Sunday, January 8, 2012

The Modern View of Marriage

A recent Citibank commercial exhibits the modern view of marriage found in the young, White professional women who are the target of Citbank's rewards program. The commercial features an attractive, athletic woman who says, "My boyfriend and I were going on vacation ... we talked about getting a diamond, ... but with all the points I earned ... I flew us to the rock I really had in mind."





The guy, is never shown in detail, and is a lesser rock climber than the girl (who goes first and stands alone on a towering, dangerous spire). Complete with faux-tribal yodeling and grrrl power! singing, its almost a SWPL parody. One might ask why marriage has become less attractive, to the point that Citibank (which only cares about getting consumers to sign up for its rewards cards program so they can reap fees off it, in the essentials) points out that its target young White female professionals can use the card to go rock climbing instead of getting married?

Let me repeat this. The commercial says flat out that the card allows women to avoid marriage in favor of "exciting" rock-climbing. The "rock I really had in mind."

How has marriage come to this?

It came to this, because in essentials, most White women find their men not very sexy. After all, modern life provides a lot of comfort and security. But the essentials of that security and comfort can only be provided if the men trade-off sexiness for reliability and agreeableness and cooperation. Women don't find happy, smiling men attractive, as any reader of Twilight or its "Teen Paranormal Romance" spawn (that's a genre inside Barnes and Noble Bookstores, no lie they have an entire section devoted to it) would know.

More than a thousand men and women were shown pictures of faces making various expressions and asked to rate them for attractiveness. Some pictures of a neutral face were also included.
The women were least attracted to the smiling happy men and most interested in those whose head was held high with pride. They also found the men who looked ashamed rather attractive, the journal Emotion reports.
Researcher Jessica Tracy said: ‘Pride may signal a man’s competence and ability to provide for a partner and offspring.’


Just as Satoshi Kanazawa's work showing that Black women were the least attractive to men of all races (which earned him a PC defenestration and forced, Gallileo-like apology after a PC inquisition) has not been disproven, just shouted down as not following the dogma of PC, this work and others are sure to generate lots of PC heat.

Is this assumption accurate, i.e. the cooperative, happy, smiling men who are "nice" and mostly equal to most women, are less attractive, than bad, broody guys, and thus account for the decline of marriage (because that is the supply essentially of prospective grooms -- agreeable "nice guys" for the most part)? Probably a lot more study is needed. It might very well not be. But then again, it might.

Does it make sense, or this another History Channel "Ancient Aliens Were At the First Thanksgiving (Hunting Bigfoot)" series?

In my view, there are reasons to suspect something along these lines. Every pundit from John Derbyshire, to Spengler at the Asian Times and Pajamas Media, to Theodore Dalrymple, to Mark Steyn, has remarked upon: plummeting birth rates in the West and places where women have better conditions and status and earnings and independence. Also, decreased marriage rates. Also, vastly increased female preference for "bad" i.e. abusive, violent, and dangerous men. Also, among women, vastly increased display of skin and figures, i.e. "slutty" and ultra-revealing clothing. Also, as Steve Sailer once noted, prevalence of tattoos on young women to indicate an easy attitude towards sex. The Daily Mail has shown series after series of drunken young British women stumbling around in next to nothing looking for sex on the weekend nights.

All of these things are well known. But no pundit has ever said why. The best they can come up with is … well these things just happen as a rule, because well that's what modern life is like. But why is that?

In my view, the reason for the disdain for marriage, the dislike of Western Civilization, the preference for bad boys, and all the rest is the profound dissatisfaction with "Kitchen Bitches," that is equal or mostly equal men who are smiling, agreeable, cooperative, building wealth and security and comfort but providing no sexiness. No danger. No excitement. And no pure, powerful arousal.

Joran Van Der Sloot after all has aroused many women Straight-A, Bible Study Natalee Holloway wound up leaving the disco with hulking, six foot four Van Der Sloot. She was never seen since and Van Der Sloot admitted on TV her murder. Another woman in Peru went with him to his hotel room (and her death). Van Der Sloot apparently used his notoriety to cut a wide swath among women in Asia. As did accused wife killer (yes plural victims) Drew Peterson, a former police officer in Ohio, well into his fifties, with coeds from local colleges.

In the early days of his detention, the Lima papers were full of reports about him reading reams of letters from women who claimed to be in love with him. “I get more letters every day,” he bragged to the downmarket Dutch paper De Telegraaf. “One of them even wanted me to get her pregnant.”


Even a Florida Doctor, a woman in her fifties, was not immune to his spell, spending considerable amounts of money to see him, and hiring attorneys.

What is this? Nothing but market failure. Modern society requires men to be agreeable, smiling, and cooperative. And that coupled with their near equality, makes them sexless. Causing in turn a desperation among women for sexiness no matter what. This is not evil, or a reflection of "evil women." It is simply an adjustment that women need, a set of proper incentives and investment.

Women won't value marriage (to Joe Average) if the trade-off is no sex and excitement. Game, being a PUA, working on sexiness, will all help to some degree fill that market gap, but there are limits. A man can't neglect his job, his other duties, simply to be sexy all day. No group of men spends more on being sexy and dominant (primarily through ultra-thuggery) than Black men in the ghetto. Optimizing for sexy men means minimizing for wealth and security and comfort.

The problem is one of incentives. Women are essentially, among both White working class (illegitimacy around 40%) and the White professional class (illegitimacy around 20%) betting it ALL on a continued long run of prosperity, safety, security, and comfort. Where life is so risk-less and "boring" that rock climbing, and other thrills (named Mr. Sexy Bad Boy) are required just to feel alive. Starving women in the Third World feel no such requirement for adrenaline fixes nor bad boy parades. They'd be happier if their husbands did not patronize prostitutes, drink the family money away in bars, and did some actual work at home and outside.

Women need to know that the comfort, safety, and stability of the West is an illusion. All those disaster movies, the end of the world movies, the zombie movies, and so on have played upon the fears that indeed, the surface stability and safety is just such an illusion. One destined to be shattered. There **IS** a cultural awareness that the West is not all powerful, and can be shattered at any moment. For a long time after WWII, this was centered around the Cold War and nuclear annihilation. Now, bio-terror, or zombies, or aliens, or ancient prophecies, or "climate change" nonsense articulate this fear. Which is the "entertaining" version of the real risk -- social pressures and competition for limited food, water, and other resources in a global oil shock, or global famine, or any other threat (like a failure of the Euro and a global banking shock).

Forget the fantasy of zombies or aliens landing. If gas goes to $10 a gallon, there are roaming packs of inner city marauders, looting the suburbs, a "Kitchen Bitch" with a shotgun who sticks with you looks better than fabulous rock climbing and a bad boy who does not stick around. No matter how moody and thus sexy he is. It is all a question of incentives. Women and Men behave EXACTLY as incentives push them, in the mass. [Individuals can and do vary, but the mass is what we are concerned with. It does society no good to have a few wise women choose security and the nuclear family when most abjure it for risky single motherhood.]

Marriage does not work for women, now, because they assume the stability and power of the West is eternal. Never threatened, always "boring." This is a poor bet, and likely to work out disastrously in fairly short order. Food, oil, and other resources are tight globally, and an external shock (and there is ALWAYS an external shock) in the global system will push everything over. Not aliens invading, or zombie apocalypse, or Mayan prophecies, but a corn harvest failure in Brazil, or a Wheat harvest failure in Russia, the Ukraine, and Australia. The closing of the Persian Gulf to oil shipping for six months or longer. The Euro collapsing. Perhaps all of these, are enough to send the economy into a nose-dive and mobs of hungry people from the urban centers into looting marches on the suburbs. With a paralyzed and inept bureaucracy unable and unwilling to use force to stop it. In other words, the LA Riots writ nationally.

Hipster rock climbing instead of marriage is all well and good, but a woman's "boyfriend" is not going to display the same sacrifice and courage in fighting off intruders as one's husband.

29 comments:

Jeff Burton said...

Women should not fear societal breakdown. Hollywood has taught us that women are a match for any man in a physical fight.

dienw said...

This is not evil, or a reflection of "evil women." It is simply an adjustment that women need, a set of proper incentives and investment.

You are wrong. This is Evil: you are now is agreement with "The woman wipes her mouth and says she has done no wrong." I suggest you rethink your position on this matter.

Lamont Cranston said...

I would like to see those pictures. Were the happy, smiling men less physically attractive than the broody ones?

Women who are attracted to Van Der Sloot love death. The West no longer loves life, they yearn for oblivion.

samseau said...

It's kinda weird how so many in the manosphere dream of some kind of catastrophe to bring down revenge on our corrupt women.

What if the revenge never comes? What if the west continues undisturbed for another 200 years? Does that make the world wrong?

Women act they way they do because they're going to get away with it.

Anonymous said...

Whiskey, it would seem many frustrated beta men should in the main be welcoming the coming Mad Max dystopian apocalypse (Third World War, peak oil, massive depression, global anarchy)you've described rather than dreading it.

After all, the resultant chaos and violence will kill off or financially ruin many of their male competitors, it will disrupt the current sexual marketplace that many betas are shut out of, and it will help restore marriage back to the type that was predominant before 1960 because women will need the protection and companionship of a husband once again to keep themselves and their children from falling into abject poverty.

If that's the case, then the sooner this corrupt civilization collapses, the better.

flavia said...

@samseau

You're right. As Evola said, women are water. We only really push as far as you guys let us.

I see female disdain for the kitchen bitch as having evolutionary merit. If a man is not dominant enough to stand up to me or dominate me, then can I really rely on his protection from large outsiders? Not that I agree with the way some women treat nice men- I am just saying that there is an iota to logic.

Roissy argues that as women get more masculine through forced "equality" they still need to feel feminine and dominated- but now have to upgrade to more violent/dominant men due to the fact that they are less feminine.

One of my bffs is a very dominant woman and lo and behold the one guy she truly fell for was an abusive bad boy...and all the sweet little (rich!) betas that would fall on their swords for her got the boot (and cheated on).

little dynamo said...

while it's true that u.s./western men are utterly emasculated, it's largely the "choices" of men, not women, that's driving the marriage-free society

the twentieth century saw the destruction of masculinity in every way conceivable, including the past 50 years of unending disenfranchisement, shaming, hating, and criminalizaing of maleness itself

this vast betrayal -- and not womens' "beta-blues" is the chief factor in lack of marriage

western men live in a condition of very real apartheid, and even the men don't want to acknowledge it


"This is not evil, or a reflection of "evil women." It is simply an adjustment that women need, a set of proper incentives and investment."


nonsense... you read too much Rossy

western women, and esp u.s. women, are deeply allied with evil, as their tyrannical matriarchies prove with every new law, privilege, and power-scheme favoring females and crushing males

calling this evil a "social phenomenon" or suggesting it's just an anomalous tweak in gender relations/betatude is ludicrous

this failure to call women (and enabling men) out on their vicious selfishness and hate-politics -- and instead providing constant sociological rationales for their behavior -- is exactly why boys and men are fourth-class citizens in the west

Whiskey said...

I agree with Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett's long-time investing partner, who said:

"Well I think I’ve been in the top 5% of my age cohort all my life in understanding the power of incentives, and all my life I’ve underestimated it. And never a year passes [without me] getting some surprise that pushes my limit a little farther."

Women have proved very flexible as have men in making choices. If we as a society WANT men and women to make wise and beneficial choices, rather than moralizing and sermonizing, we need to reward the wise and beneficial choices, and punish the stupid and harmful.

Calling women "evil" is as bad as feminists calling men the same, and blaming "the patriarchy" for the fact that men who can and do have sex do so, and that men find younger women more attractive than older ones.

Look at Prohibition vs. public health messages on drinking. The old 19th Century saloon, not for the most part a good place, was during Prohibition replaced by the even worse speak-easy. But legalized drinking coupled with decades effort to persuade people to moderate their drinking and avoid doing it all when driving has cut down on alcohol abuse among the White population. Because social pressure creates incentives. That over time are very powerful -- no one wants to be seen as a "drunken loser" and above all "lower class and therefore worthless in the mating market." That's a powerful incentive.

I do not want a catastrophe. I live here. I'd rather have pleasant times than bad ones. I'd rather have gradual improvement than a gotterdammerung leading to some hoped for nirvana.

Whiskey said...

Haha Jeff Burton. Quite funny.

As for "how we got here" that is IMHO a consequence of female block voting, but more importantly female spending driving the consumer economy.

More than anything else, the consumer economy, and the 24/7 messages driving it, aimed mostly at women, re-inforce the worst not best in modern Western society.

If we want incentives to position women and men to make good instead of bad choices, we need to tame the consumer economy. I'd rather that than any apocalypse, or even just sustained economic hard times (again I live here).

That means basically a two-pronged approach as in limiting drinking: an appeal to logic, and an appeal to status/emotion.

Anonymous said...

However, what if current society is too far gone to be worth salvaging? What if the time for gradual improvement has passed? Perhaps the ship has sailed as far as gradual reform is concerned and sooner or later collapse is inevitable?

Banshee said...

The attitude of today's women isn't some kind of rational plan. It's what their divorced mothers and fathers (and slutty trophy stepmothers/father's girlfriends, and abusive stepfathers/mother's boyfriends) taught them about life. Sluts of both sexes get "love"; normal is to be despised; and bad things "just happen" and can't be prepared against. There might be a few forlorn dreams of something better, but that's a fairy tale that they don't think they deserve, and don't dare to trust in.

Banshee said...

Those divorces are also what ruined the lives and outlooks of tons of sons, of course.

Men betrayed their sons and daughters as much as women betrayed their sons and daughters. The roots go very deep, back before the beginning of the last century. Blaming it all on feminism or this year's ideas is tempting, but insufficient.

Banshee said...

A lot of men thought they were getting a great deal when women stopped bothering them to get married. There was never some huge "get your wife young and keep your wife happy" movement on the part of men, was there? So let's not hear all this whining that it's all the women's fault.

Anonymous said...

Here's another commercial along the same lines:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKU4HluqXKA

Remnant said...

Incentives of this type can only be applied at the societal level. In other words, the entire society must change in order for the incentives to really change. Individual shaming of women will not work because they will simply laugh at the "well meaning" advisor.

Thus, the only way gender relations are going to change for the better in the way Whiskey desires will be for a societal calamity of the type the alt-right community expects to occur in the (near) future. Will it be worth it?

CamelCaseRob said...

I think you are misinterpreting the commercial. They were going on a VACATION and the credit card helped them go on a more exciting one. The "rock she really wanted" comment was actually saying she'd rather do exciting things than get a big engagement ring, not that she wouldn't want an engagement ring from this guy.

Professor Woland said...

Whiskey, great post. Thanks.

I too am simultaneously fascinated and repulsed watching this commercial. For me it is a bit like walking into a woman’s clothing store. It is made for and caters to women only so the sooner I get out the happier I am. They probably are too.

The message is ostensibly pro-gurrrl but in a deeper sense it is really a consolation. Citi-Bank is trying to appeal to Yuppie women (their prime target market) who cannot get a ring but can bide their time spending money on ephemeral pleasures like exclusive hobbies that only independently wealthy or unemployed people can enjoy due to time constraints or going to sheik places that most people will never go to. Lower class women are more focused on practical purchases like an ugly meaningless tattoo or a shitty Fiat econo-box so they don’t have to take the bus to work. Neither woman will get what she really wants but at least they can enjoy something while they are still young and have some power.

But women’s real power is their ability to have children and they can only do that while they are young. Sometimes that will get them a husband, home, and lasting marriage but for many it is just heartache so they find comfort drinking themselves into oblivion every weekend or gorging on chocolate and sugar until they swell up like zeppelins. For an upper crust woman not to be able to land a suitable husband is probably much worse than for her prole sister who has no disillusions about ever getting married. It is easier just to hide on top of a mountain like a hermit where she cannot be rejected or hurt, or engage in extreme behavior to give them the appearance of spiritual fulfillment while they are empty and hollow inside.

Make Sense said...

These complaints about women and going back to traditional roles never fully make sense.

If it's back to men protecting and taking care of women, for God's sake, WHY?

That's a far more obvious form of slavery for men. Men would be back to taking a whole bunch of risks, risking their lives, working all the time, for ungrateful women who bitch and, when the time comes like in our modern world, slut about fantastically and attack men.

Who wants to go to protecting women? When you know their nature is like that?

That would be as oppressive, no, more oppressive than today's world.

Today you can walk away, live on your own or with male friends, bang girls or have relationships, and be much freer. You owe no one anything.

All that is needed is significant breakthroughs in male birth control and a much fairer set of laws for men. Those things alone will kneecap feminism.

You can't go back without creating more oppression for men. The cat is out of the bag. Everyone knows what women are really like now. Freedom for men is the next step, not more servitude to women.

Anonymous said...

@ "Make Sense" - Typical MRA. You men's rights activists are the mirror image, indeed male versions, of the feminists. You and the feminists can have the world you desire but leave us out of it.

sykes.1 said...

Sharia will solve all these problems.

And it's coming.

little dynamo said...

Look at Prohibition vs. public health messages on drinking.

Prohibition, which you mention as a powerful and positive incentive, was the second mass socio-political weapon that u.s. women used to criminalize maleness (the first mass weapon was the close alliance between abolilitionism and feminism, e.g., the Seneca Falls Conference)

this soon expeanded to a war on drugs (waged, overwhelmingly, against low-income males) and the war on sexuality (waged, overwhelmingly, against low-income males) and now the plain old war on masculinity, in which maleness itself is a crime

so tho i'm a teetotaller, i'm not buying into your Wonderful Prohibition movement, as it played such a crucial role in the creation of the amerikan matriarchal police state

"I do not want a catastrophe. I live here. I'd rather have pleasant times than bad ones. I'd rather have gradual improvement than a gotterdammerung leading to some hoped for nirvana."

gradual improvement?

LOL!

and where would that be, exactly?

it doesn't exist except in your own mind, and in the minds of other materially comfortable guys who cling to their "pleasant" lives under the fem-tyranny of the west, while OTHER boys and men get the shit kicked out of them, one by one

while you rationalize to yourself about some "gradual improvement" that has ZERO evidence in society -- indeed, with each passing day, the feminist police-state becomes more hateful, cowardly, and evil

yeah bud the word is EVIL -- Pleasant You and your Pleasant Life don't like that word, too bad

your suggestion that anyone speaking the truth about feminism and modern females is equivalent to feminist tactics is ridiculous -- a strategy used endlessly by feminists over the past four decades to suppress dissent against their E-V-I-L

loosen your grip on your Pleasant Life with all your Pleasant Things and grow a pair

Brendan said...

I actually really don't care much about what happens on the broader scale any longer. My son will get his advice and will be empowered to make good decisions (or bad ones), but that's about it. Beyond that, I don't care much about the broader society -- I have no influence on what it does, and frankly I can very much limit the influence it has on me through my own choices.

I don't think there is any way "back" to the way things were, and it probably isn't desirable, either, for most people. I have no idea what comes next on the broader scale, and I don't care much any more, either. Let them eat cake, really.

No Show said...

Whiskey I'm surprised that you made no mention of the ending where the White woman leaves the White man behind in order to stand atop a gigantic brown phallic symbol.

How'd you miss that one?

rgoltn said...

I hate that commercial....and so does my wife. It is just another bullshit ad that sends the signal to women that they do not need men. My opinion is that most TV targets women. It is all crap.

Guavaberry said...

As a very feminine south american woman this commercial embodies something very different.

For me it means that she's still getting married, but instead of spending a lot of money on a ring that bears no purpose, she goes with her fiancee to have a romantic rock climbing vacation.

Maybe it's just me. I would prefer to spend engagement ring money traveling rather than just for an overpriced piece of jewelry.

Anonymous said...

Thank you! I just found your blog when doing a search for people who hate this commercial as much as I do. I tell my daughters to cover their ears when it comes on.

jcwolf said...

I don't know if this blog is still active but I just wanted to say that I am glad that someone has put some intelligent thought into the view of marriage displayed in that rock climbing ad by Citibank. When I was growing up you would never have seen a commercial where an unmarried woman is talking about going on a vacation with her boy friend. But Citibank does not care about stuff like that, they just want people to use their credit cards. The sacredness and the promises of the marriage vows are now seen by many as old fashioned and perhaps even irrelevant. If this ad truly reflects the views of many young people today that is to me is heartbreaking and one of the many symptoms of the cultural decline in America that has been going on for decades.

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