Sound familiar?

Who does this sound like?

One day, [he] would be jovial and generous; the next, cold and dismissive.... [He] had a reputation for being thin-skinned: “He could have an auditorium full of people applauding him, but if he goes out into the hall and somebody says, ‘You suck,’ it eats him alive. He’s a narcissist, very self-involved.

[T]here’s now concern that the [media platform] as a forum for socially and politically relevant topics—rape culture, queer-positive stories, trans stories, anti-racist stories—provided cover.... "It was obvious to many of us that he was strategically using that kind of sensitive, new-age guy, feminist guy. He was playing the role. He really, really needed a lot of attention."

It's not actually a description of McRapey, but is part of the scandal about the man with whom McRapey was discussing me, former CBC broadcaster Jian Gomeshi. The similarities are more than a little creepy:

At York, Ghomeshi “wanted to be the champion of women’s issues,” says Mitch Blass, a council vice-president. Ghomeshi’s election promises included increasing funding to the Women’s Centre. He spoke out in support of increased safety measures for women on campus, and co-founded a pro-choice network. Under him, YFS boycotted and published names of companies that have “ties to, or engage in racist, sexist, or homophobic activities.”

But then, as in more recent years, it could be hard to separate the politics from personal, less ennobled ambition. Ghomeshi could be a “shameless self-promoter,” says Chris Lawson, who was on staff with the Ontario Federation of Students during Ghomeshi’s presidency, and is now a communications officer with the Public Service Alliance of Canada.

When a man is excessively devoted to being a champion of women's issues, the odds are that he's either a) hiding something or b) trying to atone for his behavior. And if he's the sort of man that other, more masculine men instinctively despise, you can be almost certain that he is hiding major creep tendencies. 

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From farce to Dada

You may recall that I immediately, and correctly, identified the UVA rape story to be a hoax on the basis of its ludicrous and obviously fictional dialogue. But it turns out that some of the deeper dialogue that has subsequently come to light was not only indubitably fictional, it had some unexpected sources:

More of a love letter purportedly written by Jackie — the University of Virginia student who claimed she was gang-raped by a group of fraternity members — appears to have been plagiarized than previously believed.

On Thursday, The Daily Caller published an email which Jackie purportedly sent to a man named Haven Monahan, who the co-ed claimed to have gone on a date with on Sept. 28, 2012, the night she also says she was sexually assaulted at a fraternity house.

A person claiming to be Monahan then forwarded the email to Ryan Duffin, a friend and love interest of Jackie’s. It has come to light that Monahan most likely never existed — a development which, among other pieces of evidence, strongly suggests that Jackie fabricated the claim she was sexually assaulted.

After publication of the email on Thursday, TheDC followed up with a report that the first paragraph of Jackie’s letter was cribbed from an episode of the popular TV show Dawson’s Creek.

Now, a deeper look reveals that even more of the letter was copied from other sources. Let us count the ways. In her email, Jackie wrote of Duffin:

    He’s gorgeous, but gorgeous is an understatement. More like you’re startled every time you see him because you notice something new in a Where’s Waldo sort of way. More like you can’t stop writing third grade run on sentences because you can’t even remotely begin to describe something, someone, so inherently amazing. More like you’re afraid that if you stare at him too long, you’ll prove your grandparents right that, yes, your face will get stuck that way…but you don’t mind.

Jackie appears to have taken most of that from a University of Massachusetts student named Matt Brochu who, in an article for the school paper, which was quoted in a 2004 Washington Post article titled “Boyfriend” by Libby Copeland, wrote:

    She’s gorgeous, but gorgeous is an understatement. More like you’re startled every time you see her because you notice something new in a “Where’s Waldo” sort of way. More like you can’t stop writing third grade run-on sentences because you can’t remotely begin to describe something . someone . so inherently amazing. But you’re a writer. You can describe anything. That’s what you do: pictures to words, events to words, words to even better words. But nothing seems right. More like you’re afraid that if you stare at her for too long, you’ll prove your parents right: that yes, your face will stick that way. But you wouldn’t mind.

Another sappy sentence Jackie’s email appears to have been taken from an episode of the TV show Scrubs. Jackie wrote:

I mean, if I had the chance of hanging out with anyone in the entire world or just sitting in my dorm with him talking about music and watching a crappy TV show…I‘d choose him everytime.

The Scrubs scene was similar. In it, one of the characters said to another:

If I had the choice of hanging out with anyone in the entire world or sitting at home with you eating pizza, watching a crappy TV show, I’d choose you every time.

The good news is that Jackie is an attention-seeking little neurotic who is now getting more attention that she'd ever imagined. The bad news is that half the country is not only paying attention to her, but is also laughing at her. And these various plagiarizations raises an obvious question: from what source did Jackie crib her absurd rape scene dialogue?

I, for one, find it absolutely hilarious that these days, a college woman can't even fake a nonexistent boyfriend without copying his fictional words from bad television shows.

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PJ O'Rourke on the Dunham Horror

PJ watches Girls so you don't have to:

Ms. Dunham is 28. I was under the impression that “girls” is a demeaning term for adult women. The title must have something to do with this hipster “Irony” thing, which I confess I don’t understand. The root of the word irony is in the Greek eironeia, “liar.”

I had my 14-year-old daughter, Poppet, instruct me in how to watch an episode of Girls on my computer. (Turns out “content” is not completely “free.”)

Two seconds into the opening credits I was trying to get my daughter out of the room by any means possible. “Poppet! Look in the yard! The puppy’s on fire! Quick! Quick! Run outside and roll him in the snow!”

It turns out Girls is a serialized horror movie—more gruesome, frightening, grim, dark, and disturbing than anything that’s ever occurred to Stephen King.

I have two daughters, Poppet and her 17-year-old sister Muffin. “Girls” is about young people who are only a few years older than my daughters. These young people, portrayed as being representative of typical young people, reside in a dumpy, grubby, woeful part of New York called Brooklyn, where Ms. Dunham should put her clothes back on.

I lived in New York for fifteen years. No one had been to Brooklyn since the Dodgers left in 1957.

The young people in Girls are miserable, peevish, depressed, hate their bodies, themselves, their life, and each other. They occupy apartments with the size and charm of the janitor’s closet, shared by The Abominable Roommate. They dress in clothing from the flophouse lost-and-found and are groomed with a hacksaw and gravel rake. They are tattooed all over with things that don’t even look like things the way a anchor or a mermaid or a heart inscribed “Mom” does, and they’re only a few years older than my daughters.

The characters in Girls take drugs. They “hook up” in a manner that makes the casual sex of the 1960s seem like an arranged marriage in Oman. And they drink and they vomit and they drink and they vomit and they drink and they vomit.

It’s every parent’s nightmare.

Correction: it's the nightmare of every father who actually gives a damn about his daughter. The Dunham Horror's parents obviously couldn't have cared less about her.

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The Dunham Horror sticks to her fake story

Why she chose to lie about being raped and falsely identify a fellow graduate:

It has been almost a decade since I was sexually assaulted. It took me a long time to fully acknowledge what had happened and even longer to discuss it publicly, in the form of an essay in my book Not That Kind of Girl. When I finally decided to share my story, it had ambiguities and gray areas, because that’s what I experienced, because that’s what so many of us have experienced. As indicated in the beginning of the book, I made the choice to keep certain identities private, changing names and some descriptive details. To be very clear, “Barry” is a pseudonym, not the name of the man who assaulted me, and any resemblance to a person with this name is an unfortunate and surreal coincidence. I am sorry about all he has experienced.

Speaking out was never about exposing the man who assaulted me. Rather, it was about exposing my shame, letting it dry out in the sun. I did not wish to be contacted by him or to open a criminal investigation. I am in a loving and peaceful place in my life and I am not willing to sacrifice any more of it for this person I do not know, aside from one night I will never forget. That is my choice....

I was not naïve enough to believe the essay in my book would be met with pure empathy or wild applause. The topic of sexual assault is far more inflammatory and divisive than it should be, with tension building around definitions of consent, and fear ruling the dialogue. But I hoped beyond hope that the sensitive nature of the event would be honored, and that no one would attempt to reopen these wounds or deepen my trauma.

But this did not prove to be the case. I have had my character and credibility questioned at every turn. I have been attacked online with violent and misogynistic language. Reporters have attempted to uncover the identity of my attacker despite my sincerest attempts to protect this information. My work has been torn apart in an attempt to prove I am a liar, or worse, a deviant myself. My friends and family have been contacted. Articles have heralded “Lena Dunham’s shocking confession.” I have been made to feel, on multiple occasions, as though I am to blame for what happened.

Well she is to blame what happened. She is a liar and a child molester. Who else is there to blame?

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Bad habit or bad luck?

It is alleged that the woman at the heart of Rolling Stone's UVA hoax has a habit of claiming to have been sexually assaulted.

Gotnews.com has obtained the rape obsessed Pinterest account of the 20-year-old girl at the center of the University of Virginia rape hoax. We can also confirm that Jackie Coakley has misled other students at both her high school and her college about her past sexual relations with men.

Coakley’s social media postings (below) reveal a woman obsessed with rape and well aware of the political consequences of rape allegations. These reports confirm other reports in Talking Points Memo that Coakley made up key details of her alleged encounter at a University of Virginia fraternity. TPM had more details about Coakley lying on the night of her assault....

GotNews.com has also received word from two University of Virginia students that Coakley has lied about sexual assaults in the past. We will publish more about this past in the coming days. GotNews.com will also be offering a financial reward for credible evidence of other Coakley embellishments.

This doesn't necessarily mean that she wasn't attacked in some way. But it does tend to cast a considerable quantity of doubt on her claims.

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How did I miss that?

Another sign that the UVA rape case was a hoax from the start. I should have noticed this right away, considering that I attended a heavily Greek university where neither I nor my girlfriend were allowed to rush because our first-semester GPAs were too low.

Now, the "rape" supposedly took place during a fraternity party and was allegedly committed as a ritual fraternity rite by pledges on September 28th of that year. But what university Greek system has pledges at the beginning of the academic year? Not Bucknell. And not UVA either; Rush week there is in February. To be even remotely credible, the fictional story would have needed to be set in February or March.

The reporter, Sabrina Rudin Erdely, went to Penn, so she should have known that. I'm guessing that she wasn't among the 25 percent of the student body who was involved with the Greek system there; it rather looks as if the story may have been the belated revenge of a GDI rejected by the Greeks on campus.

Some of these quotes about Erdely are amusing in light of the obvious calendar discrepancy:

For former editors and colleagues of Erdely, a University of Pennsylvania alumna who cut her teeth at Philadelphia Magazine in the 1990s, the backlash provoked immediate skepticism.

"She's one of the most thorough reporters I've ever worked with," said Eliot Kaplan, who hired Erdely at Philadelphia Magazine in 1994. "She's not a shortcut-taker - very precise, diligent."

Lisa DePaulo, a former colleague of Erdely's at Philadelphia Magazine and a writer at Bloomberg Politics, was incredulous about the attacks on Erdely's reporting. "As far as I know, there's never been a piece of hers that was sloppy," she said. "She's an absolute pro."

How inept are journalists when someone who is supposed to be particularly good can't even get THE TIME OF YEAR correct when attempting to pass off fiction as fact? She might have as reasonably claimed that "Jackie" was raped at a college Christmas party in July.

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SJW parenting

Ye cats. One would call it a complete fathering fail, except one can't honestly call it "fathering":

"Kid called me out on Twitter last night for something she considered sexist. Proud of her; happy to have raised her so she knew she could."
- John Scalzi

And when his daughter turns out to be a miserable thought-policing trainwreck who can't find a man to put up with her nagging SJW ways, no doubt Gamma Dad will blame sexism and those evil men who fail to properly appreciate the boundless joys of feminism. How low does a gamma male have to go in order to publicly supplicate to his own daughter?

No wonder young women raised by godless parents are increasingly turning to Islam. Nothing disgusts women more than weak and spineless men. Teaching girls to point and shriek at offenses they manufacture themselves is not how you raise strong, self-confident daughters who will one day make happy wives and contented mothers.

It is, to the contrary, how you create the very worst human beings on the planet.

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Feminist philosophy

It's amusing to see women hesitant to endorse perv-shaming for fear that doing so will come back to haunt women:

Slut-shaming is wrong. We all know that – even Robin Thicke could probably hazard a guess in that direction. Ditto fat-shaming. It’s never OK to publically humiliate someone because of their gender, weight or relationship history.

But what about shaming someone for being sleazy?

Welcome to the murky world of perv-shaming, where young women are publically naming and shaming men who have supposedly sexually harassed, or assaulted them. There was a prime example this week, when American bartender Laura Ramadei wrote an open letter on Facebook to a man who allegedly groped her.... In posting Lederman's personal details online, Ramadei’s actions reflect a wider trend - that for seeking justice via social media. She is relying on people power to hand down a public and humiliating punishment.

There's no mention of reporting Lederman to anyone official.

Of course, this is a one off. An isolated incident. But, other recent examples are more serious - I'm thinking of the movement started by video games fans, called #Gamergate, aimed at publicly shaming certain female players.... These women are victims of online mobs. Just like victims of revenge porn - where ex-partners post explicit photos and personal information about women online - they have been publicly and unfairly named and shamed.

They deserve our sympathy. But does someone like Lederman?

After all, he allegedly groped a young woman. And he definitely made a sexually inappropriate joke about taking her ‘to go’. But does that justify Ramadei posting his personal details on the internet and perv-shaming him?

It’s a complex issue. On one hand, raising awareness about sexual harassment is incredibly important. Websites like the Everyday Sexism project have shown us that. But there is a difference between highlighting a problem and becoming a vigilante.

Observe the woman's dilemma. If slut-shaming and fat-shaming is wrong, then so is perv-shaming. And if perv-shaming is right, then what is the argument against slut-shaming and fat-shaming? After all, sluttery and obesity are considerably easier to prove than a claim to have been bottom-pinched.

These are the deep philosophical questions with which the feminists of today must wrestle. Notice that male occupations such as the Beautiful and the True don't come into it, as the central concern is "could it have the consequence of making women feel bad".

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Affirmative consent

The California legislature passes a sexual consent law based on Antioch College's much-mocked campus standard that was so ludicrous, it inspired an SNL-skit.

State lawmakers on Thursday passed a bill that would make California the first state to define when “yes means yes” while investigating sexual assaults on college campuses. The Senate unanimously passed SB967 as states and universities across the U.S. are under pressure to change how they handle rape allegations. The bill now goes to Gov. Jerry Brown, who has not indicated his stance on the bill.

The actual law is described more clearly here.

You may have heard of this bill as the one that would require students to draft up a written sex contract before bed or constantly proclaim “yes, yes, yes!” at every slight readjustment, thereby practically redefining most sex as rape. The Fresno Bee editorial board interpreted the bill to mean that “ ‘yes’ only means ‘yes’ if it is said aloud.” The Daily Californian, the independent student newspaper of UC–Berkeley, also claimed that affirmative consent is necessarily verbal. RH Reality Check advanced the game to approvingly say that affirmative consent requires “a verbal or written yes.” If consensual sex entailed that level of consent, millions of couples would be unsuspectingly raping one another every night of the week.

But the bill doesn’t actually require those things. It calls for “an affirmative, unambiguous, and conscious decision by each participant to engage in mutually agreed-upon sexual activity."* (While the bill initially warned that “relying solely on nonverbal communication can lead to misunderstanding,” that language has since been stricken.) Update, June 24, 2014: As of June 18, the bill's definition reads: "'Affirmative consent' means affirmative, conscious, and voluntary agreement to engage in sexual activity."

It’s understandable that commentators would jump to the conclusion that affirmative consent requires sex partners to engage in a constant Q&A—or else a finely drawn sex contract—because the bill doesn’t define what “clear, unambiguous” consent would actually look like. Perhaps some remember Antioch College’s infamous 1991 sexual assault rules, which did require all partners to verbally request and assent to every stage of sexual activity—“body movements and non-verbal responses such as moans” didn’t cut it. But the California legislation’s language becomes clearer when it specifies which situations do not constitute consent. “Lack of protest or resistance does not mean consent, nor does silence mean consent,” the bill reads. “The existence of a dating relationship between the persons involved, or the fact of a past sexual relationship, shall not provide the basis for an assumption of consent. Consent must be ongoing throughout a sexual encounter and can be revoked at any time. The existence of a dating relationship between the persons involved, or the fact of past sexual relations between them, should never by itself be assumed to be an indicator of consent.” Parties can’t consent when they’re asleep or unconscious, or incapacitated from drugs or alcohol.

Well, this should TOTALLY make things less complicated for everyone. I wonder how long it will be before young women start complaining that they are being sexually harassed by men demanding signed and notarized documents before kissing them.

Male Date Rape Player #1: May I compliment you on your halter top?

Female Date Rape Player #1: Yes. You may.

Male Date Rape Player #1: It's very nice. May I kiss you on the mouth.

Female Date Rape Player #1: Yes. I would like you to kiss me on the mouth.

[ they kiss on the mouth ]

Male Date Rape Player #1: May I elevate the level of sexual intimacy by feeling your buttocks?

Female Date Rape Player #1: Yes. You have my permission.

[ Male touches Female's buttocks ]

Male Date Rape Player #1: May I raise the level yet again, and take my clothes off so that we could have intercourse?

Female Date Rape Player #1: Yes. I am granting your request to have intercourse.

[ scene ends ]

Dean Frederick Whitcomb: Contestants?

Ariel Helpern-Strauss: [ buzzes in ] Date Rape! 

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How not to write a rebuttal

The ironically named site Beyond Highbrow savages the Chateau with all the fury of a toothless lamb:

Roissy’s site is truly horrifying, and the man is a monster. He’s the biggest asshole in the known universe. Most of his commenters are orbiting him hoping to bask in the narcissistic glow he gives off. They are also trying to be an even bigger asshole than Roissy, and that’s probably not even possible. I mean not physically possible. I mean there is probably a law of physics that prevents any man from being a bigger dick than Roissy.

Knowing Roissy, he'll probably print that out, laminate it, and use it to successfully pick up two Ukrainian blondes this weekend. That being said, I have to admit it is nice to always be able to point to the two R's as proof that I am but a humble moderate in the controversial field of intersexual relations.

And as further evidence that the many would-be critics of Game remain irrelevant due to either a) their cognitive inability to comprehend it or b) their willful insistence on miscategorizing it, there is this logical debacle:

Look. This is the way it goes. Probably in any unglued society, the Alphas cannot possibly make up more than 15-20% of the males.

Let us suppose you had a society full of Roissy addicts who had all somehow managed to reach the pinnacle of Alphaness. It would not make sense. Because no society can be all Alpha Male (at least I do not think so). In Arab and Middle Eastern, Russian, Iberian, Latin American and Filipino society, sure, you have a huge % of men playing the “Alpha” game. They look and act like Alphas (especially in Arab and Middle Eastern culture).

But even here, the same 80-20 rule must apply. Suppose a hot woman, instead of being approached by one high-value (Alpha) man a day, is now being approached by five or six high-value Alpha men a day? What’s she going to do? Bang all the studs and whore it up? You kidding? The 80-20 rule, hard and fast, will continue to apply.

In a society where all of the men act like Alpha Males, females will simply pick off the top ~20%, the most Alpha of the Alphas and most Sigma of the Sigmas, relegate the rest of the regular Alphas to Beta, Delta or Gamma and toss the least Alpha of the Alphas (who are nevertheless very much Alpha men) to the Omega bin.

This hypothetical situation is impossible. Not implausible, but impossible. Since Alpha is defined as a certain level of success with women, a society of men where all men all reach the Alpha pinnacle is, by definition, a society where all men are successful with women.

Furthermore, since women find Alpha behavior attractive, even if we address his less extreme hypothesis that 100 percent of men merely mimic Alpha appearance and behavior successfully, this does not mean the 80-20 rule will survive. The 80-20 rule is not a law of physics; it's not even a law of economics. It is merely an observational rule of thumb.

Consider: if every man turned into Brad Pitt, George Clooney, and Joe Mangienello, women would not ignore 80 percent of them. Robert is completely ignoring the rules of attraction and getting the application of the 80-20 rule exactly backwards. The point is that women will reliably choose nothing, or sharing an attractive man, over settling for an unattractive one. This does not mean they will ignore attractive men simply because there happen to be a lot of them.

I am not saying that Game is beyond criticism. Of course it isn't. But it is a little tedious to see that its critics remain so resolutely incompetent. I mean, what does it say for a critic when he has observably failed to understand that which he labels "stupid".

And speaking of critics calling things stupid, I was recently amused to observe that what a Whatever reader once described as my "stupid little Game site" had more pageviews last month than Whatever has been averaging for the last eight months.

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Don't listen to the freaks

The preachers of tolerance don't actually believe in equality. They are malformed people who erroneously believe that if they can get you to accept their depravity, it will somehow heal their shattered psychologies.

A prominent advocate for transgender and women's rights in the tech world has been charged with raping her wife, The San Francisco Examiner has learned. Dana McCallum, a senior engineer at Twitter who speaks and writes about women's and transgender-rights and technology issues, was arrested Jan. 26 and booked into County Jail on suspicion of five felonies, according to the Sheriff's Department.

McCallum, 31, who was born a male, openly identifies as a female and whose legal name is Dana Contreras, was charged Jan. 29 with five felonies, including three counts of spousal rape, one count of false imprisonment and one count of domestic violence, according to the District Attorney's Office. She has since pleaded not guilty.

As any policeman can tell you, the sexual freaks are significantly overrepresented among the criminal population. They do not behave badly because they are psychologically damaged by society's rejection, they behave badly and are socially rejected because they are intrinsically psychologically abnormal.

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Feminists: do not pass go

Go directly to the mud huts. The sexy, sexy mud huts:

Like many young women in love, Colette Armand believes she was hit by a coup de foudre when she first saw her future husband. 'The attraction was instant,' she says. 'We had an immediate connection.'

Photographs testify to the strength of their bond, showing a beaming young couple clearly delighted by each other's company. That, however, is where the conventional nature of their romance ends. For Colette's intended is a Masai warrior whose home is a mud hut on the vast African plains. Meitkini's tribe have no possessions and no running water, and their food is either plucked from the ground or killed with a spear.

Nonetheless, after a courtship of three years, Colette, 24, is preparing to abandon all the comforts of her western lifestyle to join her life permanently with his  -  even though, to date, she hasn't shared so much as a kiss with her 23-year-old fiance, as Masai rules forbid physical contact between men and women who aren't married. What's more, she has to accept that, in the future, she may have to share her husband with other women, as Masai tradition permits any number of wives.

Keep this story in mind when you try to tell yourself that women are going to stop their madness themselves at some point, that they couldn't possibly be willing to destroy Western civilization and all of the comforts that it affords them simply because the BETA males of the West don't provide them with sufficient excitement and tingles.

And notice that the woman is willing to live in a mud hut and engage in a three-year relationship without any sexual contact on the basis of "instant attraction" and "immediate connection". This is why it is ill-advised to put any serious time, effort, and expense into pursuing any one woman. Male pursuit is best done in the preparation for the moment of meeting.

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Weak men, disorderly women

“There are people in Europe who, confounding together the different characteristics of the sexes, would make man and woman into beings not only equal but alike. They would give to both the same functions, impose on both the same duties, and grant to both the same rights; they would mix them in all things–their occupations, their pleasures, their business. It may readily be conceived that by thus attempting to make one sex equal to the other, both are degraded, and from so preposterous a medley of the works of nature nothing could ever result but weak men and disorderly women.”
- Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America

The Chateau drew our attention to this quote today, and it is an eloquent rebuttal to those who claim that feminism, or our equalitarian society, is sustainable. How was it possible that a Frenchman could see, more than 150 years beforehand, what the result of sexual equality would be?

Because the logic of nature is remorseless. The logic of nature cannot be avoided. It can be manipulated for a time through technology and human will, but it will always prevail in the end. Already women are turning in desperation to technological measures to help them avoid the consequences of their decisions to delay marriage, already men are dosing themselves with artificial chemicals to restore the masculinity they have lost.

But the results are clear. We have a society of weak men and disorderly women. And such societies are not sustainable, such societies are doomed. Unless it rejects feminism, rejects equalitarianism, and rejects multiculturalism, Western society is doomed. Nature, and Nature's God, have already passed judgment on it.

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How to start a marriage on the wrong foot

I never paid any attention to the "cocky-funny" spams that used to show up in my inbox a while back. But even so, I don't know how anyone who even understood just that much about women could go so wrong on his wedding day:

Mr. Pagan, who under his Deangelo alter-ego preached the joys of being cocky and funny, never showing any weakness with a woman and constantly keeping her guessing, has gotten married.  And he’s done the whole thing in a self-humiliating style that I just can’t ignore.

So here is a bit from his wedding registry

“Soon after, Eben gathered his tribe in yet another circle, placing 3 women at the front of the room: his ex-girlfriend Rose, myself and his friend Shannon.” Rose was the only other serious romance he’d ever had.

“He kneeled before her and began to recount all the hard-won lessons learned from their relationship. He thanked her for being his teacher, for enduring the drama, and for preparing him so perfectly for me. Then, body to the ground, he bowed to her in reverence.”

Spammers are scammers, I suppose.

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Of math and stuff

Morpheus responds to Susan Walsh and her attempt to defend her assertion that the idea female SMV declines with age is a myth:

Let’s walk through Susan’s post here.  First, let me give credit where credit is due.  Susan is quite articulate, and has a masterful command of rhetoric.  No doubt, she would have been a successful lawyer.  I’m sure she is very persuasive to those without a sufficient IQ and critical thinking skills to see all the holes in her Swiss cheese arguments.  When it comes to basic logic though, she often stumbles in contradictions and non sequiturs.  I believe this is because she often starts with what *feels right* to her and then tries to fit the data and construct arguments to support that feeling.  As a side point, I think many intelligent women struggle with the battle between their emotions and feelings versus their intellect.  Most often, emotions and “what feels” right is the master, and the intellect becomes the servant.

Let’s start with the title of the post.  Note the use of the word “Conclusive” in the title.  This is a rhetorical gimmick.  If something really is conclusive, then the data and analysis can stand on its own.  The reader does not need to be told what follows is “conclusive”.  The word is simply there to plant in the minds of less discerning readers a false sense of authority.  This is the sort of thing that does work on most people to set the tone.  The Game parallel to this technique is what is called Frame Control.

She goes on to state: “was apparently incensed by her argument, emailing me this vaguely ominous message:”

Actually I was not incensed…perhaps that is projection on her part but I was a different “i” word.  I was incredulous that she was making the foundation of a post a random commenter claiming to be a PhD, and clearly not even understanding the details of the mathematical argument.  It is understandable that Susan might have some trouble with the math here.  In a recent comment, she made the statement that men over 35 lose 7 pounds of muscle a year.  Clearly, if one stopped to think about that point for even one second before making it, one would realize the basic arithmetic is absurd as you would lose 210 pounds of muscle by age 65.  To her credit, she did correct this egregious error, but it does point out that perhaps she has some difficulty with “math and stuff”.

She goes on to say: “but he is correct IF AND ONLY IF you believe that the homo sapien male is inherently more valuable sexually than the homo sapien female.”

Ahhhh.  Note the use of the CAPS and the emphatic IF AND ONLY IF which excludes all other possibilities.  She is so sure of herself.  Of course, this is demonstrably false.  If we assume for the sake of argument that this “area under the curve” notion has any meaning, then the OTHER POSSIBILITY where the areas could NOT be equal is if the “homo sapien female is inherently more valuable sexually than the homo sapien male”.  To be clear, I’m not outright rejecting that possibility.  One logical possibility is that the peak value of a typical female is orders of magnitude higher than the peak value of the male, but that the value decreases at a much more accelerated rate.  The key is that whether you start the top of the Y-axis from 10 or 100, that represents the peak value for each sex, not an absolute number you can compare between the sexes.  When dealing with “math and stuff” and comparing different data sets with different value ranges, this is called normalization of the data:

    In the simplest cases, normalization of ratings means adjusting values measured on different scales to a notionally common scale,

So conceivably, the 10 or 100 for a guy could be a lower absolute value compared to the 10 or 100 for a girl.  It is an interesting question.  Who has a higher absolute sexual value?  The 23-year Sports Illustrated swimsuit model with 36″ legs, a perfect body, and face of an angel, or the 38-year old tall, charismatic, handsome, wealthy hedge fund manager?  But they both could be at their respective peak values of 10 or 100 or whatever scale you normalize to.  What I’ve described here with normalizing the data is yet another reason this whole “area under the curve” business is just gibberish.

Let’s hit this from yet another angle.  When we depict SMV on a chart like this, we are essentially showing a price path or trajectory in value.  The path of the line over time and the corresponding Y-axis value is the informational content, not the cumulative area under the line.  If a woman was super-fit then gained 50 pounds, then lost it, the path of that line would show a sudden collapse and rebound.  It would be nonsensical to start analyzing the area under her particular SMV value line.  In a sense, this is basically just like plotting a stock price over time.  It is the stock price at a particular point in time that matters, not how much area is under the stock price line.  This whole “area under the curve” business is almost as nonsensical if I grabbed two random stock tickers, plotted them and then stated that somehow the areas under the curves must equal.

In general, responding to rhetoric with dialectic in this manner amounts to little more than casting pearls before swine, but not when the rhetoric is fake dialectic. In such cases, exposing it for the nonsense that it is is extremely effective, and Morpheus has done a competent job of demonstrating why Susan's reliance upon an incompetent authority was unwise.

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Raging against reality

I occasionally find myself wondering if Dr. PZ Myers made his PhD out of crayons and an old newspaper. I mean, I know he's not actually stupid, but he so often puts his metaphorical pen to paper before stopping and thinking through what he's writing that he may as well be.

SMV? What’s that, you’re wondering. It stands for “Sexual Market Value”. It purports to show the worth of men and women over a range of ages. Hold off on your rage for just a moment, and let’s look at it objectively.

First, the SMV axis. What are the units? There aren’t any. Why? Because he doesn’t actually measure anything. Get that? All of the values in this chart are arbitrary inventions that he totally made up. The entire thing is a fiction.

Second, the whole concept of “Sexual Market Value”. What does that even mean? It’s dimensionless. He doesn’t have a way to look at any person and say, “Your market value is X”. It doesn’t even make sense to put this into a chart; my sexual appeal to my wife is huge, but negligible to everyone else. Scarlett Johansen may have a reputation as a very sexy woman, but her sexual “market value” to me is zero, and not only is it offensive to propose that her sex is purchasable for some imaginary sum of a million quatloos or whatever, it probably isn’t even a real commodity.

Except, and here’s the scientifically repugnant part, he has no way to assess the SMV of an individual, except to look them up on the chart. Which he made up. The circularity is so perfect, it’s practically Biblical.

And then in his post he chastises critics for their inferior understanding of statistics, and unironically titles his post “Sex, Lies and Statistics”. Gaaaaah. Let’s not even start on the ethics of judging people’s worth by the sole parameter of their sexual attractiveness. By that criterion, the author of that graph is a negative ten, and should be shoved in the hole beneath the outhouse and ignored for the rest of his days.

One last tip: don’t read the comments. Don’t read the comments. Don’t read the comments. In between totting up the scores on all the women they’ve had sex with, they’re laughing at the critics for not appreciating the science of the graph.

Actually, what we're laughing at is the fact that the critics, like PZ, have clearly failed to understand what they're looking at.  As one commenter noted of PZ and his commenters: "It reads like some sci-fi robot trying to process illogical statements. "What are the units? There aren’t any." "What does that even mean? It’s dimensionless." "It doesn’t even make sense to put this into a chart [Warning CPU overload]". 

Of course there are no units! It is a graphic representation of a variable! 10 does not represent, (as PZ somehow manages to erroneously theorize despite it being explained right in my post), one's actual SMV at any given age, but rather one's MAXIMAL SMV at any given age. And as for the idea that varying subjective values cannot be utilized by the market to produce an average net, well, this betrays an ignorance of basic economics that borders on the complete.

Having been overweight, lonely, and unattractive throughout his adolescence and young adulthood, PZ is entirely familiar with the concept of Sexual Market Value. What does it mean? It means why the pretty girls in high school and college never had any interest in him. And he knows that perfectly well, otherwise he wouldn't be complaining about the ethics of judging people's worth by something that is a meaningless fiction. No one cares about meaningless fictions, but most people care a great deal about how others judge their SMV.

As for the "scientific repugnance", PZ is remarkably unobservant if he is going to stand by his insistence that there is no way to assess the SMV of an individual except to look up their age on the chart. Does he truly find it hard to assess the changing SMV of the same individual pictured at 5, at 25, and at 85?  Does he really believe anyone needs a chart to determine which of the three individuals pictured has the lower SMV?

The fact of the matter is that PZ has no understanding whatsoever of Game. He is a fairly typical Gamma male, constantly trying to make sense of a universe that strikes him as unfair by viewing it through a reality-warping Gamma delusion filter.

All Rollo's chart is meant to be is a graphic representation of the observable and the obvious. The average woman's maximal SMV peaks at a younger age than the average man's and subsequently declines faster. This means that women are advised to make different decisions on a different timescale than men if they wish to take maximum advantage of their attractiveness to the opposite sex.

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Savaged by Statistical Sheep II

As I mentioned in my previous post, Susan Walsh was determined to prove that Rollo's illustrative graphic showing how women's sexual value peaks sooner than men's, something that is both intuitively obvious and empirically observable, is a based on a myth of plummeting female sexual value.

Susan first tried using logic, but her inept attempts at utilizing it turned out to be either incorrect or irrelevant. But futile though they were, those attempts weren't anywhere nearly as embarrassing as her attempt to appeal to the mathematical authority of a random commenter whose claims to be a "PhD statistician" are, to say the least, more than a little dubious.

Susan wrote: "These sorts of graphs reflect aging male fantasy – a sort of 50 Shades of Bray. Enter Kelly, a PhD statistician who takes the top chart apart with math."

This is never going to make an impact, but as a PhD statistician I am going to tell you why all this red pill crap is wrong. Women peak sooner, but men have a broader peak.

    1. Those graphs are wrong because, with a fixed number of people in the world, equal between the sexes, you have to scale the curves so that the area under each one is the same.

    2. The top valued man is not a “10,” ever…He is downgraded by competition in the market.

    He’s some relatively lower value scaled by the fact that men’s sexual prime lasts longer. Why is this, for the non math geniuses out there? Because if there are 50 men who are 7.5′s, and there are only 30 women, then men’s actual score and actual value on the dating market is downgraded because he can’t just choose a 7.5 and take her.

    3. There are even more men competing for the same women.

         a. Not only does the male curve have a broader prime, and therefore more area, there is another factor at play – women hit menopause around 55, but most men want to keep having sex into their 70′s.

         b. Consider that “alpha” males often have several girlfriends, taking more off the market. And women are out of the game for longer to recover from being dumped.

         c. Women are more likely to focus on their kids after divorce and stay out of the dating market.

         d. There is even less area under the female curve because the super attractive part up until age 18 is not even legal for sex.

    This all serves to downgrade men’s real value on the dating market.

    So take that blue curve, and shrink it until the area underneath is the same as the area underneath the women’s curve. This is why women tend to date men 5 years or so older, rather than 16 years older. A lot of this red pill stuff is wishful thinking. There is a little truth to it, but the relative lesser availability of women overall makes it a weaker effect.

    If you looked at the curve and said to yourself, “I am going to be a 10 at age 36!” you are probably only going to be a 7.5 because your whole curve has shrunk, due to you competing with a whole lot of men. There is a giant tranche of men who are 6′s and 7′s who are going to be competing for a much smaller tranche of 6-7 level of sexual attractiveness in women. Many will have to either settle or be alone.

The first, and obvious, response is: what math? This attempted refutation isn't based on statistics or math, it is nothing more than nonsensical babbling and Susan should be mortified at taking it seriously, let alone thinking that it "takes the chart" apart in any way.  Shall we begin?

1. The SMV chart is not the entirety of "the red pill".
2. It is unclear what she means by "women peak sooner but men have a broader peak". Is she making a statement or falsely describing the chart? The chart shows women peaking sooner AND having a broader peak.
3. It is very clear that Kelly has not understood that 10 does not represent "the perfect 10", but rather, the individual male's peak. It is impossible for a man to never reach his own peak sexual market value. And worse, if the mere existence of competition in the market intrinsically degrades one's sexual rank, how can there be female 10s? Kelly's statement assumes that there is no competition in the market for women, which is obviously false.
4. We finally reach "the math".  First, note that it is a hypothetical if-then statement and there is no reason to believe it is applicable to the real world. Second, it is incorrect: she is still confusing individual peak SMV with overall SMV rating. Third, even if we utilize the latter, a 7.5 paired with a 6 does not reduce his sexual market value, it merely means he has Hand in the relationship. Fourth, she again forgets that what she asserts about men would apply to the female curve as well.  And fifth, I note that the only "math" presented here is the controversial notion that 50 is more than 30.
5. The assertion that there are more men competing for the same women as they get older would be indicative of plummeting female sexual market value for most women, not disproof of it. In such a situation, the demand may remain high for some women due to the supply-demand curve, but the overall supply has dwindled. And even that is dubious, for the obvious reason that men can simply date younger women... as we observe them to do.
6. There is absolutely no reason for there to be the same area underneath both curves. This is begging the question, it is not a refutation. She might as credibly have insisted on coloring the blue area yellow and claimed to have refuted the chart on that basis.
7. Again, "the lesser availability of women" presumes declining female attractiveness.
8. Kelly leaves out an obvious option. Men who are 6s and 7s who cannot find women of similar sexual market value their own age are not doomed to either settle or be alone, as they can also pair up with the more plentiful younger women of similar sexual market value.

Notice that no math was required for this refutation, because there was no math involved in the first place. Argumentum ab auctoritate is usually fallacious, but an appeal to an observably incompetent non-authority is so bizarre that I don't see any need to further beat the dead horse. I don't go in for much pop psychology, so rather than speculate why Susan would elect to put forth such an inept argument, I would simply encourage her to critique them more thoroughly before making them public.

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Savaged by statistical sheep

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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