Black women and all men face similar dating environments

It’s well-known that well-educated black women tend, on average, to have far better personalities than their white counterparts, despite facing tougher odds on the dating market. On the whole, they’re an exquisite and underrated group. There are a lot of cultural reasons for this and, subjectively speaking, some aesthetic ones too, but I’m going to explore an altogether different explanation.

I had an insight, about a week ago, when I encountered this Roissy post on an OkCupid study of race and reply rate. Black women get a substantially lower reply rate than women of other races: 34.3%, as opposed to 42.1%. Among men, whites get the highest reply rate– 29.2%. In fact, the only race-pairings where women reply more often involve black women, and there’s a 6%-gap between BW -> WM (32% reply rate) and WM -> BW (38%). As this study is controlled for facial attractiveness, and OkCupid is predominantly a site for educated, upper-middle-class people, it’s unlikely that there’s a nonracial (e.g. socioeconomic) component to this. Very unfortunately, some people just seem to be nervous about dating blacks.

On a side note, it’s interesting to note the American attraction to Middle Eastern women. White men, in the US– and speaking in very broad terms– are wary of blacks and adore Middle Easterners. In Europe, whites are wary of Middle Easterners (well, specifically, Muslims) and adore black women. All this shows is that mens’ supposedly purely aesthetic tastes in women are actually quite culture-bound.

I don’t mean to trivialize the severe social injustices inflicted upon American blacks by comparing them to the relatively mild ones that American men face today, but there are similarities between what these groups face on the social and dating markets. To be feared and distrusted because of one’s physical presence is something that most blacks, and most men, have faced, and also something most white women have never directly experienced. The bastardization of feminism that has metamorphosed into outright man-hating depicts men as violent, oversexed, unattractive, and unrefined– similar to American racism’s caricature of black people.

On the dating market, women generally have more value than men (as OkCupid’s differential in reply rates shows) but this is not nearly as true of black women, who exhibit a male likelihood of receiving replies. Let’s combine this bit of data with something most men have observed. Good-looking men, usually, aren’t douchebags. Some are, but nothing about the experience of a “7” male is inherently corrupting. “Alphas” are douchebags, but those are a different set entirely; I know of plenty of seriously handsome men who have excellent personalities. Good-looking black women, as well, usually have great personalities. They’re funny, sweet, feisty, and virtuous. Among white women, it’s less common for one to be gorgeous and have a great personality. Average-looking, shy women are often very sweet, but the “bombshells” are often intolerable.

In fact, the correlations between attractiveness and personality seem to be different not only in magnitude, but in direction, for black and white women. Black women generally have better personalities as they are more beautiful, intelligent, and educated– in other words, as their “market value” climbs. White women tend to get worse as their SMV increases into the 7-10 range. Let’s explore the reason for this.

I’m going to pay homage to the crude practice of numerically rating attractiveness in order to make an assertion. The “sweet spot” of attractiveness that is most conducive to having a great personality is 6-8, for most racial/gender categories. I’ve rigorously defined these numbers (see the link) so that this represents the 72nd to 94th percentiles. This definitely seems accurate for men; most of the great guys are in this range, with men in the least desirable third being too bitter, dismal and defeated to be enjoyable company. Black women, in my estimation, are penalized half a point by the sexual market, putting this sweet spot up to 6.5-8.5 (78-97th percentiles). White women, on the other hand, get a 2-point bonus. In other words, we can expect the white women with the best personalities to be between 4-6, or the 43rd and 72nd percentiles. Beyond that 72nd-percentile mark, there is a precipitous drop. Thus, we’d expect that men within the 70-85th percentile range of sexual attractiveness to be the most unhappy, struggling to earn respect and decency from comparably attractive counterparts, often forced to choose between a great personality and a (moderately) beautiful woman, when they feel like they should have both. Indeed, this is the range of men in which the aggrieved “beta” males tend to reside.

We’re talking in aggregates here, so exceptions obviously exist. There are “9.5” white women who are not haughty, of course, and there are average-looking men and black women who are. However, I think this SMV-derived explanation of the bearing of race and gender on certain social and sexual behaviors has a lot of validity.

That said, SMV is far from the only factor. Culture is also important. Asian women (who, if the concept of “race” still exists in 50 years, will be considered “white” by then) also get a 2-point bump, but a lot of them aren’t nearly as entitled or nasty as their white counterparts. The “sweet spot” of 6.5-8.5 among black women and 4-6 among whites seems to be 4.5-7.5 among Asian women. The reasons for this come from Asian culture and values rather than SMV. But culture is complex and qualitative, and much more difficult to analyze than the crude, blunt numerical instrument of SMV.

Read Full Post »

The Spearhead: Love and Race in Modern America

Today’s post is here, at The Spearhead. An excerpt:

I approach the podium. My hands tremble slightly. Even though the atmosphere is one of support, I’m not used to speaking in front of crowds.

“My name is Cless Alvein,” I begin. (Actually, that’s my pseudonym, but let’s go with it this way for now.)

“Hi Cless!” the crowd calls back in unison. The first step to self-understanding and growth is the ability to articulate one’s predicament.

“My name is Cless Alvein, and I’m looking for love. I’m looking for a beautiful, intelligent, sweet woman to caress and cherish. I guess you could say that I’m a love-a-holic.”

Read Full Post »

Thoughts on aoefe’s “Dissonance”

Over at GirlGame, aoefe posted an essay, “Dissonance“, on the contrast of her traditional beliefs about gender and relationships against the truths (and untruths) she has learned in the Roissy-sphere. In one column, she presents what I call the “nice guy” view of relationships; in the other, she presents the most dystopian elements of the Roissy sphere. Obviously, for all of these dichotomies, the truth is somewhere in the middle. I’ll attempt to mediate these incongruities as well as I can.

1. I thought my accomplishments [as a woman] mattered vs. they are inconsequential to men. Achievements matter to men in relationships, but not in the same way they matter to society at large. Why is this? Society values devoted specialists, while in relationships, there’s a premium on well-roundedness. It’s better for one’s spouse to be modestly intelligent, good-looking, charming, and educated than it is for that person to excel at one to the detriment of others. As is a husband’s, a wife’s role is difficult and multi-faceted. She has to be a lover, a mother, a best friend, a spiritual and intellectual partner, and (when her husband is ill) a caretaker– a tough job with a wide array of responsbilities. Integrity and kindness are crucial. So are intelligence, education, ambition and beauty, but diminishing returns have already set in by the time a woman enters the top 1% for any of these. It doesn’t hurt for a woman to have a 150 IQ, but it’s not necessary.

Society, in the external sense, rewards people for being “pointy” rather than well-rounded– for reaching the apex of a narrow discipline. No one gets a promotion for being a great father, or for having a lot of hobbies. Professional athletes are not expected to be belletrists, nor are poets expected to excel on the basketball court. Obviously, there are practical limits on the extent to which one can invest all of one’s endowment into one discipline, but those who excel are often those who reach and push those limits, and they’re rarely well-rounded. This is just an inherent trade-off in life.

The female lawyer is a Roissy stock character for overblown “pointiness”– the woman who has invested the bulk of her time and emotional energy into the rigid, competitive, and rationalistic discipline of law, placing her social and inner lives on the back-burner. This is what’s rewarded (and requisite for any measure of success) in large-firm law (“biglaw”). It is not what most men want in a relationship.

Are a woman’s accomplishments treasured by men? Yes, absolutely. Skill, passion, intelligence, dedication, and artistic talent are major turn-ons. That said, while the difference between a “10” concert pianist and an “8” matter for one who aspires to the world stage, it’s just not an important factor in a relationship. Moreover, sacrificing important virtues for the sake of achievement, as is required in the most cutthroat careers (investment banking and large-firm law) makes a woman undesirable.

2. I thought confidence was attractive vs. confidence in a woman is not required. A woman’s confidence is an asset in a relationship, and a major turn-on in the bedroom. Yes, it is very attractive for a woman to confident, just as it is for her to be accomplished.

The world of “game”, however, is that of the crude sexual market. Sexual market value (SMV) is different altogether from desirability in the context of long-term relationships, to the point that there’s very little overlap. (This is one of the reasons why combat dating, casual sex, and the nightlife scene are among the worst places to look for relationships.) A woman’s SMV is based on her ability to provoke short-term, r-selective sexual desire. Intellectual, personal, and spiritual confidence– all of which matter immensely in long-term, loving relationships– have no bearing on a woman’s SMV. Even sexual confidence, although it makes a woman great in bed, does not appreciably raise her SMV. Her “market value” is largely determined by her looks, although it can be boosted via a certain bitchy social confidence that many men conflate with physical attractiveness, because they lack the self-awareness to recognize its influence.

On a related note, here’s a nasty secret about SMV. It has very little correlation, if any, to whether a person is good in bed. The casual-sex scene is focused entirely on the pursuit of social status, not great sexual experiences. In fact, most people would agree that peak sexual experiences require intimacy, trust, and love between the two partners, and are therefore completely impossible on the casual scene.

3. I thought men enjoyed curves vs. men are turned off by less than slender. We’re all different. I’d say, in general, that I prefer a curvy and slightly muscular build with a BMI around 21-22. On a 5’8 (173cm) woman, this would be 138-145 pounds (63-66kg). Muscle, curves, fat– I like it all, in moderation. My tastes differ from those of the stereotypical male in other ways: I prefer small-to-medium breasts (perky A-cups) and dark skin color. I also find small bellies– the kind that are flat when a woman is standing, but soft and slightly pudgy when she sits– irresistably sexy. We men are all different in what we like.

What’s relevant to a woman’s success on the sexual market is the ratio of the number of men who prefer her body type to the number of women who have it. About 0.5% of men prefer obese women. If only 0.25% of American women were obese, instead of over 30%, they’d be “niche” lovers in a privileged position. Very thin women are in a good position because they’re preferred by such a large percentage of men but, in my experience, many of those are not the best men, just as women who prefer six-pack abs tend to be uncultured. The men who criticize their BMI-20 girlfriends for being “too fat” tend to be jackasses in other ways– misogynists, cheaters, bad lovers, and creeps.

Also, let’s not forget that the men who are most critical of womens’ bodies are those who have very little experience with real women. Men with even modest amounts of experience know that the emotional context triumphs over minor nuances in physical appearance. The Internets harbor quite a few basement virgins with this attitude, but I wouldn’t put much stock in what they think, unless one is interested in dating men like this guy (watch 1:00 – 2:00).

4. I thought aging was natural and acceptable vs. aging is ugly you might as well die. On the sexual market, a woman’s value plummets precipitously in her early 30s but, as I’ve said before, SMV is irrelevant to a woman’s long-term desirability. Desirable men marry women in their 30s and 40s all the time. In fact, most desirable men I know in their 30s and 40s prefer a woman 2-5 years younger than they are, not 10-20.

Men’s preferences for age gaps tend to be correlated to their inexperience, and it’s easy to imagine why. I’m 26, and although maturity is much more important than age, I’d most likely prefer to be with a woman of 23-26. I have no desire to date a 20-year-old. Why? Because I have before, when I was 23. I’ve dated women of every age between 17 and 22, and I’m basically done with those ages. Most of the older men who prefer women in their late teens and early 20s, in my observation, are those who never had the chance to date attractive women when they were young. I have, and I’ve moved on.

A woman whose self-worth is tied to her sexual market value, and to a steady diet of crass male attention, “might as well die” on her 30th birthday, because these benefits are about to recede from her life forever. Women with more mature senses of self-worth generally do fine. If they take care of themselves and age well, they’re highly desired by men their own age (including, if they’re married, their husbands) for long-term relationships.

As for aging being “ugly”, I don’t think so. I know some very good-looking 80-year-olds. They aren’t sexy to a 26-year-old’s eye, but they’re still attractive people. Attractive young people tend to age into attractive older people, even though they don’t inspire carnal lust later in life. Besides, very few people are ugly, even among those who are overweight. Most people I find sexually unattractive, but I would qualify far less than 1% of people I meet as ugly.

Moreover, even beauty itself is not necessarily tied to youth or SMV. Consider Michelle Obama. She’s a stunningly beautiful person, physically and otherwise, but I certainly wouldn’t consider her a sex symbol. Her beauty is derived from her elegance, intelligence, passion, and physical comeliness– not raw sex appeal. As a 45-year-old woman, her SMV (outside of her marriage) is virtually nonexistent, but I’d be thrilled to marry a lady like her, and one who ages as well as she does; and it’s no surprise that her husband, even with the presidency and millions of options, adores her. I bet he’s faithful to her as well; if he weren’t, I’d be angry, because she’s a wonderful woman.

Most men in happy marriages remain in love with their wives, even as they age. Who minds a couple laugh lines on the face one fell in love with? They’re a reminder of times enjoyed together. On that note, shared memories and depths of intimacy achieved are not easily replaced, and keep a wife’s “marital value” buoyant, rendering what happens to her SMV utterly irrelevant.

5. I believed I had value vs. to men I have very little. You do have value, in the world of long-term relationships. If you’re in a happy marriage, your husband will adore and treasure you.

On the casual sexual marketplace, however, people are interchangeable commodities, valued and priced according to a single measure of status. Absolutely no one is exempt from this. For a woman, this is largely determined by her appearance; for a man, it’s based on his “psychosocial dominance”, or Game. People who find this immoral or appalling, such as me, are best to avoid the casual-sex market and the combat-dating racket at all costs.

It’s important to note that “Game’s” tenets are often self-confirming biases. People with such a dismal view of human nature tend to find themselves surrounded with low-quality people, and the behaviors they encounter confirm their negative stances. “Game” is calibrated toward sociosexual success with low-quality people, the reason for this being their sheer number. In truth, the quality of people is not distributed like a bell curve. It’s shaped much more like a pyramid, and those who desire lifestyles of high-frequency sexuality must target the wide but dismal base of it.

6. I was mate selective because of personality type vs. I am hypergamous due to biological drive. “Hypergamy” is a difficult word to discuss, because it means different things to different audiences. There’s good hypergamy and bad. For women to desire men for their character, intelligence, integrity, ambition, and integrity is a great form of hypergamy, and one that impels society to grow. For women to desire men based on their sociosexual dominance or because those men are desired by other females (preselection) is bad hypergamy. The word hypergamy is used pejoratively in the Roissy-sphere, but largely because the style of hypergamy seen in the world of casual sex, Game, and combat dating is the disgusting and immoral variety. Hypergamy doesn’t necessarily have to be a bad thing.

It’s virtuous for a woman to be selective, but vicious for her to be picky. The distinction is as follows: the selective woman places a high value on intimacy, love, and men worthy of her affections. She gives her body and heart only to men who earn them, but does not reject men prematurely. The picky woman is one who rejects men for trivial reasons, such as poor fashion sense or a lack of Game.

7. I thought men were just men vs. men are alpha, beta, omega and zeta. The sexual marketplace, and the reversion to pre-monogamous sexual norms, created these artifacts. Alphas are the men who succeed in this nightmarish world, much like the rats and vermin that inhabit ruined environments. Betas are men, leaning toward monogamy, who are desirable for long-term relationships, and who succeeded in the previous regime, but are shortchanged by this one. Gammas (or omegas) are the men who succeed at neither, and often make fools of themselves attempting to become “alpha”. Zetas are analytically connected to the distribution of the prime numbers.

8. I thought racism had died out vs. racism is alive & well. The world of casual sex and combat dating is hellish, bringing out the worst in people. It’s also one of the most superficial social environments on earth, focused intensely on physical presence. This means that race will undeniably have a major role in it. For woman, race has a strong but complex effect on her SMV. For example, the obnoxious alphas often desire racial variety for the sake of “collecting” a complete set of racial categories, but they prefer to date blonde white women for the status benefits afforded. By contrast, the betas, who are significantly more desirable for (and desiring of) long-term relationships, tend to be very open to dating women of all races, and many are dating interracially. Love is far too beautiful to be rejected on such trivial grounds.

Racism is dying out, slowly, but this society has a long way to go. Interracial love, relationships and marriage are bringing down racial barriers rapidly, although the dehumanizing and ruthlessly competitive environment of casual sex and combat dating is one of the last places we’ll see racism disappear.

Read Full Post »

U.S. scene: white men go another way, white women panic

I’ll flat-out say it: from the perspective of someone seeking a long-term life partner, preferably in the next decade, American white women just aren’t, in aggregate terms, very good. Sure, some individual American white women are great– my mother is an American-born white woman, and my parents are still together after 35 years– but there are far too few of them. The odds are long, and the good ones out there are usually taken. Show me an American-born single, attractive white woman older than 25, and I’ll show you an 85% chance of a defective personality.

The cultural pestilence (celebrity culture, The Rules, Sex and the City) that has swept through middle-class, predominantly white, suburban America has corrupted more women than men, just as the rot in our nation’s black culture (gangster machismo) has destroyed more men than women. The result of this, in both cases, is a severe gender imbalance– a “marriage squeeze”, if you will. There are plenty of great black men out there, but not enough for all the college-educated, professional black women. Likewise, there are plenty of quality white women out there, but not enough for all of the high-quality white men to find one. One conclusion: white men and black women should get together in larger numbers than they already do. It just makes sense, and I’ve been saying this for a long time.

More generally, the rising generation of white American men– unless they want to be celibate and miserable, or stuck in a sham marriage with a substandard partner– should look not only outside of their racial category, but beyond our national borders. Some white men are only attracted to white women; they can go to Eastern Europe. Others like Asian women; there’s a whole continent full of such women to the east. Those who are like me, and don’t care about a woman’s race in the least, will discover that there are several continents full of beautiful, charming, intelligent women who blow America’s suburban-bred office-cows and casual-sexing divorce monkeys so far out of the water they land in Poland (and, if they know what’s good for them, they’ll take lessons from the local gals).

I feel a need to clear up some misconceptions, propagated by panicking and jealous U.S. white women, about American white men who pursue international and interracial relationships.

Misconception #1: “White men going another way” (henceforth, WMGAW) are seeking subservient housewives.

False. Feminism is a worldwide phenomenon, and has been a force for good in most cultures it has touched. Modern Eastern European and Asian women are not submissive housewives. They’re smart, strong, educated, and assertive. They have college degrees and careers, and demand equality in relationships. The fact that they return calls, initiate sex, and support their lovers rather than trying to compete with them is not acquiescence. The first of these is basic politeness, the second is healthy sexual desire, and the third is love.

If WMGAW wanted subservient housewives, they’d target misogynistic shitholes like Saudi Arabia and, upon bringing their wives back home, keep them in complete social isolation– but no reasonable man wants to live like this. These men often go to countries like the Czech Republic, where women are as feminist as here. Others date black women, who are certainly not known for being docile housewives.

This assertion is also made about white men who date second- and later-generation Asian-Americans, and even more ridiculous when applied to them. Those who propogate this particular stereotype expose their ugly racism.

Misconception #2: WMGAW are taking advantage of foreign womens’ depressed economic situations.

This is, quite frankly, an offensive and wrong assertion. To make no distinction between (a) an upper-middle-class urban Colombian gal with a PhD and (b) a miserable third-world peasant is, quite frankly, absurd. To imply that most foreign women who date white American men are doing so for economic reasons is “ugly American” jingoism in the extreme. People– yes, even those who live in countries with $5000 per-capita GDP and hang-dry their clothes (gasp!)– do not separate with their families, friends, and cultures so lightly. A college-educated, comfortable Peruvian woman is not going to pack up and leave her friends and family behind and move to a foreign country because they drive larger cars there. Most of these women date internationally, and accept the attendant difficulties, because of love, not economic greed or desperation. (The “mail-order bride” phenomenon is a separate beast. It’s not representative of the norm for WMGAW.)

In most cultures, men are inferior (i.e. they have worse moral character and behavior) to women, creating a surplus of desirable and good women. Among U.S. whites, the reverse is true. The U.S./foreign pairing only makes sense, then; the discrepancies cancel out to some degree. An American man who goes overseas to find a wife does so because he can find a higher quality of lover overseas than he can in the U.S., and these men are desired because these women are able to find a better husband by expanding their horizons. International and interracial dating are win-win.

If WMGAW were seeking to take advantage of women in economic depression, they’d go to miserable villages in the third world, not high-rent districts in Seoul and Budapest where the women they’re chasing, although “merely” middle-class by American material standards, are near the top of their respective societies.

Misconception #3: WMGAW have race fetishes such as “yellow fever”.

Also false. The Columbia study put this one to bed. American women turn out to be far more racist in selection of dating partners than American men are. Which is why white American women propogate such nasty stereotypes when “their men” date women of other races and nationalities; interracial dating benefits only the open-minded. A nerdy, kind, moderately attractive but socially reserved, white “beta”, who wouldn’t have gotten a second look from attractive American girls in college, incites unholy indignation in these women when he is seen with a woman of a different skin color or accent.

Misconception #4: WMGAW “can’t get white women”.

There’s a bit of truth in this. For one thing, foreign women have no interest in American notions of social status, whereby having chased an oblong ball in high school makes one sexy, but having an interest in computers makes one asexual. They don’t respond as strongly  to the crass gimmicks (“game”) that work on American yuppies. Finally, for an upper-middle-class Polish or Korean woman to be seen with a “bad boy” below her level of intelligence and couth is just not socially acceptable. So foreign womens’ tastes in men are indeed more (for lack of a better word) cultured than those of American white women.

We, the cultured and intelligent “beta” males, can certainly “get white women”. It’s not exactly hard! On the other hand, we don’t want most of the available ones when we realize how much better we can do by expanding our pool to include other races and nationalities.

Okay. I’m done on this topic for the morning. Let’s pause to hear the shrill cries of the unwanted Sex and the City gorgons before Perseus’s mirrored shield petrifies them into spinsterhood.

Read Full Post »