A Sub-Standard Man is Worse Than Death

As a hyper-literal person, I often have to restrain myself from reducing every interaction and conversation down to the “brass tacks.” Subtext, subtlety, and letting silence speak all have a place. Relations between the sexes is one of the best use cases for these kinds of delicacies, actually.

But they’re only effective if both parties know what is being said in the subtle silence. If one (or both) parties is, for instance, a slack-jawed zoomer without even a hint of social couth or knowledge, then you can’t be genteel about it. You just have to slap the little weirdos in the face with a brusque, direct sentence and endure the emotional fallout.

Which is where I come in.

Actually, that’s a lie. Andrew Tate, the internet’s toxic ex-boyfriend, came in with this take:

Wretched man though he is, Tate has at least three takes a year that hit the mark. In this case, he has accurately called out (in aggressive and overly simplistic language) why many men face rejection from women over and over and over.

Because they suck.

And despite their glaring suck-itude (which every woman can clock at a distance, btw), they still have the nerve to approach a woman and ask her:

1. to accompany him to a secluded location, behind a locked door, out of screaming distance,
2. take off all her clothes,
3. and allow him to stick his body inside her body.
4. All while positioning his superior body mass atop hers, knowing she lacks the strength to dislodge him if she so pleases.

Remember what I said about brass tacks?

That’s the request you’re making every time you ask a woman on a date. Every time.

But there’s a second request you’re making, one that is just as outrageous. You are asking her to consider making you a reflection of who she is and her status in society for the foreseeable future.

Remember this guy?

Colloquially known as “Tinder Guy,” this man, who I know nothing about, made the news for swiping right 2 million times on Tinder, and securing only one date out of it. Men on the internet used his case to illustrate why dating apps are useless for finding relationships (true), that they favor women who are seeking attention and simps (true), and how only a tiny fraction of highly attractive men can expect success (also true).

But some commenters got very angry at the women attempting to explain why they would have swiped left too. I won’t list them all because only one is important for this conversation.

This man will embarrass any woman he’s with.

And no woman will willingly sign up for that. No matter how “looks-matched” you say she is.

You Can’t Negotiate Desire (Or Status)

I’m not a psychologist, evolutionary or otherwise, so I won’t bore you with any science-based opinions I gleaned from other, smarter writers. But there are reasons why girls are so picky. Deep, inborn reasons. Yes, even the fat ones. Yes, even the butter-face mids. They’re picky for good reasons, and no amount of silly fantasizing about violent theocratic revolution will stop them from being picky.

Instead of wondering how you can bend half the population to your will, perhaps you should activate those analytical skills I keep hearing you excel at.

Society has changed, but what women value hasn’t.

Consider a short scene from the 1997 movie Paradise Road about women interred at a Japanese POW camp during WW2. Early in the movie, wealthy English women are being evacuated from Singapore aboard a ship and must bunk four to a room. None of these ladies is accustomed to sharing or giving way, so two of the ladies snidely duke it out.

Mrs. Roberts: The conditions are somewhat unusual, but this is my cabin.

Mrs. Tippler: Your cabin? It's my cabin.

Mrs. Pargiter: I understood that Marty arranged this cabin for me.

Mrs. Tippler: My husband is an engineer with coastal traders.

Mrs. Roberts: [Smugly] Mine is the head of the P.W.D.

Topsy: [Exasperated] Mine's in pineapples. Look, girls, we're just going to have to get along.

You see what happened there? All these gals are rich but they didn’t whip out their net worth to try and assert dominance. They used their husband’s position. His status. Topsy, the American, is somewhat apart from this particular hierarchy, which is why she is the one to play peacekeeper. Her husband’s self-made fortune holds no sway here, but his respectability does.

Do you think Topsy would have spoken up and squashed the argument if her husband was, say, a weird, eccentric tycoon who made others uncomfortable with his mumbling and poor hygiene? Would she have felt comfortable asserting herself in this female group if her husband had gotten sloppy drunk at last night’s party, and was seen groping the band singer?

The answer of course, is no.

Yes, sexual attraction is vitally important (as I emphasized in my guest post on Femlosophy) in a woman accepting your initial approach. But so is a woman’s pride in being associated with you.

Topsy is able to parlay with other, more influential women because her husband is respectable, successful, and esteemed by other men. Do not imagine that in the days of girl bosses and power couples, women are any more okay with the idea of an embarrassing partner than they were in generations past.

It is well remarked upon that women are more invested in group consensus than men, less willing to endure dissent. So why do so many men express confusion that women need their friends, family, and colleagues to approve of their partner before they will become serious about him?

A woman choosing the wrong man, even if she’s crazy about him, can mean being ostracized from her social group. And if the man in question doesn’t have a whole new, better network for her to slip seamlessly into, then his request for her allegiance to him is unreasonable.

We all get sensitive about our physical appearance. Some of it can be changed with a good lifestyle; but not all of it. So maybe it is a comfort for you to know the wild-eyed search for an escape route that befalls a woman’s face when you try to pitch woo isn’t because of your looks.

It might be because you are someone her father would hate. Her friends would mock. Or she would, in general, be shamed to be seen in public with you.

And most of those things are fixable, if you have a mind to.

Because yelling at single ladies that they’ll be sorry for rejecting you once they turn 30 is not an effective strategy. It’s simply not true.

There is still a stigma for the never-married over-30 woman. But it’s nowhere near as bad as the stigma of being the woman with the humiliating husband. If her friends hate her husband/LTR, if her coworkers are uncomfortable around him… that’s a death sentence. For her social life, for her career, maybe even for her relationship with her family.

So when you ask out a woman, carefully evaluate what you are asking her to submit to. Because it is a request for submission, however genteelly phrased.

Make sure your request is a reasonable one.