Wedding reception dance floor gender ratios.

Around 8:30pm, there were about 10 women for every man on the dance floor.

Around 9:30pm, there were about 3 women for every man.

Around 11:00pm, there were about 0.1 women for every man.

Men don’t dance until they’re three sheets to the wind, at which point it doesn’t matter to them if women are involved or not.

Also, all the old people cleared out by 9:30, so the DJ stopped playing any music my parents recognized.  Explaining to my mother that the name of the song was “Yeah!” turned into a sort-of “Who’s on first?” experience.  Also, my dad was utterly perplexed at the song he thought was called “The Huffty Huff.”

OT: Always a bridesmaid…

I’m going to be out of town for several days (and therefore not updating the blog) to be in my brother’s wedding and visit family.  Consider this thread a social post.

Why sending dirty messages is a bad idea (NSFW).

Because if they’re leaked, something like this could happen to you (extremely NSFW):

(For those not watching, it’s Bill Maher and Jane Lynch giving a verbatim “dramatic reading” of Rep. Anthony Weiner’s Facebook messages with a Las Vegas blackjack dealer named Lisa.)

Maybe it wouldn’t happen to you on this scale, but stuff like this doesn’t go quietly into the night.  I don’t trust cell phones, Twitter, or Facebook.

(HT: THR)

Companionship vs. sexual attraction.

Hana recently made a provocative statement (at least, for this corner of the internetz) at her blog:

…close friendship, where two people share common interests, a compatible sense of humour, and similar intelligence, etc.   When a man and a woman are close friends in this way, the importance of sexual attraction seems to fade.  Sexual attraction is still present…Still, sexual attraction becomes less important when a man and a woman are truly close friends.

She then made an even more provocative statement:

As long as you’re somewhat attracted to him or her, why not marry your best friend?

This seems like a pretty far cry from Dalrock’s and Badger’s insistence that a woman feel “head over heels” for any potential spouse, but in my opinion, it seems like a good recipe for a stable, enduring marriage.  If women are able to grow in attraction to a mate and will feel more attracted and more attached to him once they have sex, and the woman at least meets a man’s minimum physical attractiveness requirements, and there is a preexisting emotional/intellectual bond and the two enjoy each other’s company, then that sounds like pretty solid grounds for marrying (assuming there are no red flags in other areas).  God willing, you’re both going to be old and achy a lot longer than you’re going to be young and hot, so it’s worth investing in someone who will still be fun when your collagen production has reached its nadir and you can’t see each other clearly up close without bifocals anyway (not that you would necessarily want to, due to the wrinkles).

Speaking anecdotally, I had a friend who fit this description.  We attended the same church and got along swimmingly.  It was very easy for us to have lengthy conversations, and our senses of humor meshed well.  We weren’t superclose friends, but I could tell that we were on the same wavelength.  After knowing him for a couple of years, I started to think that if he hadn’t been married with kids, he was someone I probably could have married.  I didn’t feel “head over heels” for him.  I didn’t even have a crush on him.  I wasn’t physically attracted to him (but whatever my minimum standard of physical attractiveness was, he met that, because I wasn’t repulsed by him).  He was just someone I got along with really, really well.

When you consider that when you marry someone, you’re signing up to wake up to that person’s face every day for the rest of your life, and when you come home there’s no escaping that person, getting along really well becomes a pretty important consideration.

A picture is worth a thousand words!

Why women are afraid to pump up men’s egos.

The privateman, in his most recent blog entry, wrote,

“It’s remarkable but I wonder how many women resist or completely reject such advice [to make a man feel good] because of feminist, ideological grounds (“it’s wrong to make a man feel good”)  or their own sense of fabulousness causes them to stick their heads in the sand.”

The answer is:  a lot.

The reason that women resist and reject advice to flatter men is basically an issue of power.  You wouldn’t know it from reading manosphere sites, but men, especially if white and educated, get the majority of perks in the world.  They get the best jobs.  They occupy the top of pretty much every occupational field, fields of women’s interests included (fashion, beauty, cooking, media).  They make the most money.  They’re more implicitly trusted in matters of business.  They get to have sex with tons of people and receive very little judgment for it.  They get to marry women young enough to be their daughters and have kids at age 70.  They get to be funny, outrageous, outspoken, and wild, and people just chuckle affectionately.  (Women who are funny, outrageous, outspoken, and wild, on the other hand,  just get called bitches, sluts, and bulldykes.)  They get to do most of the exciting and interesting things in this world, and they tend to think they know everything about everything.  And generally they don’t pay much of a social price for getting fat and dressing dumpy.

Meanwhile, women are expected to be quiet and have babies, always be up for sex, never gain any weight, and never have an opinion that contradicts a man’s.

Given these circumstances, it’s pretty easy to see why a modern woman balks at making a man feel good about himself.  In her mind, he already has the world’s oyster in his palm.  Giving him MORE sex, MORE compliments, and MORE deference is only going to inflate his ego even more than it already is and make him feel even more entitled to the things society has already given him.  And what, exactly, has this man done to earn any of these things other than be born with a penis?  Furthermore, if a woman flatters a man’s ego, he will just take her for granted and feel he has the ability to make unqualified demands as well as the right not to be of any help to the woman.  Women can’t see how treating a man well (i.e., like a ’50s homemaker) for no reason other than that he is a man can result in anything good for themselves.

Additionally, every woman either has a friend or knows somebody who got a boyfriend and then turned into a Stepford wife who has to get permission just to go to the mall, and while she’s there, her boyfriend will be constantly checking in on her and demanding to know all the details of what she’s doing.  And the friend will insist that he’s just doing this because he loves her.  No sane woman wants this to happen to her or be seen as weak and controllable, so that’s another reason that women tend to be resistant to giving men what they want.

Some of this attitude stems from hypergamy.  Women all want the best men for themselves, but women know that those men have options and in many cases have no compunction about straying.  A woman could treat such a man as a king, and she still runs the risk of his cheating.  So in a defensive measure, the woman will do what she thinks will earn her greater respect and shore up her power, which is to deny the man what he wants or thinks he is entitled to.  Then the man won’t feel quite so secure about walking all over her, because now he knows there is a price to pay.

Another reason is the American culture of meritocracy, where we take pride in earning things for ourselves and much American lore is centered around people who Did It Themselves, as opposed to getting something because of who your dad was.  This attitude extends to mating, as well.  It’s hard for women to be taught that everything they know about how the world works apparently doesn’t work in romantic male/female relationships, and it’s not like any major media is out there promoting this, anyway.  (It IS kind of ironic, though, that men who will rail against the evils of affirmative action will be happy to receive affirmative action praise from a woman.)

I can hear the cries rising up from the peanut gallery already, so let me be clear that YES, a lot of this modern female attitude is a response to alpha males and WAH WAH WAH MOST MEN ARE BETAS DOOMED TO LONELY SEXLESS LIVES WHILE ALPHAS HAVE ALL THE FUN WAHHHHH MARRIAGE 2.0 CAROUSEL NO GOOD WOMEN LEFT ON THE ENTIRE PLANET EXCEPT IN THAILAND WAHHHHHH.  But at the same time, women instinctively don’t want to dish out praise and coddling to men they don’t respect.  Sorry, Pushover Pete.**  And sorry, Slob Sam.  A lot of times women see men as overgrown children who seem barely able to take care of themselves.  They live in sties.  They think the Value Menu is cooking.  They would rather turn their underwear inside out than do laundry.  And women think to themselves, “I’m working a full-time job and still living respectably, but I’m supposed to tell this guy how wonderful he is and bring him his slippers?!?”  (Boundless:  “MAN UP!”)  It’s the “people like to help people who can help themselves” meritocratic thinking at work.

So what is the solution?  It’s not castigating women and screeching that everything is their fault.  (See:  Garden of Eden.)  Explanations of the differences between what motivates men and what motivates women are all fine and good, but you can’t undo generations of dogma raised to a level of canonical faith to go bye-bye with a few sarcastic zingers and alpha posturing.  Demonstrating praiseworthy characteristics is the best way to go, especially if done with confidence and good humor.  Greatness is irresistible, so show some greatness and the admiration will come forth naturally.  (If it doesn’t, you might be swimming in a poisoned pond.  Best to look for fresh water in that case.)

**My brother once told me that when a woman tells you you’re the best at something, you’re walking on air for a week.  I goggled at him like he’d just said that 2+2=5 and asked him, “But what if the woman is lying?”  He said that it didn’t matter.  But inside I was repulsed at the idea that a man would so gladly accept unearned praise and that a woman would stoop to giving it just to get her way.