Photo on Photobucket via Melissa McEwan’s Shakespeare’s Sister.
Lux Alptraum of BOINKOLOGY asks a question that, combined with a Clive Owen/ Photoshop un-mashup that’s been going around seems like a perfect excuse for an HNT editorial
A recent post from College Candy posits that women who aren’t getting laid just aren’t trying hard enough  or maybe just aren’t willing to lower their standards enough
...
Is it true? Is it that easy for ladies to find some action  or that hard for guys?
As a lady with a few dry spells under her belt, I’d like to think it’s a little more complicated than all that: but what do you think?
Read the quote, plus Alptraum’s quote of College Candy, in context here.
My experience, personally and in conversation with male and female friends who’ve range from still-waiting 40-year-old traditional Christians to “why waste time learning to masturbate” classmates in high-school is yeah, it’s a lot more complicated. And yeah, “standards” have a heck of a lot to do with the complications.
I first got my eyes opened to the standards thing right after I started blogging, with a, well, eye-opening post from the great but now-long-gone Cat Nastey who wondered if maybe straight vanilla people, straight men especially, complain about how hard it is to find partners because they’re just way more fussy about who they’re willing to count as potential partners when it came to age, social and marital status, class, looks, reputation, current or previous partner “number”, and, of course, preferred gender.
Anyway, my first, second, and third-hand experience is that it’s a bit of a myth that men have a hard time and that women “could always” find a partner. The key, I think, is Alptraum’s point about standards and what, exactly, constitutes “reasonably attractive and intelligent.” (And the blocks aren’t necessarily the sterotypical ones: classic eye-hurting beautiful men often feel too self-conscious about something else to ask anyone out, and often eye-hurtingly beautiful women never get asked out because — unless they’re jerks, which would be Problem B — guys assume they just have to have giant neck-breaking boyfriends in the background.)
On the other hand, of course, the reasons often are sterotypical where women are supposed to conform to height/weight/Prada-shoe beauty-trap standards, men are supposed to conform to the job/car/devil-may-car standards of the worthiness trap. And everyone’s supposed to agree that sex should be a bit scarce that men can gain status by getting and women can gain it by holding back.
Actually I think a year or so ago there was an article about a down-state New York college where, the story went, women outnumbered men just enough that men discovered that in fact they wouldn’t say yes to just anyone and women discovered they couldn’t assume men would say yes if they asked. The point being that a lot of what we’re raised to believe about who can and can’t “get laid” if they “really wanted to” and were “willing to lower their standards enough” are more gender-constructed than real.
And… ok, actually, you know what I think is the trick with “standards” in the phrase “lower your standards enough?” I think the problem is that when we say it we’re talking about not our standards but off-the-shelf standards that we haven’t necessarily done much to customize. Except, of course, in terms of “lowering” them to meet… ok, reality, sure, but even that’s a construction. Check out, for instance, those side-by-side photos of Clive Owen, one made up, lit, and photoshopped baby smooth and the other still craggy-handsome but far less idealized with wrinkles, pores, and other normal characteristics of an actual human face. The point being that if all we knew (and that’s all a lot of, especially, younger people know) is the idealized Owen face then one would have to be “lowering one’s standards” to hook up with the actual Clive Owen! Let alone the other mere mortals we meet after work.
Anyway, this is getting long and jumbled because I’m trying to make two points at the same time, but if everyone tried to test the “women could get laid if they tried hard enough” theory almost everybody would discover it was more complicated than they thought. Especially if they all tried it without questioning their assumptions about standards and, especially, making the mistake that adjusting ones standards to meet reality equals “settling.”
One last thing, by the way, I’m not saying I think we should have no standards at all. We do. We’re people. Goodness knows I have… focal points that revolve around media influences, the way older athletic/farmer-trending family members tended to look, and… for some reason, an inexplicable, roughly 75% attraction to former-Catholics with birthdays between mid-September and mid-October (!?!?!?) No idea what that’s about, especially since I’ve never really been one to ask about birthdays in the first place. The point being that until I noticed I had those standards I didn’t really think much about how important outdoorsiness was to me in a long-term partner, or how irrelevant birthdays were. And once I got that then they were my standards and that let me relax about everyone else’s… and, for that matter, everyone else.
Nor did I recognize how much they constrained my partnership opportunities. Which is sort of the point I think I’ve been trying to get to. We usually understand “standards” to mean “an ideal to hold out for.” Instead they’re often “limits on opportunities for partnership.” The problem isn’t the one or the other, it’s, as Cat Nastey saw it, failing to recognize that you can’t have one without the other, and therefore you can’t logically brag about the upside while complaining about the downside.
And, by the way, this all gets back to what’s so subversive about Osbasso’s HNT meme: when almost everyone posts their first photo they’re posting with those off-the-shelf standards in mind and, consequently, the accompanying text almost always includes some overt or covert variation on “please be kind.” And you know what? All but the very occasional troll is kind. And not because we’re settling but because… hey, real people are pretty cool even without $6,000 worth of agency Photoshopping. Even Clive Owen. :-)
Happy HNT (or Half-nekkid Thursday!)
Submitted by 2190 (not verified) on Thu, 2008-05-29 14:06.
Um... can I help you with that towel? It's getting in the way of my view! ;)
[Hi Helga. As a matter of fact I did get a bit tired of holding that towel. Sorry it's in the way. --fl]
Submitted by 2190 (not verified) on Thu, 2008-05-29 14:07.
I much prefer the actual Clive...
Thanks for posting the photo figleaf...
[If I was into him I'd prefer the real to the idea as well. Same for Photoshopped women in ads, posters, and porn. Thanks, norby. --fl]
Submitted by 2190 (not verified) on Thu, 2008-05-29 14:07.
Clive Owen's pix not a good example. No 2 is certainly preferred.
[I understand why. Which is why I think No. 1 is such a *good* example of the point I'm trying to make. Thanks, Five. --fl]
Submitted by 2190 (not verified) on Thu, 2008-05-29 15:42.
Oh, dear, now I am embarrassed. I didn't see the lovely photo of you first time aroung figleaf.
Whether I stand a chance with him or not, I tend to get a little distracted by Clive...
Sorry...
[Oh no problem, Norby. I was sort of off the rails posting two on one day anyway. :-) Thanks. --fl]
Submitted by 2190 (not verified) on Thu, 2008-05-29 17:21.
Hi, fig. I found my way to your blog after posting my very first HNT.
I must tell you that reading this post made me think about the standards we all have, and inspired me to write a post of my own concerning a friend of mine and his standards. I was going to post it here, but it kind of took on a life of it's own.
So, thanks for the inspiration!
That said:
I prefer the 2nd "rough & ready" pic of Clive.
And I would be remiss if I forgot to compliment you on your HNT pic. Very tasty, but that damn towel has GOT to go!
[Hi Rina! Glad I could inspire you. I'm *really* glad you posted it on your blog instead of here in comments because... well, that way the visits for your idea wind up where they belong -- on *your* site. Happy HNT. --fl]
Submitted by 2190 (not verified) on Thu, 2008-05-29 18:45.
I think part of the problem in discussing this, or thinking of potential partners, is the word "standards" itself. Now, I can see why you say that certainly we want to have our own standards.
I think if you change the word to "preferences" it cuts through a lot of the gunk. When each individual looks at his or her own preferences, and asks, "Why do I prefer..." we have a chance of opening up the possibilities beyond the conditioned "standards" or even our own previous "standards."
As a woman, I have had sex with more people than any of my long-term male partners. I don't know if that speaks to the idea that any woman can get laid easier than a man. I know that a number of these encounters must have "lowered their standards" as I have been getting laid from my weight of 180 lbs to 310 lbs. Some of these encounters have preferred large women. Some of those who perhaps "settled" have come back for more, because perhaps they found how limiting their previous preferences were.
I too have expanded my sexual encounters beyond my preferences, and have at times been quite pleasantly surprised. Body, looks, even personality, these things *don't* always matter when it comes to sexual chemistry.
And you have it exactly right, it is our own limitations that we put on our preferences that will keep us from getting laid. Let me rephrase that...it is our *judgements* that limit us. And if we are only looking at surface and first impressions, those jugdements could be severely wrong.
Withholding judgement can go a long way toward deepening connections of *any* kind.
[Agreed on the wording, Heidi. It's just that the language a lot of people use really does hinge on the word "standard" and the cliche "lowering your standards." Which is, exactly as you say, a lot of gunk compared to what we're really talking about which is preferences, and very often default/preset options we pick up from others. Thanks! --fl]
Submitted by 2190 (not verified) on Thu, 2008-05-29 19:23.
Oh, the ultimate topic for me, the ultimate Single Issue Voter.
"For men, getting laid is a chore, for women, it's a choice."--Ross
Jeffries.
"Attraction isn't a choice"--Eben Pagan, aka David DeAngelo.
The ultimate test is, of course, to go out and ask 50 random strangers of the opposite sex (assuming heterosexuality, because this is a het paradigm) "Hey, wanna f*ck?" and report back. An apocryphal but oft-cited on-campus study reported that the average-looking man got NO positive responses, while the average-looking woman got several. A lot of the early stuff in the SC centered on the idea that it was easy for a man to go YEARS without a partner, due to the slightest deviation from Alphaness, "the nudge out of the light", except for the possibility of providing mercy sex for "Fat Chicks." Mike Pilinski actually used those words, as in "Do you know what the equivalent of the 'Nice Guy' is? FAT GIRLS." And, well, it's weird, but a woman's body isn't a really good predictor of her mental stability, sensuality, or enthusiasm. But dealing with them successfully as objects is probably an extra filip for those who do. And possibly it's easier to have sex with people who get very few offers. The whole thing is a big, messy question seldom handled with grace.
[See, here's where I think the interesting part comes in: what if *everybody* started trying the 50-person trick? At first, yeah, you'd probably have a lot of men saying "yeah, you bet" not because they were interested in the person asking but because they expect that they're *expected* to because sex is scarce. But once it soaked in that sex *wasn't scarce,* and that, in particular, they could use "achieving" sex as a form of social capital (self-assigned if not otherwise) then they'd turn or return to a default "yes" only if they're *actually interested* level. Similarly you'd see that *if* women were asking then they'd also feel no stigma for saying no even when they wanted to and... again you'd discover a default "no" only if they're *actually not interested!* And in general I'm guessing that on average people wouldn't wind up having nearly as much sex as we lead ourselves to believe, but we'd tend to enjoy the sex we *actually wanted* a lot more. Thanks, ES. --fl]
Submitted by 2190 (not verified) on Thu, 2008-05-29 22:55.
My running joke is that I appear to be solely sexually attracted to engineers and MIT students ....
[Really?!?! Hey, I used to at least live a couple of blocks east of MIT! Of course at that point I was still a high-school dropout and a cabbie to boot. But... um... hey, the *cab* had an engine so close enough, right? :-) But yeah, those kinds of types really stick deep. Thanks, Dw3t. --fl]
Submitted by 2190 (not verified) on Thu, 2008-05-29 23:21.
Yep. I didn't want to clutter up your comments. I think one of the things that constitutes a "good" blog is its ability to get people thinking and then..writing, which is what you've done here. Thanks!
[Oh thank you, Rina. That's what I want more than anything. Thanks again. --fl]
Submitted by 2190 (not verified) on Fri, 2008-05-30 10:50.
I'm actually NOT the entitled barbarian my internet persona seems, because I'm pretty sure my default setting is "No", the way Twisty et. al. mean it. But it's not because I don't want sex, or don't regret all the sex I didn't have, it's just that I have a chronic illness that means my sex life requires a certain amount of planning and orchestration that propositioning perfect strangers on the street apparently doesn't suit, even IF I could be assured of positive responses. That doesn't change the fact that I'm apparently not a match for many, many women, and I will pretty much sleep with ANY woman who says yes. I think I've turned down TWO in my life, each time because I was in a relationship at the time. I get one spontaneous offer per 5 years from my social circle, and (when not in a relationship) I look for one, generally not diligently enough. (Mea culpa.)
Two questions: First, I don't think the "lots of offers of sex you don't want isn't a privilege" meme is a meaningful one for straight men contemplating the straight female experience, because men in the throes of youthful desire really WOULD boink 'til they dropped day after day if they had the level of access that average women apparently do. Second, how many people perceive themselves (despite reality in some cases, mental maps are hard to change) as excluded from interpersonal sexual contact by factors they can't change? True, it is mainly the shyness problems caused by past rejection that short men (for example) blame, but the "Journey to the Land of NO" caused by results like 1 in 500 (when you are continually the sole initiator) can make it seem like one's failure to measure up is immutable.
Captcha "Milwaukee tougher". Indeed it is.
["how many people perceive themselves (despite reality in some cases, mental maps are hard to change) as excluded from interpersonal sexual contact by factors they can't change?" *That's* the biggest area in my opinion. I mean yes, there probably really will be people who will never be suited to anyone else, but given that, say, prisoners for life and even "Siamese" twins, male and female, meet and marry in intensely monogamous cultures, there's reason to believe that "believe themselves unsuitable" people have way more room to maneuver than maybe they, or even we, imagine. Thanks, ES. --fl]
Submitted by 2190 (not verified) on Fri, 2008-05-30 15:19.
Men have in their mind standards when it comes to a woman making it known that they are interested, even if it is basic conversation. I find they act put upon.
[Yup. That's another one of those areas where I think we mistake gender for circumstance: nobody likes to feel put upon. The difference is since men have almost always been the initiators they aren't as used to it, don't have a lot of mechanisms for dealing with it like grown-ups, and so they tend to decline, um, ingraciously. Thanks, Five. --fl]
Submitted by 2190 (not verified) on Fri, 2008-05-30 15:49.
Eurosabra, I'm not sure that I am reading your second paragraph correctly. I am interpreting this "First, I don't think the "lots of offers of sex you don't want isn't a privilege" meme is a meaningful one for straight men contemplating the straight female experience" to be a response to women complaining about harassment. My entire comment is based on this interpretation, so if it is wrong, please disregard the comment.
I personally have no problem with "offers." I have a huge problem with the way that those "offers" are communicated. I have a problem with men assuming that because I am outside, I am there to be hit on (there are times and places...the metro or a street corner are not one of them). (There is also a huge difference between striking up a random conversation and hitting on someone!) I have a problem with being treated like a dog (whistles and catcalls). There are very nice ways to compliment and hit on a woman that have nothing to do with whistles, catcalls, grunts, "hey baby", etc (which have more to do with the man proving his "masculinity" to other men than actually expressing an attraction to me). I have a problem with the games that people play. A man is much more likely to convince me to have sex with him casually if he is honesty about what he wants and doesn't play games. Sorry, I think I'm ranting now.
My point is that they problem is not the "offers" in and of themselves. The "offers" are more often than not encased in some form of objectification and/or misogyny. The problem is that being objectified is not a privilege.
Even if teenage boys would be happy to be objectified, how many men do you think would find it a compliment if that objectification continued every day of their lives well into adulthood (I'm 30 and I still get it every day). How many men do you think would like to have their academic and professional achievements tied to their sex appeal and their willingness to exploit it.
These issues are all related.
Submitted by 2190 (not verified) on Fri, 2008-05-30 17:20.
The point you raise about street harassment is so clear as to not need any treatment, there are plenty of feminist websites (with which I'm sure you're familiar) that do so. Suffice it to say that context is everything, and it is IMPOSSIBLE to approach anyone on the street with romantic intent without being a huge interruption of his/her daily routine. And communication starts non-verbally, from 20 feet away, sometimes more. That said, men come in for a huge amount of shaming for trying to turn the public sphere into a zone for romantic connection, and the usual amount of bullheaded obstinacy and objectification compounds the problem: rather than read body language and see who is open to communication, the men you describe take a "This thing is broken, it won't give me what I want" approach. And a concomitant denial of freedom to move unhindered in the public sphere. So, we agree, at least thus far: street harassment isn't a romantic approach, it isn't pick-up, it's misogyny. However, I don't think that awareness/realization brings men closer to an understanding of how they should understand their desire for connection, and sexual desire tout court. "Don't be an ass" is a point of departure, not a conclusion. And there is a striking failure of male imagination here in that the follow-up is "Well, if I don't initiate, nothing will happen." Or "If I wait for signals, I'll wait forever, and in vain." Both statements are demonstrably untrue, yet men behave as if they were.
I think we're mixing several issues here, namely "Who initiates?", "who gets more acceptable 'offers', and is that gender-related?" and fl's main point "Aren't people eliminating potential partners with their preconceived notions?" Unpacking all of that interrelated stuff is complex.
Submitted by 2190 (not verified) on Fri, 2008-05-30 18:51.
I was once at a poly gathering and made a slightly snarky comment about the aggravation of dealing with engineers in a romantic context, and someone took amused offense.
I said, "Everyone I've been involved with since I was sixteen was an engineer, an engineering student, or an MIT student."
He said, "Oh. Right then. My sympathies."
(I have since learned that my boyfriend from when I was fifteen grew up to join ... the Army Corps of Engineers ....)
[Wow, Dw3t, that's amazing! --fl]
Submitted by 2190 (not verified) on Sat, 2008-05-31 10:14.
On "standards" vs. "preferences": I'm not sure that either word is ideal, for me. "Standards" implies some kind of ranking from better to worse, and makes it hard to make the point that, no, I'm not open to certain offers without implying that all those other women who are have, well, actually lower and less good standards than me. And I'd like to separate the "casual sex is less good than committed sex" argument from the "sex of the kind you don't actually want isn't much worth having" argument, even if both are true. On the other hand, "preferences" sounds as if my desires are much more flexible than they actually are. It's hard for me to define precisely what needs to be there, for me, for sexual chemistry, but my experience is that if it isn't there before I kiss you, you don't turn into a prince if I try to kiss you anyway. Maybe other people's mileage varies, but I'm not other people.
The ultimate test is, of course, to go out and ask 50 random strangers of the opposite sex (assuming heterosexuality, because this is a het paradigm) "Hey, wanna f*ck?" and report back.
Of course, I'd only dare do this (assuming I was still single) if I had someone with me to act as bodyguard, and knew I could safely backtrack on that request.
In the real world, where I wasn't approaching random strangers, I've never been in the position of making overt sexual approaches to people I hadn't slept with and getting rebuffed; what actually happened was that I made some sort of approach to someone I found attractive, and maybe 20% of the time I'd get enough of a response that I could believe my interest was reciprocated. Some other portion of the time, I got mixed signals, and took those mixed signals as a no go. A 20% success rate isn't necessarily bad, but it didn't feel like the overwhelmingly great odds that the world was telling me women had. (High school memory: I go off on a "visit potential colleges" trip, which includes being shown around by the high school friend that had left for college before me, the guy that, at the time, I thought I was in love with, but unrequited. Guy welcomes me, shows me around, introduces me to friends, and at one point the conversation between him and another guy turns to just how much easier women have it, in romantic terms. And I'm sitting there, listening to him, and thinking about how he will never, ever like me back in that way.)
Suffice it to say that context is everything
Yes, and the problem with the "women have the advantage of all these offers" discussion is that, for me and probably a lot of women, the street harrassment and drunk at a party sort of offer is way more common than the kind where (whether it was someone you already found attractive or not) the guy is safe, sober, and approaching you in a way that's not actively insulting. Not because that's the way most men are, but because the men who do make the kind of "offer" that isn't so much offer as aggression make so many of them. And none of that has to do with resenting men offering or initiating per se; just following simple rules like not "offering" on the street or on the job (or at least, for the "job" part, being extra careful in certain ways if you're trying for coworker romance), and not taking too many drinks first, and not pressing if the answer is no, would really be all that's needed. Those guys who are hearing feminist complaints and agonizing over whether they can still initiate at all are, I think, overgeneralizing the complaint.
"Don't be an ass" is a point of departure, not a conclusion.
True, but it is important to understand, from the start, that "don't be an ass" is definitely not the same as "don't initiate."
Submitted by 2190 (not verified) on Sat, 2008-05-31 11:45.
I suppose "wants" and "needs" work better for me than either "standards" or "preferences." "Needs" would be those things it just doesn't work for you to give up, whether because you just can't be attracted without them (e.g. only one sex and not the other), or because you wouldn't feel safe without them (e.g, no men who show signs of being potentially abusive, regardless of how attractive they are), or because you have a hard ethical objection (e.g., no one who's married). And "wants" would be those things that you can choose to be flexible about or not.
[Yup, that's even clearer language, Lynn. --fl]
Submitted by 2190 (not verified) on Sat, 2008-05-31 16:01.
20% is an awesome success rate. Mystery, the only PUA who is really willing to put numbers out there, suggests that roughly 1 in 12 is a good success rate for getting phone numbers for men who are ALREADY good with women, and 1 in 50 for some type of physical contact. Roosh V suggests that with 50 approaches/week, or some 200/month, you can get 10-12 new partners a year. That's four hours in a club, four approaches an hour, four nights a week, plus 2 on the street. 0.5% success rate. For guys who are ALREADY good, i.e. not subcommunicating doubt, insecurity, etc.
With respect to the "don't initiate" message, I would reply with the vaguely Trotskyite "You may not be interested in most men, but lots of men are interested in you." The strict "no touching" university/corporate rules mean that the critical step is only likely to take place in the presence of positive signals. And all of this in the context of a system in which men are expected to initiate.
[Y'know it occurs to me that there's another problem with the sexual-scarcity paradigm for men and it's that it's harder to recognize that there *just aren't that many* unattached, available, compatible people! And if you're in a situation where only one gender asks and the other is therefore subject to... having to point out their unavailability. Hmm... I'll have to think about this more. Thank you, ES. --fl]
Submitted by 2190 (not verified) on Sat, 2008-05-31 18:03.
Yeah, I think my problem with the 20% success rate speaks more to how women sometimes hear the "if you're a woman, all you have to do is show up" messages than to 20% actually being a bad success rate. But I doubt I'm the only woman who had that reaction; women aren't taught to expect to get shot down sometimes and just keep approaching people.
[Yeah, its a particularly nasty trick that *because* you're told all you have to do is show up then rejection's going to hit pretty hard. And possibly be compounded by the Sex in the City meme that it's because you need hotter shoes when it's more likely just poor timing. Throw in the cultural conditioning that you're not supposed to be asking in the first place and yeah, it makes a lot of sense that it'll be easier not to try again. Darn it. Thanks, Lynn.
Submitted by 2190 (not verified) on Tue, 2008-06-03 19:31.
Well, you have to "show up" 5 times to be certain of success, I have to show up 200 times. And women wonder why men always seem to be in a hurry, never pay attention, etc. It's the dehumanizing effect of being treated as disposable, just a small part of an endlessly renewable resource, over and over again.
[It *really is* the dehumanization! It's like when *every fucking phone solicitation* starts out "we just wanted to bring you up to date on our activities..." when you, and they, know perfectly well that no matter what the call will end with them hitting you up. In that case for money. And if (like too many calls) the hitters up really feel they've got a quota to meet and an expectation that only one in 10 or, for some "charities" one in 200. And so it's got to be the same for women too inside the social expectation that men always initiate and women "gate keep" a.k.a. pick which of the glut of inquiries she's going to respond to... if any. Thanks, ES. --fl]