“The female price of male pleasure” is missing one important thing: men and women are biologically different. For decades we’ve been hearing blank slate ideology from feminists. But men and women aren’t blank slates. We have similar, but distinct in notable ways, built-in preferences. This is basically obvious to anyone who has ever dated, but for some reason it’s been missing in feminist discourse for like 50 years.
That men and women have distinct preferences is obvious to anyone who has dated or anyone who has read evolutionary biology. Every guy who learns game unlearns blank-slate ideology and instead has to learn what women actually want. Most women do not want precisely what men want in the way that men want it.
At the same time, most women haven’t learned what actual men are like. In my opinion it’s insane that women get blackout drunk and go home with strangers and near-strangers, yet many do and the larger culture seems unwilling to tell them that no, this is not a good idea.
And then women are SHOCKED that men don’t want the same things they do. Kind of like how men are SHOCKED that women don’t behave or think like women in most visual porn (which is male fantasy).
How about we start by acknowledging the difference average preferences between men and women in terms of how, where, when, and why sex happens happens?
Get rid of the blank slate and we’ll all be better able to know each other. Stick to it, and we’re going to keep getting these missed signals and crappy hookups and drunkenness.
(The author does mention and talk about biology, which is a good start, but refuses to link it to psychology. And the failures of the medical profession to treat endometriosis and similar ailments seriously are also real. She is confused about “beauty standards,” though. Those exist because women are in competition with one another for the highest-status men. If men thought they could win sex competitions by wearing high heels and makeup, every straight guy would be at the makeup counter tomorrow. I’d be first in line.)
Guys are frustrated by sex advice like “Just be yourself” and “Be a gentleman” (AKA be asexual, then watch the girl go off with some caveman). Â Women are frustrated when they realize guys are hornier and more feral than they often appear on the surface.
I think both men and women are paying the price for ignorance and failing to emphasize the desires, on average, of the opposite sex.
No one, or almost no one, is looking at the “Five whys” failure analysis of the Aziz Ansari situation. We can’t import the methods good software teams use to understand modes of failure. Evolutionary biology helps us understand those modes better, on a sexual level. Women are encouraged to act like naive waifs, like “Grace,” instead of being taught about agency and male desire. Men are taught to be overly timid and then they’re surprised when the least-timid among them are the most sexually successful.
What a mess. What’s it going to take to get a little honesty injected into this conversation?
