Further Thoughts on Moral Agency

While discussing Dalrock‘s latest post concerning “Duck pickin’ women“, I was taken to task by GKChesteron for inaccurately stating that in the prior century (and earlier) women tended on average to marry in their late teens. He correctly pointed out that the early twenties was the median age for marriage in the US. At least, that is what the US Census Bureau indicates. The bureau gives the median (not mean) age as 21.6 for females for age of marriage, and 25.1 for men, in the year 1910 (about a hundred years ago).

The discussion of age of marriage started with this comment by Sunshinemary:

I mentioned this in a thread last week, but by the time they turn 18 and are old enough to marry, 58% of girls are already sexually active, and by 19 that jumps to 70.1% – with all that this entails in terms of disease transmission, potential alpha-widowhood, accidental pregnancies, and the like. So, even though he sounds extreme to suggest that girls might marry in their late teens, there is some wisdom in his words.

She followed that up with this comment:

Yes, I have learned not to mention that I want to marry my girls off by 20. The shocked looks on people’s faces…

But this really goes with what donalgraeme and I have both written about regarding young women and moral agency (or lack thereof) in the presence of an alpha male.

Then she linked to my post on moral agency in women, which itself was a copy of an earlier post on her old site.

I then expressed my curiosity about how the out-of-wedlock birthrate was so low in that US during that time period (only about 1.5% for whites in 1920 according to this source), especially given fact that contraceptives and abortion were not easily available. Digging around, I found it was probably at least somewhat attributable to the overall low rates of pre-marital sex in the United States during that period. I have only begun to dig into the goldmine of information that is this study on changing sexual mores, but so far it has been illuminating. It reports only a 6% premarital sex rate among American women by age 19, or less than 10% of what it is now.

Even though the median age of marriage for women was in the early twenties, the rate of premarital sex and out-of-wedlock births was low. How did this get achieved? Well, CK Chesteron supplied some helpful theories:

1.) Familial involvement prevented a lot of tumbling
2.) Separate work areas did two things
a.) Reduced opportunity
b.) And reduced pheromone based affections <—- this right here is HUGE
3.) Per the earlier thread bastards only existed where the parents _never_ married. We know for example that the pilgrims (as leftist are wont to tell) had a lot of “shotgun” marriages where the child was born less than nine months after the marriage. But the couple in question _married_ and the offspring was therefore considered legitimate.

All of them are fairly sound, especially point 2. You see, when you put young men and young women together, and they aren’t adequately supervised, sex will happen. Its pretty much guaranteed. This was something we understood a century ago, but is now forgotten amongst the Churchians. The results:

The last one hundred years have witnessed a revolution in sexual behavior. In 1900, only 6% of U.S. women would have engaged in premarital sex by age 19. see Figure 1 (all data sources are discussed in the Appendix). Now, 75% have experienced this. Public acceptance of this practice reacted with delay. Only 15% of women in 1968 had a permissive attitude toward premarital sex. At the time, though, about 40% of 19 year-old females had experienced it. The number with a permissive attitude had jumped to 45% by 1983, a time when 73% of 19 year olds were sexually experienced.

They fail to understand that you can’t just send young men and (especially) young women out into the world, unmarried, and expect them to easily resist sexual sins. A century ago those young women, before they were married, were not let loose into the world. Nearly all of them would have been staying with their family, and would have had few opportunities to be waylaid by temptation. Quoting from that study again:

The idea is that young adults will act in their own best interest when deciding to engage in premarital sex. They will weigh the benefits from the joy of sex against its cost, the possibility of having an out-of-wedlock birth. An out-of-wedlock birth has many potential costs for a young woman: it may reduce her educational and job opportunities; it may hurt her mating prospects on the marriage market; she may feel shame or stigma. Over time the odds of becoming pregnant (the failure rate) from premarital sex have declined, due to the facts that contraception has improved, and more teens are using some method. Figure 2. The cost of engaging in premarital sex fell, as a result. This leads to the paradoxical situation where, despite the fact that the efficacy of contraception has increased, so has the number of out-of-wedlock births.

Put another way, the environment matters. When the cost of sex is cheap, young adults will pursue it. Without a great deal of self-control, premarital sex is going to happen, and young adults are not known for their self-control. And even self-control might not be enough. I doubt that a hundred years ago it was only the cost of sex which made it rare; parents almost certainly took steps to protect their daughters. While I am sure that the study is worth another post or two, there does seem to be a simple lesson to be learned from it: In an age where the cost of sex is cheap, the only way to keep your daughters from engaging in premarital sex is to keep them away from men or for them to marry early.

Update: Sunshinemary has her own thoughts on early marriage here.

What is Love?

The subject of Love has been on my mind lately, largely inspired by a couple of posts over at Dalrock‘s place. The first, Lovestruck, discusses the changes over the past few decades in our understanding of love and the role that it plays in marriage. The money quotes:

While there is much truth to this, it isn’t entirely correct. There is a new sexual morality which modern Christians and non Christians alike have embraced in the place of biblical marriage, and it isn’t centered around overt hedonism.  The new sexual morality is centered around romantic love.

…

What nearly all modern Christians have done is place romantic love above marriage.  Instead of seeing marriage as the moral context to pursue romantic love and sex, romantic love is now seen as the moral place to experience sex and marriage.  This inversion is subtle enough that no one seems to have noticed, but if you look for it you will see it everywhere.

As others have noted, this shift, while hardly noticed, is seismic in its implications. Dalrock gave us a glimpse with just how perverse and grandiose this shift is with this next post, But We Were in Love! There is so much wrong contained in the post I can’t begin to scratch the surface with a single quote, but here is the one that I found most egregious.

My bible is a book about love. Love is the highest and most important commandment I find when I read it with an open mind. Intimacy and sex is one (of many!) ways we express our love. I do not think that love among adult consenting human beings, can ever be a sin. This is my understanding.

Worst of all is that so many of the commentators at the site Dalrock linked to claimed to be Christians. As I remarked in a comment:

Whatever it is that they are talking about, it isn’t Christianity. Some form of paganism, I’m just not sure which.

I haven’t thought up a better explanation yet, although some other commentators suggested a modern remake of an ancient fertility goddess cult. Whatever the nature of their current faith, it is not Christian.

Central to this perversion of Christian teaching is the idea of love as a feeling, rather than an action. Unfortunately, feelings are temporary, transitive things. They come and they go. But Paul reminds us in 1 Corinthians that Love is patient, Love is kind. In short, love is not a feeling. But that is exactly what “Romantic Love” is all about, feelings. Is it no wonder then, when western cultures teaches us to arduously pursue romantic love in our lives, that the divorce rate has skyrocketed? The song that carries the same name as this post is rather informative on the matter:

The lyrics, which can be found here, are illuminating. It is a full on immersion with Blue Pill untruths. A sample:

I want no other, no other lover
This is your life, our time
When we are together, I need you forever

The protagonist of the song is demonstrating low value, principally in the form of “oneitis.” He is showing almost no Alpha attributes what so ever, and it should come as no surprise that his lover has deserted him. He can’t understand why she has left him:

Oh, I don’t know, what can I do

What else can I say, it’s up to you

For those of us familiar with the Red Pill, we know what is wrong. His low-status antics have convinced her that he is low value. Women are hypergamous, they seek the highest status male available to them.  This hypergamy, driven by base instinct, affects how they feel. Which means it is really easy for women to fall in love, and for them to fall out of love. Men are only somewhat better. All of which is why Christians are to understand love not as feelings, but as actions. We love someone not by feeling something for them, but by doing something for them. For a better understanding of Love, try this post by Loki. I will probably update this post as I think of or find better examples.

Winnowing the Weak

In discussing the nature and effects of sexual harassment laws over at Sunshinemary’s site, Rollo Tomassi plugged a link to a post of his concerning how people react to a woman abusing a man in public. Reading through his post, one particular paragraph caught my eye:

In the manosphere a lot has been made in comparison about an alpha / beta dynamic in human behavior, but I think in focusing on similarities in primate social structures we neglect to see the pack mentality that is also prevalent in human nature. One of my passions is reconditioning retired racing Greyhounds. There is a peculiarity of this otherwise gentle breed in that they are prone to viciously kill other Greys who display behavioral cues that imply weakness, pain or disability. When an injured Grey yelps or cries from pain on the race track (or in a group setting) it’s not usually the broken leg that kills the dog, it’s the other 7 dogs piling on to tear it apart. This behavior takes a lot of people by surprise because it’s entirely incongruent with the nature of one of the most passive breeds of dog, but in their primal past a yelping dog could give the pack away to prey or otherwise endanger the collective. That yelping became the trigger cue for killing that member of the pack. It may have been a species survival trait in the evolutionary past, but now it’s a liability for the animal.

That inspired me to leave this comment over at SSM’s site:

Interestingly enough, it is women more than men who seek to tear down the weak members of the pack (non-Alpha men). Women despise weak men in a visceral way. The Nuclear Rejection is a perfect example of this. I theorized recently that maybe the nuclear rejection was a form of fitness test, but as others (especially SSM) made clear, that was not the case. Rather, it was just the most obvious indicator that women are repulsed by weak men, even hate them.

Since most sexual harassment laws only punish “unwanted” male sexual attention, they are the perfect example of the Feminine Imperative in action: women manipulating social systems to “protect” them from weak, unworthy, “Beta” (I don’t especially like the term, but that is what people use) men, while helping said women at the same time identify worthy, masculine “Alpha” men.

This ties in nicely with my earlier post, which I referenced in the comment,  concerning the nature of nuclear rejections. Perhaps a Nuclear Rejection is not merely an effort to, as Deti put it:

… to cause the man never, ever, ever, ever to even think about her ever again.

Perhaps it is instead an effort by the woman to signal to the rest of the pack that there is a male who is weak that needs to be “weeded from the whole.” In that sense, maybe sexual harassment laws serve, as their real purpose, as a means to “weed out” unworthy males from society in order to leave women with only “worthy” Alpha males. Others in the manosphere have speculated that feminism was an effort by women to associate themselves in close proximity with high-value men. Sexual harassment laws are the other side of the coin: to winnow the weak males out of the job market and allow women to focus their efforts on top tier Alpha men without distraction from unworthy men.

Frame Control

An interesting debate arose over at SunshineMary’s site (a not uncommon occurrence), concerning Christian dating and courtship. I expressed my view that two principal questions were behind the debate:

How does a man maintain sexual attraction with a woman without sexually escalating?

and…

How does a chaste man seeking a chaste woman express that he is chaste without lowering his attractiveness in the eyes of the woman[?]

Several very good answers were supplied by fellow commentators. Cail Corishev chimed in:

The bottom line is that he has to bump up his alpha in other areas to compensate for the fact that he’s not dominating her sexually. Fortunately, a guy doesn’t have to be 100% alpha in all areas to be attractive. Height and fitness are alpha qualities, but a short, fat guy can attract women if he compensates in other areas, such as being the life of the party or having dominant body language.

as did Keoni Galt:

A man determined to remain chaste until marriage should escalate to the point where he has determined he is morally bound by his belief and faith and go no further. (For most, that would be kissing, hugging, holding hands…).

If stopping at 2nd or 3rd base makes her lose attraction and interest in him (which was vR’s regular complaints about all the EAP’s he was dating), then she has proven herself unworthy of his commitment.

and a few others as well.

Overall, these are excellent pieces of advice, and the two quoted comments in particular are important reminders about major Red Pill truths. Keoni’s full comment references that excellent advice of having an abundance mentality, that is, never succumbing to the belief that there is only one woman out there for you. It is simply a good approach to take in life in general, like many other Red Pill concepts.

Cail’s comment comes very close to my own thoughts on the subject. I have covered the subject of male attractiveness before, and key amongst the many attributes is that of Power. In general manosphere parlance this is often referred to as Frame. A dominant masculine frame is essential to any successful interaction with women, no matter whether you are aiming for a ONS or hoping to court a young lady in pursuit of marriage.

“How does a man maintain sexual attraction with a woman without sexually escalating?”

My question, as Keoni pointed out, was poorly worded. Rather than asking how to maintain sexual attraction without sexually escalating, it should have asked how a man can maintain attraction without escalating to sex itself. I think the answer is measured escalation, done in such a way as to always leaving the woman wanting more, but never putting yourself in a position where the woman clearly expects sex and it seems like you are backing down. Proper frame is key here; you must always appear in control. That sense of cool, composed confidence is supremely masculine, and is very similar to the detached aloofness that Roissy advocates. As long as you have that going for you, you should be able to control the interaction such that it never seems like you are afraid of sex. If the woman herself broaches the subject, a mysterious air is what I would advocate. Don’t make your intentions clear if you can help it. However, if the woman tries to place you on the spot, as a form of fitness test, it is possible to still escape gracefully. When she asks, say “No”, but with a mischievous smile that makes it seem as though you are hiding something. Then, when she asks why you aren’t interested in having sex with her, you respond like this: Look around suspiciously, then if possible slowly circle around her, maintaining eye contact for as long as possible, and move in close and whisper in her ear… “The best part of being a Man is never having to explain yourself.” Then quickly disengage. This will pique her curiosity and provide that emotional thrill-ride which women adore. If that doesn’t satisfy her, then Keoni’s advice to NEXT her is solid.

How does a chaste man seeking a chaste woman express that he is chaste without lowering his attractiveness in the eyes of the woman[?]

An easier question to answer, I think. While you shouldn’t lie, it isn’t necessarily something you should volunteer about yourself until after you have established yourself in her eyes. Once again, maintaining a mysterious air is probably the best solution. If she presses, or the subject comes up, then the key is to make it about your worth as a man. Make it clear that you as a man are discriminating, and that only a woman who is worthy can earn the right to experience that part of your masculinity. Its all about value: you must express your high value as much as possible, so that the woman’s natural hypergamous instincts will treat your supposed admission not as a sign of masculine weakness, but as a marker of high status.

A Fitness Test of Mass Destruction?

If you have been around the Christian manosphere a while, you have probably come across a man who mentions that he was the target/victim of a “nuclear rejection” in the past. For those unfamiliar with the term, a nuclear rejection is when a woman rejects a man’s expression of interest in her (asking her out on a date, for example) in a loud, dramatic and attention-gathering manner. Not only does it involves a rejection, but it is accompanied by her best efforts to belittle and humiliate the man in front of all witnesses. The woman is essentially trying to annihilate the man publicly, hence the use of the word nuclear.

While I have never been on the receiving end of one, I can image it would be something of a traumatic experience. Now that some time has passed since I first found the Red Pill, I have been thinking over why women use nuclear rejections. Why bother, after all? If the man is unworthy, why not just say no as quickly as possible and leave? I have a theory now that a nuclear rejection is more than just a rejection on steroids. I think there is something else going on. Badger has some theories of his own, but I have a different idea: I think think that a nuclear rejection might in fact be a form of fitness or “shit” test.

When a woman starts into a nuclear rejection, she is launching the ultimate fitness test against the guy. Possibly due to her past experiences with him, or the way that he is approaching her, or the general setting, but she finds his masculinity lacking and him utterly unattractive. Whatever the cause, she is subconsciously giving him an opportunity to beat this test and force her to re-evaluate him as a potential mate. Perhaps his abrupt interest in her causes her to respond in a defensive manner, which for women takes the form of the passive-aggressive fitness test. Since she has just been put on the spot in a big way, the sense of insecurity is greatly heightened, and her response is that much more powerful.  If this is what is happening in a nuclear rejection, then the real question is how to respond…

Another Ray of Sunshine

Apparently SunshineMary has decided to rejoin the blogging world. Her new site can be found here. Fortunately, she saved the archives from her old site and they are available there. Her opening post covers the topic of the balance of power between the sexes, and the role that Game plays in it.

It Only Takes One…

While I am not a regular reader of Roissy’s site, he does sometimes offer some truly thought provoking and insightful writing. His latest post, concerning an Alpha widow, is one such example. While it is full of snark (as usual), he gives an excellent analysis of a woman confessing that she is an Alpha Widow. While the full post is worth reading, the key point, as far as could be determined by the actual article on the Daily Mail, is that the woman so ruined had slept with only one man prior to her husband. Of course, she could very well be hiding more lovers, but there is no evidence to back up any such assumption. All of which means that it took only one man to ruin her as wife material forever. Just one man. One Alpha Male, to give her an emotional high which could never be replicated by a man who would actually marry her. When women complain about men wanting to marry a virgin, they need to keep in mind that we have a very good reason to do so. None of us want to become the next Neville.

An Analysis of Human Sexual Strategies- Part 3: The Present Day

This is Part 3 of my series on Human Sexual Strategies and Socio-Sexual interactions. Part 1 covered what human socio-sexual behavior would look like in the state of nature, that is, without any set of rules or guidelines (culture or civilization) to govern it. Part 2 covered the system of “Hard” or Lifetime Monogamy, and why it didn’t always develop, why it took longer to develop than would seem logical, and how female sexual strategies played into this. Part 3 covers the changes in socio-sexual interactions in the last few decades, and tries to explain what is really happening.

The End of “Hard” Monogamy

The last few decades have seen the decline of Hard Monogamy in the West. Whether you call it traditional marriage or Marriage 1.0, it is in severe decline. Manosphere giant Dalrock has covered the decline of marriage numerous times. Ballista over at Society of Phineas also devotes a considerable amount of effort detailing the vast problems with marriage in the west.

So what, exactly, has occurred in the last few decades which caused such an abrupt change? No fault divorce is the most prominent alteration in the marriage landscape, because a more accurate name for it is “unilateral” divorce. When any single party to a marriage can end it on a whim, then it can no longer be considered “Hard” Monogamy. Instead, it becomes yet another version of soft or serial monogamy, but with a (temporary) stamp of moral approval. The removal of the social stigma from divorce is another factor.  The perverse incentives for a woman to divorce, based on child support laws and other aspects of the Family Court system also play a role. Then there is the general decline in Alpha traits in men in the west, leaving  them less attractive to women. When you combine that lack of attractiveness with incentives to divorce and reduced costs, it is only natural that many women will bolt. Lastly, women don’t need individual men to provide for them or protect them anymore. The State can provide protection, and the job market is such that many women can find jobs to provide for themselves and any children they might have. Men are simply less useful to a woman than they used to be. Hardly surprising then, that women are more likely to ditch them.

Where are we now?

This leads to the point of the post: where are we now? My theory is that we are seeing a reversion back to the state of nature in Western Civilization.

Marriage 1.0 represented a compromise between men that helped ensure that nearly all men could gain sexual access to a woman. However, women and top-tier men did not benefit from the system, and so have cause to see it ended. The top-tier men want sexual access to as many women as they can, while women want sexual access to the top-tier men. For men, hard monogamy got in their way. For women, the problem was that they needed an individual man to provide for them and protect them. They had to play be the rules of lifetime monogamy to get that. If they didn’t, then they were shamed and shunned, and forced into the far corners of society, finding what work they could.  This part was critical, because shaming men doesn’t work (because it only takes a small number of men to service a large number of women). Then along came regular police forces, feminism and sexual liberation.

Now a woman no longer needs an individual man for protection. A woman is able to get a job and provide for herself and any children she has. Or she could get the state to help out in the form of welfare. And the social stigma of pre-marital sex is gone as well. We moved from this:

To an organization of society where most good looking females chase after the smaller percentage of top-tier men they find attractive.  This is the hook-up culture, where many women spend their youth and beauty (not to mention give up their virtue) in pursuit of men who will never marry them. Instead, they end up as part of a “soft harem” which a man juggles as he sees fit (or spins as plates, if you prefer). The rest of the men are forced to compete over what is left, which is mainly women of a much lower SMV rank themselves. This fact is partly why so few women have a problem with the hook-up culture, because it benefits all of them to some degree. It ends up looking like this:

Which is exactly what human socio-sexual behaviors look like in the state of nature. Hard Monogamy was a social construct, and like everything society builds, it can be destroyed. And that is exactly what has been happening in the last few decades. Stone by stone it is being dismantled, until society finds itself at the same point where it began. Most women don’t have a problem with this, because they end up with sexual access to men of a higher SMV than they would get in a system based on lifetime monogamy. If they rode the carousel, once their looks fade with age and they are good and ready, they can settle down with a man with a SMV closer to their own. If they didn’t, well they can still settle for a man when they are good and ready.

To understand where western civilization is going, it isn’t necessary to look into the future. Just look to the past, and you will see exactly where we will end up.