Should I, if only for didactic purposes, ever link to EVIL websites? Since Michael Blowhard directed my attention to Roissy I've been facing this dilemma again. Not only won't I link to him but I have to put this unsalubrious and indeed embarrassing discussion under the fold...
Roissy promotes an aggressively instrumentalist view of the sexes; imagine Larry David as a scoreman plus make the language of the monologues ruder and more offensive. He also thinks like an economist and uses marginalism:
"Smells bad. (when a shower isn’t going to help your cause, why bother?)"
My question is which parameter value he
incorrectly estimates; after all, he is not just evil he is also imprudent in missing the joys of monogamy and matrimony. I believe that most of all, he underestimates his transparency to his observers in
real life. I sometimes call this
the endogeneity of face to thought and thus his face must be somewhat evil too. Since his strategies cause him to spend time only with women he can fool, he doesn’t correctly perceive how he is wrecking his broader reputation; the same is probably true for the rest of us as well.
(But IS he evil? Is there not a theorem which suggests that
rule-governed sweet young things will in fact overinvest in the rule
and, if you could selectively induce "rule disengagement," human
welfare might rise? But no…that theorem was refuted some time ago.)
Can he still be saved by a good woman? Indeed there are so many good women out there and yet not one has saved him to date. If only he would read Henry James’s "Beast in the Jungle."
Poor Roissy. Poor, poor Roissy. Here’s his advice for much older men who wish to attract 25-year-old women:
Bear in mind that younger women (barring a few notable golddigger
exceptions) are not as practical as older women. They are more
whimsical, flirty, passionate, and romantic, and this means you will
get more mileage having a youthful outlook, being recklessly
spontaneous, maintaining a high level of energy, and focusing on the
emotional connections, than you would tempting them with the allure of
financial stability and security.
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Wouldn’t want to be him, but his unsentimental view of intersex relations does allow him some interesting insights. I could have used some of his advice in high school.
I think he’s mostly a beneficial force. I think of him as I do security hackers who publish weaknesses in encryption algorithms. His advice might be useful to cynical wanna-be playboys, but it is definitely useful to otherwise naive women.
I have seen his website, much to my great distress. The unpleasant part is not so much this Roissy character himself – I am unlikely to ever encounter him, or if so to be targeted, or if so to be vulnerable to him – but the fact that his outlook is so incredibly nonunique. Most of the single men I know (generally age 25-35) share his goals; very few of the single women I know do. Worse, virtually all of the single men I know and many of my married acquaintances of both genders share his outlook on gender relations; however, again, very few – possibly none – of the single women think this way.
Of course, this is part of a larger, depressing (if you are a single woman over 25) phenomenon in which the pool of male singles rapidly empties of worthwhile individuals, while the pool of female singles rapidly empties of attractive yet vapid or at least highly suggestible individuals, leaving the intelligent, interesting, and not entirely spineless women to attempt to “save” the likes of Roissy. For all that it is a cliche, this is a reality and because it is a cliche it is often discounted.
One of the great aspects of Roissy’s blog is that he doesn’t censor or delete comments. Roissy is essentially telling the truth, without sugar coating. Also, his player advices are good. In the end, men are mostly attracted to women between the ages of 15-25, and that doesn’t change. A woman’s value for a man is directly related to her remaining fertility, a topic most economists aren’t willing to cover.
The real problem is that too many women squander their years of prime attractiveness buying into the feminist myths that say a woman can doggedly chase achievements and credentials just like a man well into her 30s and still be considered a prime catch for marriage and family-building. Then they get there and realize that the men their age are going for hot women in their 20s. Men become more attractive to women the more credentials and money they accumulate. Since feminism tells women they are not just equal to men but exactly the same, modern women start buying into the myth that advanced age, credentials and top careers and money accumulation will make them a top draw in the mating game to, just like it does for men. Then they get mad at how “unfair” the world is when they realize it’s not so. They have no one to blame but themselves. Men have always been honest about what they want in women: be attractive, have plenty of child-bearing years left, act pleasant, don’t be emasculating and be able to hold a conversation. Men never asked women to get these credentials and put off marriage to the age where most men no longer find them as attractive. It’s these women’s own fault for listening to other feminists’ advice for how to get a man rather than listening to men themselves. We’re simple visual creatures. We’ve never denied this, we’ve been open about it from the beginning.
Tom Leykis has been doing this schtick on the radio for years. Yeah, it’s sociopathic, but very entertaining (to this unabashed beta male, anyway) and one of my great guilty pleasures for the ride home from work.
This is Roissy’s blog.
C’mon, are we children? This should in no way be taken as a ‘defense’ (or criticism) of the linked material, but it’s basic Internet etiquette to link to the people you are discussing, out of respect for your audience, and out of fairness to the people you are characterizing.
If you don’t want to link to someone, lest you advertise them to an “innocent” world, then don’t talk about them specifically at all.
I certainly don’t like the implication that you think your readers are incapable of making their own sensible independent judgments of material you believe yourself qualified to morally and intellectually evaluate.
T, I do not think women are generally surprised by the fact that men are not attracted to intelligence and professional success. Annoyed, yes. Frustrated. Angry. Disappointed. We understand that by increasing our abilities, financial status, accomplishments, and personal autonomy we are dramatically decreasing our attractiveness to men. However – and this will alarm you – some women would rather be happy than married, if they are going to have to make a choice. We complain about it the way people complain about traffic or the weather; it’s certainly not news that men are “simple visual creatures” with the collective depth and maturity of a soap bubble, but it’s still unpleasant.
Like Steve Sailer, Roissy is evil, but it’s good to have him around because so many more people think how he does than dare to say so. Suppressing the idea isn’t good.
Come on, people. A big chunk of this blog’s readership is already profoundly evil. I certainly am.
It’s interesting to see misogyny theatre is always running somewhere.
I don’t deny there is happiness from physical attraction. That’s obvious. Attraction to intelligence and personality is, as you might say, complementary.
Women are not the same as men, but they are worthy of equal respect in achieving what they want in the world without social opprobrium or second-guessing.
I don’t know any better than you do what the true self-actualization of a woman consists of (it is obvious it will be different for different people). Because neither of us knows, it is to everyone’s advantage that men give the women themselves the freedom and space to determine this for themselves.
I am convinced this will lead to more satisfying and fulfilling “positive sum interactions.”
Are you kidding? Roissy is pretty tactless, but he’s still not as bad as Douchebag Supreme Tucker Max. That guy could use a severe beating.
Well some of it is just the contrarian spirit – “aha, I know the truth, and must shout it to the rooftops!”
I think Roissy is largely right about the economics of male-female relationships, as well as hugely entertaining to read, but it recalls to mind something I read awhile ago attributed to Thomas Sowell. He points out that for example, it would be silly and taxing to apply firm-level economic reasoning to the household , and the ability not to do so raises our standard of living.
In much the same way, speaking to his male readership, Roissy educates those who searching for women in extremely competitive venues, like nightclubs, bars, college campuses, large cities, etc. It is appropriate to be ruthlessly economic in those settings. But, per my personality, I hope that when I settle down I will too have the luxury of not like an alpha-male cad that women are indeed attracted to.
Haven’t read the blog, but I suspect that Roissy is a pseudonym – it is the name of an institution from “The Story of O” where girls are taken to be trained as sex slaves.
mk@1:46: If the playing field is changing we must acknowledge that and not stick to the same ideas that have held by default in the past.
i’m surprised no one has yet commented on this manner of thinking, which is the source that is SINGLEHANDEDLY responsible for much of the eventual unhappiness of feminist-indoctrinated folks of both sexes.
read over and over until you understand:
MEN AND WOMEN ARE DIFFERENT, AND OUR MINDS ARE NOT BLANK SLATES.
i am ridiculously sick of comments like this mk’s, which blithely assume that we can consciously jettison tens, if not hundreds, of thousands’ worth of deep-seated evolutionary-psychological programming.
for instance, women are pretty much hardwired for hypergamy, as is plainly evident from the first days of young girls’ pandering to high-status males in grade school and junior high.
therefore, even female ceo’s who rake in six-figure salaries still have an irrational desire to ‘marry up’.
worse yet, when they DO ‘marry down’, satisfaction is rare.
also, get this:
YOUNG PEOPLE ARE IMPRESSIONABLE.
i know, big news there.
but the consequences are myriad: most notably, girls who are constantly told to seek status and career accomplishments, an exhortation that has reached the level of dogma in our society, will, by and large, swim with the tide. this will leave them wondering what the hell happened when they are pushing 40, still single, and childless
yes, men are impressionable, too. but that’s less of a factor here, for two reasons: (1) women are MUCH more prone to herd behavior and MUCH more averse to flouting convention than are men, and (2) we don’t live in a society that is trying to browbeat men into following life paths in direct contravention to their evolutionary urges, as it does with women. (re #2, if you don’t realize the severity of the situation, just TRY the following gedanken experiment: imagine the current response to a young, bright american high school girl saying that her #1 ambition is to start a family young and be a dedicated wife and mother.)
Eh. I’d like to think there’s freedom in enlightened civil societies to live against our evolutionary-endowed birthrights. It’s probably easier for a woman to achieve fulfillment marrying young, but there shouldn’t be some sort of moral sanction on choosing one’s path towards that goal.
Eh. I’d like to think there’s freedom in enlightened civil societies to live against our evolutionary-endowed birthrights.
of course there is freedom to do so, silly. that is not the issue.
the issue is that living in a manner antithetical to our hardwiring is unlikely to produce lasting satisfaction.
let’s make this multiple choice:
(1) 50,000 generations’ worth of wisdom about the sexes vs.
(2) 2 generations of ‘wisdom’ about the sexes?
i’ll take door number one.
I agree that most people would rather be happy than married…and I also think that investing in an education and a career (whether male or female) makes you happier than just trying to hook a rich mate while you are young and pretty and live off the money (and that works both ways: Sunset Boulevard, anyone?) Besides, even if you “nab” a rich husband when you’re young and pretty, what do you do when he moves on to someone younger and prettier?
Moreover, if these “male” and “female” characteristics are so immutable and evolutionary-driven, what’s up with being gay?
I concur with Diana, what is up with being gay???
Despite what you may think, women in their twenties are still looking for love and marriage young, despite exhortations to be all they can be in their careers. Indeed women my age don’t think that pursuing a career and a family have to be mutually exclusive. The problem then isn’t that women are dismissing marriage for careers, it is that they think that they can be ruthlessly picky as they search for their mythical soulmates. And frankly, given the state of perpetual adolescence that young men are prone to wallow in, why not be picky?
For example, I have three girlfriends who ‘settled’ and thought that their husbands would grow up and stop drinking/drugging/partying/playing video games when they got married, only to find out that their husbands had absolutely no intention of settling down. One friend had a baby (which was planned) and a few months later her husband decided that domestic life was getting in the way of his social life, so he dumped her.
In retrospect these women should have known that their boyfriends would be terrible husbands, but based on what I read here, what alternatives did they have? To break up with them and hope they could find someone better before they got too old and haggered?
What I gather from this discussion is that we should go back to the way it was in the old days when teenaged girls married older men that their parents picked out for them.
My sneaking suspicion is that Roissy is not so much trying to help Beta men, as he is mocking them. In other words, he is gloating along the lines of “Ha ha, I can get laid all I want, you losers can’t” while making a pretense of trying to advise them. I say this because I usually find an element of condescension in his postings.
As to whether his “Game” theory actually works, well it’s possible, but I rather doubt most men have the innate ability to use it effectively.
All that really needs to be said:
Roissy is a gigantic douchebag.
Peter, no it isn’t. I made a long post here earlier detailing the facts of the matter, but the spam filter eated it.
Christina, any woman having progeny with a guy who is still drinking/drugging/partying/playing video games is not settling, she’s an idiot! But like a wise man once said, women marry men thinking they can change them, but they never can, where men marry women thinking they’ll never change, but they always do.
It’s not the abilities, financial status, accomplishments and autonomy that decrease career women’s attractiveness to men, it’s the age, diminished looks and reduced fertility that comes along with those things that do it.
From this article:
If I’m a man that wants to have a hot wife and raise multiple, healthy kids, what good are your “increasing abilities, financial status, accomplishments, and personal autonomy” going to do for me? Am I supposed to settle for less in the looks department and risk miscarriages, reduced fertility and birth defects to help Gloria Steinem prove a point? Why? What’s in it for men when we can just get a girl in her early 20s who is at her peak hotness and fertility and call it a day?
While aging does have some effect on men, men ultimately are more likely to remain fertile for longer periods of time. Women’s fertility on the other hand declines more rapidly.
A man is much more likely than a woman to be capable of reproduction at age 40.
A man is also *much* more likely than a woman to be stinking up a coffin at age 40.
You seem to regard male-female relations as more immutable and unchanging despite a vastly different technological and economic landscape than our ancestors ever had to traverse. While I don’t agree with the feminists that biological considerations are wholly unimportant, I just tossed out an example of how differing economic systems change the composition of marriage.
What is up with being gay is that, after reading about half of these comments, I am one happy gay woman.
I agree with Scott Scheule – and also L2P (especially L2P).
I suppose that underlying a lot of human behaviour are some evolutionary imperatives – men – spread your sperm around! women – find an alpha male!
But I hope we are more than baboons.
Sometimes this blog makes me feel a little depressed about other people’s political/social judgements – some of the responses here make me feel worried about some people’s essential humanity – DF , I mean you – you are only describing yourself, not men in general.
If you’re just worried about increasing a site’s search engine ranking, use nofollow.
It’s really ridiculous and disrespectful to your readers to not link to the post you’re referring to.
then cancel your damn subscription
“Women are not the same as men, but they are worthy of equal respect in achieving what they want in the world without social opprobrium or second-guessing.”
Isn’t this whole thread about heaping “social opprobrium and second guessing” on a man for seeking to achieve what he wants in the world?
I see absolutely no (evidence-based) discussion of whether what Roissy advocates is effective, and of whether the world is likely to be a better place if men followed his advice.
Instead I see people criticizing Roissy for being a “douchebag” and Tyler refusing to link to someone who disagrees with him (I guess because these ideas are dangerous?!). Moreover, it seems as though many of the attacks on Roissy’s personality at least *might* come from people who were “beta males” in college (econ nerds) and therefore might have some beef with a player. Finally, evidence presented by such people (and women) may simply be incomplete due to lack of experience, at least compared to Roissy’s.
All in all I am very disturbed by the absurd rhetoric that suggests SIGNIFICANT cognitive biases in this argument. I would support actually getting some statistics on how effective this program is and how men feel after taking courses (like Mystery Method) that support ideas like Roissy’s.
Roissy is the War Nerd of the Battle of the Sexes, a better writer on his topic than anybody appearing in print.
My question for him is this: “If you have mastered all these skills for covering up from women in bars that you are a Beta Male and persuading them that you are an Alpha Male, why not use similar techniques on men at work? After all, if men think you are an Alpha Male, then you _are_ an Alpha Male, and there’s no more need to pretend.”
‘I see absolutely no (evidence-based) discussion of whether what Roissy advocates is effective, and of whether the world is likely to be a better place if men followed his advice.
Instead I see people criticizing Roissy for being a “douchebag” ‘
False dichotomy; the guy is obviously a douchebag regardless of consequences.
Andre,
What is god’s name are you talking about?
MG – How, pray tell, would you know whether Roissy and readers can get laid? Simply because they say things that hurt your delicate sensibilities? Oh yes, misogynists can never get laid, only men who put women on pedestals get laid. Which is why jerks are always complaining about how nice guys are getting all the girls…oh wait, that doesn’t happen, does it?
Look, I like evolutionary psychology, I think men and women are immensely different creatures, but that is not at all relevant to the fact that at a very fundamental level this guy is a gigantic douche. He reminds me of this guy in my fraternity back in college who used to wear leather pants. Now this guy was obvoously what you’d call a “beta male” who maybe was able to fool the occasional girl into sleeping with him. But that didn’t make you any less of a douche, it made him more of a douche. I find it kind of pathetic that anybody over the age of 16 is so seemingly insecure about his sexuality. I feel for guys who have a hard time getting women to like them, but I certainly have more respect for those who don’t fall prey to such douchebaggery.
Michael Blowhard may be right that this is performance art, but I suspect this is at least how this guy wants to think of himself. I’ve known guys who talk like this guy writes; sometimes correct, often insightful, but regardless, gigantic douchebags.
mq wrote: Roissy just provides some entertainment for a niche market of horny young guys who have turned misogynistic because they can’t get laid.
When you can’t summon a token attempt at refutation, armchair psychology and petty insult suffice, at least for someone with your low standards for discourse.
“I find it kind of pathetic that anybody over the age of 16 is so seemingly insecure about his sexuality. I feel for guys who have a hard time getting women to like them, but I certainly have more respect for those who don’t fall prey to such douchebaggery.”
That’s funny, cause I feel for the guys who go through life without having their affections returned by women because they fear being labelled a “douche” by people like you. I have more respect for the guys who go after what they want and need, regardless of whether or not they are labelled “douches” by naturals who never had to try to get girls, and betas who never had the courage to try.
ielerol: “This may be somewhat tangential, but I have always been singularly unimpressed by the “men are wired to be sluts, women are wired to be clingy” evo-psych “logic.”…But…women cheat too. [more on social punishment for female extra-pair mating snipped]”
Way to take that strawman and beat it to death.
There are a variety of male strategies but almost all of those strategies involve taking advantage of opportunistic matings with attractive women. If you want to sum up, men’s ideal strategy can be summed up with “polygamy”.
There are a variety of female strategies but women all need to take into account two key variables: resources for her children and genetic material for making children. Almost all women will take resources if offered. Additionally, almost all women will engage in extra pair mating if she finds a man who’s genes are so much superior to what she has access to that it is worth the risk of getting caught and potentially losing out on the support of her partner (and risking physical harm from her partner in some cases). There are three variables that control in this equation: (1) Cost of loss of support from her partner (or cost of having a child with no support if she is single). (2) The difference between the quality of her partner and potential extra partner. The bigger the difference, the more risk she will bear to obtain his genes. (3) The risk of getting caught. If you had to summarize the ideal strategy for women it would be “hypergamy” where the woman gets to monopolize the resources of a high status, high quality mate.
Note that all of these propositions are testable and, in our society, there have been big changes to all of the 3 factors for women. Women can better afford to raise children alone and the legal system ensures support if the father has means. Women are now exposed to a wider array of men since they now more commonly work with men and society no longer shames women for going out drinking in mixed company. All of these factors were encouraged by feminism. In fact, the entire “player revolution” would have been impossible without those social changes.
All the objections to Roissy in this thread have basically been “his words are uncomfortable for my world view, therefore he is bad”. It’s remarkably like when Steve Sailer is criticized.
diana: “Moreover, if these “male” and “female” characteristics are so immutable and evolutionary-driven, what’s up with being gay?”
This doesn’t strengthen any alternative hypothesis about male / female relationships because explaining the behavior of gay males and females is equally problematic for any model of male / female behavior. The “it’s all society that teaches men and women their roles” would have to come up with a reason that some very small percentage of men and women react in an extremely different manner than everyone else does when they are subject to the same conditioning. If it’s because of some starting characteristic that causes different reaction to the same conditioning, well then, congratulations but you’ve arrived at the exact hypothesis that you were trying to refute (inherent traits).
billare,
The penis is physically designed to remove any semen that is present in the vagina if it is thrust in and out. This is one of the ways that men are equipped to handle sperm competition.
More importantly is testicle size in relation to body size, which when humans are compared to gorillas and chimps, shows that human females are more promiscuous than gorilla females but less promiscuous than chimp females.
“Sperm Wars” by Robin Baker is a really good book for questions like this.
Having criticized the indulgence in armchair psychology by some of Roissy’s detractors, I’ll partake in it myself, with the caveat that it’s pure speculation: I suspect that a large sum of the anti-Roissy crowd are innate betas who seethe with resentment over being unable to implement his advice – because of marriage or age or some other impediment. It’s not Roissy’s fault that evo psych arrived too late to increase your “notch count.”
I don’t know Facefree, I think it’s close to the opposite.
They are afraid to acknowledge that they can implement his advice because that breaks the spell that there’s nothing they can do to improve their success with women so they should just accept what they’ve gotten. It’s easy to accept a bad fate if you think you have no choice (not good looking enough, not rich enough, etc.) but the knowledge that you’re accepting a bad fate because you’re too lazy and afraid of change makes the person angry at the messenger.
So they need a new set of excuses; “only jerks do that sort of thing” seems to be popular. Turns a failing into a moral virtue. Neat trick.
You’re asking the wrong question.
Rather than ask “Is Roissy evil,” ask “Was feminism evil?” Because Roissy is largely a response to the movement that demeaned men, drugged young boys and shamed them in school, and trvialized rape (among many other things).
For years, feminism made man-bashing such a fabric of the culture we have taken it for granted. AP just did a story on how most Father’s Day cards bash dads. What kind of a society have men allowed to happen to them? Well, Roissy — and his ilk — are payback for that society. Voices like Roissy could never have gotten through in the mainstream media, but now the internet has given rise to a new type of outspoken man — angry but truthful.
The alleged hatred spewed by Roissy is also no match for the anti-male venom coming out of most women’s studies courses. Someone needed to go up against Baby Boomer feminists and undo their damage. I’m glad someone as articulate as Roissy elected himself.
Funny, Jason Malloy seemed to have some data and a story to tie it together that could have turned this entire discussion on its head; I do hope he finds the energy to retrieve it…
One of Roissy’s theories is that there are plenty of dominant manly men who are sexually unfulfilled because they don’t understand women, so developing more dominance among men won’t serve the objective of getting sex, even if it gets them a promotion or an invitation to Monday Night Football sausage-fest. Helping men understand women for the purpose of acquiring sex is the prevailing raison d’etre for his blog.
I have some trouble accepting that theory. In my experience, and it’s not like I was born yesterday or anything, men who display leadership qualities in their work environments or in other hirearchies usually do okay with women.
Now, this isn’t to say that Betas who can’t get laid are occupational failures. Some have decent jobs, especially in IT, but by and large they’re not in leadership positions. If they do well in social settings, it’s usually among similarly unsuccessful-with-women Betas.
What a train wreck. I couldn’t look away.
Ooh, Tyler, both Roissy and Steve Sailer have sullied your blog; a true Axis of Evil!
You must need a shower now…
Or are perversely pleased that you have 100 comments on a thread.
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