How to find a virgin to marry (if you are a guy)

The first thought many of you may have is that such creatures no longer exist in such a sluttified place and time as 21st Century North America. You would be wrong. According to the most reliable surveys, about 25% of the U.S. female population has either never had sex, never had sex except within marriage, or only had premarital sex with their current partner. Fully 10% of women enter marriage as virgins. So, while it's rare, it isn’t that rare. Of course, in certain subcultures, it will be more common that in others. The Yale Drama school would appear to be a very bad place to look for it, as would any number of industries from the restaurant trade to Hollywood. Therefore, if a virgin is what you must have, I have devised a plan for finding these rare birds.

(On a personal note, when I was younger I was much more concerned about this sort of thing, but as I have grown older, the urgency of this particular criterion has been much attenuated. So, this is much more of an intellectual excercise than a practical battleplan for me at this point. It still would be nice though. Hey, as guys lets admit it, the thought of being the only one whose ever been in there is pretty cool.)


Look for an Evangelical Protestant (or, better yet, a Mormon)

Being a Catholic is, in practice, more like being part of an ethnic group than it is an adherence to a certain set of principles. Being a Protestant on the other hand, particularly an Evangelical Protestant, usually means you actually believe the stuff. That is why the term “bad Catholic” is in common parlance, while there is no commonly used equivalent like “bad Protestant.” For an Evangelical Protestant, faith must be personal. It’s not enough just to be on the right team. If you don’t believe in and practice traditional Christian moral standards, you aren’t a Christian at all. Now, I am not saying that this is how Catholics are supposed to view their religion, only that that is the way they often do in practice.

Furthermore, Catholicism is linked culturally to several actual ethnic groups. It is almost unimaginable to be Italian or Spanish or Irish and not be Catholic. It is part of being a member of those groups. Therefore, people in those groups are much more likely to stay Catholic, regardless of their level of devotion. Needless to say though that just being Italian or Spanish or Irish does not make one less likely to be a slut.

I would also say that the widely flouted Catholic standards on birth control and divorce tend to a more general dissolution of morals. If the community doesn’t take its standards seriously on these “smaller” things, individuals are going to follow their own inclinations on “bigger” things, like premarital sex.

Female teachers at the Catholic school I have been teaching at will openly admit to living with men before they came to work there. In fact, it is not unusual for teachers here in the Catholic school system in Canada to live together while teaching at Catholic schools. If caught, they are generally let off with nothing more than a slap on the wrist and a curt order to move out. An Evangelical teacher at a Christian school would in similar circumstances be summarily fired.

Now, morally conservative Catholics, who know their way around their Church better than I, undoubtedly also know where best to seek out their fellow true believers. Parish shopping is not an unknown phenomenon and there are certain churches where traditional Catholics are known to congregate. Furthermore, there are also still some small Catholic colleges in the United States which seem to actually take the faith seriously. Your general run of the mill Catholic though has an entirely justified reputation among Evangelical folk as little better than a heathen.

Orthodox Churches in North America have the benefit of being small, but also have the disadvantages of being tied to particular ethnic groups (Greeks, Russians etc.).

NOTE: It has been pointed out to me (see Trumwill's comment below) that a Mormon is probably an even better bet than an Evangelical Protestant. Mormons are even more tightly knit and community oriented than Evangelicals. Therefore, there tends to be far fewer deviations from community standards.


Look for someone in an area where religion is less popular

One of the great benefits of the sexual revolution for conservative minded guys was how it made it much easier to tell the sluts from the good girls. Where the stigma of pre-marital sex is non-existant, there is much less incentive to keep your slutty past private. Girls will admit to all sorts of things these days. With some carefully deployed tactical non-judgmentalism, one is usually able to smoke out the details of someone’s past.

You want as clear a line drawn between those who truly believe and those who don’t, because that functions as a clear signal as to who does and does not follow the conservative moral teachings of their church. Therefore, one of the clear exceptions to my advice about preferring an Evangelical would be in the Southern United States. Apparently “everyone” there is religious, but they don't seem to be having much less premarital sex. I am reliably informed that this is not the case in most of the rest of the United States, even Mid –Western areas such as Ohio, where conservative Christianity in general and Evangelical Christianity in particular, have become very much a minority taste. Needless to say conservative Christianity in my own country of Canada is even less popular.

For this reason, I would actually suggest that you look for someone at a church in an urban area. For example, evangelicals in downtown Toronto are there because they really believe, while those in rural Alberta perhaps less so. The women in urban churches will tend to be of a higher educational level too, meeting yet another of my criteria. However, please note that this is not a hard and fast rule.


Look for a North East Asian (Chinese, Japanese, Korean)

This may seem contradictory, as NE Asians are among the least religious people on earth. However, if you can find an attractive NE Asian Evangelical, chances are you have hit the jackpot. Even some non-religious women in these groups are virgins into their late twenties or even late thirties. My own theory is that this is at least partially due to genetics. NE Asians just tend to have a lot more conservative temperaments overall than do white or black people. One should not entirely discount culture here though, as Asian culture tend to be a lot more focused on tradition and family honour than white culture.

The same does not necessarily apply to all Asians. Philipinos and Thais have personalities a lot closer to the white average than do Japanese and Koreans. Notice that both countries are known for their prostitutes.


Look for someone young

Pretty self-explanatory. The less time she has been out in the dating world, the fewer opportunities she has had to have sex. Also, the fewer boyfriends the less chance that one of them had the moves to get her into bed.


Look for someone with a bachelor’s degree

Smarter people have more self control. The sad fact is that the people who are most likely to disapprove of pre-marital sex, the poor and uneducated, are also the ones most likely to have a lot of it. (On the other hand, one should note that women with post-graduate education are almost as bad as women with very little education, so if at all possible you will want to avoid women with graduate or professional degrees.) It have to say that it was shocking to find out how many virgins there were at so liberal a place as Harvard University, despite the fact that no one there seems to have any theoretical objections to it. Ironically, you may be better off searching for a virgin at Harvard than at the local Pentecostal Church. However, in reality, you will want someone who is against premarital sex in theory and has the self-control and foresight to actually put that theory into practice. Essentially, this means going for a conservative religious woman with a bachelor’s degree.

I would note that from my own dating experience, the ability of college educated Evangelical women to keep their legs together in our day and age is nothing short of astonishing. A shockingly large number of them have never even kissed a guy, let alone had sex with one.


Look for a someone in the 6-8 range for looks

There are two factors in how her looks influence a woman’s sexual behavior. First of all, if a woman is very good looking, she will suffer fewer consequences from having more partners. If you are a perfect 10, you are going to have lots of high quality suitors regardless of how much you slut it up. Examples apparently include Bar Rafaeli and Scarlett Johannson. If a very beautiful woman is so inclined, she can basically sleep with whomever she wants and still lose very little of her value in the sexual marketplace. Beautiful women know this, and those who want to will often take full advantage of this. The second factor is that less beautiful women will very often try to date up. But in order to compete with the really beautiful girl for the attentions of a high quality man, a less good looking girl will have to put out earlier. Even Alphas will often take the easy way out and sleep with a less attractive women, so long as they don’t have to work so hard or make any definite commitment. Sometimes the Alpha will even take a genuine liking to the less attractive girl, but putting out earlier still comes with a much greater chance of getting dumped. If a less attractive girl starts constantly chasing after the Alphas, she can easily start racking up the numbers.

According to Roissy and other pick up artists, in general society the second factor seems to be stronger. A 6 or a 7 is much more likely to be a slut than a 9 or a 10. Women will sleep around to get Alpha cock, but they don’t have the same drive for variety as men do, so if they are able to get a high quality man to stick around they don’t have much incentive to sleep around. However, in smaller religious subcultures, it is the first factor that would seem to be the stronger. The less attractive women are still trying compete with the more attractive ones, but, in these cultures, even the Alphas are not supposed to be sleeping around and will suffer a devaluation on the marriage market if they do. So, there is no general culture of sleeping around to corrupt those women lower on the totem pole. Second, for a girl in one of these subcultures losing your virginity means a significant loss of value on the marriage market, not to mention the stress of breaking a major moral standard. So there is a strong disincentive to try and move up the mating ladder by putting out early. It may work, but if it doesn’t there is the downside is huuuuuge. So, in this case, the less attractive women will, in fact, try to compete with the more attractive women by being more chaste. "I may not be quite as beautiful as her, but you will be the only man I have ever been with." On the other hand, a very beautiful girl, even in a strict religious subculture, knows that having sex will not completely devalue her on the marriage market. She will take something of a hit, but not necessarily much of one. So, if she get the chance to hook up with a really hot guy, she is much more likely to take advantage of it than a less good looking girl.

I don’t think I need to note that really ugly/fat girls everywhere are much more likely to take whatever they can get whenever a good opportunity arises. This holds even in conservative religious circles, though many ugly conservative girls, especially the ones who really believe, will resign themselves to celibacy or accept the courtship of very unattractive, but honourable suitors.

Final Thoughts

So, in conclusion, high thee to a Chinese Baptist Church near Toronto, Ontario and find yourself a cute but not spectacular 22 year old with a bachelor’s degree.

P.S. The biggest indicator that a girl is a virgin is her insistence that she wants a guy who is a virgin himself. Whether or not you can meet her standard will doubtless affect whether you think that a good thing or a bad thing.

Why the men's rights movement is going nowhere?

Men’s rights will never take off for the following reasons:

1. It is hard for men to play the victim card without looking weak and therefore loserish. Most men would rather just suffer in silence than admit their weakness.

(Similarly, most men will not complain about the fact that they have lost in the sexual revolution. You just can’t admit that, while your future wife was out shagging a couple alphas, you yourself could barely get laid. Again, by complaining, you admit you are a loser.)

2. There are all sorts of men who will chivalrously jump to a women’s defense. Men’s ability to form a pack and present a united front falls apart in the pursuit of pussy.

3. Alpha males run everything and there is a human tendency to Platonically lump everyone who is of the same category together. Alpha males are making out like bandits, hence feminists and other beneficiaries of the current system will always be able to point out how “men” are the big winners in our society.

4. Alpha males are making out like bandits in the current system, so the most talented and articulate men have little incentive to speak out against it. Why would they? This leads to a huge leadership gap in the men's movement and lends a further loserish cast to the proceedings.

5. Most beta males are actually pretty happy being assraped by society. I’ve been reading James Kalb’s The Tyranny of Liberalism and from the survey data he presents there, it appears that men actually received a boost in happiness since the sexual revolution. It would appear that a lot of men really do prefer XBox 360 to sex. Or think they are doing better than they really are.

Nothing will happen to reform our truly corrupt Western societies until something goes seriously, overwhelmingly wrong. It’s going to get much worse before it gets better, if it ever does. In such circumstances, there really are only two options: huddle down in a small religious community (the Benedict option) or make hay while the sun shines (the Roissy option). In any case, submitting to the practices of the mainstream of society is a not a realistic option for the truly aware. I can’t really believe so many people simply aquiesce to it.

Who benefitted from the sexual revolution?

Many social conservatives have the unfortunate habit of seeing the sexual revolution as a case of "men" unscrupulously exploiting women for their own purposes. The classic social conservative position is that what women want most is marriage to a good man, and it is only the selfish hedonism of males that holds them back. There was no place in this worldview for raw female sexual desire. Women didn't want sex, they wanted committment. I used to share that view, but have since come to see how absolutely wrong it is. As F. Roger Devlin has demonstrated, the sexual revolution was, in fact, female driven. If women did not want it to happen, it would not have happened. The fact that women are not sexually innocent should have been obvious. The human race did not propagate itself by women not liking sex. That, with regard to most men, women can take it or leave it is not, in itself, determinative. The truth is that when it comes to the top men, females' drive to copulate is as bad as men's.

Now the mere fact that the sexual revolution was female driven, does not necessarily mean that women were the real beneficiaries. In fact, it is arguable that on the whole they, in fact, lost. At the very least, most women merely found new ways to be unhappy. But let us at least grant that some women benefitted very much from the sexual revolution. Women are not necessarily averse to a little variety and at leas some women got the benefit of playing around a bit, before settling down with a satisfactory mate.

Alpha females didn’t really gain anything in the sexual revolution. In fact, they probably lost, as Alpha males, their natural long term mates, now have much, much less incentive to settle down with them. If they do manage to snag an Alpha, they are now much, much likelier to suffer the indignity of being cheated on. In short, these women would have gotten Alphas anyway, but now get them on much less favourable terms.

Lesser females don’t get much of a good deal either. When they attempt to date up, as many of them will, they have had the pleasure of having sex with an Alpha. But, in the process, they are very likely to suffer the indignity of being a frequent pump and dump victim. Furthermore, having had sex with an Alpha means they will be much less satisfied with their eventual beta husband, should they actually get married. One could somewhat plausibly argue, like DA, that giving lesser females access to sex with Alphas was an overall benefit to these lesser women, but one could also argue that ultimately they tend to suffer a lot more heartbreak and indignity than their encounters with Alphas are worth.

Beta males are the one's getting the biggest shaft here. They are forced to compete with Alpha males, meaning that they are often left out of the mating game as the Alphas monopolize more than one woman at a time. Should they actually find someone to mate with, chances are it will be with one of the Alpha's leftovers. More than just the psychological unpleasantness of having other men "break in" their woman, this means that Betas are often left to deal with the bitterness towards men that repeatedly being pumped and dumped by Alphas often bequeathes to women. Not to mention having to measure up unfavourably to the Alpha's sexual performance, and fact that the women is unlikely to bond as strongly with him after having fallen in love with an Alpha.

Alpha males have, of course, made out like bandits. They frequently get the benefit of multiple consecutive or concurrent relationships with various women. If they want to settle down, they rarely have much difficulty in finding a long term mate. Of course, if they try to hang on too long, they do risk ending up alone or with some lesser female in the end, but if they are smart they can end up with the benefits of both easy sex and committment.

Publication

My Ecclesiastes translation has been given advance publication
here.

Three Types of Women: Bad Girls, Girly Girls, and Nerd Girls

NOTE: Reading this post over again at the behest of some friends, I have to say that the original post implied more personal experience with these three types of women than was the case. I guess I have a taste for lurid innuendo. I _have_ had some quite interesting dealings with all three categories of women here, so much of this _is_ based on my own experiences. (For example, drunk female law students making crude sexual advances is something that I have known first hand.) But much of the following is also based on my reading, my impressions of female friends, classmates, co-workers etc., as well as paying attention to the observations of others. I have therefore modified the post to make things more clear.

I have also modified a bit of the part on bad girls, to make my observations a bit more rounded.

After you and your friends had enough experience in the dating world, things start to take on some definite patterns. Here are some modest observations on what I take to be the three types of women out there. I am willing to be corrected if anyone has any further suggestions.


1. Nerd Girls

Nerd girls are much more immune than most to pick-up techniques, and, in fact, I have found such techniques to be almost spectacularly useless in dealing with them. Nerd girls tend to look much more objectively at the character and accomplishments of those they go out with. Everything is at face value. Either you measure up or you do not. As long as you have the qualities they like, they always call you back, even if they are really good looking. Though they have some male mental traits, nerd girls are not entirely devoid of femininity. They actually tend to be quite mothering, even of their boyfriends, something which can sometimes be a real turnoff. However, some nerd girls can actually be very good looking. My family on my father’s side are good gene, good bone kind of people, but also quite nerdy. My sister, a nurse, happens to very, very good looking, but also likes to watch an awful lot of Star Wars and Star Trek. (She had bit of a a bad girl streak when younger.) My only female cousin on my dad's side is almost as good looking and is a bio nerd taking Medicine at McMaster University. An amazing girl I was dating not too long ago is a total nerd. She also happened look like a model. However, whatever their looks, nerd girls, still, alas, can sometimes be a bit boring. They lack the charm of girly girls and the wildness of bad girls. They tend to make great wives and girlfriends, but not necessarily the best lovers. But they rarely cheat or have sordid incidents in their sexual past. They are terribly loyal. I would also note, many Asian women tend to fall into this category. As I keep stating elsewhere, I have known several nerdy white math/computer guys with incredibly good looking wives/girlfriends. Of course, the women were all Asian. (National Review columnist/pop math author John Derbyshire and his wife fit this mold.)

2. Bad Girls

Bad girls too have a masculine aspect to their personality, but they are anything but mothering. They often have athletic bodies and are often found in high testosterone careers like lawyering, journalism, pornography and rock music. (Female lawyers tend to be a mix of bad girl and nerd girl, with the mix tending in one direction or the other depending on the individual.) Their calculating, amoral selfishness is frequently off-putting, but their attitude towards sex tends to be more like men’s and their wildness can make them exciting bedmates. Even so, their aggression and lack of femininity in bed means that they are not really the ideal lover, and as they get older and set in their ways it they apparently often start ordering their partners around in the sack. (With bad girls, apparently, it often feels like you are the one being fucked.) Like nerd girls, bad girls too tend to much pick their boyfriends and lovers based on more objective qualities like looks or accomplishment, though they aren’t likely to single you out for your niceness or good character. So, if you are a relatively tall, good looking nerd chances are at some point (particularly if you go to law school) one of them will up and decide “He’ll do.” Such events come at you pretty much at random and are fairly rare, but they do happen. Of course, they next day, no matter what does or doesn't happen, they will act like they have never known you. And if you happen to merely make out with them at a party, by the next day they will have really and truly forgotten that you ever existed. They will often cheat recklessly on boyfriends or husbands. On the good side though, bad girls tend not to make you fall deeply in love with them. They are good for a ride in the hay, if that is what you want, but it is almost always right up front that you can’t really expect much of anything else from them. Artsy bad girls, I have a found, are a particular temptation for the lonely art nerd.

Bad girls are still girls, however, so they are rarely completely devoid of impulses towards marriage and motherhood. But they often lack any instinct for how to fulfill these conventionally feminine roles properly and their gestures towards these roles are often touchingly pathetic. One particularly good example is Courtney Love. Her frequent attempts at girliness always seem to end up with her embarassing herself badly. I can think of few people who try so hard, and fail so miserably, at being girly.

3. Girly girls

Girly girls are the one’s who are most flakey. They tend to like astrology, psychics, and pop psychology. While nerd girls tend to go in for more conventional religion, girly girls are into “spirituality.” They also tend to have more than their share of feminine charm. Bad girls may be the most sexual, but girly girls are the one’s you tend to find most sexy. Unlike bad girls, girly girls will be attracted to good qualities like kindness and character, but they aren’t nearly enough to seal the deal. Furthermore, even if you run the gamut on objective qualities like good looks, humour, moral character, and accomplishment, if you don’t establish dominance in the relationship, it is doomed. You won’t get rejected exactly, you are too good a catch to be explicitly dismissed, but you’ll find yourself getting strung along. (I should say that I myself tend not to get stuck in the lets just be friends zone. Rather I tend to get stuck in the dating/make-out buddy stage.) When a girly girl fails to call me back after a few days, I frequently will call them again to ask if they are actually interested and if I should move on to dating other women. Not wanting to lose me and my many good qualities, they will almost invariably call you back for a date. I remember one particular girl that I begged to tell me she wasn’t really interested. She told me she couldn’t say that. When they finally do reject you it will be with something like, “I really tried to love you.” And so they did. Because of their charm and emotional openness, it is easy to fall hard for these girls. But they will break your heart like no other. Of course, it will in all truth be quite unintentional. I actually find that with my own minimal investment in pick-up techniques that I have been getting my heart broken more, not less than before. Before, it was either nerd girls or bad girls, who. whatever their merit, are just incapable of inspiring me with the kind of obsessive emotions a girly girl can. Girly girls, though maddeningly attractive, were just completely beyond my reach. Now I find it actually isn’t hard to chat up and get dates with this other kind of woman. And I don’t find it hard to keep dating them, at least for a while. It isn’t even hard to get them to make out with you. (Mystery’s technique works spectacularly well for me. Establish touching. Wait until you see the “doggie dinner bowl” look. Ask her if she wants to kiss you. If she says yes kiss her. If she hesitates, you still kiss her. It is darn near infallible. The rest is easy.) But I keep getting my heart broken by these girls nonetheless. Girly girls are generally sexually conservative, but also somewhat erratic. They will often go long periods without sleeping with anyone and then all of a sudden have a fling. They tend not to cheat, but then all of a sudden they sometimes do. Nothing is more maddening for a man that to date someone who has been for the most part genuinely chaste, but who also happens to have one or two spectacularly sordid sexual incident in their past. Bad girls, who have slept with many more men, but who own their own promiscuity, don’t awaken any such jealous passions.

I am not sure if I should really just accept my fate and just marry a cute nerd girl, something well within reach. It certainly would make life a lot simpler, but they aren’t necessarily what I am most attracted to. Bad girls are, of course, off the table. I have deep passions, but they tend to lie beneath the surface. I tend to cultivate a stoic reserve. (I think I resemble the remark in Singin’ in the Rain: “Dignity, always dignity.”) Control and restraint: these are all wonderful qualities to inject into a prose style, but they won’t do much to attract a girly girl. I have noted with some jealousy the sexual tension between Roissy and Clio (herself a blend of nerd girl and girly girl, with just the barest hint of bad girl). Morally and spiritually, Clio and I have much more in common than her and Roissy, but, sadly, despite my admiration for her very French ooh la la (French Canadian women are some of the most charming on earth), there is just no chemistry there. I'm crushed.

Smart or talented betas tend to end up with either nerd girls or bad girls, rather than low end girly girls. Examples of talented beta/nerd girl matchups include Kurt Cobain’s first girlfriend, Tracy Marander, was a mothering nerd girl. William Hazlitt ended up married to some rather mannish women. Alfred Hitchcock ended up with Alma, a bit of a cutie, at least in her younger days, but hardly Hitch’s ideal. As for beta/bad girl matchups, Kurt Cobain eventually ended up with Courtney Love. Charles Baudelaire ended up with Jeanne Duval.

SUGGESTED READING:
Roissy examines women by career here and by nationality here. He takes on Type A women here.

Supernaturalism, Tradition and the Law

Ever notice how weird it is that you can believe any crazy shit you want, implement it as government policy, teach it in public schools or whatever, so long as you scrupulously avoid referring to a supernatural being. Such a belief doesn't have to actually be rational or scientific, so long as you claim that you arrived at it through purely rational or scientific means. Conversely, if you want to enact a sensible policy, but make your appeal to the people on the basis of traditional attachment to some supernatural entity, you are an enemy of peace, order, and good government.

I remember sitting in one classroom in downtown Toronto during my practicum where a we watched a film that presented the case that the pyramids were the work of some alien civilization. I know that many teachers present Michael Moore documentaries in their classroom almost without comment. While subbing north of Toronto, I was given the film What the Bleep Do We Know? to show to the class. Its muddled and mystical pseudo-science was apparently perfectly acceptable fare for the students of York Region, though a similar propagandist film for Christianity would have brought howls of protest.

The effect has been to on the defensive all political ideas based on tradition, because most traditions have been expressed in religious form. We don’t do these things because someone has thought out all the extended details, but because it is the command of God. I would suggest therefore that the prohibition against entanglement of religion and politics has become wholly arbitrary and should be abolished. In our present context it is nothing except a club for liberals, left and right, to beat traditionalist conservatives over the head with. Policy enacted for religious reasons is just as likely, perhaps even, being based on tradition, more likely, to be of benefit to the vast majority of people. That the secular reasons behind such policies may have been forgotten or never even consciously articulated, does not mean they are not there. Asking religious social conservatives to produce explicit secular justifications for every aspect of their policy preferences is absurd. Furthermore, even when we can see that a particular policy is possessed of good secular justifications, sometimes it can only be expressed to the commonality of men in religious terms.

For example, there are several good non-religious arguments against gay marriage. Clio put out the primary one:

I am concerned about same-sex marriage because I believe that the purpose of marriage is to tie biological fathers to their biological children. Same-sex marriage confuses and confounds that primary purpose of marriage because it insists that biology is of no significance to marriage, and moreover that biological parenthood is also not important to the formation of families. It is one thing to say that gay people can be good parents, which I believe. It is another thing to say that biological parenthood doesn't really matter.

Right, marriage is there to convince masculine men to express their masculinity by sticking around and supporting their children, rather than in that other popular form of expressing your masculinity: screwing as many chicks as possible. Therefore, marriage needs to, in some way, celebrate masculinity as masculinity. Gaying it up isn’t helpful. Furthermore, extending marriage into a situation, male-male relationships, where monogamy is unlikely doesn’t exactly send the message to other men that society expects you to take your marriage vows seriously. But few people can follow the kinds of complex economic arguments necessary to make the case this way, and the core of people opposed to gay marriage do so for religious reasons.

To cite another example, there are several good arguments against our current sexual mores (i.e. sexual anarchy). For most people, having a clear set of rules about when you should and should not engage in sexual relations was a good thing. It brought some order to the sexual marketplace. The old rules weren’t perfectly fair to everyone, but they dampened down the sexual warfare aspects of courtship and had the virtue of clarity. You knew when you had stepped into the outlaw zone. But of course no one, except perhaps yours truly, thinks about the complexities of the sexual marketplace when deciding whether to sleep with someone. No one thinks of how living with someone in a stable long term relationship subtly undermines the bright line rule that you should only engage in sex once married and thus increases the likelihood that the less intelligent and the less restrained will truly get themselves into trouble. So, the only effective way to convince most people of the need for restraint is a firm “Thus Saith the Lord.” The alternative, which is to vastly overstate the emotional and physical risks of pre-marital sex for everyone, is ridiculous. Secondly, there is the collective action problem within the sexual marketplace. In an anarchic sexual marketplace, it doesn’t make a lot of sense for just one person to act with restraint. There are plenty of men and women out there willing to do double duty. (If a woman doesn’t put out, a man can go off to find someone else who will, while if a man restrains himself during dating while others do not, unless his dates come from a pool where chastity is the norm, chances are he will end up buying at full price the cast off of some someone like Roissy.) So, unless you ensconce yourself in a smaller religious community you have to put yourself out there to compete. But, in doing so, almost everyone ends up just slightly less well off. Most women are putting out slightly sooner than they really want to and sleep with a couple men they really wish they hadn’t, and most men are ending up with someone slightly more sexually experienced than they would prefer (i.e. with slightly more sexual experience than they have). Once again, most people are totally incapable of following the logic here, so the only recourse for convincing people is to proclaim morality by divine fiat and unapolagetically enact policy that reinforces this. (In this particular case, I’d suggest much tighter divorce laws (but not abolishing divorce altogether), stripping fathers of any rights over children unless married to the mother, ending the right to child support unless the mother is married to the father, and reintroducing criminal sanctions against adultery.)

As a side note, I don’t really get the fetish many people have about keeping opposition to Darwinian evolution out of schools. I myself am a firm Darwinian, but all sorts of absurdity is taught in our public schools, much of it with far worse social and public policy implications. Why the particular outrage over this particular variety of creationism? The only thing I can think of is because of its reference to a supernatural being. The ideas of economic and racial, and sexual creationism are just as absurd, but are nonetheless all but our official ideology. They have not, however, made the mistake of appealing to the supernatural.

SUGGESTED FURTHER READING:
Megan McArdle on gay marriage.
Mencius on pseudo-atheists. My response is here
Mencius further opines on how our supposed rationalism is really nothing more than one group of religious (though often non-theistic) sects persecuting another.
Pith comments on publicly funded religious education here, here and here

Apologies and Announcements

Apologies to my readers. I never intended to go this long between posts. I haven't disappeared or given up on blogging. I haven't run out of ideas or lost interest in writing. I have been settling nicely into a new job from this fall. While that in itself wouldn't have kept me from posting, the fact is that since settling in to my new city I have started dating and socializing rather a lot. So, that plus work, plus the fact that I seem to like consuming art even more than I like writing about it, has put blogging pretty much on the back burner. I do promise to try to write more however in future, and, in particular, I will definitely be writing something here over summer holidays.

Furthermore, I have something of an announcement to make. The journal Literary Imagination, put out by Oxford University Press, is going to be publishing part of my translation of Ecclesiastes sometime in the next few months. I am hoping that this will lead to the whole thing being published as a book. If that happens it will pretty much put an end to the anonymity of this blog, since I'd prefer my writing to be considered of a piece. However, I am not quite willing to reveal myself in full as of yet, though as I well know, anyone intrepid enough could probably track me down anyway.

Thanks to all my faithful readers. I shall return.

The Unbearable Lightness of Quirk: A Review of Juno

Last night I went out to see the movie Juno. It was a mixed experience. Certainly the film got quite a few laughs out of me. But I have deep reservations about this kind of hyper-literate quirky comedy.

First of all, an interesting character is more than a collection of peccadillos. Juno is a film prime example of the fallacy that if you just load up your characters with enough unusual tics, they will emerge as convincing individuals. Such peccadillos, like Juno’s father’s being “born to work in HVAC” or her step-mother’s obsession with dogs, are little more than a crude attempt to distinguish between characters who actually sound an awful lot alike. There are some great lines in the movie, but they are scattered more or less randomly among the characters and, in isolation, I would dare you to tell me who said what. Nothing illustrates better that a great script is more than a heap of witty lines. Great comedies use wit to reveal character, not show off the writers virtuosity.

The actors, especially Ellen Page, labour mightily to render these characters three dimensional, with somewhat mixed success. In general, there are two kinds of movie characters, which I will name after the two main figures in Tennessee Williams’ Streetcar Named Desire: Stanley characters and Blanche characters. For a Blanche character, the writer gives the character a distinct individual mode of thought and expression evident on the page, and it is the actor’s job to serve the character as written. On the other hand, for a Stanley character, the writer gives you hardly anything more than a sketch and it is the actor’s job to more or less create the character from a few basic building blocks, much like Brando did with Stanley Kowalski. Stanley characters are often don’t have a lot to say, and the performance is more about pure emoting. Cinema is the perfect medium for this kind of thing, and, indeed, in the film version of Streetcar, Stanley is a much fuller character than in the play. (Martin Scorsese with his series of inarticulate male characters is very much the master of this, but there are scores of classic film roles where the actual dialogue is banal to non-existant.) The problem with Juno is that it is a dialogue heavy film with roles that all sound the same. With so many words already defining their characters, the actors don’t have much room to fully create anything memorable. The kind of actor based character building that Brando did with Stanley doesn’t work nearly so well when you have this much dialogue to work against.

What actually may ensure the film’s survival is not the portrait of the central character or her quirky family, but that of the Jason Bateman/Jennifer Garner marriage. Alas, the whole mess rings all too true. Some might wonder why a self-consciously arty guy like the husband would want to settle down with such a conventionally domestic wife, but it wasn’t any mystery to me because, well, Jennifer Garner is a smoking hot babe. There is no end to the betrayals a man will commit, even of himself, if it involves the chance to hop into bed with a pretty girl. If the price you have to pay for getting the girl is Anne Geddes prints and muzak, then so be it. But this is a dangerous strategy, especially in an age of easy divorce. “Men are April when they woo, December when they wed.” Most men, even if they really don’t really believe all the romantic crap the spout when pursuing a woman, manage to at least temporarily convince themselves that they do. However, once the delights of physical love become routine, as they always do to some degree, what once seemed like an acceptable compromise now begins to look like a trap. I recognize a lot of myself Jason Bateman's Mark, the ambivalence about having children (though having gone that far down the path, I don’t think I would be turning back), the difficulty of meshing my desire for a stable home with my far-out and time consuming arty interests (religious women, my prime targets in the marriage market, tend to be extremely conventional), and, of course, the conviction that 90s alternative music rocks. I sympathize, while ultimately judging him to be a creep. To paraphrase Slash on Axl Rose, he is an asshole, but he’s not just an asshole.

What makes Juno interesting is that it is a strenuously hip film (the soundtrack is filled with the songs from all the best bands people like you and me have never heard of) that dare to question the value of hipness. The film is in love with how cool it is, but is harsh in its distain for those who would let coolness keep them from doing their duty. Unlike many defenses of conventional morality, it recognized just how, well, cool cool stuff really is. It doesn’t flatter middle class vulgarity; it just refuses to make coolness the ultimate standard of value. The film sets us up to dislike the Jennifer Garner character, what with the cloyingly romantic pictures on the wall and the perfectly set towels in her bathroom. Juno, like many arty girls, has something of a tomboyish distain for the stereotypical trappings of romance (arty girls tend not to care about China patterns or the perfect shade of paint for the nursery), and we are expected to agree with her. But over time we warm to Garner’s Vanessa. On the basis of dreck like Daredevil or Elektra, designed to showcase her big, healthy, fit body more than her acting chops, one would never have thought Garner capable of such a performance. She is warm and feminine, deftly adding in a restrained touch of the baby mania and domestic perfectionism that often goes along with the admirable desire for home and family. In short, her Vanessa, good but not faultless, is an authentically rounded person, as opposed to the walking tics that seem to inhabit the rest of the movie.

On a couple side issures, I have to disagree with the notion that Juno’s decision not to have an abortion is just a part of her quirky, unconventional nature. It is absurd to believe that Juno left the abortion clinic “just to be different.” I hasten to add that Juno’s decision not to have an abortion is not some deeply considered moral decision, but more one of aesthetic revulsion. The portrait of the abortion clinic is extraordinarily harsh. (The lone abortion protester on the other hand is portrayed as rather dopey, but still, well, rather nice.) For Hollywood, this involves some bravery, as it involves exposing some rather harsh truths. Its one thing to be go along with the polite consensus and generally be in favour of “choice” in the abstract, but the people who actually care strongly about abortion rights, or who get involved in the abortion industry are, in fact, more than a little creepy. It would have been nice if Juno had made some sort of reasoned decision on the matter, instead of basing it on pure disgust, but the fact is that most people are not capable of deep moral introspection and base their moral judgments almost entirely on gut feeling.

On a much less urgent matter, Juno’s friend Leah’s crush on the math teacher was totally implausible. No teenage girl would ever have a crush on someone who looked like that. However, as a teacher myself, I would add that if you are a) not totally incompetent, b) not an asshole, c) not totally hideous, and d) under 35, a significant portion of your female students will fall in love with you. I tend to find this is rather disturbing, so I have actually found myself toning down my dress for work. I always wear my glasses at school and the good old teacher standby of khakis and a plaid shirt suits me just fine. Of course, what with the teaching profession itself being so heavily female, I don’t want miss any opportunities with there. So, I will admit to being somewhat torn.

Lastly, I must confess I’m a little annoyed at films where teenagers are given absurd levels of cultural sophistication. Juno’s knowledge of obscure 70s punk and horror movies is more than a little implausible. There are no sophisticated sixteen year olds. No matter how smart or hip, they just don’t actually know that much.

LINKS:
Ross Douthat takes a look Juno and abortion here.

Steve Sailer reviews the film in the February 11,2008 version of The American Conservative. An excerpt is here.

The Steve Sailer Rule of Conspiracies

Over the past couple years, Steve Sailer's writings on conspiracy theories (see below) have intrigued me. Like most educated Westerners I don't think much of conspiracy theorizing, but the examples Steve has given got me thinking. Some of the stuff he cites is pretty banal, if it even counts as a conspiracy at all, like the USSR spreading stories about aliens in New Mexico to cover up their reconaissance missions. Gossip doesn't really require any actual group cohesion. If your story is interesting enough (aliens and sex acts are always popular), all you really need is one person to get the ball rolling.

More interesting though are some of Steve's other examples: the Mafia, the 90s Russian oligarchs, the Donmeh, the diamond business, not to mention conspiratorial groups like the Druze or the Assasins. What these all have in common is that they all involve small, closely knit ethnic groups or people with close family ties. To be precise, actual conspiracies tend to be found only among family members or, what amounts to the same thing, closely knit endogamous ethnic groups. Therefore, in honour of Steve's abiding interest in family, I give your the Steve Sailer Rule of Conspiracies. So far as I know, Steve hasn't spelled this out explicitly, but I'll do it for him:

The more closely related the alleged conspirators are, the more likely that there is an actual conspiracy.

We in the West, with our loosely knit families and anti-nepotistic traditions (the Catholic Church ruthlessly suppressed cousin marriage), don't think much of conspiracies, and for good reason. Without family ties, there are just too many incentives to defect and therefore somebody almost always does.

What surprises me in all this is how few actual conspiracies Jews in the West have been involved in, despite their otherwise fitting the profile quite well. I just don't see a lot of evidence for Jewish conspiracies, except in a very few, limited cases. The much simpler explanation for their disproportionate success is that of Greg Cochran and Henry Harpending. I suspect that when you you have such high natural intelligence, the tendency is to start fighting amongst yourselves for the true top dog position. In fact, of the relatively few Jews who have been involved in conspiracy type behavior, like those in the diamond business, many seem to be the presumably less intelligent ultra-Orthodox types. Why conspire when you can kick everybody's ass on a level playing field?

So, if we in the West have little time for conspiracy theories, why are they so popular in the rest of the world? The reason is that family is that much more important there. Therefore, in places where this is so, conspiracy is entirely plausible fact of daily life. Is it any co-incidence that the current hotbed of conspiracy theories is the Middle East, with its high incidence of cousin marriage? In most places in the world, a good and decent person, as a matter of course tries to benefit his family first, at the expense of everyone eles, so, by the lights of their experience, why wouldn't America and the West work the same way. Therefore, it is that much easier, and happily much more self-flattering, to think that the West's technological and economic superiority must be a result of devilish scheming, not of any deficiencies on your own part. (The U.S. tendency to elect people named Bush and Clinton does nothing to relieve this suspicion, I'm afraid.) Even in the West, it is the Italians, with their tradition of family-centred corruption, that tend to be the most open to conspiracy theorizing. (They also traditionally have have the reputation for being, well, the most Machiavellian.)

On another topic, more plausible explanations for many alleged conspiracies in the West are groupthink and inertia. For example, some would cite the exclusion of conservatives from certain professions as proof of conspiracy. But in fact, there is no such conspiracy to keep conservatives out of Hollywood, the universities, the teaching profession or the media. People on university tenure committees or in Hollywood casting agencies don't sit around planning how to keep conservatives out; these types of jobs just naturally attract rootless, less family oriented individuals, and once a critical mass is reached, well by God the opinions of my group are correct and don't let me hear otherwise. There is no central direction or planning, just the natural tendency to ostracize people with different views.

LINKS:
Steve reviews Antitrust here. He follows up here. Steve's thoughts on Lee Harvey Oswald and the plot to assassinate JFK are here. He writes on the Donmeh here, here, here. and here. He writes about conspiracy hotbed Salonika here. He writes on post WWII Italy here. His thoughts on the great Italian conspiracy novelist Umberto Eco are here.

PLEASE NOTE:
Comment moderation has been enabled. I have no interest in letting the comment section becoming a place for people to rail against the Jews or other groups. While some Jews have been involved in some conspiracies, the idea of a some secret worldwide Jewish cabal is to me self-evidently absurd. Furthermore, whatever Jewish involvment there has been in specific conspiracies clearly seems due to historical circumstance, not some unique awfulness of Jewish character.