Making the Music Stop

Background

In the comments following my “Woe is Me” post titled All Alone in the Dark, Sunshinemary (honestly, I’m not picking on you, its just that your comments make for great blog fodder) left this comment:

I really, really think men should refuse to marry non-virgins. Women are not total idiots. If they realize that no one will marry unchaste women, they’ll close their legs pretty quick.

While I think that this will help, to some degree, I don’t believe that it will be a complete solution. In my reply I said that:

I’m not really convinced this is the case. As I’ve argued before, I think that if you give women a choice between sex with hot men and no marriage on the one hand, and sex with only one man (who may or may not be hot) in marriage on the other hand, that many, many women will choose the first option. Whether it is their true nature, or the inexperience of youth, or whatever cause, many will take that path. Enough that you will end up with a large number of women outside the marriage pool. And far more men inside the pool who now have no marriage partner available.

Let me explain what I meant. If you give women the choice of marriage where they must be a virgin, or no marriage and they can pursue sex to their heart’s desire, a large percentage of women will choose to pursue “free” sex. How many? It is tough to say. But I believe that the percentage of women who choose that path will be greater than the percentage of men who choose that path. In part this is because the percent of men who can eschew marriage and still get regular sex is much smaller than the percent of women who are attractive to those men.

While no one can agree on a single number, a rough estimate that is widely accepted is that about 20% of men are found to be attractive to women. So let us take a sample of 200 youths, 100 men and 100 women. About 20 of the men are considered attractive to the women by virtue of their LAMPS factors. Some are better looking, some are more athletic, some might have inherited money or come from a respectable family, and a few just have a boatload of charisma. Now, depending on who you ask, between 40 to 60% of the women will be considered attractive (or at least, not unattractive). That means that 40 to 60 women will be attractive (or at least, not ugly). For the sake of this hypothetical, lets assume that half of each attractive cohort decides to forgo marriage, and that we split the attractive female cohort to the right side of the curve, or 50 women. That leaves us with 10 men and 25 women who eschew marriage. They have all the sex they want, and everyone else waits for marriage. Unfortunately, that leaves us with 90 men who want to marry, and only 75 women (of course, the 10 men enjoying the 25 women on the carousel could always decide to marry later, making things even worse). Fifteen men cannot marry because there aren’t enough eligible women. Given that skilled “players” can spin several plates at once (that is, to maintain a harem of sorts), a small number of men can claim a much larger number of women. Thus, there will still be men who cannot marry because there aren’t sufficient marriageable women for them.

More troublesome though, is whether women even want to marry. Dalrock has been exposing for years now how the ideal female sexual strategy is not life-time monogamy (marriage), but instead serial monogamy. If we give women the choice between marriage as virgins or a single life with the possibility of unlimited sexual access to alpha males, we run the risk of women choosing en masse to follow their natural sexual strategy. In the past women were very much supportive of marriage because it was highly beneficial to women and the costs of avoiding marriage were great. Remember, women have three primary impulses which drive their behavior:

1) Have sex with the most attractive man possible (in order to have his children)  [What Deti refers to as the Female Prime Directive]

2) Secure Provision

3) Secure Protection

Those three impulses are still with us, but our civilization is very different from what it was, say, two centuries ago. Back then, in order to secure both protection and provision, women had to get married. A woman’s husband would be the source of those things. She did her best to satisfy the first impulse by marrying the best man she could. Contrast this with today. Nowadays, the State provides Protection to women, and the cost is paid by the taxpayers, not by an immediate figure in her life. In fact, in many places because of gun controls laws, men are much less able to protect their wives and children then they were even a hundred years ago. Furthermore, Provision is much easier to acquire in the present age then in the past, when a woman might have been able to support herself, but would have trouble supporting children. Thanks to changes in labor laws and the labor market, in many cases women don’t need the help of a man to support themselves and children. And even if they can’t do it all by themselves, the State is always willing to lend a hand.

With both the third and second impulses satisfied without the need of a man (husband), that leaves women with just their first impulse. Unless a woman is attractive enough to snag one of the top-tier, high-value, attractive men for herself in marriage, then marriage means that she will be stuck with an unattractive man for her whole life. But why would she want that? She doesn’t need him to protect her, or to provide for her, after all. Marriage is mostly a status marker these days, a valuable one, but still just a status marker. All of which means that for many women, they may not feel compelled to seek marriage. Instead, they will ride the carousel with whatever attractive men decide to take part in it. More is needed than just making marriage for the chaste.

What will it take?

Sunshinemary’s idea is a good start, but I think more is needed to really end the carousel, or at least, to cut down on the number of women riding it. So what are some potential ways to stop the music, and restore balance to the SMP/MMP? Here are a few:

1) Convince men to only marry chaste women. Sunshinemary’s original idea is still helpful, as it will motivate those women for whom marriage is a status marker.

2) Reduce or eliminate the massive amount of state support to unmarried women with children. Single mothers receive a lot of government support, and since the taxpayers ultimately support this, it means that single mothers are able to draw provision from multiple men at once, not just a single man. If this support were to be curtailed, there would be some initial hardships, but women would be forced to adjust their behavior accordingly.

3) Encourage early marriage. The truth is that Christians who don’t promote young marriage don’t actually care about chastity. The longer that women are single adults, the greater the chances of them becoming sexually active and joining the carousel.

4) Slut Shame. That is right, we need to start ostracizing women who take part in that culture once again. While it may seem cruel, in the long run it will be beneficial to women by discouraging them from taking part in a lifestyle that trashes their ability to bond with a future husband.  While the idea of “the ends justify the means” is oftentimes used for ill purpose, the consequences of the carousel are grave enough that such tactics are important.

5) Restore Masculinity to its proper place. Women despise weakness in men. Unfortunately, our society has done its best to emasculate men. This is especially prevalent among Christians. If we want women to consider marrying, especially marrying young, we need to stop making men unattractive to women.

Conclusion

The five steps mentioned above are just a few of the steps we can take to fight against the carousel and our depraved culture. They will not be easy steps to take; feminists and their White Knight supporters are sure to actively resist. However, I am not one to just sit by and watch the world collapse all around us. On the Day of Judgment, I want to be able to stand before the LORD and tell Him that I did my best, that I tried my hardest, and that I put all of my talents to good use.

If anyone else has any additional ideas on how we can turn around the culture and stop the music for good, feel free to leave them below in the comments. I will add them to this post as time permits.