Search Results for susan walsh
Susan Walsh: Chartbreaker, Part 2
Happy day! Susan Walsh has drawn another diagram! Loyal readers of Man Boobz will recall the last time that Walsh, a would-be relationship expert who blogs at Hooking Up Smart, tried her hand at diagram making. It wasn’t pretty. In an attempt to sketch out the economic costs of sluthood, Walsh cobbled together an extravagantly convoluted mess of a flow-chart based on little more than a few bad assumptions and what she insisted was common sense.
This time, Walsh attempts to chart how the sexual revolution has transformed dating, borrowing her argument largely from some dude called Frost who blogs about sex and relationships and PUA bullshit at Freedom Twenty-Five.
Back in the old “leave it to Beaver” days, Frost argues, virtually all men and women paired off efficiently with partners who exactly matched their level of hotness, as charted on the infamous ten-point scale beloved of pickup artists and other such creatures. Fives married fives, nines married nines, and even lowly ones were able to find true love and hot ugly sex with others as unfortunate as they were. As Walsh puts it, attempting to make all this somehow sound vaguely scientific:
This system worked pretty well in achieving equilibrium with respect to SMV (sexual market value).
Naturally, neither Frost nor Walsh offer any evidence that any of this was true. Which only makes sense, since it, er, wasn’t.
Let’s set that aside for a moment and move on to our current fallen state, post-sexual revolution. Now, apparently, a small minority of hot dudes score all the chicks, from nines on down to threes. Everyone else spends their lonely nights alone with their hands and a choice of vibrator or fleshlight.
Here’s where the diagram comes in. It’s a doozy:
From "Hooking Up Smart."
Now, Walsh doesn’t actually explain how she knows this (or, rather believes it, since it clearly is not true), or why exactly she thinks the sexual revolution is to blame. But Frost does, sort of. With the sexual revolution, he argues,
the social convention of monogamy starts to break down. Women are free to do what they want, and they quickly realize that the men they can persuade to have short-term sexual relationships with are much, much more attractive than the men willing to marry them. Attractive men are free to eschew marriage, and instead maintain a harem of rotating friends-with-benefits and one-night stands. Super-attractive men (professional athletes, rock stars, bloggers) can spend every night with a different coterie of young, attractive women, railing lines off their ass cheeks and banging them senseless.
Sounds great for men. And not too bad for women either, who get to shag NHL players and bloggers instead of their ho-hum husbands.
Wait a minute. “… and bloggers?” Bloggers are now the alpha males? I wish I’d known this sooner!
But every woman who elects to join a harem, must necessarily leave a lonely man behind in the great mating scramble. … The men at the bottom are left to their RPGs and porn.
So there you have the effects of the sexual revolution on men: Great for the few, awful for the teeming masses.
Well, there’s a certain logic to that argument. It’s just not, you know, true.
Walsh and all the manosphere dudes who’ve convinced themselves that 80% of men have been left sexless have it backwards: as a handy FAQ at the Kinsey Institute points out, only about 10 percent of men don’t have sex during any given year. The average frequency of sex ranges from more than 100 times a year for those in their teens and twenties to about 70 times a year for those in their 40s.
But what about the ladies? Frost explains that they suffer too, especially those unfortunate enough to be mega-hotties. Frost seems to base this conclusion almost entirely on the sexual history of one Betty Draper. This seems a very small sample size to me. Also, she’is fictional. But that doesn’t stand in Frost’s way:
What about the top woman? The ultimate hottie? Previously, she had the top man all to herself. She literally could not have asked for anything more, assuming as I do that women naturally gravitate toward sleeping with the one man who is their best option at a given time, while men are only as faithful as their options. Suddenly, her man is beset by hussies, plying him with offers of cheap sex. How does Betty Draper feel about the breakdown of monogamy in her world? …
Now [the top women] must choose between sharing, or settling for a man far below her previous catch. Meanwhile, uglier women can choose between monogamy with a man far above her previous level, or a shared slice of one of the top men. She is unequivocally better off, as the hotter women are unequivocally worse off.
Frost concludes:
The Sexual Revolution harms attractive women, and unattractive men. It benefits unattractive women, and attractive men.
Betty Drapers of the world, unite!
Naturally, none of this is the fault of men. It is, Frost and Walsh apparently agree, the fault of all those mid-level bitches slutting it up with the top men. It’s all their fault that the ladies at the top and bottom are getting left high and dry.
Indeed, it’s high time that the hottest hotties stood up for their rights, Frost argues in a second blog post:
It never seems to occur to the hot girls of the world that the sexual revolution is the cause of their troubles. Without it, the best that a top man could do is find a top woman, and devote his life to her. In our present dystopia, he can find that top woman, and rip her heart and soul to pieces by maintaining a harem of flings on the side.
If it wasn’t for the legions of female 7′s and 8′s throwing themselves at the male 9′s, the female 9′s could have their men all to themselves. But in the world as it is, they will always be competing with the omnipresent availability of cheap and easy sex.
Were the hot women to regain their hot pride, sluts and feminists alike would quake in their boots:
The greatest fear of the feminists is that desirable women like yourselves will wake up the lies they’ve been fed, embrace their feminine modesty, and cast the harsh light reality on of the fat, shrill, used-up slutwalkers and middle-aged divorcees.
What of the not-quite-hotties? Walsh has some harsher advice for all those “mediocre sluts” out there riding that alpha asshole cock carousel. She writes:
For less attractive women, an objective assessment of market value is essential. That can only be realized by evaluating which men are interested in dating you rather than banging you.
In other words: mid-level ladies, you’re still losers. Eventually, you asses will get fat, your skin will get wrinkly, and the alpha assholes will grow tired of banging you. So what are you poor gals to do? Walsh offers this grim assessment:
These are the hard truths of the Post Sexual Revolution era. There are a few winners, and many losers. It is difficult to see how equilibrium can ever be regained. For now at least, your only option is to think carefully and realistically about your personal life goals. Make sure the choices you’re making get you closer to them.
(Confidential to Susan Walsh: You do know that using terms like “equilibrium,” like you’re some sort of sexual economist, doesn’t actually make your bullshit true?)
Given that everything in Frost and Walsh’s posts here is such unmitigated bullshit, I think I have some better advice for women of all hotness levels (if they haven’t already figured this out for themselves): stop taking relationship advice from a woman who wants you to hate yourself.
And speaking of bad choices: those smileys? Oy. Strive for elegant simplicity, not tacky clutter.
NOTE: Chuck on Gucci Little Piggy has written a response of sorts to this post. I’ve replied on his blog here. But there is something distressing going on there: Someone has posted several rude comments there under the name “Man Boobz.” THAT PERSON IS NOT ME. If any of you are responsible, STOP IMMEDIATELY. I’ve asked Chuck to ban that person and delete the comments.
EDITED TO ADD: Chuck changed the name of the commenter to “not man boobz.” That makes sense to me.
Susan “Chartbuster” Walsh does it again
Susan Walsh, the slut-shaming, chart-making dating guru behind Hooking Up Smart, has made yet another chart! This time, it’s a flowchart attempting to diagram “the anatomy of a hookup.” While not quite as impressively incoherent as her infamous flowchart trying to explain the dire economic costs of sluttery, or as plainly incorrect as her diagram purporting to show that hot dudes get all the sex, this one is impressively daft nonetheless. I suggest you click here to see it full-size.
Well, I’ve followed all the various little arrows around on the chart, and as far as I can tell, her point is that if you have sex with someone, this may not result in true love for all time. There’s a shock. In other words, all these little boxes and arrows are intended to draw our attention to the fact that, as Cliff Pervocracy has put it, “every relationship does either end or continue. I salute your tautological genius.”
The other thing to notice about Walsh’s chart is that she apparently can’t conceive that people can remain friends, or even become friends, after sex. As Walsh loves to remind her female readers, having sex with someone doesn’t automatically make them fall in love with you. But it doesn’t make them automatically hate you or want to have nothing to do with you either.
So I present to you a somewhat more simplified hookup flow chart, which nonetheless manages to cover the possibility that people who hook up with one another can sometimes become friends afterwards.
Super Obvious Note: All friendships and relationships may at some point come to an end, or change into something else.
Despite the clear flaws of Walsh’s chart – it’s a strange mixture of obviousness and obliviousness - many of Walsh’s readers hailed it as a work of genius. One anonymous commenter wrote:
I don’t think there has ever been a better visual representation for the hookup that shows its futility from the woman’s point of view.
Sassy6519 agreed:
That diagram looks as pleasant as trying to cross a minefield.
And that, of course, is the real message Walsh is trying to get across with her (probably deliberately) muddled chart: hookups are scary!
As Walsh put it in a comment:
The point of the chart is really to highlight the odds of getting to dating via a hookup. Studies say 12% of the time. All those yellow and red boxes are just a visual representation of those odds.
Of course, in Wash’s vision, not “getting to dating” is apparently as bad for women as getting an STD, or finding out the guy you’re fucking is a feminist, or something.
Ian Ironwood agreed with her analysis, more or less, but urged his fellow dudes to exploit the situation for their own advantage:
Men are starting to learn their own value in the dating world. They’re beginning to learn Game and use women’s desire for a relationship as leverage. And that means that they’re raising their expectations (which sucks for feminists, who are constantly trying to lower women’s expectations of themselves while raising it for men) and getting a lot more canny about just who they want to spend their lives with.
Men are, indeed, the keepers of commitment. It’s the masculine equivalent of our “virtue”, our ability and willingness to ally ourselves with one woman (or just a few). Those fellas in the Puerarchy who are still hooking up like mad, y’all are the rest of that leverage. With Game-savvy PUAs pumpin’ & dumpin’ like it’s on sale, they provide a bleak alternative to pursuing commitment with a quality dude, which means his value as a high-status male goes up with his willingness to commit. But that also means his expectations of his future bride go up as well.
Guys, recognize your value to women, and use it to your advantage. Remember, a woman in a crappy relationship enjoys higher status in the Matrix than a woman without a relationship, all things being equal. They crave the validation they get from their female peers in the Matrix more than they even crave the romantic connection. That provides a tremendous amount of leverage for the dude who understands that.
Other dudes, nonetheless, still feel that women are too icky to deal with. Herb put it this way:
[I]f there is one lesson Game types and MRA should be pushing it is this:
“A man needs to be ridden by a woman as much as a bicycle needs to be ridden by a fish.”
And yes, I changed it from “have” to “ridden by” for a reason. In the combat dating era, especially in marriage 2.0, men are saddled and ridden too often.
You don’t need a woman in your life to be a man or be complete. …
If you physically need sexual contact there is no shame in deciding the way women have organized the current SMP is a losing game and just turn to the world’s oldest profession (which too many women let themselves become even if they don’t realize it)
You know, if you’re running a dating site ostensibly to provide useful information for young women, and your most enthusiastic commenters are either PUAs hoping to use that information to better exploit women, or MGTOWers looking for more excuses to denigrate and dismiss all women, maybe you’re doing something wrong.
Friend-of-Man-Boobz Ozymandias tried to inject some good sense into the discussion over there. Unfortunately, very little of it stuck.
EDITED TO ADD: I added a quote from Walsh.
American women: Monopoly capitalists of the vagina?
Men are tired of masturbating with the dead hand of capital!
Most manosphere misogynists lean to the right. But every once in a while I’ll run across an MRA who considers himself a man of the left. Today, while perusing the Spearhead, which generally appeals to some of the more reactionary MRAs and MGTOWers, I ran across a most intriguing example of the Manosphericus lefticus.
“Davani” describes himself as “a socialist and a supporter of women’s rights,” explaining that
the last thing I want is some kind of uneducated, barefoot-and-in-the-kitchen woman who I can’t even have a conversation with on any intelligent topic.
But Mr. D is a most unusual sort of socialist-feminist indeed. You might call him a Socialist of the Penis. Or, rather, a Socialist for the Penis. As he explains,
I am all for egalitarian culture (e.g., expanding women’s rights), but only if the women themselves are egalitarian. In the US, much more so than anywhere else, they are not.
Should dating advice be a boys-only club? One self-described Omega Virgin says “yes.”
NOTE: Man Boobz Pledge Week Continues! Big thanks to everyone who has donated!
If you haven’t yet, and want to, here’s the button you’re looking for:
The Men’s Rights blogger behind The Black Pill – formerly known as Omega Virgin Revolt – has made it his life’s mission to bring down the Pickup Artist movement, or at least the part of it that overlaps with the Men’s Rights movement online. Not because “Roissysphere gamers” are misogynist assholes who preach a mixture of manipulation and date-rapery to their readers. But because, in his estimation, these guys are promoting a “Misandrist Dating Advice Distraction (MDAD)” that convinces poor oppressed men that they can solve their problems by manipulating drunk hotties into sleeping with them – thus distracting them from the much more important goal of destroying feminism.
No, really.
Does Manosphere Blogger Vox Day Really Support the Murder and Mutilation of Women?
Most women, it is fair to say, don’t want to be deprived of education; they don’t want to be considered little more than baby-making machines; and they don’t want “independent” women to be maimed or murdered.
But according to the influential manosphere blogger Vox Day, women who object to any of this just don’t know what’s good for them. In one of the most repellant manosphere rants I’ve run across yet, Vox attempts to rebut PZ Myers’ critiques of evolutionary psychology with a series of bizarre and hateful assertions about women, offering his own “scientific” rationales for keeping women down. Is this all somehow satire on his part? He certainly seems sincere.
TRIGGER WARNING for all that follows; Vox explicitly defends the maiming and murder of women.
Vox starts out by arguing that depriving women of education makes solid evolutionary sense:
[E]ducating women is strongly correlated with reducing their disposition and ability to reproduce themselves. Educating them tends to make them evolutionary dead ends. … 40% of German women with college degrees are childless. Does PZ seriously wish to claim that not reproducing is intrinsically beneficial to women?
Instead of being educated, Vox goes on to argue, girls should be married off young so they can start popping out babies:
[R]aising girls with the expectation that their purpose in life is to bear children allows them to pursue marriage at the age of their peak fertility, increase the wage rates of their prospective marital partners, and live in stable, low-crime, homogenous societies that are not demographically dying. It also grants them privileged status, as they alone are able to ensure the continued survival of the society and the species alike. Women are not needed in any profession or occupation except that of child-bearer and child-rearer, and even in the case of the latter, they are only superior, they are not absolutely required.
Next, he defends the practice of throwing acid in the face of “independent” women:
[F]emale independence is strongly correlated with a whole host of social ills. Using the utilitarian metric favored by most atheists, a few acid-burned faces is a small price to pay for lasting marriages, stable families, legitimate children, low levels of debt, strong currencies, affordable housing, homogenous populations, low levels of crime, and demographic stability. If PZ has turned against utilitarianism or the concept of the collective welfare trumping the interests of the individual, I should be fascinated to hear it.
He moves on to honor killings, arguing that they too are good for women, because
female promiscuity and divorce are strongly correlated with a whole host of social ills, from low birth and marriage rates to high levels of illegitimacy.
He offers a similar rationale for female genital mutilation, before launching into this bizarre racist attack on abortion rights:
[F]ar more women are aborted than die as a result of their pregnancies going awry. The very idea that letting a few women die is worse than killing literally millions of unborn women shows that PZ not only isn’t thinking like a scientist, he’s quite clearly not thinking rationally at all. If PZ is going to be intellectually consistent here, then he should be quite willing to support the abortion of all black fetuses, since blacks disproportionately commit murder and 17x more people could be saved by aborting black fetuses than permitting the use of abortion to save the life of a mother. 466 American women die in pregnancy every year whereas 8,012 people died at the hands of black murderers in 2010.
Vox wants “girls” – presumably teenagers — to be married off young and start popping out babies. Yet in his mind female fetuses are “unborn women.”
Despite Vox Day’s repellent ideas about women – and his proud racism – he’s an influential figure in the manosphere, mentioned approvingly and regularly cited by others who present themselves as more moderate voices. It may not be a shock that the reactionary antifeminist blogger Dalrock includes Vox in his blogroll, and cites his work with approval (see here and here for examples). But, astoundingly, he’s also regularly cited approvingly by antifeminist “relationship expert” Susan Walsh of Hooking Up Smart (see here, here, and here). And she has even written at least one guest post on Vox’s “game blog” Alpha Game.
At this point I suppose I shouldn’t be shocked by any of this. But I still am.
MRA: Making women suffer is a highly ineffective way to put them in their place
Making women cry: Highly ineffective.
Given the enmity towards women in general, and feminists in particular, that’s omnipresent in the manosphere, it seems logical to assume that most of the dudes lingering around MRA, PUA and MGTOW sites online would take a certain secret pleasure in seeing women suffer.
As regular readers of this blog know all too well, oftentimes the desire to see women suffer is not so secret: some MRAs and others of their ilk literally laugh at women getting cancer, declare that rapists should be given medals, openly fantasize about “beat[ing] the living shit” out of women, and tell feminists who complain about this sort of shit that they’re “so pernicious and repugnant that the idea of fucking your shit up gives me an erection.” (Those last two examples come from Paul Elam, one of the MRM’s most influential bloggers.) Still others send rape and death threats to outspoken women online.
But good news, folks! It turns out that not all manosphere misogynists want women to suffer. Why? Because suffering is an ineffective way to put women in their place. That, at least, is the argument of a fellow calling himself Höllenhund. In a comment on Susan Walsh’s Hooking Up Smart blog, he offered this argument:
Making women suffer wouldn’t achieve anything in itself – I’m pretty sure the overwhelming majority of the Manosphere would agree. Women are normally solipsistic and they fail to understand their own urges and don’t comprehend the connection between cause and effect. They’d never understand why they’re suffering in the first place.
So, basically, in his mind, women are dumber than dogs and thus harder to train. Even worse, the suffering women can sit down in the street and cry, and countless “white knights,” hoping to win their approval (and get in their pants) will rush to their aid:
Suffering only motivates them to fish for male sympathy (and thus investment) through crying and whining, to blame ‘ bad men’ for their ‘misfortune’ and thus play the game of ‘let’s you and him fight’. That’s how it has always been.
So making women suffer is largely pointless. I’d go further and say it’d actually be detrimental to men because it encourages white-knighting and intra-male competition. …
And some of the ladies even seem to sort of like it:
Not to mention the fact that many women actually seem to find some sort of twisted pleasure in suffering, that all this’d simply serve to justify more anti-male legislation and whatnot.
Poor Höllenhund doesn’t have much hope that women will ever see how totally terrible they really are
[T]he notion of making women ‘admit their faults’ is pie-in-the-sky as well. Again, I’m sure pretty much everyone in the Manosphere would agree. You have a bigger chance of seeing pigs fly.
If women are to recognize their faults in this SMP [Sexual Marketplace], they need to have a realistic picture of both their own sexuality and the SMP in the first place, plus they need to have empathy for beta males …
Er, you’re lecturing us about empathy?
Sorry, on with the rest of the sentence:
plus they need to be imbued with the sense of morality without which the very concept of ‘fault’ is meaningless.
And lecturing us about morality too?
I think we’ll sooner see Haiti become a dreaded military superpower.
I’d rather see that than live in a world in which women were so self-hating that they actually believed they were guilty of whatever unnamed sins Höllenhund attributes to them.
NOTE: I found Höllenhund’s comment because the blogger at Pro-Male/Anti-Feminist Technology cited it as a prime example of the sort of brave “truth telling” that will get you banned “on feminist sites that supposedly support men.” And yes, it apparently did get poor Höllenhund banned from Hooking Up Smart. I’m not quite sure how Susan Walsh, a traditionalist devoted to slut shaming in a thousand different flavors, counts as feminist, but that’s not the point. The point is: I’m regularly accused of “cherry picking” comments from MRAs. In this case, Mr. PMAFT picked the comment for me.
Is she really going out with him?
Some guys get all the chicks!
This is a bit of a rant inspired by some of the discussions of my recent post on Susan Walsh.
In my defense, I’ve enlivened it with a couple of videos.
Let’s say you’re a young, horny, lonely heterosexual guy. You’re walking to the store to buy some, I dunno, pretzels, and you see the woman of your dreams walking arm in arm with some hideous toad of a man. You say to yourself: how is it that a nice guy like me can’t find any girl who will return my phone calls, while ugly boy here seems to have won the girlfriend jackpot? If you’re Joe Jackson, you write a song about it:
Pretty women out walking with gorillas down my street
From my window I’m staring while my coffee grows cold
Look over there! (Where?)
There’s a lady that I used to know
She’s married now or engaged or something so I’m told
Is she really going out with him?
Is she really gonna take him home tonight?
Is she really going out with him?
‘Cause if my eyes don’t deceive me,
There’s something going wrong around here
A lot about the world seems desperately wrong when you’re young, horny and alone. But maybe in this case there is something that you’re missing. Maybe the ugly dude is charming as fuck. Maybe he’s a brilliant thinker. Maybe he’s awesome in bed. Maybe she’s shallow and materialistic, and she likes him just because he’s rich. Or maybe there’s nothing redeeming about the guy – intellectually, sexually or financially — and the woman in question simply has horrendous taste in men. It could be any of these things.
But here’s the thing: no matter how wounded you feel, whom this woman goes out with is really none of your business. She doesn’t have to have a good reason to be going out with him. It’s not your call. The world doesn’t owe you a hot girlfriend, and this particular woman has the inalienable right to go out with whoever she chooses, even if you personally feel ill at the thought of them doing it. Women you find attractive aren’t obliged to date men you think are appropriate for them.
A lot of guys in the manosphere seem to have hung on to this young-man’s anger and sexual jealousy. But instead of somehow turning their resentment into a catchy song, and then moving away from the rock world to a more jazz-inflected sound, these men cultivate their resentments. And talk about them endlessly.
Soon they’ve developed the uncanny ability to demonize any woman who makes any romantic choice – other than picking them. If a “hot” women is dating an ugly dude, well,
He must be rich! All women are filthy golddigging whores! She’d never give a decent, hardworking beta like me a second look!
If the same woman is dating a conventionally handsome man, the reaction can be just as strong:
She’s a shallow bitch! They always go for the alphas! She’d never give a decent, hardworking beta like me a second look!
Weirdly, a lot of manosphere dudes also get angry about the sexual and romantic choices of women they aren’t interested in at all. If a woman they don’t think is all that hot is with a conventionally handsome man, it’s still the woman to blame:
Ha! She’s punching above her weight class, looks-wise. I guess any bitch can get laid, while a hard-working beta like me doesn’t even rate a second look. But eventually he’ll dump her and I will laugh and laugh. Live it up now, bitch, because you’re going to end up alone with a bunch of cats!
This is the thing that’s weirdest to me. Getting worked up about a woman you like who’s dating a loser? I can understand that. I did that, a lot, in my twenties. But quite a few manosphere dudes – and women like Susan Walsh who are manosphere-adjacent – seem somehow deeply affronted by the notion that any women could hook up with a man either lower or higher on that universal 10-point hotness scale so beloved by PUAs and other manosphere dudes.
Walsh speaks of “equilibrium” in the “sexual marketplace” (or SMP as she and her fans like to abbreviate it), and seems to consider any deviation from it to be a moral failing – of the women involved. (The slut-shaming is strong with this one.) Her idea of “equilibrium,” as I mentioned in my last post on her, is one in which fives date fives, tens date tens, and female sixes and sevens know better than to try to get the attention of male eights and nines by wearing low-cut dresses and “slutting it up.”
But here’s the thing. If you’re going to try to mix economic terminology into your dating advice, it helps to actually know what the terms mean. Market equilibrium, as Wikipedia handily summarizes it,
refers to a condition where a market price is established through competition such that the amount of goods or services sought by buyers is equal to the amount of goods or services produced by sellers. This price is often called the equilibrium price or market clearing price and will tend not to change unless demand or supply change.
Guess what? Insofar as the dating world is a marketplace, it’s already at equilibrium. Potential daters size up their prospects, and make a guess as to who is and who isn’t “in their league.” Those who are aiming too high (setting their price too high) and not hooking up with anyone (selling themselves) may end up lowering their standards (lowering their price) to make a sale (get laid). Some products (people) appeal to a wide demographic; others to a nice market. Some have better marketing then others. Some products look good at first glance, but turn out to need a lot of repairs. All this is mighty familiar to students of economics. This is how markets work.
Of course, the dating world is even more complicated and messy than economic marketplaces. But in a lot of ways it really does act like one.
The interesting thing here is that Walsh and her followers aren’t thinking like capitalists at all. Essentially, they’ve decided that they know better than the SMP they so love to talk about, that their imaginary 10-point scale should predict who chooses whom better than those who are actually doing the choosing. That’s not capitalism; that’s a Soviet style command economy. It’s not the way marketplaces work, and it’s not the way the dating world works.
Guys: if no one is buying what you’re selling, you could try to change what you’re selling so that it appeals to buyers more. Or if you are confident in your product you can simply wait until a more discerning buyer shows up.
Or you could sit by yourself stewing in your own bitterness and blaming everything on the bitches. Much like the jealous narrator of David Bowie’s classic Queen Bitch, only much less sexually ambiguous. And, frankly, much less appealing. In this song, Bowie manages to make sexual resentment somehow glamorous.
I would like to apologize for talking about this song and bitter manosphere dudes in the same sentence. But I’m still posting the video. This is Bowie, in 1972, performing it live, and fucking killing it:
Chart breakers
Some people probably shouldn’t try to make charts. I mean, take a look at this fucked up Venn diagram here:
Making a Venn diagram is harder than it looks.
There’s so much wrong with this diagram it’s hard to even know where to start. The letters are too small. “Narwhal” should be plural. The Sirens of Greek Mythology did lure sailors to their death with their songs, but they weren’t sea creatures. They were, rather, bird women – you know, with wings and everything. Also, while Miles Davis was indeed a thing (specifically a man) with a horn, to the best of my knowledge he never stood in a pond, at least not while playing said horn. And even if he had, it wouldn’t have made him a sea creature.
I suppose I should acknowledge that I’m the person who made this Venn Diagram. I would like to apologize for its many failings and for any damage it may have caused.
But, look, I’m not the only one who can’t design a diagram for shit. Consider this unholy mess, put together by Susan Walsh, a retrograde dating “expert” who runs a blog called Hooking Up Smart. Walsh devotes considerable energy to bashing feminists and sluts, sometimes at the same time. In a recent post, she attempted to spell out the economic costs of sluttery. This diagram was the result.
Even Walsh seemed to realize that it was a bit of a turd, and she offered it to her readers with a sort of apology:
I’m not an economist; this is really more of an exercise in common sense, as well as a work in progress.
No, you’re not. No it isn’t. And that’s no excuse. Essentially, Walsh just made up some bullshit, drew lines between different parts of the bullshit, and pretended it all made sense. There are so many things wrong with her flow chart that, as was the case with that Venn diagram above, I don’t know where to start. Graphically, it’s obviously a disaster.
From Hooking Up Smart. Click on this pic to see the full chart. You really need to.
And when you look at the, er, content of the diagram, it’s equally befuddling. Apparently the only possible results of a pregnancy that results from a “casual sexual relationship” being carried to term are “dropping out of school,” “promiscuity,” “substance abuse,” “violence,” and “crime,” followed closely by “prison,” then “EVENTUAL ECONOMIC STAGNATION!!!!!!!!!!” (And yes, she did use ten exclamation points.)
But my favorite bit of the diagram is the question “was sex consensual?” If it’s not, watch out! Someone might have to go to court! (For some reason she forgets to draw the requisite line to “prison,” perhaps because it is so rare for rapists to actually serve time?)
Here’s the thing, Ms. Walsh: sex that isn’t consensual is no longer an example of a “casual sexual relationship.” Sex that is not consensual is rape. Just as boxing that is not consensual is battery.
Walsh knows all this, of course. It’s just odd that in this diagram she seems to consider the supposedly dire consequences of “promiscuity” as far worse – for individuals and for society – as the consequences of rape.
She might want to make a few adjustments before she puts forth her next version of that chart.A better solution would be to simply delete it from her computer and pretend it never happened. That’s what I’m doing with my Venn diagram.
