Steve Sailer writes: After reading the book by Gagnon, Laumann, et al, I wrote to Gagnon’s co-author Edward O. Laumann and proposed they write a sequel to The Social Organization of Sexuality that could be entitled The Sexual Organization of Society.
I used my not very lurid life in Chicago as an example of how sex organizes cities geographically. In fact, I pointed out, the academic jargon term “construction” deserved to be taken more literally because much of the immense investment in construction in Chicago existed for sex-related reasons.
In 1982 when I got my MBA at UCLA and got a job offer from a downtown Chicago marketing research firm, I asked a friend in Santa Monica who had recently lived in Chicago where the prettiest girls in Chicago lived because I wanted to rent an apartment near them.
Comments to Steve Sailer:
* You are a pig. The only way this post could possibly be more alarming is if you had asked, where are the prettiest white girls.
* Kinsey, of course, conducted his “survey” on prostitutes, shirt-lifters, the sexually diseased and felons.
You know, Democrats.
* Quite a bit of human behavior is focused around having sex, or achieving the result of sex, namely, children. And since having sex and having children doesn’t happen in a vacuum, but instead in a social setting, it should be obvious that there will be different social, cultural, and sexual rules in different places and at different times. As we used to say in the ’60′s, Duh.
Actually, the most interesting thing about the “performative” thesis, either in this telling, or in Judith Butler’s telling, is that it tends to undercut this entire notion that our sexual history is pre-engraved in our DNA.
Above and beyond all this pie in the sky nonsense, there are only a few ranges to human sexual conduct: either we are going to act like primates or we are going to act like the society around us, or else we are going to draw on our cultural history and find better models. The primate model is promiscuous and frankly disadvantageous to lady primates, and the current social sexual models are probably not very good for women, either. So where do we go from here? That is up to each individual.
One thing that is interesting to me is that our culture has, for a long time, evaluated a man’s virtue by his interest in engaging in perpetual copulation. I submit that is strange.
* Men who wait until their married to have sex, or otherwise constrain their animal instincts, aren’t doing so out of a lack of interest. It takes a lot of social sanction to overcome the natural self when it comes to sex.
* If you meet someone in the workplace and you are a heterosexual male, it is built into the operating system that you will note their sexual attractiveness and that this will have some effect on future interactions, since usually people who perceive each other as sexually attractive will be nicer to each other, even if they have absolutely no intention of consummating the relationship.
In popular culture women are nearly always sexually attractive unless they are playing roles that call for them to be unattractive, like Roseanne, for example. Lena Dunham, although I have never seen her TV show, is known for turning the paradigm around as an ugly woman who has sex with a lot of men, but apparently this is a comedy. (I don’t think I want to see this show.) Usually it is necessary for the lead woman to be sexually attractive to maximize advertising revenue or movie attendances.
* Social Construction of Sex and Sexual Construction of City are confused because the very hip/hot places where men find women(and vice versa) also tend to be homo-heavy and ideologically libby.
Homos often form communities in nice hip parts of cities. They also cater to glamour, fashion, and night-life. So, even much of ‘hetero’ social culture is interwoven with homo presence.
And of course, guys like to take girls out to fancy and hip cultural stuff, and that often means theater or some such, and those have long been dominated by fruiters and feminists. So, for a guy to impress his girl, he might take her to some play written by homos or feminists. Imagine that.
I used to drive around with friends the area Sailer is talking about. It was surreal cuz you’d go from hip male/female clubs to homo clubs. You’d see men and women dressed up to look hip and cool, and then you’d see a bunch of homos.
* We sure have come a long way from Age of Jane Austen. People now jump in the sack much faster.
But it’s true enough that social setting counts for a lot, and much of that happens in that setting is more about status than sex, or it’s about status-for-sex.
And fancier parts of city matter cuz that’s where men and women(especially men) can show off that they are not meater-men but men of sociability, success, culture, knowledge, and all-the-stuff-considered-fashionable.
After all, even a hillbilly in some run-down village can say “I wanna hump you.” Anyone can do that.
It is in the social setting that a man can show off that there is more to him than just ‘sex appeal’.
This is why Travis Bickle blew it big time by taking the woman to a porno movie in TAXI DRIVER. It was socially and culturally so low.
These days, however, maybe a woman won’t mind so much. Even some stuff on TV that girls watch is pretty porny. And Emma Sulkowicz… sheesh.
LAST DAYS OF DISCO is interesting movie about how men and women use all sorts of cultural signaling to impress others. Status-for-sex. Homo-ish world with Liberal elite signaling.
In a strange way, the straight male has to be sort of ‘gay-ish’ in signaling to the straight woman. If a straight woman has a homo friend, he wouldn’t be interested in her body. He would try to impress her in other ways that seems fancier and more cultured. Or since HE would not be interested in her sexually, he would prioritize the subject of what she wants and needs that what he wants or needs. Homos make women feel like they are the center of the world, which is why fashion is about homos making up womenfolk. Ho’s go for that, and that is why hipster guys have that metrosexual side.
But the old way was best. That was when fathers brought up boys and girls right.
Stuff like virginity mattered. It was valued as something to save for that special someone.
Nowadays, it’s disposed of as soon as possible. Sexual culture is all about casualness than consequence-ness.
So, if a girl is kissing a guy, she could be kissing lips that’s been licking who-knows-how-many-pooters. It’d be like indirect cunnilingus for the woman.
OR if a guy kisses a girl, he could be kissing lips that sucked who knows how many meaters? It’d be like indirect blowjob.
This is progress? For most of human history, people looked down on this stuff for good reason.
But we are supposed to pretend we are more progressed cuz men now do indirect blowjobs and women do indirect cunnilingus.
That is so ewwww.
The beginning of GODFATHER when Bonasera says he taught his daughter to never dishonor the family. Now, that is good stuff.
Or the ending of GODFATHER II where everyone is dressed respectable. Guys don’t have tattoos. And Connie is dressed proper. Not like a whore.
Indeed, THE GODFATHER is like a horror movie where people who have illicit sex get killed. Sonny fooled around, so he got killed. Carlo fooled around and he got killed. Fredo fooled around in Las Vegas, so he got killed. Tataglia the pimp got killed. Geary didn’t get killed but he got blackmailed.
Vito and Michael remain true to their women, and they live.
I just noticed the final scene of Godfather II is sort of like the scene in Cuba where the big shots sitting at the table are introduced one by one.
It’s like Michael went a long way from the idealist and member of family to a shark among sharks.
Well, people are more casual about sex these days because of birth control. That’s pretty clear.
But on the whole, nothing has changed. Thoughtless young women are looking for hunks who will protect them, and thoughtless young men are looking for the prettiest girl. As they age, women are looking for good providers, and men are looking for — the prettiest girl who will put out the most in the sack.
So men “display”, and so do women. Again, nothing has changed.
In my experience, I was turned off by women who were difficult to talk to, or who had had multiple abortions. But then, I wanted children. In retrospect, I realize I was also turned off by short unintelligent women — no matter how good looking they were — because I was instinctively thinking of the progeny we would produce.
It ‘s not easy to find someone you can talk to, who laughs at your jokes, who has compatible values concerning how to live, how to keep a home, pets, children, food, household tasks, and who can at least respect your occupational and intellectual interests. Sex is pretty far down that list: not that sex isn’t important, it’s rather that for most people sex isn’t that complicated.
* This is what is special about Whit Stillman movies.
His characters are not exactly prudes or prigs — some are — , but they intuitively understand that meaning comes from form, manners, style, honor, duty, obligation, and etc. Emotions and behavior have to be interwoven with such ideas. Otherwise, there is just sloppy gloppiness. And once this becomes the norm, it especially hits the lower orders really bad. UK is a wasteland among the former working class.
I’ve seen so many ruined lives among hornball lower classes of ALL races. And when you think of kids of these trash parents growing up to garbage pop culture, it’s really dispiriting.
Too much thinking about propriety is sort of limp, like with the four-eyed character in METROPOLITAN who is something of a dullard.
Folks gotta navigate between dull nice guy and debased ero-maniac.
All this sexual liberation stuff turned out to be a dead end.
It’s like the guy and girl talking about ‘balling’ in WOODSTOCK which is just ewwwww.
The hitchhiker couple just sound like a couple of slobs.
Or girls acting like Lena Dunham or communicating like Emma Suckowitz: “fuc* me in the butt.” The sex scene in Tiny Furniture is like a farmboy going to do it with sheep. It’s just debased.
I mean what the hell with Sulkowicz? All the nuttier when her parents are well-educated academics.
Can you imagine CASABLANCA where Bogart opens the note in the rain and reads, ‘fuc* me in the butt’?
Or imagine the scene in LOVE STORY where Jenny admits she cares. Suppose she said ‘Oliver, fuc* me in the butt’ instead.
Or imagine the scene in IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE where George and Mary are singing ‘Buffalo Gals’. Would it be progress if they were singing ‘Anaconda’ instead and if Mary were ‘twerking’?
What the hell has happened to our culture?
The end result of ‘sexual liberation’ is just people acting like animals.
It’s like food. Just pigging out like a glutton is a dead end. It’s just animal behavior.
Food becomes an ‘art’ and culture with proper forms and methods.
Men need to civilized wild girls, women need to civilize wild boys.
But we have wild girls and wild boys who talk and act like X-rated versions of Pixar characters. That’s another thing. If these people were at least adult in their emotions, their vulgarity might have some gravitas… like in LAST TANGO IN PARIS where the pain is real.
But today’s hookup culture is like Pixar cartoon characters having sex. Boys stop maturing after 13, girls after 14.
I like how Stillman used mental illness or imbalance as a kind of metaphor for problems of human nature as a whole. Some of his characters are quirky, eccentric, just borderline nuts. But how they do remain sane and maintain some kind of equilibrium? Because they do care about ideals and principles such as honor, faith, loyalty, and etc. Without such stuff, the borderline ‘loon’ in LAST DAYS OF DISCO might totally lose it.
Same with the woman in DAMSELS IN DISTRESS. Her ideas about love and stuff keep her busy and occupied enough to not lose herself to total nuttery.
I love the movie GHOST WORLD and never tire of it, but it is about the dead end life of a girl who chooses a life of WHATEVER.
A kind of hell. NO way to live.
Truffaut was something of a delinquent out-of-control and was abandoned by his parents. But Andre Bazin took him under his wing and did much to develop his mind and talent. And Truffaut become someone.
His film WILD CHILD is prolly a tribute to Bazin.
But what kind of world do we have now?
Immigrant kids come to France, and they are turned extra-savage by American black rap culture. Look at shows like Dunham’s GIRLS, look at whores like Miley Cyrus, listen to standup comics, and etc, and it seems like the current culture is invested in turning young people into savages instead of turning young savages into civilized and cultured adults.
We have thug music, pornified mainstream culture. Much of today’s TV shows would have been X-rated in 70s. It makes LAST TANGO look tame.
Every idiot vlogger sounds like Portnoy.
This isn’t good, especially for EU as millions more young men from africa and middle east are headed there. Cologne mess is just a prelude.
What passes for higher morality today? ‘gay marriage’ and trannies are ‘women’.
And then, there are all these Angry Slave Movies. Just when we need to rein in the black craziness and tell them stop acting violent, these movies like DJANGO, 12 YRS A NEGRO, and the new BIRTH OF NATION will just make blacks feel justified in their nuttery.
The past will be used to justify current black rage.
When babies are young, we don’t say NATURAL is good. Diapers have to be changed and kids have be potty-toilet trained. Controlling natural processes is what being human is about. We also teach table manners. ANIMAL HOUSE behavior is not proper eating.
And there was a time when sexuality was handled like potty-training.
At a certain age, hormones kick in, and teens have to encouraged to control their urges and seek meaningful relationships whereby sex is made meaningful.
But now, we don’t horny-train the teens anymore. We tell to them go with Nature, which is like telling young children to never learn toilet-training and just shi* all over.
So, we have ‘twerking’ as culture. We have dance where young people dance like they’re screwing. We have teachers having sex with students like school is some sex club.
All gonna end badly.
