Tactical guide to mate selection

12 comments:

Cass said...

Wow. I don't even know what to say about that, except "Thank God I didn't marry someone that dumb."

E Hines said...

Conselarry, is it?

Not exactly how I found my wife.

Still, I have to think this is a satire of some sort....

Eric Hines

Cass said...

I read somewhere that the guy's a divorce lawyer. I imagine that gives a person an unusually jaundiced view of dating and marriage :p

If he's making fun of the way some men think of women (pickup artists, or just bitter, divorced men who can't figure out why the angelic creature of their dreams wasn't as beautiful on the inside as she was on the outside), then it's a very clever parody. But there's a little too much misery in that mind set for me to laugh along with him.

I don't think that was the point, though :p

I guess I'll always be a bit of a Pollyanna wrt to the opposite sex. I don't want to believe men are that dumb or that shallow or that contemptuous of women. And I certainly don't want to believe that women are that shallow or mercenary.

Marriage, with all its many faults and failings, is one of the few things I believe in unreservedly.

But that's probably why I'm not a divorce attorney :p



Ymar Sakar said...

This isn't very tactical.

Grim said...

I saw this earlier this week, but didn't post it for the same reason that I don't post most of this stuff. It's obviously intended for humorous effect, as Mr. Hines says, but it's nevertheless not actually good advice (if only because it's unwise to tell men that they should all aim for only beautiful women, although it's fine to play with the feelings of less-beautiful ones so long as you never marry them).

The feminist version of this incredibly stupid advice made InstaPundit tonight. I wasn't going to post it either, but it's terrible advice:

1) Work 'to become the man you want to marry, or rather, the woman the man you'll want to marry will want to marry.' (The author is assuming her audience can get a job that will let her work more than 25 hours a week, which says something about her expected audience given those jobs are essentially all the job creation there has been in six years.)

2) Sleep around with lots of guys, especially including ones who "literally" have tattoos that say "I'm a mistake." The sex will be bad, we are assured, and you won't enjoy it, but you should do it anyway because... well, be sure to do it. Probably you won't contract VD or have to have one of those 'empowering' abortions to avoid becoming entangled with Mr. Mistake.

3) Drive yourself insane for years worrying about how you'll never marry or have children. Own this spinster thing! Stress and misery are fun!

4) The final piece of advice, and I quote: "You know that guy friend you weren’t romantically interested in because he was just too nice and available? Suddenly, you’re grown up enough to come to your senses. Marry the fuck out of him."

So, wait: we already know who "the man you'll want to marry" is? Instead of working hard for years "to become the woman the man you'll want to marry will want to marry," why don't you just ask him today what kind of woman he'll want to marry?

The answer may very well be, "You." In that case, you can skip the stress and misery, avoid the VD, and get the decent husband you were hoping will still be available in the end.

Of course, unlike the video, this was meant to be serious advice.

douglas said...

" (if only because it's unwise to tell men that they should all aim for only beautiful women, although it's fine to play with the feelings of less-beautiful ones so long as you never marry them)"

Actually, Grim, I think the matrix they lay out makes dating and marriage equal in 'hotness', but the divergent factor is the 'crazy' scale. The 'fun' zone is presumably for non-committal encounters only.

I think there were a couple of important caveats in there that help it make a lot more sense than perhaps we are giving it credit- he says explicitly that the hotness scale is personal- to quote, "...she needs to be at least a 5 in your mind...", so since one man's 5 is another mans 8, it's really a measure of attractiveness across the board- not purely physically. He also never really lays out what the crazy rating is based on. If you find yourself dating someone who you think is nuts quite often, I'd suggest you think twice about considering marriage. It's also an important caveat when he says that any woman can fall anywhere on the scale at any given time, and that it's important to plot a significant amount of data to get a cluster that suggests an identifiable center from which to make an assessment. I think that's quite right- we are all crazy sometimes and at other times, quite a bit more sane. One has to account for both the average and the extremes.

I'll even give a shot at defending the women's matrix (to a point). Yes, it's way over simplified, but it does (crassly) get to the issue that a woman really cares that her potential mate can provide. That's something our modern culture has tried to obfuscate, to ill effect. to the extant that it counters that erosion of our cultural foundation, I'll give it credit.

Cass said...

Of course, unlike the video, this was meant to be serious advice.

Do you really think so? It seemed obvious to me that the Salon author (that's 5 minutes of my life I'll never get back) had her tongue pretty firmly in her cheek. But then I'm female and you're not.

Most of the article was making fun of dumb/immature things women do - self deprecating humor.

It wasn't until after I watched Tex's video that it occurred to me that he might actually be making fun of men. Certainly a lot of men do think exactly that way. But it certainly wasn't obvious to me (probably b/c I still struggle to understand the way men see the world sometimes) :p

Grim said...

I might have agreed that it was tongue in cheek, Cass, if it hadn't opened with the vicious mockery of another woman and her contrary (and more traditional) advice. She seems to be advocating you really do all these things -- date that drug dealer! it'll teach you important lessons about how important you are to yourself -- before giving the time of day to that one good and decent guy you already know is the guy you'll eventually want to marry.

Ymar Sakar said...

Then they end up wondering why few people want to get with an old spinster with a career, like some people have noticed.

Males can already get a career, and they don't need a woman for it.

Cass said...

Grim, I wanted to write a post about this today but had too much going on at work. Will try to get to it tonight or tomorrow am.

My take on what she wrote is very different from yours (shocking, I know :). To be honest, that contrary/traditional advice annoyed me no end, even though I married young and did everything she said.

Perhaps I'll be able to explain to you how it seems to a woman (or at least *two* women - the author, and me - who could not be more different in terms of values or life choices). When you manage to alienate people who actually agree with you on the merits, I'm pretty sure you've done the persuasion thing all wrong.

Anyway, should make for an interesting discussion!



Assistant Village Idiot said...

Cass said "A little too much misery in that mind set..."

Exactly

Grim said...

I only hope that the 20-something women share your impression that she was telling them to totally never do what she was telling them to do. :)