A long time reader was not super happy about an email I put out a few days back about players mostly getting their notches from promiscuous girls:
I’m a little taken aback by the latest email. Have you read Sex at Dawn? Not sure I agree with all the analysis on the latest email from a biological level, or from personal experience. I’d argue that women are much more open to sexual encounters than you’ve indicated, and that spreading this type of narrative is bad for both sexes.
The traditional narrative of women having a lower sex drive than men (and choosing a pair-bonded mate that provides the best access to resources based on Darwinian evolutionary biology) appears to be false, and driven by historical anthropologists who were bad with women trying to fit behavior into boxes based on biased assumptions. These boxes totally ignored the fact that we evolved from a largely egalitarian tribal hunter and gatherer society. It’s societal programming that’s causing a lot friction.
If you make a girl feel the right feelings (note I didn’t say anything about playing games, or saying lines, or pickup…it’s about FEELings) it’s highly likely she will be down; it just takes them longer to get revved up so to speak than visually driven men. I think people need to stop slut shaming and spreading false narratives about sexual desire; it’s not helping anyone out. I see the point of the email to a degree, but just wanted to add another viewpoint
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A lot of this I agree with, some of it I don’t. We’ll get to that.
But what’s most remarkable about this response is how little it actually addressed any of the content in the email. My email was about: a) how promiscuous girls are the ones most likely to sleep with players b) how the same girls thus make up most of players’ notch counts, and c) how finding girls who are sexually available is a major aspect of advanced game.
I didn’t say anything about the nature of female desire, or even once mention sex drive. And while I noted some girls were more promiscuous than others, I didn’t “shame” it.
It appears the reader got triggered by my use of the word “sluts” — my blunt short hand for girls who sleep around — and began constructing a straw man out of the rest of the email.
But let’s address it anyway, shall we?
First off though — a point of order.
In case this wasn’t obvious, I use and will continue to use uncensored language in these emails because this is my list, my analysis, and I am NOT walking on eggshells to protect your sensibilities.
I am not a judgmental person, I am an HONEST person. I tell it like it is. You may disagree, and that’s cool… but I have ZERO tolerance for thought policing or moralizing. This is a place for open and curious people — not for ideologues. You can read boilerplate bullshit that tells you exactly what you want to hear elsewhere — it’s a dime a dozen.
Good. Now, as for the arguments…
Yes, I have read Sex at Dawn. And I appreciate the discussion that it’s generated. But the book has been panned by biologists and anthropologists for a reason — it cherry picks data and indeed, relies entirely on straw men to make its central argument.
For those who don’t know, Sex at Dawn’s basic point is that humans aren’t really like Chimps — they’re like Bonobos, a related species of ape that, rather than being territorial and aggressive like chimps, live in egalitarian sexual harmony.
Everyone gets laid. Everyone cooperates in raising children.
Their evidence for this?
Well, first is the observation that “monogamy doesn’t work” with humans. It makes points like “a lot of people cheat,” or that “many are sexually dissatisfied in long-term monogamous relationships,” to bolster this claim.
All of which is true.
(Tbh I’m not sure who has said otherwise except some extreme religious ideologues, which of course, make a very useful foil as “the mainstream opinion” this book is written against)
But rather than support the very modest proposition that humans aren’t purely monogamous, the book jumps the shark tank and starts to assert that a) human relationships aren’t based on pair bonding b) humans are in fact polyamorous and c) it’s natural for humans to cooperate in raising others’ children equally.
And how do they make these very extreme claims?
By describing as examples the cultures of a handful of primitive, low-outside-contact hunter-gatherer tribes that ostensibly support this.
Now, I will admit that it was interesting to hear about some of these unique societies, and their rituals of “free love.” I think especially because it shows the range of how humans can self-organize (we are not chimps *or* bonobos — we’re humans, capable of dramatic variation).But:
a) these tribes were (as I recall) very small, like sub 200 peopleb) these tribes represented like <0.1% of tribes in the category, all counter examples — of which there were many — were omitted from the bookc) these tribes were often sexually controlling in their own way
One example the book gave has stood out to me all of these years:
This tribe — I believe it was in the Amazon — had a ritual of forced sex. If a woman wanted to sleep with you, you had to do it. You were not allowed to turn people down.
This is presented by the author as a progressive ideal — an Eden of sorts. Because it ensures cooperation and freedom rather than competition and control within the group. The women have sex with all the men, so that the men have to cooperate in child-rearing, and that there is no in-group tension.
Sounds great… except that a) the sex is coercive — something we in the West call RAPE — and b) it is coercive explicitly to avoid tensions, because as the book implicitly admits, these tensions are innate.
Lest you think I’m being hyperbolic, their own example noted a young boy was HIDING with the amazon researcher because he did not want to have sex with his cousin, and if they found him, he would be forced to do it.
This is the “sexual liberation” of our species that was stolen from us? Forcing a young boy to sleep with his cousin?
I could bully this book for awhile but the gist is that the book is ideological fodder for people in the polyamory community, because it tells them exactly what they want to hear: “free love is normal, monogamy is not!” And it uses distortion after distortion to make this claim.
(If you want a book that debunks it in depth, you can try Sex at Dusk. I own the book but aside from the introduction have not read it myself.)
The reality of human nature, of course, is not black and white.
Humans pair-bond, and throughout our evolutionary history, the vastvast majority of children were born of these offspring. Anyone who has fallen in love knows how this works.
That said, is it “natural” for humans to stay pair-bonded forever? Perhaps not. Many higher-status men throughout our early history (and recent for that matter) have had multiple wives. And it was probably much more common in Paleolithic times to “divorce.” Monogamy may have meant serial-monogamy. And of course, affairs have always existed.
But poking holes in “till death do us part” and how it conflicts with our sexual nature doesn’t mean that we are orgy-driven bonobos.
“Sexual sharing” is at best one of MANY adaptations attempted to manage the complexity of human desire and emotions along with the demands of childrearing — and one that only has worked in small, close knit groups without outside threats. That is indeed the only place we have any evidence of them ever existing. And most of our modern attempts to recreate them (see: Oneida Community) have collapsed within a generation, despite all the means to endure, reverting to — you guessed it — basic nuclear family pair-bonding.
Anyway, enough about this book.I know this email is already long, and this is a natural point to cut it.
But I want to briefly address some of the last points he made more generally about female desire and promiscuity.
The women who I have described as “sluts” who are getting shit-faced weekend after weekend and hooking up with every half-decent guy they bump into or swipe right on —— these women are NOT hooking up from a sense of “empowerment.” I don’t know what to tell you about psychology if you believe this.
These women are in a BAD place. I have met them and socialize with them. Eavesdropped on their conversations in the cafe. Guys like Goldmund who are still on the market have dated them. Their lives are chaotic, they are usually on anti-depressants, and they have severe attachment issues.
Casual sex to these women is a form of self-abuse and escape.
And this is most of your “slut” demographic today. Broken women who have been broken by lies, most especially the lie that sex as a general meme is “empowering.”
For men that is barely true, and for women it is NEVER true.
What is empowering is being able to do things that feel good and raise your self-worth. Things that improve your self-esteem.
You would not see 25% of western women on SSRIs if promiscuity were doing that.
That said:
I am NOT claiming that women don’t love sex, that they don’t love sex as much as men do, and that women “shouldn’t” be able to have sex with guys that they want. None of this has anything to do with a woman’s right to sexual encounters, or disputing that women want to have them with guys who “get it.” Moreover, I would not call a woman who has a non-monogamous sexual encounter a “slut” (that is reserved for women who sleep with people mindlessly).
But a woman’s OPENNESS to a sexual encounter — and whether that encounter will be a positive experience — depends on her state of mind, stage of life, and the guy involved.
And we simply cannot conflate the rare romantic flings with Don Juan — which she often wants to become something more, it should be noted — with the usual “hook up” culture encounters which are more robotic, transactional distractions.
Anyway, that’s as much as I can say for now.
If you want to pick my brain about more of these topics in an uncensored setting…
There’s only one way.
Apply here: www.patstedman.com/application– Pat
PS Those books are affiliate links. That’s right — if you buy I might get a dollar. Thanks in advance
