressed that here.

A few days later, he found me on Facebook and sent me a message: “Is there something wrong with you, or are you just a c*nt? Hahahaha.”

Why, it’s almost as if shitty behaviour from one party brings out the worst in another, isn’t it?

I blocked him again, and started to wonder if the mix of good dates was worth the risk of bad ones.

From what I can tell, her definition of a good date is meaningless sex with a random Latino, and a bad date is when some guy gets understandably upset by being ignored after he’s bought her dinner.

I was in a terrible mood until that night, when I got a notification Will added me on Snapchat.

Obsessed with Will, yet sleeping her way around Europe. In my book there is a character who, separated from her fiance by the cruel demands of the US visa system, addresses her heartache by shagging someone else for several months. I say this because I’m sure there are elements which normal people will think unrealistic or exaggerated.

In Munich, I met Maddin* (from Bumble) near the Isar River. We sat in the grass and watched people wade in. He was 33 and chiseled. We sat with our feet in the water and he moved closer to me and kissed me. He said he had to leave for a wedding in his hometown that evening, but that he had a few hours, and asked if I wanted to go home with him.

Heh! If Maddin had to go for a wedding, I have a bridge to sell Miss Linscott. So did she go? What do you think?

Just as I expected, his apartment was huge and sleek and expensive-looking. And he was amazing in bed.

So, why is someone who is 33, chiseled, and lives in a huge apartment in Munich picking up women on hook-up apps? Answers on a postcard.

He said he’s never been in love and that he’s too picky, and that he finds one flaw and moves on (this seems to be a common pattern in today’s dating-app culture).

A major flaw being a woman’s readiness to go to bed with him almost immediately and falling for stories about weddings in his hometown. Note that her behaviour utterly typifies the dating-app culture, yet she’s too dim to realise it.

He said it was one of the nicest conversations he’d had with someone he just met. I smiled the whole walk back to my hotel, feeling revived and relaxed.

I’m beginning to like this Maddin chap. My guess is he’s made his money selling secondhand cars.

I took an overnight bus to Copenhagen. At a seafood restaurant near the city center, one of the waiters smiled every time he walked past, and I smiled back. I heard him talking to my waitress (in Danish), and shortly after, he took over as my waiter.

Can you imagine that conversation? “Hey Olaf, I’ve got another one of those American airheads on my table. She seems a lot like the one you shagged against the dumpster two nights ago, you want to swap tables?”

After dinner, he made me a cappuccino from the restaurant next door and got my number, then we went out for champagne. He said he was surprised I didn’t mind eating alone, “looking like I got stood up.”

I suspect what he meant was he’s surprised she didn’t mind eating alone and hooking up with the waiter.

I still don’t know what will happen with Will, but we’re seeing each other again. He asked me to come over his first night back in town, and it felt like we picked up right where we left off. We spent the whole night cuddling and telling each other about our summers, and have been seeing each other in the weeks since.

Prediction: Will is going to find someone else shortly and give you the heave-ho.

I think you can learn from every person and every relationship, no matter how brief (or awkward).

Every relationship? She’s only had one, followed by a summer of sex with random strangers.

I’m building a better picture of what I want in a partner, but I’m also learning that I don’t need one to be happy.

This is probably just as well; I see several cats in this woman’s future life.

Okay, this post is already long but I’m going to make it longer because there are some important points here, many of which I make in my book. The first is that feminists will tell you there is a double standard at play: if a man had written this, everyone would admire him for his sexual prowess. This is a myth, and I address it in my book thusly:

Amy took a step towards me. ‘You have such fucking double standards!’ she said, trying to control her anger. ‘If she was a man, nobody would say anything, but she’s a woman so you think you can judge her!’
‘What double standards? If a guy’s lurching from one low-grade woman to another, fucking anything that moves and failing to hold down a proper relationship, you think women won’t judge him?’
‘Not in the same way,’ said Tom.
‘Bullshit! No self-respecting woman would go near him, and rightly so. This whole double-standards thing might apply to young people, but there comes a time when men need to show maturity and restraint, just the same as women, and we’re all way past that point.’

There’s passage from my book which is relevant here, too:

‘Remember when you were younger,’ I said. ‘You’d always ask a girlfriend how many guys she’d been with? The answer would always bother you; if she said two or three you’d be disappointed. But that changes with age; when you’re with a woman over thirty you don’t care how many, but you want to see that they were decent, normal guys and she was with them for the right reasons. You don’t want to hear she’s had one-night stands, or been with a string of losers, or men twice her age. It’s not the number of guys a woman has slept with that matters, it’s the standards she’s kept.’
‘Yes, you need to see she’s applied some sort of filter.’
‘If she’s got no standards, it reflects badly on you. It means either she sees you on the same level, or she’s scoring out of her league – in which case you should probably aim higher yourself. Whereas if she’s maintained her standards, it shows she values you.’

Is this being judgemental? Perhaps, but I address that too:

‘It’s not so much judging as assessing, trying to work out if you’ll be compatible with that person. The thing is, I know guys can be judgemental about women, and sometimes they might react unreasonably to an aspect of their past. But it all depends on what that past looks like, doesn’t it? Where do you draw the line?

…

You know what? I should be judgemental! I don’t care what people do on their own, but if they try to enter my life I’m entitled to judge what I see of their behaviour and values. If they don’t like the process, it tells you something already.’

If women – or men – are going to behave like Miss Linscott, then they should at least shut up about it afterwards. As one character says to another in my book:

‘Everyone has a history at our age; I don’t expect the women I meet to be virgins, so they’ll have a past, ex-boyfriends, and so on. If an ex was important to them, or they were in a serious relationship, then I’d expect them to tell me about the guy and I’d be okay with it. But I don’t need to know everything. For example, if a girl went on holiday to Mexico and fucked a waiter, I don’t want to know about it. I don’t think there’s anything necessarily wrong with it, but she should keep it to herself. This sort of thing isn’t my business.’

This is obviously difficult advice to follow if you’ve bragged about it in Cosmopolitan. Also, I think this point is crucial:

When you start dating someone you want to know the choices they’ve made, but more important is how they view those choices today.

At some point in future, Miss Linscott is going to meet a man who might be interested in forming a relationship with her and this summer of sex is going to come out. If she’s engaged in some self-reflection and is doing everything she can to hide this sordid episode due to the shame it now induces in her, she’ll have half a chance of convincing him to stick around. But if she hits him with a barrage of angry feminist mantra about how she was “empowered” and he’s being “judgemental”, he’ll be off like a shot. Of course, she may still meet someone, but:

‘The only guys who wouldn’t care are those who just wanted a fuck. Or maybe guys who are desperate.’

Finally, what the hell kind of job did her parents do on her? They must read this article and feel so very, very proud. That’s something else I address in my book, too.

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Passion versus Affectation

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Following on from the subject of yesterday’s post on the status of men and its attraction to women, it is common knowledge that many decisions a man makes in life are to increase his status such that he can attract a suitable partner. In short, a man will study so he can get a good job which will bring in a decent salary meaning he can buy a nice house and car, and women will find him attractive. For middle-class westerners, this is pretty much how it works. For other parts of the world, and among other classes or ethnicities, the incentives are very different and hence you get different outcomes. I noticed in Russia that the ease with which young men can get a very pretty girlfriend removes the incentive for a lot of them to behave well. Why make any effort when you’re getting laid anyway?

So while it’s well known that men naturally seek to increase their status and hence their attractiveness to women, what is often missed is that this does not apply beyond certain basics, e.g. getting an education, holding down a job, and not getting too fat. There is a whole industry out there giving lifestyle advice to men who wish to raise their status: wear these clothes, buy this car, start using that product, learn to do this or that. Much of this might work for young men who haven’t quite found their way in life, but as you get older (and you start having proper conversations with women) you realise how superficial much of this is.

For example, I had someone tell me recently that every man should know how to mix at least one cocktail, so he can impress girls when they come over for dinner. Now that’s probably not bad advice – knowing how to mix a cocktail is a handy skill – but it’s going to make absolutely no difference to what a woman thinks of a man (and if it does, she’s probably bad news). Another chap I know took up salsa dancing because he reckoned women like men who can dance. Others learn a song or two on the guitar because they want to serenade women they bring home from clubs.

Have you seen the problem yet? Women are not impressed by a man’s ability to mix a cocktail, or to dance, or to play an instrument (or to cook, or to speak a language) per se, they are attracted to the passion that drove the man to develop those skills to begin with. They look at a dancer and see the passion he has for it, the drive and determination in his body language, and realise how much effort he must have put in to develop such a skill, and they’re attracted to that. Someone who has no passion for dancing but took lessons and learned a few moves in order to attract women is going to look a lot different from a guy who’s doing it for real, and this will be abundantly clear to all those looking on. Similarly, if a fellow has developed an interest in cocktail mixing of his own accord and uses his skills to entertain women, they’ll be more impressed than if he’s learned one or two recipes just to make himself look cool.

Perhaps learning a few superficial tricks is useful for a man in his twenties, especially considering he’s hanging around women without much experience, but men over 30 taking such advice is a bit sad. Does anyone seriously think women will be impressed by a guy going to opera not out of love for the genre, but because he thinks it makes him look sophisticated? Or someone who’s learned to play poker just so he can tell women he plays poker? Because you can be sure she’ll be able to tell the difference. I’ve noticed that if you show a woman a particular skill or interest, the first thing she does is start asking questions, i.e. why, where, how and with whom did you learn it. She asks this because she wants to see the passion behind the skill – the actual skill isn’t particularly relevant at that stage – and if there’s no passion she’ll see straight through you. Genuine passion is extremely hard to fake, particularly for obscure interests such as bluegrass music. And nobody learns the banjo or songs with titles such as “Oh, Dem Golden Slippers” to impress women anyway.

So whenever you read advice along the lines of “real men do X” or “every man should know how to Y” you can safely dismiss it as a shallow affectation aimed at men who think they’ve grown up but haven’t. Real men follow whatever weird passion they have naturally, and women will love them for it.

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Relative Status

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Fellow blogger Adam Piggott writes the following on the subject of whether middle-aged men can pick up much younger women:

However, as I have already stated this all depends on whether or not you have made a man of yourself. What does this entail?

– You have kept yourself in excellent shape with a regular strength training regime.

– You are financially successful.

– You have philosophical depth.

The last point means that you are well rounded and knowledgeable. You have interests, hobbies, and worldly pursuits. You dress and carry yourself well. You can hold your drink as well as hold a conversation.

This is true in a superficial sense and undoubtedly applies to much of the world normal people inhabit, but I don’t think it paints the whole picture. What women are seeking in a man is status, and while financial success and the ability to hold a proper conversation are status markers in some (or even most) circles, they are wholly unnecessary in others.

As regular readers will know, I unwittingly got myself tangled up with an artsy-type in the front-end of last year who had moved from Moscow to America when she was 21, and by 23 was married to a man in his forties (primarily to get a residency visa, but she was attracted to him to some degree). I charitably assumed this chap was some alpha-male banker who prowled the swanky bars of Manhattan in a custom-made suit generously buying women drinks from his six or seven figure salary. Turns out he was a polyamorous hippy who drank too much, couldn’t keep a job for any length of time, and didn’t have two cents to rub together. When I saw his photo I saw a man a head shorter than her and  looking like a taxi driver who works nights.

So what explained her choice? This took me a while to figure out, but I got there in the end. Now this woman had obvious self-esteem and daddy issues she was trying to address, and shortly after arriving in New York she fell into the artsy, Burning Man, hippy scene and adopted it wholesale. This involved a lot of drinking, drugs, and partying with all manner of weirdos and losers, and within this particular group her future husband would have enjoyed a certain status. If nothing else, as a long-term resident of New York with his own place he’d have been able to score drugs more easily than her. The guy who hung around the school gates flogging weed did well with the hot girls too, for the same reasons. The fact that the guy my friend married was by most measures a complete loser didn’t matter because he had a status among his immediate peers and within the group she found herself in. Status is relative, not absolute, and it is this which young women seek in a man.

Of course, this means certain men will deliberately insert themselves in such groups often for the purpose of seeking out those younger women (we’re talking age and availability, not quality here). I have written about this before in response to a Laurie Penny piece:

Why do I get the impression that this individual is not half as normal and decent as Penny is letting us believe. At a guess, I would say he is a slimy fucker of the first water who hangs around lefty circles hoping to get into the knickers of women, usually much younger and with low self-esteem and few morals, throwing out leftist and feminist platitudes to get himself accepted with no further scrutiny. Penny, at nineteen years of age, ought to have stayed well away from him even if she didn’t think he was a rapist.

As Laurie herself says:

He was in his early thirties, a well-liked and well-respected member of a social circle of which I am no longer a part,  a fun-loving, left-leaning chap who was friends with a number of strong, feminist women I admired.  I was nineteen. I admired him too.

Like I said, status is relative. Adam’s criteria are probably accurate if you’re a normal chap seeking a level-headed, sensible woman but there are plenty of other types out there – on both sides.

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We need to talk about Laurie Penny

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I don’t wish to necessarily single out Laurie Penny for criticism in this post, but she’s such a typical example of the phenomenon I want to write about that I don’t have much choice. If a Nickelodeon was asked to come up with a cartoon of a hard-left third-wave feminist, they’d simply ask an artist to follow Laurie around all day.

In June last year, the estimable David Thompson linked to this piece of hers in the New Statesman:

I had been struggling to find language for my growing anxiety over the fact that, at almost 30, I still have no desire to settle down and form a traditional family. I’ve been waiting, as open-mindedly as possible, for a sudden neo-Darwinian impulse to pair up and reproduce. And yet here I am, and it hasn’t happened. Despite no small amount of social pressure, I am happy as I am.

…

Study after study has shown that it is men, not women, who benefit most from marriage and long-term partnership. Men who marry are, on the whole, healthier and happier than single men. Married women, by contrast, were no better off than their single counterparts.

…

If women reject marriage and partnership en masse, the economic and social functioning of modern society will be shaken to its core.

…

I happen to believe in dismantling the social and economic institutions of marriage and family.

So Laurie is happy and doesn’t want to get married, and thinks marriage is bad for women and she wants to see the institution, and that of the family, destroyed. She then goes on to tell us that:

When partnership ceases to be mandatory, it only becomes more special. Next week, one of my partners is getting married, and this week I went to his stag night as part of the groom’s party. I’m happy for him, and for his fiancee, whose permission I got before mentioning her in this piece.

As regular readers know, Laurie is – or at least was – polyamorous. Well, good for her.

Now here’s what The Times says about Laurie, and they meant it as a compliment:

A writer and polemicist, a bad-ass, contrary, angry, bisexual troublemaker who is never happier than when she’s upsetting someone, or preferably everyone …

Here’s what she had to say about, erm, herself on ABC recently:

I don’t think, as political people, as activists, and as people who care about a livable future for the human race, we should be moderating our language at this point.

The opposite. I think this is when we go harder. Because, ultimately, you can’t do feminism, you can’t do anti-racism, you can’t do any kind of progressive politics if your first objective is to make the other side feel comfortable.

…

Well, I’m sure some people DO feel uncomfortable with the pace of social change, but I would suggest they get used to it, really. I don’t think it’s my job to make people who are sexist feel more comfortable. I’m not a politician, I’m a writer, and my job is to push the discussion forward.

Here’s what she said about herself (again) in march last year, in another New Statesman article:

I’m happy because I live in my own bubble and give zero fucks – a bit like a teenager.

Here’s Laurie praising her sister:

Here’s how she’s described her love life since her early twenties:

Over the past ten years, I have been a “single poly” with no main partner; I have been in three-person relationships; I have had open relationships and have dated people in open marriages.

Finally, the title of her latest book is called Bitch Doctrine.

Laurie has set out to portray herself, with quite some success, as a badass woman who gives zero-fucks, takes shit from nobody, does whatever the hell she wants (a bit like a teenager), and bucks every societal convention there is. Liberal use of profanity, piercings, dyed hair, and an unconventional sex life all complete the picture of someone who doesn’t care what anyone thinks.

Like I said, Penny is somewhat of a cartoon, but she’s far from alone. I follow a handful of radical feminists and polyamorists online and they try so hard to be different they end up looking and sounding exactly the same. Unfortunately they also have something else in common which I haven’t listed. Consider the following tweet, from last June:

For someone who has built a career by demanding men she doesn’t know treat women with greater respect, it is odd she appears to have neglected to ask the same of her partner. Then yesterday, this:

This was about as surprising as Christmas. A feature of the people I mention above is their habit of posting semi-coherent outbursts of raw emotion followed by wallowing self-pity; their moods are up and down like a roller-coaster, one minute saying how happy they are the next moaning how shit life is. I’m not going to link to any examples because these people are, in the main, private individuals who are daft enough to post their mental torments on the internet.

But Laurie Penny is a public figure, writing for major publications and appearing on national television. She uses these platforms to advocate for social changes and encourage others to reject societal norms which, in the opinion of anyone with half a brain, would result in increased unhappiness and the further fracturing of society. In other words, she’s fair game for criticism.

Now I don’t want to make light of her depression, but she has probably brought this on herself. She boasts of being anti-social and nasty, and brags about rejecting conventional intercourse such as engaging in monogamous relationships, and takes delight in making people with whom she disagrees uncomfortable. In short, she sounds pretty damned unpleasant. And now we find the last nine months have been mean to her, she’s been dumped by her partner, and she’s depressed.

Well, there’s a surprise, eh?

Whether she’s realised it is open to question, but Laurie is probably finding that having thousands of sycophantic followers on Twitter and media types praising her “bravery” and calling her a “badass” is no substitute for having one or two genuine close friends and a partner who loves her. The problem is, you can only get those by being occasionally pleasant, which will be difficult for someone who’s made a career out of being the exact opposite.

The fascinating question is did the unpleasantness cause the loneliness, or vice versa? Or is it a vicious circle where a slight rejection when young induces unpleasant behaviour, resulting in loneliness and further unpleasant behaviour?

Alas, I’m just a blogger so I don’t know. But there is an awful lot of this stuff about, particularly in women in their late twenties and thirties. Laurie Penny is just the best example of a widespread problem.

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Puffing Up Polyamory

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A mate who may be vying for a coveted Research Assistant’s position on this blog forwards me this article from Men’s Health:

More Americans are showing interest in polyamory, or relationships where you have more than one romantic or sexual partner, according to a new study published in The Journal of Sex Research.

For the study, Amy Moors, Ph.D., director of social science research and evaluation for the College of Engineering at Purdue University, looked at data gathered from Google Trends between January 2006 and December 2015.

Moors analyzed the search volume for the terms “polyamory,” “open relationships,” and “swingers,” comparing them to control keywords like “Facebook” and “quotes.” She discovered that searches for “polyamory” and “open relationships” increased over time, while searches for “swingers”—a more old-fashioned term—decreased over time.

Personally I don’t think this means much, but it’s definitely a term that’s entering the general lexicon. This should be good for my book sales.

Moors says that while it’s not possible to know why exactly people are searching for these terms, it’s clear that an increasing number of people are thinking about non-monogamy and looking for information about it.

My guess is people are finding the term cropping up in online dating profiles, or meeting mentally ill people from Brooklyn who’ve never known anything else.

Unsurprisingly, part of the reason for an increased interest in open relationships is due to their appearance on TV. “Several of the large spikes in internet searches related to polyamory and open relationships are tied to popular TV shows and press,” she says.

Well, yes. TV shows exist in part to push an agenda set by the sort of liberal arts graduates who go into media, and polyamory is but the latest fad being promoted. Just as Sex and the City convinced a generation of women they could slut it up around New York until their mid-30s before settling down with a multi-millionaire playboy, no doubt these new shows will convince some that having meaningless sex with a succession of low-grade partners is a viable lifestyle choice.

Though, she says, it’s hard to say whether people are Googling this info because they’re just curious about what they’re seeing on the small screen or they’re actually interested in trying it themselves, the topic is definitely on the public’s mind.

It’s on the public’s mind because TV shows, magazines, and newspapers won’t stop promoting it.

Moors adds that non-monogamous relationships are widely misunderstood and stigmatized.

So will Moors add some clarity or muddy the waters? What do you think?

“There isn’t scientific evidence to suggest that humans are unable to love and/or engage in sex with more than one person,” she says.

That’s a handy strawman, isn’t it? Nobody is saying humans can’t love or have sex with multiple partners, but a quick survey of several billion people and a couple thousand years of human development would suggest that if you’re interested in a stable, functioning, relationship which benefits both the individuals, society, and any children then monogamy is probably the way to go. Sure, some people might be able to watch their partner go off with someone else and have sex and not bat an eyelid, but let’s not pretend this is common. She might as well say there is no scientific evidence for jealousy and insecurity.

“In fact, some of my recent work compared relationship quality based on trust, satisfaction, passionate love among people engaged in consensually non-monogamous, and monogamous relationships and found no differences.”

And how did you measure “relationship quality”? Did you look at longevity? Did you look at how many people, when ending a polyamorous relationship, quit the practice altogether and return to monogamy versus those going in the other direction?

“I anticipate that consensually non-monogamous relationships will become more mainstream,” Moors says.

I don’t know about that, but I am quite confident the propaganda won’t ease up.

Even polyamorists aren’t convinced by the practice. Consider this article I stumbled across this morning:

I just realized that I’ve had 5 different relationships which ended because the other person wanted to monogamous.

This implies they were already in a polyamorous relationship, but one of them wanted monogamy.

Two of them, (or more?), I also know they wanted to have kids. It makes me wonder if there’s a link between monogamy and plans for children.

This kid is nothing if not sharp!

I wonder if people that plan to procreate are more interested in monogamy because they’re looking for a partner that will be looking inwards towards their family. Their only priorities will be their children and partner, and not be distracted by other love affairs.

Who knew, eh?

Reading between the lines, this second article sounds as though it’s written by a man who likes shagging around with women who are dabbling in polyamory (probably due to low self-esteem, daddy issues, or personality disorders) but really want to settle down with a loving partner and have kids. The first article, like so many others, is fundamentally dishonest in refusing to address the obvious difficulties polyamorous relationships create, especially for those who want to have children.

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