Alpha Mail: Women in science

What really happens when women study science:
Practicing Engineer for 20 years. Georgia Tech Grad.  Thinking back on Women in Science I have known:

Case #1 : Ph.D. in Physics which took 11 years including undergrad.....lasted nearly 1 year in Industry, now a happy housewife with 2 kids. Husband is a productive scientist. She's smart but was miserable for 11 years + the 1 year of productive work she did.

Case #2: Masters Degree from Georgia Tech in Industrial Engineering. Worked in Industry for 4 years i.e. less time than she was in school, now a House Wife with 3 kids.

Case #3 Super Smart Lesbian. Ph.D. Physics....Serial Entrepreneur....multi-millionairess...Briefly became Undersecretary of Energy....Big shot director of multiple universities...on the board of several large corps....wonderful person, gifted teacher.

Case #4 My Old Boss....Ph.D. Physics....~10 years developing high tech before becoming a Six Sigma Black Belt...which is some sort of a management fad....very high income...no kids...had a cat but had it put to sleep when it interfered with her lifestyle.

Case #5.....Ph.D. Physics....Member of JASON Advisory Group....Mother, world famous scientist and pioneer...wonderful person....Mover and Shaker...

Case #6 Ph.D Physics...10 years to get degree lasted 2 years in Industry 2 years in Academia...now a housewife...

Case #7 M.S. Biology....married to a drug addict....underpaid and overworked...only breadwinner supporting worthless husband and 2 kids.

Case #8 Ph.D. Physics.....11 years of college....Initially burned out after 2 years of Industry but returned and is working as a productive scientist....She has dogs instead of children....

This might be a useful list to show both young men and women who have it in their heads that one's destiny is determined by one's academic credentials.  The fact is that MOST women who obtain STEM degrees, and more than a few men, will not remain in any scientific or engineering field for long.

This is particularly worth noting for young women who think they are not going to have families due to what are most likely nonexistent careers in science and engineering.

The hen-peckee's dilemma

Dr. Helen points out that although a scientific study may have determined hen-pecking to be counterproductive, there isn't much that the man can do about it under the present legal regime:

Yes, hen-pecking doesn’t work and men are resentful but in today’s modern marriage, what is he to do? If he raises his voice, he might be charged with domestic abuse, he doesn’t want to get mad because he might lose control which society frowns on and finally, if the wife wants to fight back, she has the force of the state, the legal system, and the culture on her side. He has little recourse.

And some wonder why men are less than entirely enthusiastic about entering a state of hen-pecked matrimony... although I suppose a hen-pecked husband could always slip his wife the relevant copy of Psychology Today.  She might not trust the church or 6,000 years of recorded human history, but she can hardly deny science, right?

After all, studies show.

I have to admit, it is remarkable how often both men and women stick religiously to intra-relationship tactics that haven't ever worked before, presumably under the mistaken impression that just one more time is going to do the trick.

It's your fault she's old and dried-up

See, if you bastards simply stop being attracted to slender young women with large, firm, breasts, she wouldn't be chopping her hair off and going through hot flashes.  Is there no end to the limit of male evil?

Women go through menopause because men have consistently preferred younger women in recent evolutionary history, according to a study published June 13 in the journal PLOS Computational Biology. Thus, menopause is not evolutionarily advantageous and may be the result of a series of random, harmful mutations that accumulated in women but weren't acted on by evolution because the women had already reproduced by the time the mutations affected them.

It may be because it might possibly perhaps have been... science!  Color me dubious.  Steve Sailer may need to expand his Law of Female Journalism to include scientific studies.

The most heartfelt articles by female journalists tend to be demands that social values be overturned in order that, Come the Revolution, the journalist herself will be considered hotter-looking.

A right to her own facts

Demolished, for varying degrees of demolished... and methodical. I know some people like Fox's Megyn Kelly, but I've always considered her to be overrated and little more than a high-functioning feminist.  She's the classic example of the credentialed midwit who has been told too many times that she's brilliant, as evidenced by her supposed "demolition" of Erick Erickson and Lou Dobbs concerning the bad news about female breadwinners:

Megyn Kelly methodically tore fellow Fox News pundits Erick Erickson and Lou Dobbs to shreds on Friday for their instantly infamous comments about women in the workplace.

Both men had a near meltdown about a study which showed that more women than ever were the sole or primary breadwinners in their households. They agreed that it signalled a terrible new trend for civilization itself. Erickson even brought the animal kingdom up, saying, "When you look at biology, look at the natural world, the roles of a male and a female in society, and other animals, the male typically is the dominant role."

When critics, including Fox News' own Greta Van Susteren, pounced, Erickson doubled down on his radio show and in a blog post on Red State.

Kelly was loaded for bear when Dobbs and Erickson joined her on her Friday show, and she let both men have it.....

"What makes you dominant and me submissive and who died and made you scientist-in-chief?" was her first question to Erickson. Try as he might, he failed to convince her.

When he said that many in the Pew study agreed with his discomfort about the role of women, she shot back, "Just because you have people who agree with you doesn't mean it's not offensive." Eventually, she let loose with a harsh monologue:

 "I didn't like what you wrote one bit. To me you sound like somebody who's judging and then wants to come out and say 'I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, and now let me judge judge judge, and by the way it's science it's science it's science it's fact fact fact fact. Well, I have a whole list of studies saying your science is wrong and your facts are wrong.'"

Kelly did what women usually do when forced to confront a reality they find distasteful: claim that she has a right to her own facts and her own reality. Kelly didn't have "a whole list of studies" to defend her position, she simply lied in the knowledge that no one was going to be permitted to call her on her false claim.  The idea that society cannot survive too many female breadwinners may be offensive, but neither societies nor individuals that find reality offensive tend to survive very long.

30 percent of women are sexually dysfunctional

Yet another aspect of intersexual relations to keep in mind with regards to the increased male tendency to avoid marriage.  There is a very good chance she will not always be as sexually interested in you as she is at the start.

Lack of lust, when it creates emotional distress, meets the psychiatric profession’s clinical criteria for H.S.D.D., or hypoactive sexual-desire disorder. Researchers have set its prevalence among women between the ages of about 20 and 60 at between 10 and 15 percent. When you count the women who don’t quite meet the elaborate clinical threshold, the rate rises to around 30 percent.

What is worse is that this doesn't even count the women with a lack of sexual desire that doesn't create emotional distress for them.  However, it is unlikely that the pharmaceutical industry will be able to provide the answer; even if they do manage to artificially provide a sexual picker-upper, the potential for disastrous consequences should be obvious.

Game, and specifically Dread Game, are much more likely to be successful for men faced with sexually avoidant women.  Consider this aspect of the connection between relationship length and the decrease of female attraction for their husband or long-term male partner.

All scientists really know is that the disparity in desire exists, at least after a relationship has lasted a while. Dietrich Klusmann, a psychologist at the University of Hamburg-Eppendorf in Germany, has provided a glimpse into the bedrooms of longtime couples. His surveys, involving a total of almost 2,500 subjects, comprise one of the few systematic comparisons of female and male desire at progressive stages of committed relationships. He shows women and men in new relationships reporting, on average, more or less equal lust for each other. But for women who’ve been with their partners between one and four years, a dive begins — and continues, leaving male desire far higher. (Within this plunge, there is a notable pattern: over time, women who don’t live with their partners retain their desire much more than women who do.) 

It is very clear that attempts "to reach through the invisible barriers" erected by sexually avoidant women will not work.  Closeness and intimacy is what is turning them off.  Therefore, to increase sexual desire in a long-time female partner who has become sexually dysfunctional, a man will have to engage in his own avoidant behavior.  This doesn't mean it is necessary to go out and have an affair, only that it is necessary to create space in the relationship and induce an amount of fear in the woman.

Go on more business trips and don't bother calling in.  Go to Vegas or Bangkok with your friends. Start living more like the single man you once were and who once attracted her.  Don't be always available or always at her beck and call.  And if she starts worrying about your loyalty, don't be quick to reassure her of it.  Even if the thought of infidelity doesn't occur to you, she doesn't need to know that.  She doesn't deserve to know that because the knowledge will only kill whatever budding desire her dread is beginning to produce.

Now, it should be clear that this is not advice for most couples; the 70 percent of women who are not sexually dysfunctional and avoidant don't merit such behavior anymore than they should be taking the drugs.  But once a woman exhibits a regular pattern of going to bed early or finding various excuses to forestall sexual overtures, more serious measures are in order.

Women commit most domestic violence

Even the studies cited by feminists to blame men for domestic violence reveal as much:

Take domestic violence, for example. It is almost universally portrayed as though the perpetrators are men. Indeed, in 1989 the Canadian Journal Of Behavioural Science published the results of a survey that was celebrated as a classic exposé of ‘battered wives’, and was taken up as proof of typical male perfidy.

However, two years later the Journal acknowledged a different side to the story after the data had been re-analysed. While 10.8 per cent of the men surveyed had pushed, grabbed or thrown objects at their spouses, 12.4 per cent of women had done so too. And although 2.5 per cent of men used serious violence, so did 4.7 per cent of women.

Marilyn Kwong, who carried out the new analysis, also examined eight other studies and found the pattern was universal. Inconvenient facts had been cut out.

I would go so far as to argue that given the redefinition of sexual assault to mean "sexual contact to which express consent has not been given", women also commit the majority of sexual assaults.  I have been groped, on the chest, posterior, or genitals, without giving express consent, by at least 10x more women than I have ever touched myself.

When facing spurious feminist assertions, punch back twice as hard.  When you hear an appeal to domestic violence justifying one form or another of the Female Imperative, remind your interlocutor that as per the Canadian Journal of Behavioral Science, women commit nearly two-thirds, (65.3 percent), of serious domestic violence.

How dumb do they think we are?

To reiterate:  never, ever, ever, pay any attention to women when they give you advice about what women find attractive:

Forget flash cars, expensive restaurants and lavish bouquets - the way to impress the nation’s women is to fasten on a tool belt and get drilling. High maintenance females have voted DIY skills sexier in a man than sporting prowess and cooking capabilities.  A new study has revealed women’s top turn ons - and turn offs - when it comes to a man's skill set, taking in everything from assembling furniture and unblocking drains to scoring on the football pitch or cooking up a storm in the kitchen.

Sure. That explains how Joe the Plumber stole Irina Shayk from Cristiano Ronaldo and why you can't go to a hardware store without seeing more hot girls exposing their implants to men in tool belts than you see at a rock concert.

If this doesn't undermine the perceived legitimacy of social surveys, I don't know what will.  Men, this is how hopelessly stupid women genuinely believe you to be.  "If I dangle even the merest prospect of sex in front of him, maybe he'll put my Ikea furniture together for me."

If a woman ever tries to pull the "you know what I think is really sexy" line on you, and you not only buy it, but actually perform the supposedly sexy task, you're a delta. At best.

Science destroys itself

And scientists wonder why the public has so little confidence in them and their magic process:

Whether you adore Lena Dunham or think she's overrated, one thing seems to be in consensus: She's not drop dead gorgeous. She made a hit TV show about being average ("real"), she's constantly scrutinized for wearing not enough or nothing at all, and always has to address her looks on top of her talents.

But is Dunham really all that average, or even bad looking? Not according to science.

Beauty, it so happens, is not just a matter of personal taste but rather a matter of measurements, geometry and calculations -- all the stuff you loved in 8th grade math. That science says that Dunham is just like the rest of those Hollywood exquisites, if not even more attractive (gasp). Yes, the frequently body-shamed "Girls" maverick is scientifically better looking than "conventional" beauties Scarlett Johansson, Jennifer Lopez, Taylor Swift, Kim Kardashian, Jessica Chastain, and even Jessica Biel. 

Look, it's really not that hard.  If your hypothesis results in the conclusion that Lena Dunham is more objectively beautiful than Jessica Biel, that is not evidence that society's standards of beauty are somehow incorrect or require modification, it is evidence that YOUR HYPOTHESIS IS INCORRECT!

It's Roissy's world

The main job of social scientists appears to revolve around confirming that we're all living in it every other week:

Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health, a massive and detailed database covering 27,000 teens and young adults, she found that physical attractiveness (as rated by the person conducting the survey interview) does indeed correlate with sexual behavior--and in opposite ways for the opposite sexes:  The better-looking a man is, the more lifetime sexual partners he reports; the better-looking a woman, the fewer. Good-looking men are more likely to have had sex soon after meeting a partner; good-looking women, less likely. Good-looking women are likelier to describe their relationships as "committed"; good-looking men, less likely.

I have long pointed out that feminism is the only ideology that is less connected to observable reality than Communism.  That is why Western society, having been feminist-ridden since 1973, is unlikely to last as long as the 72 years that communism survived in the Soviet Union.

Men and women not only aren't the same, they would barely qualify as being the same species if they weren't able to breed.  Neither Game nor the results of the McClintock paper would be viable if the basic precepts of feminism were even remotely true.  If a woman asks why you're not a feminist, the correct answer is "because I don't believe in leprechauns riding unicorns down rainbows".  And if she asks why you don't think much of the intellectual capabilities of feminists, the correct answer is "Because people who structure their entire approach to life around leprechauns riding unicorns down rainbows are stupid."

That would explain the fantasies

This is a surprising and not-often reported aspect of rape that may, or may not, be related to some basic Game concepts:

This is a topic that has been discussed a great deal in the past with counselors, rape victims and other online forums. It is however still a taboo topic for Survivors to admit.  It is usually thought of as not being PC or polite and people start getting very defensive about it. Well, exploring and trying to find out the truth is not helped by closing one's eyes to things we rather not believe.

I think that the answer to the question as to why do some females orgasm during a sexual assault or rape is that all of the various explanations have some validity, but none of them tell the entire story in the case of every individual victim of the crime. First of all, orgasms in women being raped are not frequent, but they are not uncommon either. In the study you cite, about 5% to 21% of women interviewed in the studies surveyed reported having an orgasm when they were raped.  Researchers have hypothesized that the actual figure is probably a bit higher in reality due to victims being understandably embarrassed both by the rape and by having achieved an orgasm during unwanted, forced sexual relations. Around 20% seems to be a likely, real-word figure.

I think 5 percent would be remarkable.  Around 20 percent seems absolutely astonishing to me, considering that it is estimated that only 30 percent of women climax via intercourse alone.  Now, I very much doubt we'll ever get any reliable scientific data on the phenomenon, although I suppose it is remotely possible, given the current appreciation for EL James's literary adventures combined with the potential for forcibly administered pleasure, that a number of women might agree to be raped in the interest of scientific progress.  It seems even less likely that rapists just happen to regularly target the minority of women who are capable of intercourse-only climax, even though that indicates some women must be more likely to have an orgasm from rape than from consensual sex.

If that is true, this would have some astonishing implications for intersexual relations as well as the apparent reliability of the average woman's capacity for understanding the complicated intricacies of her own sexuality.  It might also explain the otherwise inexplicable popularity of certain SF writers among the female SF/F readership.

The fascinating thing, of course, is the way that those considering the phenomenon are resolutely to avoid the obvious, which is that women respond in a sexually positive manner to male dominance, including violent male dominance.  The idea that some rapists must engage in foreplay only demonstrates the intellectual panic aroused by the statistical observations. That women would respond positively to extreme sexual dominance should be no surprise, as it is very much in line with what Game Theory would logically suggest, and yet it is due to the fact that even the most experienced Game theoretician is steeped in decades of anti-scientific equalitarian propaganda.

Sexual response is a continuum, not a circle.  So, it makes sense that the more extreme the input, the more extreme the output.  Now, for the benefit of the cognitively challenged and the terminally offended, I will trouble to point out that no amount of orgasms can be used to justify rape anymore than an instinctive  mouth-watering response to chocolate justifies force-feeding someone hot fudge sundaes, but it is both gutless and pointless to play ostrich and pretend that the reported phenomenon simply does not happen.

Do you support women working?

Then, it logically follows that you also support more domestic violence.  It is Science:

Intimate partner violence is two times more likely to occur in two income households, compared to those where only one partner works, according to a new study.... The study found that more than 60 percent of women in two-income couples reported victimization, while only 30 percent of women reported victimization in cases when only the male partner was employed.

Why do you hate women?  Why?  Naturally, the researchers sail off into airy theories of female empowerment through work and concomitant male insecurity, but the fact of the matter is that if society wants to reduce domestic violence, female employment should be discouraged.

At this point, one has to seriously wonder about the sanity of anyone who actively supports encouraging women to pursue careers rather than family life.  In addition to being less likely to marry, breed, or be happy, a career will also cause a woman to die earlier, get divorced, get cheated on, have fatter, fewer, and less healthy children, and make her twice as likely to experience domestic violence.

I have the impression these statistics about the downside of female employment are seldom cited by high school guidance counselors.

Will you cheat?

Or will your partner cheat?  A neuroeconomist presents a scientific test:

My recent appearance on the Dr. Phil show prodded me to develop some simple tests for infidelity that expose the impact of this soup of chemicals. While there is no perfect test for whether a man will cheat, I will give you a list of things to look at. Most are subtle and below our conscious awareness. If enough of these factors line up, it might be time to worry.

Let's see how we do here.

1.  Resting heart rate.  +1
2.  Testosterone.  +2
3.  Movie/kids/dogs +1
4.  Public flirt +1
5.  Family +1

It would appear I'm just below the chemical cheating threshold and am therefore a reliable marital bet.  Science said so.

The easy marital health test

A small scientific study indicates a potentially reliable test for the health of a marriage, as well as a man's marital ALPHA/BETA status:

[T]he participants' commitment to and satisfaction with their relationships did not seem to change with fertility, the researchers found. But women with less sexually attractive partners seemed to feel less close to their beaus as they moved from their least fertile to most fertile period. Meanwhile, women matched with the most sexually attractive men seemed to experience the opposite effect.

"Women with the really good, stable guy felt more distant at high-fertility periods than low-fertility periods," Haselton explained in a statement. "That isn't the case with women who were mated to particularly sexually attractive men. The closeness of their relationships got a boost just prior to ovulation."

The researchers found the same trends when they repeated the experiment with 67 new participants. In this phase of the study, the researchers added a new questionnaire that had the women rate their partners' flaws, such as thoughtlessness, moodiness and childishness. Women paired with less sexually attractive guys were significantly more likely to find fault with their partners during the high-fertility period than the low-fertility period.

 In other words, if your wife is particularly sexually responsive in between her periods and gets irritable when she's getting them, she probably finds you to be sexually attractive to her and your marriage is likely in pretty good shape.  On the other hand, if your wife is at her most irritable when she isn't about to have her period, and around that time, she has an inexplicable, but dependable impulse to put on a short skirt and go out dancing with her friends on her monthly girls night out, well, there is a good chance she doesn't find you to be particularly hot stuff.

But don't worry, the researchers are careful to assure BETA married men.  The fact that she is regularly drawn to have sex with other men she finds more attractive doesn't mean that she wants to forgo the benefits of a long-term relationship with you.  It's just a pity that these mysterious urges tend to strike at her most fertile time of the month.  Perhaps, if you're lucky, the baby will even look somewhat like you.

How is that better?

A metastudy asserts that PMS doesn't affect women's mood:

Researchers working under the direction of Dr. Sarah Romans of the University of Otago in New Zealand asserted that the correlation between an impending menstrual cycle and symptoms such as mood swings is far more tenuous than previously stated, according to Time Health & Family.

“The human menstrual cycle … has historically been the focus of myth and misinformation, leading to ideas that constrain women’s activities,” authors of the study wrote. “We wished to examine one pervasive idea, that the [menstrual cycle] is a cause of negative mood, by studying the scientific literature as a whole. We briefly reviewed the history of the idea of premenstrual syndrome and undertook a systematic review of quality studies.”

In short, 85 percent of the studies did not observe what is classically known as PMS, and just over half off the studies found menstruation and mood to be related at all.... “Taken together, these studies failed to provide clear evidence in support of the existence of a specific premenstrual negative mood syndrome in the general population,” the study concluded, according to its abstract summary in Gender Medicine. “This puzzlingly widespread belief needs challenging, as it perpetuates negative concepts linking female reproduction with negative emotionality.”

So, what is everyone supposed to conclude, that women behave like irritable grizzly bears whose cubs have been stolen simply because they get off on it?  I understand that Ms Romans would like to unconstrain women's activities, which is a reasonable goal, but this would appear to be a ludicrously counterproductive means of going about it.  I mean, surely a scientist is capable of understanding that failing to find evidence of the explanatory cause does not eliminate the observed behavior.

Given the expressed motivations of the researchers, color me very dubious on this one.  Especially since a relationship found in over half the studies would tend to be evidence in support of the existence of such a relationship.

Why solipsism matters

There are a number of issues that have been raised by Susan's challenge to the concept of female solipsism and my response.  First, I'll begin with citing a comment by Dr. Jeremy at Dalrock's place:

[I]f the concept of Female Solipsism is an important one, further clarity is required. Some questions to consider:
1) What are the range of behaviors and concepts we are trying to explain and define? When one uses the term “Female Solipsism”, what specifically do they mean? What is the definition and operationalization of the term?
2) Can the behaviors/concept above be fully encompassed within a more commonly-used, already existing term? Having a full view of the behaviors involved, would a different term choice be more clear and informative to convey the set of ideas?
3) Is the desire to claim power and meaning internally for the group by coining a “unique” word, or to convey a set of ideas to those outside the group?

It's not my intention to address the follow-on questions at this point, but rather the primary one.  Is the concept of Female Solipsism an important one?  To which I answer yes, because mastery of the concept has the potential to be a tremendous aid in anticipating, understanding, and manipulating female behavior.  Consider Ian Ironwood's tremendous adventure in female solipsism, which he explored by the simple device of writing in a notebook in the presence of a number of women.

The lesson of the story is that every single aspect of the response from a group of 14 women (13 co-workers and a boss) was based on a) her solipsistic belief that I was writing about her based solely on the fact that she didn't know WHAT or WHOM I was writing about  b) her belief in the absence of evidence that my stubborn silence was proof that I was writing about her and c) the belief that every other woman in the group was conspiring against her over the imaginary book for some reason.

Read the entire thing.  It may sound absurd, but speaking as a published author, I assure you that you could easily replicate his experience in very nearly any group of women today.  And this is where the hypothesis becomes provable, as unlike Milton Friedman's ideal rate of money supply growth or anthropogenic climate change, it is easily put to the test by the individual.  I'm still working on a Solipsism Quotient test, which is designed to distinguish between the solipsistic, the narcissistic, and the less self-absorbed, but in the meantime, here is a little pop quiz that can be easily applied to the women of your aquaintance in casual conversation.

1. Bring up the evil consequences of the 19th Amendment, including the national debt, the economic crisis, and the housing bubble, to a woman.  Does she a) challenge the legitimacy of the linkage of the 19th Amendment to one of the consequences, b) agree and express her opinion that women should not be permitted to vote, c) question the practicality of overturning the amendment, or d) immediately start talking about how the prospect of not being permitted to vote makes her feel?
2.  Make critical comments about a behavioral trait that you know the woman possesses without making any reference to her.  E.g.: telling a fat woman that obesity costs the healthcare system more than $150 billion every year.  Does she a) question your data source, b) point out a flaw in your reasoning, (for example, how the system also saves money due to the shorter lifespans of the obese), c) ask if you are indirectly criticizing her, or d) immediately start explaining why she possesses that trait?

Answers in the vein of (d) indicate that the woman is probably egoistically self-absorbed to such an extent as to merit the label "solipsistic".  She literally cannot imagine that the topic does not concern her as the central subject. The angrier her reaction, the more strongly solipsistic she is.  Not all women will answer in such a manner, but I would estimate that three in every four women will.  I expect that similar male-oriented questions would get solipsistic reactions from one in five men or less.

But don't take my word for it.  Test it out in casual conversation and report your results here.  This isn't scientific methodology of the sort that will stand up to professional peer review, but it is a fundamentally scientific approach of testing the hypothesis and could prove the basis of a useful predictive model of female behavior applicable to a broad variety of intersexual scenarios.

Science names the Hamster

"Reverse Frontostriatal Connectivity" is the neurobiological term for the Rationalization Hamster:

Women and men differed in the brain mechanisms that enabled self-controlled decisions. During self-control men showed a stronger decrease in some limbic regions than women. An increased frontostriatal coupling helped men to control immediate reward desiring. Women showed the reverse frontostriatal connectivity during a ‘desire-reason dilemma’.

Translation: Men use reason to override their feelings. Women use feelings to override their reason.

This would help expain why it is difficult to utilize logic to convince a woman of anything. The more you succeed in convincing her, the more she will be inclined to amp up her feelings in order to counteract that success. Applying logic to the science, this suggests a more successful strategy would be to simply skip the logical process entirely and go straight to making an appeal to her emotions.

Sound familiar?

Study and the single standard

Susan Walsh cites a new study purporting to support the evolution of a single sexual standard:

The irony, of course, is that feminists seek the eradication of the sexual double standard to create a culture where there is no standard, no judgment, no shame for either men or women who engage in casual sex. Instead, we see an increasing move to a single standard of increased judgment for both sexes. Young people are becoming less tolerant of casual sex. According to Rachel Allison, co-author of the study from the University of Illinois at Chicago’s Department of Sociology:

"Men and women are increasingly judging each other on the same level playing field. But, gender equality and sexual liberation are not synonymous. While we’ve come a long way in terms of gender equality, it seems that a large portion of both college men and women lose respect for individuals who they believe participate in too frequent casual sexual activity."

Color me dubious. Question: how can a study which doesn’t appear to include any historical data credibly claim that “views continue to shift” or that “the traditional double standard has weakened considerably”? Moreover, how credible are the polls when we’re asked to believe that “sorority women judged men the most harshly for hooking up”? Are sorority women also the least likely to hook up? This seems rather unlikely.

Furthermore, if sorority women hook up the most, while simultaneously claiming to judge men the most harshly for hooking up, this would appear to be strong evidence in support of the core Game principle which recommends ignoring what a woman says and paying attention to what she does.

Why your old wife is still young and hot

This may help explain the "love goggles" affect that I previously mentioned concerning how men in happy marriages tend to view the physical attributes of their wives with a positive subjective bias:

According to Ramachandran, when we see someone we know, a part of our brain called the fusiform gyrus identifies the face: "That looks like mom!" That message is then sent to the amygdala, the part of our brains that activates the emotions we associate with that person. In patients experiencing Capgras, Ramachandran says, the connection between visual recognition and emotional recognition is severed. Thus the patient is left with a convincing face — "That looks like mom!" — but none of the accompanying feelings about his mother.

Ramachandran holds that we are so dependent on our emotional reactions to the world around us, that the emotional feeling "that's not my mother" wins out over the visual perception that it is. The compromise worked out by the brain is that your mother was somehow replaced, and this impostor is part of a malevolent scheme.

Ramachandran thinks there's good evidence for this explanation of Capgras, in part because of an odd quirk in his patient's behavior. When his mother calls him on the phone and he hears her voice, he instantly recognizes her. Yet if she walks in the room after that call, he is again convinced that she is an impostor.

Why? Ramachandran says that our visual system and auditory system have different connections to the amygdala, so while the auditory recognition triggers an emotional response in his patient, visual recognition does not.

In other words, a long history of positive emotions is the real world equivalent of having soft lighting, a good photographer, and a skilled Photoshop artist working on your behalf 24/7. A man who loves his wife literally cannot see her accurately or objectively without making a serious intentional effort. The same is obviously true of women, of course, but because women are less visually oriented than men, the amygdala effect is probably less important to the marriage.

This may also help explain why women leaving their husbands are so often prone to overrating themselves. Even if she's a mere four, but he sees her as a six and treats her like one thanks to the amygdala effect, she is going to be inclined to see herself that way too. But since the effect doesn't exist for any other men, she is likely to be disappointed with the reactions she receives to her newfound availability.

Bloody peasants

I note Gmac's discussion of "the Beer Shield":

The Beer Shield is a college-born social tactic that young men pick up in dive bars and house parties. It is a fallback technique akin to a security blanket that should be shamed out of men. Keeping a beer close to your chest is a sign of insecurity. It’s no different from playing with your phone in a bar. It tells the other people around you, “Hey everyone! I’m awkward and have no idea what I’m supposed to be doing with myself right now!” It signals desperation and confusion to the opposite sex. More importantly, it’s counterproductive to an approach mentality.

I would be remiss if I did not mention that there is a much more serious and underlying problem on display here. By holding a beer, by drinking beer, by even being credibly identified as a beer drinker, a man is signifying that he is an illiterate peasant, of solid, but hearty stock, the sort of man thick-waisted farm girls with red faces and ankles the size and shape of overstuffed German sausages expect to meet out behind the haystacks. Civilized men who attract beautiful women drink wine, preferably red wine, although prosecco and lambrusco are acceptable alternatives in the summer heat or on Friday night with pizza.

Women see wine drinkers as intrinsically more wealthy, handsome, and sophisticated, because they are. What cultures drink wine? The French and Italian. What cultures drink beer? The German and the English. Now ask yourself this question: towards which cultures are women more powerfully drawn? Here is a hint: neither are known for winning wars or eating sauerkraut.

The amusing thing is that the wine/beer delta is such a powerful social signifier that even if you are at a bar with a group of men and you are the only one to ask for a glass of cabernet, syrah, or pinot noir instead of a "heinie" or a "bud" - notice how even the names of the hops-related beverages are declasse - some modern version of an agricultural helot is bound to make a comment on the order of "well, la di dah". This only shows that he is cognizant of your social superiority, as well as the likelihood that you are, unlike him, wearing clean underwear.

Beer looks and smells like urine, that's why they have to chill it to zero degrees Kelvin in order to make it halfway palatable. Wine looks like blood and smells like the velvety nectar of the gods. And let's face it, women have not bought 18 bazillion masturbation fantasies about men who drink piss. As we all know, women prefer bad boys, and what does a supervillain drink in his hidden mountain lair? An ice cold Coors Light or a 1945 Chateau Mouton Rothschild? A frosty Miller Genuine Draft or a 2006 Brunello di Montalcino? To ask the question is to answer it.

But don't accept my word as law, (although in this case it would clearly be the height of reason and good sense), go forth and live the science! The next time you're out in mixed company and the men are all calling for their infantile "beerz" in order to nervously suck on what are quite clearly pacifier substitutes, remain calm and order "something red" instead. Don't play wine snob and make yourself look like an ass, if you're asked, just tell the service that whatever happens to be open will suit you nicely. If you have to choose because you find yourself at some savage, godforsaken place where the proprietor doesn't already have two or three nice bottles going, choose the merlot over the cabernet; the less expensive merlots are always more drinkable than the cheap cabs.

Don't be surprised if people look at you strangely. Men will wonder if you've come into an inheritance. Women will find themselves contemplating when you became so stylish. Attractive women whose names you do not know will attempt to press their lips against you. And in time, you, too, will learn to develop a healthy aristocratic contempt for the beer-swilling masses. My point, in case it has escaped your hops-addled mind, is that if you're utilizing the beer shield, the shield is arguably the least of your self-inflicted handicaps.

This post comes courtesy of Badger, who isn't a bad sort even if he does live in a hut and drink peasant brew.

Science plays catch-up

We needed a "scientific" study for this?

Two new studies reveal fascinating evidence that manwhores are much more attracted to promiscuous women than to less sexually available women. They don’t settle for them, they strongly prefer them. Essentially, men who are oriented toward casual sex deploy “adaptive, exploitative measures against women they perceive as vulnerable.”

First, I note that the description isn't of "manwhores", but rather, players. Susan is among those women who like to use the term as a would-be perjorative substitute in a futile attempt to convince young women that men they find attractive are not attractive, which is fine, but it's a completely inappropriate term because a manwhore is a homosexual prostitute, not a man who is sexually successful with women and is not compensated in any monetary form for the services he provides. One could make a much better case for women who provide sex after dinner dates as "womanwhores", but let's face it, that just sounds both ridiculous and redundant. Second, the concept was already covered in all the necessary detail a long time ago on Friends

JOEY: How're you doing?

RACHEL: I'm ok.

JOEY: Ooh, that bad, huh? Look, I can sense when women are depressed and vulnerable. It's one of my gifts.

However obvious, it was interesting in that it supported my contention that female intelligence is not an attraction factor for men, not even intelligent men. This is a myth that women cling to almost as strongly as men cling to the myth of male loyalty and devotion being an attraction factor for women. It's amazing, but men and women alike seem to have tremendous difficulty distinguishing what makes the opposite sex attractive from what makes an individual member of the opposite sex a wise choice as a mate. The two concepts aren't only different, they're barely even tangentially related and in some cases can be outright contradictory.