The following was recently posted on the PPD sub:

Women are right about being to picky. That's the way of evolution.

The narrative:

Women's pickiness is a good thing. It's the way of evolution. Those are good things. You can't blame women for this. Women aren't fundamentally doing wrong.

The reality:

Women being picky isn't the problem. Deception is the problem.

Today's opinion from Ask Amy

Friends with benefits might have a love match (posted today)

Dear Amy: I am a 26-year-old woman in a “friends with benefits” relationship with “Paul” (age 28).

Paul and I had clearly agreed on casual sex and a no-strings-attached formula, but it seems like I have fallen for him.

He is the perfect man I had always imagined my partner to be.

I think he also has feelings for me, but maybe he is too scared to show his affection and to tell me how he really feels.

He often talks about how much he likes me and at the same time brings up his other love interests. This puts me in a very confused state.

I do not know if he really loves me or is just playing games with me.

The stage is set for deception

There's a fundamental tradeoff women face in who they engage in sexual relationships with:

  1. Trade for the caliber/attractiveness of men they can attract, but at the cost the amount of commitment/investment that can be attracted.
  2. Trade for the amount of commitment/investment that can be attracted, but at the cost of the caliber/attractiveness of the men they can attract.

The woman in the example has traded off the level of commitment/investment she can attract to be with a higher caliber man. She's having sex at the lowest level of commitment possible -- no commitment.

Women, by and large, want long-term relationships and marriage in their future, but the tradeoff they continually make relies on (and assumes the acceptability of) the fallback of deception to their eventual long-term/marriage partners about their sexual history as/if needed.

This deception is wrong and extremely exploitive.

The usual problems

There's a good chance the woman in the example above is compromising her ability to love who she can get for more commitment/marriage if her fuck buddy who she describes as her "perfect man" doesn't work out, which is likely to be the case. The woman in the example has been picky in the caliber of man she can get to sleep with her, but in terms of the commitment/investment she requires, she has no standards whatsoever.

It's not that pickiness is wrong, it's that women are overwhelmingly relying on deception to get into long-term/marriage relationships with more invested/commited partners -- the availability of which will erode over time, as we are seeing today, as more men understand and take that deception into account.

So men are not competing with what single women can get for a relationship, much less marriage. Men are competing with what single women can get for casual sex in the hopes of a relationship, because that's how women lead in dating today. Sex first, then commitment maybe/hopefully.

Deception 101 - Understanding the broader context

This comment was recently posted on PPD:

Men :ask question pertaining to women’s experiences.

Women: gives answer men don’t like.

Men: YoUr LyInG!/completely invalidates your experiences/downplays assault/victim blames ect.

My response:

What, if true, would explain what you described? It's a common type of question.

Answer: Men's and women's sexual strategies are adversarial due to basic biology.

The long and short of it:

At men's extreme, they take advantage of women physically -- rape.

At the other end, women's extreme is taking advantage of men socially -- deception of paternity, deception of sexual history to longer term partners to secure commitment/investment from those who wouldn't be interested otherwise, etc.

Men have conceeded physical exploitation as wrong.

But women today are overwhelmingly socially deceptive -- deception about sexual history to long term partners is widespread and overwhelmingly the rule. I cannot stress enough how big of a deal this is: women today are overwhelmingly socially deceptive in their mating strategy.

Interestingly, women often frame social deception in a justifiable/positive light to themselves (sometimes referred to a "rationalization hamster", due to the unconscious nature of the thought process used to justify actions/beliefs in a circular way).

Evolution naturally selects for qualities in each gender that make them more capable of maximizing their reproductive success. Men will have more reproductive success with increasing physical strength. Women will have more reproductive success through social means. Members of each gender who have those qualities will be selected for and pass those qualities to their offspring.

Your comment is consistent with this.

For example, to the extent there are legitimate or less defensible concerns from men (e.g., lying about sexual history, preferences for previous sexual partners, etc.), those concerns will tend to be downplayed, deflected, misrepresented, or lied about, whether true to a large degree or small.

Something related and less contentious might be used to reframe, for example, which characterizes your comment: Men want to invalidate sexual assault experiences and blame women. Therefore, men are wrong. How dare they blame assault victims, etc.

It's an innate quality that has been selected for in women the same way physical strength has been selected for in men over hundreds of thousands of years of evolution.

Make no question about it: This kind of deception is extremely exploitive.

Over time:

Widespread and overwhelming social deception by women = fear of men to engage with women in long term sexual relationships.

In a mirror way that:

Widespread and overwhelming physical exploitation by men = fear of women to engage with men in short term non-sexual relationships.

Neither is progress.

Both are regressive.

Progress will only come from the extent to which the most exploitive mating strategies of both men and women are eliminated.

Both will destroy long term relationships, family formation, family stability, and society.

Widespread rape by men - immediately.

Widespread social deception by women - over time with a long drawn-out rot and eventual collapse.