The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Watch Me Go SoCon: Does Tiger Woods Really Affect My Social Life?

Posted on | October 3, 2011 | 19 Comments

by Smitty

I’m going to chock this up to my thick-headed inability to understand, but I really don’t get this (emphasis original):

I’ve been shrieking this from the rooftops for years now: other women’s sexual choices affect my sexual and dating choices. Women who sleep around set an expectation for men, and then reinforce that expectation with the idea that anyone who doesn’t sleep around is a prude, repressed, or has hang-ups.

Maybe I’ve been some kind of mutant, but, even in my most wayward moments, I never considered sexuality outside of faith, for longer than the twinkling of an eye, wherein there is risk the eye offend.

Or maybe I have enough trailer-trash relatives in the extended family (one cousin was case forty-something on Judge Judy) that I knew any woman who’d consent to usage as a protein receptacle was more trouble than she’s worth.

So the fact that men exist who are merely dogs that bark in complete sentences has never bothered me. I’m not in that market. I watch them lead high-stress lives for all the trouble their hormones get them into, and feel Absolutely. No. Envy.

I don’t mind admitting that I met Mrs. Other Smitty on a site similar to this one, about 12 years ago. Whether it’s the same site or not is irrelevant. We were pen pals for several years before things became permanent. Does my experience map to the general case? Probably not.

And that’s where this post should conclude: quit fretting your existence with respect to the person on your left or right.

Be ultimately concerned with your existence with respect to the Almighty. Those other folks will take care of themselves, and, with patience, the Almighty will take care of you.

ADDENDUM (RSM): Permit me to add that (a) Smitty’s mystification is the result of his studying this problem from the perspective of morality, rather than economics, and (b) Roxeanne’s problem is that she doesn’t want to speak that fateful sentence, “Stacy McCain is exactly right“:

The old saying that a man will not “buy a cow if he’s getting the milk for free” – i.e., that promiscuous women undermine their marital prospects — expresses this supply-and-demand concept of sex. But the truth of this adage on an individual basis can also be extrapolated to the larger society: When women are generally promiscuous, men will be generally reluctant to marry.
This explains why, in every culture, sluts are stigmatized. The rational basis of what feminists derogate as misogynistic “slut-shaming” is seldom articulated, but it is this: Promiscuous women make it more difficult for all women — including chaste women — to get and keep a husband. . . .

You should read the whole thing, even if you’re a feminist. Because I’m exactly right, even if no one will ever say so.

Category: Roxeanne de Luca

Comments

19 Responses to “Watch Me Go SoCon: Does Tiger Woods Really Affect My Social Life?”

  1. Bob Belvedere
    October 3rd, 2011 @ 1:15 pm

    Stacy, I will and always have said so about you being dead solid perfect on this issue.  There’s an important book in your writings on Feminism and the damage it has done, most especially to women.

    Conservative gals who call themselves Feminists need to be educated on why that betrays what they say they stand for.

    SIDENOTE: I watched the first part of Ken Burns’s Prohibition last night and, in addition to be pleasantly surprised that he and Lynn Novick put the blame for it on the Progressive Movement, they showed the connection between the Christian Socialists and Feminism.  They also portrayed the Feminists as willing to outright lie to get their Prohibition and Suffragette messages across.

  2. ThePaganTemple
    October 3rd, 2011 @ 1:20 pm

    Hang in there Smitty. I think I know exactly what you’re going through. Calisthenics and cold showers are only good for so much. You’ve got to learn to visualize with your minds eye. I used to know a certain person who when he was married used to cheat on his wife with every woman who struck his fancy. The fun part was, his wife never caught on because she was the physical receptacle of his hidden lusts. That certain person may or may not have been me.

  3. Joe
    October 3rd, 2011 @ 1:32 pm

    I like that scene in It’s A Wonderful Life, when young Violet is crossing the street and Burt the Cop quips:  “I better go home to see what the wife is doing…” 

  4. Joe
    October 3rd, 2011 @ 1:39 pm

    Then again can we make an analogy about RSM being too generous with his journalistic affections for Herman Cain only to have Michael Barone sweep in to snatch up the prize? 

    Things are often not always fair.   

  5. Tennwriter
    October 3rd, 2011 @ 1:41 pm

    And another question: Should I be concerned for the larger community for A) Each of its members is a human being And/or B) Ultimately the behavior of the larger community does feed back to affect me?

    Both really.

    Your trailer-trash relatives might have been sources of strength to you, for example.  I’m going to suggest the likelihood that they may not have had enough money or emotional energy to help Mrs Other Smitty while you were off conquering the Afghan Seas (don’t know, and not my business, just a hypothetical to clarify things).  So instead of a source of community and strength, their bad choices made it harder on MOS and on you in turn.  They may have even been a source of weakness, a drain on you and yours.

    So, I hope that clarifies it for you.

    And the effects get even bigger and stronger across society, I think.

  6. GAHCindy
    October 3rd, 2011 @ 1:47 pm

    You are exactly right. Of course, I am nobody, and I will ever say so, so you’re right that nobody will ever say so, too.

  7. Roxeanne de Luca
    October 3rd, 2011 @ 3:32 pm

    This debate is between those who think that male nature – or the nature of individual men – is fixed and unalterable by society and experiences, and those who believe that many (or even most) men, especially young men, are influenced by culture and women. 

    Pardon my cynicism, but once you’ve dated a pastor – a PASTOR – who had waited until he was 30, then, once he got his taste of unchaste women, demanded sex as a condition of dating, you’ll really “get” what I mean by all of this.

  8. Dave
    October 3rd, 2011 @ 3:49 pm

    I thought the linked piece was horribly unfair to men. I am perfectly happy…fulfilled even….with my wife, and this marriage, this love is far, far better than boning random people. I slept with plenty of other women-one night stands, longer relationships, friends with benefits-before I met my wife. My wife and I slept together the weekend we met.  It’s been more than a decade, and I haven’t slept with anyone else since, nor do I desire to. Sex is fun, but the old cow adage is bullshit I think. Sure there are cads out there, maybe more than ever before (although I tend to think we just talk about it more than previous generations), but there are plenty of men who are perfectly happy to enter into a committed relationship, even if they dabble until it comes along. If you check the statistics on who initiates the most divorces, you’ll find that a majority of the time it’s not the men who have trouble with committed relationships, it’s the women.

  9. Anonymous
    October 3rd, 2011 @ 4:16 pm

    gals who call themselves Feminists need to be educated

    IYKWIMAITYD!

  10. Anonymous
    October 3rd, 2011 @ 4:25 pm

    I used to know a certain person who when he was married used to cheat on his wife with every woman who struck his fancy.

    That’s fascinating. If I cheated with every woman who struck my fancy, I’d have no time for anything else, as I’ve always been rather generally attracted to women, per se.

    Rather than them striking my fancy, however, the determining factor always seemed to be whether I struck their fancy. When I was a bachelor, I expended tremendous effort on fancy-striking. But once I got married, there was only one woman whose fancy needed to be struck and, it seems, the rest of womanhood rapidly lost interest.

    Being Mrs. Other McCain is apparently not an enviable task.

  11. Matt Knowles
    October 3rd, 2011 @ 4:26 pm

    I keep hearing this claim, that women who sleep around are making it tougher for more chaste women to find suitable mates.

    Why don’t they just buck up and collectively write off men who sleep around with women who sleep around as suitable mates?

  12. AngelaTC
    October 3rd, 2011 @ 4:31 pm

    Sorry, but the assertion that men think that there’s something wrong with you (frigidity, hangups, whatever….) doesn’t hold water.  Every society has bad girls, and every society has guys who  date them until those guys decide to seek a mate to marry.  

    At your age you should know that there’s not a guy on the planet who wants to marry one of the town sluts.   If they’re insinuating that there’s something wrong with you (a la “hangups) for not putting out, then they’re lying to you to try to pressure a little piece out of you.   You’re naive to believe they actually think that to be the truth.  It’s just that their dating objectives aren’t the same as yours at this juncture.

    As for the pastor – yeah, we’ve all dated jerks.  Heck, maybe you should ask the Catholics about some of the crap a few of their priests demanded from the altar boys.   

  13. ThePaganTemple
    October 3rd, 2011 @ 4:42 pm

    RSM, I might be wrong, but it seems like you missed this part of what I posted-

    The fun part was, his wife never caught on because she was the physical receptacle of his hidden lusts.

    In other words, my friend just closed his eyes and visualized his wife was the object of his lust. The good thing about that is, you get to have your cake and eat it too. You are “cheating” on your wife, having a torrid affair, but at the same time you’re not cheating on her.

    Best of all it doesn’t matter whether the woman you are lusting after thinks you’re attractive in real life or not.

  14. ThePaganTemple
    October 3rd, 2011 @ 4:42 pm

    RSM, I might be wrong, but it seems like you missed this part of what I posted-

    The fun part was, his wife never caught on because she was the physical receptacle of his hidden lusts.

    In other words, my friend just closed his eyes and visualized his wife was the object of his lust. The good thing about that is, you get to have your cake and eat it too. You are “cheating” on your wife, having a torrid affair, but at the same time you’re not cheating on her.

    Best of all it doesn’t matter whether the woman you are lusting after thinks you’re attractive in real life or not.

  15. ThePaganTemple
    October 3rd, 2011 @ 4:46 pm

    When you get right down to it, how many women are there who actually do sleep around with more than one man on a habitual basis? I know there’s more than a few, but I don’t think there’s as many as most people might think. Once you discount the prostitutes, I’d say they are overall a very small percentage of women, and I’d be willing to bet most of them are in their forties and fifties.

  16. Anonymous
    October 3rd, 2011 @ 4:49 pm

    On the demanding pastor: Sex is very much a matter of habit, and habits formed early in life are not easily changed. The most important habits are habits of mind: How we think about things will tend to shape our behavior, and habits of behavior reinforce the habits of mind.

    Human nature is a fixed quantity, but human personality (or human character, if you will) is tremendously varied and malleable. People adapt to their circumstances and respond to incentives, because if they did not, they would be incapable of survival. Thus, when we speak of the traditional “stiff upper lip” attitude of the British, as being a characteristic trait of their nation, we are making reference to a personality type forged by many centuries of cultural and social incentives. Likewise, the characterisitic “Yankee ingenuity” of 19th-century New Englanders — their aptitude for mechanical invention — can be seen as the product of adaptation to a specific cultural environment, as British colonists learned to do for themselves in building a simulacrum of English life in a hostile wildeness.

    Most people never think about such things, of course, and therefore take for granted the culture and social incentives of their own time and place. This “present-mindedness” of American culture has grown progressively worse over the past half-century for two major reasons:

    1. Television, contant exposure to which tends to shorten our attention spans and limit imagination, so that we cannot conceive of anything that is not shown to us in a dramatic visual context.
    2. Youth culture, arising during the tumult of the 1960s, which denigrates the value of experience and encourages young people to think of their elders as being foolishly out of touch with what really matters (which is, of course, whatever is popular this week).

    For half a century, Americans have been told that our elders are fools, and that history has nothing to teach us. Is it any wonder that age-old wisdom about courtship and marriage is now scoffed at? And is it any wonder that we are, as Bork said, slouching toward Gomorrah?

  17. DaveO
    October 3rd, 2011 @ 5:18 pm

    You are incorrect. Not every culture stigmatizes sluts. Whenever a great culture slips in to dottering senility, it first does away with the foundation of society, the nuclear family. Sluts and slutdom become chic, daring, and de rigueur. Homemakers, home schooling, and maritally loyal wives are seen as signs of mental illness, emotional dependency, and irresponsible parents. Greece, Rome, several other empires throughout the world all share that characteristic. The only question at that point is who will take the big comfy pillow and smother senile fool.

    Every time, it’s the hyper-macho, uber-virile male-dominated culture that does it. Will it be Russia? China? Iran? My theory: you will learn the identity of said smotherer because women will flock to it, and demand effeminized Americans to become more like them.

  18. Roxeanne de Luca
    October 3rd, 2011 @ 7:00 pm

    AngelaTC,

    Struck a nerve, did I? Me-ow!

    I am well-aware that men will use some interesting lines on women to get in their pants; what amazes me is that those lines are no longer, “I love you,” “I’ll marry you if you get pregnant,” or anything that would indicate that young women are sensible about sex and have a good head on their shoulders.  Rather, the “hang-ups” line is one which indicates that the only healthy, logical thing to do is to sleep around. 

    The analogy that comes to mind is the difference between, “You ate all of your veggies, how ’bout dessert” and “Why are you eating broccoli?  Don’t you care about your health?”

    As for the pastor: well, ask for a man’s view of him.  Stacy McCain tried to marry us off, and Da TechGuy met him, so both men will be able to give you a good analysis of his personality. 

    Heck, maybe you should ask the Catholics about some of the crap a few of their priests demanded from the altar boys.

    That was a very immature and unnecessary comment, Missy. I did not mention Catholicism, not it being a panacea against sexual misconduct.  What baggage prompted you to bring it up?

  19. nicholas
    October 4th, 2011 @ 5:13 am

    Ace, the hang-ups line is pathetic.  You’re telling me that a guy who would like to date you to whom you consent to spend some of your time with then immediately assume you will lie down with him?  That is rudely presumptuous.  Now the fact that a lot of young men are exceedingly presumptuous isn’t really news.  Just make it clear, “The demand for sex is an immediate deal breaker.  You will get no play with that.”  Then, if he wants to analyze the psychologic implications of that reality tell him he should consider paying for a counselor, that way someone could be listening to his shpeel and not have it be a total waste of their time.  

    Hey, do you realize there now is a category at The Other McCain that is simply titled Roxeanne de Luca?  Pretty cool!