Sex difference in evaluating attractiveness or no?

On Dalrock’s recent post, one thing stood out to me in Mandy Hale’s comment:

I never meet guys. Like…literally NEVER. A few years ago I felt like I could simply walk into a room and command the attention of the men in the room. I had no trouble meeting men. I got hit on regularly. But something changed along the way and that’s not my experience anymore. I suspect it was more an internal change than an external one, as I honestly think I physically look better now than I did ten years ago.

I’ve had this conversation with my wife before about the attractiveness of some women we encounter. There’s been several times where she’ll say an older woman is very attractive, and I don’t see it at all compared to a younger woman. This is not taking into account physical body changes: if a woman was obese and then suddenly got in shape she’ll definitely become more attractive. However, objectively her youthfulness, fertility and facial attractiveness all decline as she ages.

A woman in her 30s can go from “unattractive” (overweight/obese) to “attractive for her age” (athletic/fit curvy), but she is not as objectively attractive as an average young non-obese young 20 something. Yes, she could be in greater physical shape and have better curves and maybe even better facial features, but she’s still not as attractive as the younger woman. Youthfulness is one of the things that is very attractive to men. This is a fact that is fairly apparent to the vast majority of men, but it seems to be the case that women don’t see it as readily as men do.

In women don’t really understand male attraction, it also seemed to the case that women don’t really understand the power of their own waist-to-hip ratio has on their overall attractiveness in conjunction with the clothes (hint: dresses and skirts) they wear. That’s why the girl who lost weight went from like a 2-4 range ish to a 7-9ish on most scales whereas most women would’ve said her lost weight only bumped her up to the 5-7 range at most. The sex appeal comes from the lost weight on the face and the curves that make a man go “wow.”

It seems to me that this would be potentially another sex difference that sabotages women’s efforts to land a man. Unless there is a more drastic physical change, no woman is more attractive with age (or even if she is then her face at least won’t show it for the most part). I suppose that some women “get it” when approaching the wall, but it seems that others do not.

I’d be curious to hear a weigh in from the men and women on if this is the case and why.

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Anomalous

The more you read the Bible and examine history, the more you understand that cultures that actually follow the LORD are anomalous.

The cultures that seem to emulate God’s design (male led families) tend to be very successful, at least at first. However, that success is short-lived when they start to stray from God’s design.

This is not a bug but a feature. All cultures will inevitably stray because humans don’t like to follow God. Just as did Israel and Judah eventually rebelled against God, even God’s Church has problems with obedience in Revelation 2 and 3. However, we are still called to be that people, not the culture.

1 Peter 2:9 But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession, so that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light; 10 for you once were not a people, but now you are the people of God; you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

It is actually an anomaly if a culture sticks with God’s principles, though inadvertently, for a long time. Wide is the road that leads to destruction.

Objectification is meaningless

A reader writes in:

Can you talk about the idea of objectification? I hear people use this word in regards to lust, porn, cat-calling, etc. but I’m not entirely sure I see sexual immorality as objectifying. Is objectification really the problem most men have in their views of women? If we ran through the gamut of sexual sin, do they all involve degrading a woman to an object? Is commitment the only thing that makes it not objectification. Maybe you get what I’m driving at? I just never understood that word and how exactly we objectify women in modern culture. For instance, to praise a women on her beauty is often considered objectification because it’s assuming she has no power of agency and is merely an object to be looked at.

You gotta go back to the basics to understand this.

If an attractive man (or celebrity) “cat calls” a woman and she recognizes him, she’s going to think it’s flattering. If an unattractive man (say a homeless man) does the same thing she’s going to think it’s creepy. Women love to get the attention of attractive men with their beauty but hate when unattractive men do the same thing. Cat calls are corny and crass, so I would not recommend Christians do them anyway. But the point remains.

The problem is not with “objectification” but rather the context of who is doing the objectifying. It’s a great thing for a husband and wife to objectify each other in that they’re sexually attracted to various traits and aspects of each other. If you burn with passion and want to marry, it’s a good thing to have that sexual attraction toward your wife. As with a wife, think she looks amazing or sexy? It’s fine to express it, as long as you’re not committing fornication or lacking self control with her (if not married).

Immorality of lust and porn are not sins because you’re objectifying in them. Lust (or rather coveting in the NT) is about desiring wife that isn’t yours (or woman if you’re married). Lack of self control and warring against the flesh. There is reason the idea that it creates unreasonable expectations just like romance novels do with women too.

Overall, I would ignore everything that “modern culture” says about any topic. You’ll always find that modern culture presents numerous double standards in behavior, usually in the favor of pedestalizing or idolizing women. The goal is to be conformed to Christ, and it’s clear that culture is almost always diametrically opposed to what Christ says.

Johns Hopkins Research: No evidence people are born gay or transgender

This should not be a surprise, but I was surprised to see it in PJMedia. Although it is a couple years old.

Scholars at Johns Hopkins University released a new report on Monday which argues that there is not sufficient evidence to suggest that lesbian, gay, or transgender people are born with this sexual orientation or gender identity.

The three-part, 143-page report, which appeared in the Fall 2016 edition of The New Atlantis, also investigated other commonly accepted ideas about homosexuality and transgenderism. Mayer and his co-author Paul McHugh, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Johns Hopkins, challenged the claim that discrimination and social stigma are the only reasons why homosexual and transgender people suffer higher rates of mental health problems and are more likely to commit suicide.

I think the weird part is they try to claim both sides:

• People are born homosexual or transgender. We shouldn’t criticize them.
• But if you come to identify as something else, you can claim whatever you want to be and people should accept that.

You can’t have it both ways.

The study breaks down in three parts: First, Mayer and McHugh examined whether homosexuality is an inherited trait, and concluded that people are not simply “born that way.” Second, they looked at the causes of the poor mental health associated with gay and transgender people, concluding that social stress does not explain all of it. Finally, they studied transgenderism, concluding that it is not innate and that transgender “treatments” are associated with negative outcomes.

The report found insufficient evidence to back up the idea that people are born with innate sexual attractions. Mayer and McHugh examined past studies which show a modest association between genetic factors and sexual orientation, but these studies have not been able to pinpoint particular genes responsible. Other hypothesized biological causes, such as prenatal development and hormones, have also been linked to sexual orientation, but that evidence is also limited.

“Studies of the brains of homosexuals and heterosexuals have found some differences, but have not demonstrated that these differences are inborn rather than the result of environmental factors that influenced both psychological and neurobiological traits,” the report explained. “One environmental factor that appears to be correlated with non-heterosexuality is child sexual abuse victimization, which may also contribute to the higher rates.”

That last paragraph doesn’t sit well with most of the liberal crowd.

The report cited the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health, which tracked the sexual orientation of children aged 7 to 12 in 1994-1995 and again in 2007-2008. Eighty percent of male respondents who had reported same-sex attraction and both-sex attraction in childhood later identified as exclusively heterosexual, while more than half of the females who reported both-sex attraction as children reported exclusive attraction to men as adults.

Mayer and McHugh also analyzed twins. They pointed to a 2010 study by psychiatric epidemiologist Niklas Långström which analyzed 3,826 identical and fraternal same-sex twin pairs. Both twins had at least one same-sex partner in only 18 percent of male identical twins, and 11 percent of male fraternal twins. For women, both twins had at least one homosexual partner in 22 percent of identical twins and 17 percent of fraternal twins.

“Summarizing the studies of twins, we can say that there is no reliable scientific evidence that sexual orientation is determined by a person’s genes,” the researchers wrote. “But there is evidence that genes play a role in influencing sexual orientation.”

The genetics part is the one that interests me the most. If homosexuality was “all” genetic, then you would expect that identical twins would have 100% rate of homosexuality if it was genetic. This is similar to inheritance of some diseases like Huntington’s where if you have the gene then you have it.

So homosexuality has some small to maybe moderate genetic influence at most based on the twin studies. Sometimes this occurs early on or sometimes later from the pushing of LGBT. This is a far cry from being born that way.

From a Christian perspective this is fairly consistent with how we interpret the fallen world. Since the fall, all humans have some predisposition (some genetic or otherwise) to certain sins. Since we are new creations in Christ, we don’t go along with what our flesh desires but the Spirit and conform it to Christ.

Of course, this is becoming “outdated” and “hate speech” even though the scientific consensus says otherwise.

Incels and the growing plastic surgery culture

This was a pretty crazy article with a sensationalist title of course.

How Many Bones Would You Break to Get Laid? “Incels” are going under the knife to reshape their faces, and their dating prospects.

The article is long so I’ll only cover a bit.

Truth4lie was 27, depressed, and living in a student apartment after a year in a psychiatric hospital on suicide watch when a friend showed him Neil Strauss’s pickup-artist guidebook, The Game. Together they practiced lines from the book, planning to use them on girls in nightclubs. “Would you like to kiss me? I didn’t say you could.”

In real life, pickup artistry made Truth4lie anxious. One rule stated he needed to initiate conversation with a woman three seconds after seeing her, which felt like taking an exam. Still, he tried the techniques for a few years, with middling success. Eventually, he stumbled on a forum called Sluthate, where anonymous men gathered to “discredit the effectiveness of pickup art.” In one post, a user described coming to the realization that it didn’t matter what he said because of the way he looked.

The user uploaded a selfie, and other Sluthate posters agreed, mocking the flaws in his face. They congratulated him for “taking the black pill,” shorthand for waking up to the tragedy of being ugly. Ugly people, especially ugly men, they said, are destined to lead unhappy lives and die alone.

Reading this, Truth4lie felt exhilarated. In the mental hospital, counselors had told him the roots of his depression and anxiety were repressed childhood traumas. In therapy, he relived getting in physical fights as a kid with his dad and the time he punched his sister in the head. Cognition determined emotions, the counselors told him. By changing his mind-set, he could change his behavior. But what if his problems weren’t inside him but outside? Looks can’t be changed with a mind-set adjustment; neither can the cruelly superficial world that values them above all else. The realization was awful and great all at once, as if someone were finally telling him the truth about himself after a lifetime of fake validation.

“The difference between a mirror image and non-flipped image of myself drives me crazy,” he typed one night, after spending hours comparing his phone’s selfies to his reflection. “I see all my asymmetries … How can it only be my brain?”

Friends and family said he had body-dysmorphic disorder, a condition the International OCD Foundation says affects about one in every 50 people. Psychiatric manuals describe it as an obsession with perceived flaws in one’s appearance that others don’t see or notice. But Truth4lie’s imperfections were perfectly noticeable to other forum users: weak jawline, feminine nose, small frame, thinning hair. To Truth4lie, their assessments explained why he hadn’t fit in in high school, why his ex didn’t love him, why women he looked at on the street didn’t make eye contact.

Interestingly, the “black pill” leads some men who seem to be unsuccessful with women down the road of “reverse” narcissism. In other words, if looks are everything with women then even if you don’t have the looks you must go the road of getting looks to be successful.

Seems to be the same with women’s plastic surgery: breast augmentation, butt augmentation, lip augmentation, and whatever type of cosmetic the Kardashians are promoting nowadays. Beauty is not one thing but the only thing.

Truth4lie had for a while tried to write a novel about his time in the psychiatric hospital. He read Camus, who said that life has no great meaning. He pondered nihilistic theories posited on the forums he frequented. He discovered terms like “oneitis,” a disease of romantic obsession that enslaves men, and “hypergamy,” an evolutionary principle that pushes women to seek mates above their status. In a post-monogamy society, that means a tiny percentage of genetically superior alpha guys hoard most hetero sex. There were infographics to back it up, Tinder experiments with precise data. Beyond that, there was biology: Genetic wiring controls most everything about life, the forums’ users argued, ensuring the misery of people like him.

The forums’ posters blamed their plight on women’s rising social power. Once upon a time, women without careers married for stability; today they inevitably spent their 20s riding a “cock carousel” of the hottest guys they could land, settling for an ugly or average-looking man only when they were old and used, i.e., above 30. Even then, women could hardly be depended on for loyalty. Showered with attention on dating apps, favored by divorce courts, beloved by HR diversity initiatives, women had become a privileged class. The forums rarely mentioned wage gaps, pregnancy discrimination, or sexual violence, except in jest.

When men get sucked into the black hole of knowledge (especially if they were lied to a lot about men and women and relationships), it’s easy to go down the path of nihilism. That’s where you get your incels and MGTOWs.

That’s part of the big issue that I think Churches need to do better on: discipling single men and women especially those who want to get married. Actually tell them the truth. Help them in the areas where they need to grow and mature and give them advice to be attractive.

However, the broader picture is that Christians have the responsibility to take any knowledge and wisdom captive to Christ. It’s very easy to go down the rabbit hole and lose sight of the mission completely. We’re here to evangelize and make disciples. We’re here to love and serve others. Anything that fosters bitterness, jealousy, or envy is not going to help any Christian be effective for Christ.

In Christ there is the fruit of the Spirit (love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, humility, and self control), contentment (the actual context of Phillipeans “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me”), and gratefulness.

Aaron Renn’s Masculinst

I’ve posted about his newsletter before, but check out Aaron Reen’s Masculinist archives and sign up if you’re interested in content discussing Christian men’s issues. It’s up to #34 issues so far and covers a wide range of topics from the feminization of the Church to men’s personal lives to how to respond and support Churches and pastors even if they’re going off track.

He made a big contribution to The Biblical Masculinity Blueprint with allowing the material from newsletter #3, played a big role in editing, and made some monetary contribution to get the book out.

Support him by signing up or on Patreon.

Take up your cross

In the spirit of the Roosh post a couple days ago, let’s go over the verses he mentioned:

Matthew 16:24 Then Jesus said to His disciples, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me. 25 For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. 26 For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul? 27 For the Son of Man is going to come in the glory of His Father with His angels, and will then repay every man according to his deeds.

There’s several interesting things about this verse.

• Jesus is subtly predicting the manner in which he would die
• Jesus is very graphic: “take up your cross” to the 1st century Jew would mean that you would literally carry the cross to the place where you would die a criminal’s death in shame (nakedness) and suffering.
• This is the cost of discipleship (deny self and follow): you must be willing to sacrifice everything for His purpose/mission and follow Him until death. ]

It’s a very sobering passage, and so far I think Roosh understands that since he’s trying to totally change his behavior. Hopefully he will come to the understanding that follow Jesus also means carrying out His mission: make disciples of all nations and teach them about Jesus.

Roosh’s Christian conversion

This video gives a lot of insight into Roosh’s (supposed) conversion to Christianity. Roosh’s interview with Sharpe on his turning Christian.

I ended up watching the whole thing. Here’s a bunch of the key talking points.

• Orthodoxy was his church of choice because that’s where he can take his mother and if I remember correct he grow up in that Church
• The death of his sister made him question the emptiness of his lifestyle. Thought about how it would be much better if he had been spending time with her rather than traveling around and banging women in different countries
• Traveling also was futile because he could have been establishing himself professionally for years, so if he wanted to have a family he could already be working toward that
• Taking shrooms help him confirm that Christianity was the right path as it supposedly made him see clearer through all of the socialized and feminized BS that is imposed on us all the time from the post-feminist world. It did not blow his mind.
• Regrets the player lifestyle but realizes that he may have not been a Christian had it played out any different way
• Has pulled most/all of his books on fornicating in other countries. Left the game ones up as he thinks game is not inherently bad but recognizing fornicating is.
• Talks about how his mind is constantly sexualizing women and running game on them as a habit, so he’s being celibate and focused on retraining his mind to be normal
• Would not comment on “deeper” aspects of the Christian faith as he is new to the faith and still studying the Bible and doing research on how to be and live as Christian, aside from the obvious no fornicating.
• Commented how haters would be haters (gathering around you and love what you’re doing but once you do something that they don’t like they’ll throw you under the bus) but is doing the interview for people who actually want to know the reasons why he has done an about face and why he thinks Christianity (“the God pill”) is true.
• Recognizes the gravity of Matthew 16:24-26 (“whoever wants to be My disciple must take up his cross…”) and is trying to follow in that vein
• Relaunching his site soon.

I ended up e-mailing him and offering him my book but he declined as he didn’t have time and would buy it if he did.

Overall, he seemed very genuine on the video and recognizes he’s still an infant in the faith but seems to be doing a lot of soul searching and research on how to live the faith out. Relaunching/rebranding is an interesting thing because you alienate most of your former userbase and it’s has to hurt him monetarily pulling his books. I think that’s the most genuine thing so far that we can see at least that shows that money is not everything, and he’s serious about what he’s talking about so far. We’ll see what comes out of it, but I think he’s on the right track. Even if the shrooms story was a bit weird (I’ve heard crazier conversions).

Also, there was a surprising amount of Christians commenting in the chat while the interview was going on. I think most of the Christians who encounter the manosphere don’t know blogs like Dalrock exist.

False desire and true desire

One big issue that I’ve seen that husbands run into when they start to follow God’s Word again by acting the head of their marriage is that they have trouble distinguishing false versus true desire.

One of the issues that stems from is the the application of dread.

• There is legitimate dread/fear from a husband starting to act as the head in the relationship again because the old dysfunctional and sinful patterns are being disturbed. This is a good thing. You want to break the cycle of the wife acting as the head, rebelling, or otherwise being contentious and nagging.
• There is illegitimate dread from actually threatening or inducing fear.

The issue that I see that most Christian husbands have is that the second point often does result in better sex. It is legitimately true that if you use the a threat point of divorce (like many pastors tell wives to use against their husbands), it does often result in a wife being more enthusiastic about sex and more submissive. But this misses the point.

One of the main points of marriage is about emulating Christ and the Church. Christ does not rule by fear but by love. Christians don’t follow Christ because we’re afraid of hell. We follow Him because He showed His love for us that while we were still sinners Christ died for us.

“Threatening” certainly works (to an extent at least), but it also does not induce true desire. It’s a false desire that masquerades as true. False desire does not make one more holy, though it can get some results like sex. True desire does, and it also gets the righteous results like sex.

This is why Jesus admonishes the disciples to use authority correctly: to love and serve others.

Matthew 20:25 But Jesus called them to Himself and said, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great men exercise authority over them. 26 It is not this way among you, but whoever wishes to become great among you shall be your servant, 27 and whoever wishes to be first among you shall be your slave; 28 just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.”

The problem, most of the time, is that we believe that we know what works better than God, or we don’t believe that God will work His power through us. And then we flail around messing up relationships around us by using worldly measures like trying to threaten those close to us.

Christ’s sacrificial love from Ephesians 5

It’s probably not that surprising how the Ephesians passage is easily warped into “servant leadership” or rather do what your wife wants to make her feel better. However, few do get the deep context of the passage.

Ephesians 5:25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her, 26 so that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, 27 that He might present to Himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that she would be holy and blameless.

The sacrificial love Christ gave is for the specific purpose of sanctification. In other words, with His death Christ was thinking about how to reconcile us to God and Himself.

What most people don’t realize is that this passage mirrors Genesis 2-3 accurately.

Genesis 2:15 Then the Lord God took the man and put him into the garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep it. 16 The Lord God commanded the man, saying, “From any tree of the garden you may eat freely; 17 but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die.”

Genesis 3:6 When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate; and she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate.

Genesis 3:11 And He said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?” 12 The man said, “The woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me from the tree, and I ate.” 13 Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?” And the woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”

The purpose of the Ephesians 5 passage goes back to the garden:

1. God commands Adam not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil
2. Adam ate from it without being deceived, under the persuasion of his wife (1 Tim 2)
3. God goes to Adam, and Adam blames Eve, and Eve blames the serpent

Christ’s as the 2nd Adam (1 Cor 15) and his sacrifice is the example of a sacrificial love for our reconciliation with God. Thus, God gives husbands the same mission again to be the head of their wives and guide / teach / correct / rebuke them toward holiness rather than sin. To help them choose the tree of life rather than the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

When pastors make this passage about a husband making his wife feel better, they miss the deep meaning behind Christ’s sacrifice and parallel to creation in the passage.