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Men, even more than women, need to learn the sad truth that just because you really, really like someone doesn't mean they will like you back.

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Originally posted by orfeo:
Exactly how much time do the straight men of the world spend examining the courting attempts of other men instead of working on their own?

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Originally posted by Egeria:
Thanks for the links, Josephine. I'm glad to see some criticism of "The Big Bang"--I think the main male characters are creepy losers. And for your previous comment in regards to that nonsense about women "having power."

From the examples I've seen, self-proclaimed "nice guys" are every bit as like to be misogynists as the "alpha males" they envy so much. (And the male half of the human species is not simply divided in alphas and "nice guys," either.)

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Originally posted by Doc Tor:

So, who exactly would think a woman asking a man out was "forward" "pushy" "slut" "unfeminine"? Is it actually her own girlfriends?

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Originally posted by Boogie:
goperryrevs

This 'the man should do the asking' stuff really annoys me, and it did when I was a young woman too. In fact I didn't bother with it, I did the asking - every time. I wish more women would, it would add some balance to the whole dating minefield imo.

(It wasn't that I didn't get asked, I did, it was just that the people I fancied never asked me. I am sure it was for the reasons goperryrevs said as the quiet, studious type is my type. I am a little wild and outgoing, so it adds balance 'tho can still be disconcerting for Mr Boogs after nearly 40 years!)

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Originally posted by orfeo:
That (first) article is fine, until the end, when it says, about Rodger, 'he needed to grow up'.

This makes me despair really. What, like Rodger was just a bit immature? Oh, fuck. I give up. We have mutual incomprehension here.

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Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:

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Originally posted by orfeo:
Exactly how much time do the straight men of the world spend examining the courting attempts of other men instead of working on their own?

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How are we supposed to work on our own courting attempts if not by examining what has worked for other people?

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Originally posted by cliffdweller:

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Originally posted by orfeo:

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Orignally posted by quetzalcoatl, actually:
That (first) article is fine, until the end, when it says, about Rodger, 'he needed to grow up'.

This makes me despair really. What, like Rodger was just a bit immature? Oh, fuck. I give up. We have mutual incomprehension here.

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Where did you get the word 'just' from, though? Would him growing up not help? At all?

The word 'just' doesn't appear in the quote you made, but it does appear in your own sentence. To me taking that word out or putting that word in to either sentence changes the meaning significantly.

Again it feels as if you want to say that Rodger being 'mad' is the sole cause of everything, and that a mature, non-misogynistic mad version of Rodger would have generated exactly the same outcome as an immature, misogynistic mad version of Rodger.

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Rodger's problem was not immaturity. There are lots of immature boys (and girls) in the world. I teach them. And there's nothing wrong with them-- kids mature at different rates, so there's nothing wrong with that. But "immaturity" is not what was going on with Rodger. An immature 15 year old boy is one who still would rather play with legos than talk about girls. He might be prone to making fart jokes or giggling if you say "boobs" or some homonym for a private part (heck, the word "homonym" probably gets a giggle). They grow out of it, just a bit later than their peers. But immature boys don't try to rape girls.

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Well, I'm glad we've sorted out that there's no possible correlation between immaturity and rape based on the fact that not every immature boy rapes. Especially not the ones who are 15 years old and immature.

Seriously? I spent vast paragraphs, if not pages, pointing out this kind of logical fallacy, and you just walked right on up to it again didn't you. You also neatly managed to ignore the fact that when we call a 40 year old immature we don't mean the same thing as when we call a 15 year old immature.

Also, I fixed your crappy coding for you. In this post. If you ask nicely I'll switch into Host mode and fix the crappy coding in YOUR post for you. Oh who am I kidding, no I won't.

[ 29. May 2014, 13:40: Message edited by: orfeo ]

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Technology has brought us all closer together. Turns out a lot of the people you meet as a result are complete idiots.

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Originally posted by goperryrevs:
I've posted two lengthy emails trying to look at things from the perspective of some men. Your only engagement with it was to paint it as some ridiculous "women are cock-blocks and men resent that because they deserve those women who shouldn't withhold their vaginas from them so men should control women because women hold that power over them".

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Men understanding the experiences of women, and women understanding the experiences of men aren't mutually exclusive. We need both.

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cliffdweller wrote:

Rodger's problem was not immaturity. There are lots of immature boys (and girls) in the world. I teach them. And there's nothing wrong with them-- kids mature at different rates, so there's nothing wrong with that. But "immaturity" is not what was going on with Rodger. An immature 15 year old boy is one who still would rather play with legos than talk about girls. He might be prone to making fart jokes or giggling if you say "boobs" or some homonym for a private part (heck, the word "homonym" probably gets a giggle). They grow out of it, just a bit later than their peers. But immature boys don't try to rape girls.

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Originally posted by orfeo:

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Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:

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Originally posted by orfeo:
Exactly how much time do the straight men of the world spend examining the courting attempts of other men instead of working on their own?

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How are we supposed to work on our own courting attempts if not by examining what has worked for other people?

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I dunno, but I'm not entirely buying this idea that men are struggling THIS much to find women, but women can find a man when they want one.

For starters, the suggested 10% figure of men that women find attractive bears no relationship at all to the actual proportion of the male population that is partnered. There are lots of single guys out in the world these days, but it ain't sitting at 90%.

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Nor is the number of male singles anywhere near as much out of kilter with the number of female singles as the little thought experiment suggests. And it would be surprising if it was, given that the great majority of relationships consist of one male and one female.

We do not, in fact, live in a world where a small proportion of alpha males have harems of females while the great majority of men go without a partner because the women are all taken. That's pretty much the kind of fantasy that Rodger bought into and perceived himself to be on the wrong side of.

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Originally posted by orfeo:
I dunno, but I'm not entirely buying this idea that men are struggling THIS much to find women, but women can find a man when they want one.

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Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
I thought that saying that Rodger should grow up is so wrong, it verges on pernicious. If only it was that simple.

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Originally posted by Brenda Clough:
Hmm. As a female, I would say that probably 90% of women could indeed find casual sex, if only they are willing to lower their standards enough. (This is what the internet is for!)

All men, without exception, can find sex. All they need is money; prostitution is the oldest profession.

The problem is that lowest-common-denominator action is not what most people want. Women are powerfully socialized to not lower their standards; by and large we cannot do it. Even the mass-murderer was not up for paid sex; he wanted love.

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Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
It'd be interesting (although hard to get past the ethics committee, or find subjects) to send 20 women and 20 men on a night out with the mission of getting a casual non-paid for shag, instructions to lower their standards as far as necessary. The results would confirm or falsify the Ken Hypothesis. I know where my money is.

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Great minds think alike, Karl!

(Though fools seldom differ )

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Hail Gallaxhar

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Originally posted by Josephine:

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Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
I thought that saying that Rodger should grow up is so wrong, it verges on pernicious. If only it was that simple.

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By "grow up" I think the article meant something like, "have that Copernican revolution that most folks have when they realize that the universe doesn't revolve around them, get a grip on the idea that other people do not exist to meet your needs, and lose the sense of entitlement that is entirely appropriate in an infant or toddler but not in a 22YO man."

Of course, if this particular 22YO man could have done that on his own, he would have. So, yeah, it's not that simple.

On the other hand, making it clear to privileged, entitled young men that their ideas are not only ugly and misogynistic, but stupid and infantile as well -- that just might help change the cultre. And changing the culture just might prevent a lot of future violence. Which would be a good thing.

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Originally posted by Josephine:
I gave a quick response to one of them, simply rephrasing one of the points that you made into rather starker terms than you had used. You suggested in a subsequent post that you knew someone might read it that way, so I don't think that my reading of it was ridiculous.

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Originally posted by Josephine:
I'm still puzzling over the idea that men are typically only willing to date women who are higher status and more desirable than they are, and, that being the case, we should feel sorry for them because of the pain they feel when their advances are rebuffed.

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Originally posted by Josephine:
I hope you can see the difference between, "If I make a mistake about this person, I might get rejected, and that is demoralizing and depressing and as painful as all get-out" and "If I make a mistake about this person, I might get raped or killed."

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Originally posted by Josephine:
I'd like to have had the time to have engaged more deeply. I might later. I'm not sure.

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Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
No-one said that all the women fancy the same 10% of men. Just that any given woman would only fancy about 10% of the men in the hypothetical room.

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Originally posted by Antisocial Alto:
In terms of how easy it is to find a casual sex partner or get asked out, I think we are losing sight of the fact that the average woman has put in a LOT more effort on her appearance before arriving at the meat market than the average man.

As a female, I can tell you that showing up at a night spot clean, combed and wearing decent clothes (but not any effort to cover up your physical "flaws", like makeup or shapewear) will actually put you behind the average guy who makes the same preparations, in terms of getting attention.

Maybe women have the advantage because they work harder for it?

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Originally posted by orfeo:

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Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
No-one said that all the women fancy the same 10% of men. Just that any given woman would only fancy about 10% of the men in the hypothetical room.

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So how is this particularly bad for MEN, then?

Because it seems to me that if, as you postulate, men tend to like 50% of the women in the room, there's a far better chance that any women who expresses interest in you is one that you want to express interest in you.

Whereas women have to deal with the fact that 90% of the advances they receive are unwelcome.

In other words, it cuts both ways. While men might be moping about despairing at how many women reject then, women are despairing at how hard it is to find a decent man. Who's going to win out of that in the LONG term? If anyone is going to change their standards, it's the women, expanding the range of men they're interested in, to the benefit of the men who apparently quite happy with a large number of people so long as they have curves and breasts.

It seems me that talking about the percentage of people who find you attractive is rather missing the point that you only need one person to find you attractive: the person you're interested in.

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Aye. And on Ken's figures that's 10% likely for a man and 50% likely for a women

Hence a woman is more likely to get their first choice of partner than a man is.

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Also... I'd leap for joy if 10% of the people I find attractive found me attractive. I don't have that luxury. Propositioning around 98% of the people I find attractive would risk a bashing. You might have heard of these folk. They're called straight men.

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Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
This isn't a game of "who has it worst." It's a game of "this is what our problems are".

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Originally posted by Gwai:
Re the Karl-Marvin research project, however if you sent them out night after night looking for someone they wanted to stay with, I think the odds would suddenly become about even. Yeah, I agree that it's easier for straight women to get sex on average than it is straight men. That's at least partially because many of us women are programmed to find more serious relationships actually sexier. That's certainly not universal, but I definitely think more men want (even if they morally or practically wouldn't do it) casual hook-ups than women. I'd suspect that a large majority of single men would enjoy a one-night stand with a hot woman. I think it would be a significantly smaller majority of single women. I know that I for one have never found one-night stands that appealing. Very very few people appeal to me that much the first time I see them. If there is even a significant minority of women like me, and I think there is, then the more serious the ten women and ten men are, the more the gender balance will even.

By consequence, women who are looking for a even moderately serious relationship* don't feel like they have power. Sure if we're decent looking, there may be more people who'd have a fling with us than vis versa, but if that's not what you're looking for, it doesn't make you feel any stronger or more desirable, even though it's real.

*Say they won't have sex with someone they don't at least want to stay with. I'm not imagining strict morals or marriage-level seriousness here.

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There's something in this; it would explain the pattern I observe of blokes who find it easy to hook up going through a lot of partners (as they're rejected by women who realise that despite superficial attractiveness they're not right for them) whilst others (like me) have a very small number of relationships before settling down (in my case, just that one). It would explain how the 50%/10% ends up roughly as a 1:1.

On the plus side, for us seldom rolling the 0 on the "will this woman be attacted to me?" d10*, is that we have fewer breakups

(*I think mine was a d1000)

[ 29. May 2014, 14:26: Message edited by: Karl: Liberal Backslider ]

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Might as well ask the bloody cat.

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Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
On the plus side, for us seldom rolling the 0 on the "will this woman be attacted to me?" d10*, is that we have fewer breakups

(*I think mine was a d1000)

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Originally posted by orfeo:

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Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
This isn't a game of "who has it worst." It's a game of "this is what our problems are".

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Fine. So then, your problem is women rejecting you. Women's problem is being hit on by lots of men they find unappealing. And then finding out that some of those men are really lousy at taking no for an answer.

And my problem is being scared of what might happen if the wrong guy thinks I'm staring at him too long, but I'll put that to one side and let you straight folk work out your gender-based issues.

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Originally posted by orfeo:
In other words, it cuts both ways. While men might be moping about despairing at how many women reject then, women are despairing at how hard it is to find a decent man.

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Originally posted by orfeo:
And I don't believe anyone's suggested yet that the problems were nutritional.

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Originally posted by Brenda Clough:
Hmm. As a female, I would say that probably 90% of women could indeed find casual sex, if only they are willing to lower their standards enough. (This is what the internet is for!)

All men, without exception, can find sex. All they need is money; prostitution is the oldest profession.

The problem is that lowest-common-denominator action is not what most people want. Women are powerfully socialized to not lower their standards; by and large we cannot do it. Even the mass-murderer was not up for paid sex; he wanted love.

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Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:

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Originally posted by orfeo:
And I don't believe anyone's suggested yet that the problems were nutritional.

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What an ironic crossposted analogy I just made.

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Originally posted by orfeo:
...because the world can only have one kind of problem at a time?

Anyway, the whole reason this thread began is because a particular individual's collection of problems led to death as well. And I don't believe anyone's suggested yet that the problems were nutritional.

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Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
But we're talking about subjective perceptions here, not objective truths.

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Originally posted by Gwai:
However I would say that if we are more interested as a society in solving men's romantic problems because they handle them more violently, that in itself is a pretty deep problem.

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Originally posted by orfeo:
There is evidence, in my opinion, that men who are frustrated with their romantic failings decided to take those frustrations out on women in violent and lethal ways....None of which, of course, means that the proportion of men who take out their frustrations on women is large.

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Originally posted by orfeo:
They say that's what they're doing, anyway. Apparently we shouldn't believe this first hand evidence (any more than we should believe terrorists who explain precisely why they hate us, a parallel I drew earlier).

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Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
Same pattern. Worst still was seeing the women leaving on the arm of some greaser who smelt like his Kawasaki 500. Never got to the bottom of it.

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Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:

quote:

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Originally posted by orfeo:
I dunno, but I'm not entirely buying this idea that men are struggling THIS much to find women, but women can find a man when they want one.

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Not all men, obviously. But enough of us do to make it a known phenomenon.

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Originally posted by IngoB:

That tends to be hard when one is soul-crushing lonely and masturbation has become a major pastime. (Yes, I do speak from experience...)

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There are three main ways out, best I can see. You can try to fake it, and become "successful" but a cad. You can get lucky and have somebody look past your neediness and rescue you. Or you can learn how to set aside your needs unsatisfied, honestly seeking a happy life on other terms, and thereby ironically much increase your chances of having your needs satisfied after all.

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Originally posted by Gwai:
Re the Karl-Marvin research project, however if you sent them out night after night looking for someone they wanted to stay with, I think the odds would suddenly become about even. Yeah, I agree that it's easier for straight women to get sex on average than it is straight men. That's at least partially because many of us women are programmed to find more serious relationships actually sexier. That's certainly not universal, but I definitely think more men want (even if they morally or practically wouldn't do it) casual hook-ups than women. I'd suspect that a large majority of single men would enjoy a one-night stand with a hot woman. I think it would be a significantly smaller majority of single women. I know that I for one have never found one-night stands that appealing. Very very few people appeal to me that much the first time I see them. If there is even a significant minority of women like me, and I think there is, then the more serious the ten women and ten men are, the more the gender balance will even.

By consequence, women who are looking for a even moderately serious relationship* don't feel like they have power. Sure if we're decent looking, there may be more people who'd have a fling with us than vis versa, but if that's not what you're looking for, it doesn't make you feel any stronger or more desirable, even though it's real.

*Say they won't have sex with someone they don't at least want to stay with. I'm not imagining strict morals or marriage-level seriousness here.

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