The Protection Factor

Some time ago, a tweet arrived from DateMe Kenya:

Ladies! Before starting a new relationship, ask yourself Will he protect you? Will he respect you?

The idea that a man should protect a woman is a social expectation likely based on a large amount of hard-wiring in a man’s brain. It’s interesting to note that the tweet originated from an African dating website, a vastly different place than the locales from where most of my readers are ensconced. But the Tweet brings up a common theme in regards to how men and women relate, regardless of the continent and culture. Fundamentally, we’re predictable as a species. Unfortunately, contemporary social expectations too often conflict with our biologically-based behaviors. This conflict is terrifically amplified in the context of attraction and dating. This is because attraction to the opposite happens between our ears, the most private space we have.

The expectation and instinct to “protect” women fits quite nicely into hypergamy. A tall, strong man with access to resources and with the ability to charmingly influence others is a genetically attractive man because he has the power to protect. The Tweeter in Africa reinforced that with the first part of the question in the Tweet. Despite all the jawboning about feminine independence, women are frantically concerned with their security. Independence and security are often at odds. As humans, we need each other.

White knighting also fits well with that social and instinctual need to protect women. Back when the social Back when the contract between the sexes was still viable, coming the aid of a woman was perfectly reasonable even if there was risk involved for the man. But that social contract is badly broken so white knighting is a ridiculous throwback from history. But as the need to protect women has an instinctual element to it, the white knight phenomenon will continue to exist even if the woman is behaving atrociously. For example, witness the 20-something crowd in a popular nightclub and how certain girls exploit potential white knights by acting childish and immature with impunity.

There are organized efforts to exploit the urge to protect women. Bystander intervention programs are being introduced at college campuses to address the sexual assault . Such programs encourage young men to help stop sexual assaults on girls by getting involved in individual male/female interactions. The New York Times has a good story on this . Some will argue strongly that these programs are nothing more than cock-block training. But consider the upside, if Frank the freshman can save a buddy from the possibility of a false accusation by intervening at the right time, Frank is showing some serious loyalty to his buddy.

Back when I was plugged into the dating matrix, dates were a way for me to find ways to protect that particular woman through some type of assistance. But looking for protection opportunities on a date put me a in a terrible frame to generate much attraction. I instantly became a helpful older brother. That urge to protect stifled my charisma. When I suppressed that protection urge, I found that going out on dates to be a much more pleasant experience. I was enjoying the company of women and it showed. It took awhile to unplug myself but when I did, I stopped some unhealthy dating habits such as white knighting.

I urge men to be extremely circumspect when the urge to protect a woman arises, especially on dates or at live singles events. The social contract between the sexes is broken so men no longer owe their time and effort to come to the aid of some random dame in need. There is also the issue of assuming that a woman can’t take of herself. Two generations of strong and independent women have been fiercely stating that women are strong and independent. Men should listen to that and act accordingly by judging the circumstances carefully. Short of being the recipient of violence from a stranger, today’s woman can handle herself and her problems without a man’s protection. Besides, she always has the government.

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Where Be The Men?

I’ve had a few recent phone conversations with a Miami-based matchmaker, Dan Silverman. Unlike the vast majority of matchmakers, this is a guy. Also making him rare in matchmaking circles, his paying clients are men. Yes, heterosexual men. Dan got his start in the dating coach business and has branched out into matchmaking. He’s been in the dating advice business for quite a few years. He knows his business well and has been successful at it. This shows his advice works. It works because he accurately knows the predictability of human beings in the context of attraction and dating.

In our conversations, he indicated one of the challenges he faces in his business. His problem is not women. Actually, he has a surfeit of single women. For his live singles events, he has a veritable plague of single women. The problem is men. This is not a problem of individual men. Dan’s problem with men is the general nature of contemporary men. The Y chromosome cohort just isn’t social enough and this is not healthy for the singles business. It’s also not healthy for singles trying to meet the opposite sex out there in meet space without any help.

Having a talk with a professional and successful dating information expert confirmed what I have learned about post-divorce single men. Too many of these men are simply not visible to women because they are socially isolated and when they do get out and about, they are invisible to women. I’ve covered both topics and will continue to do so.

What makes this more significant is the downstream impact of masculine social isolation and invisibility on dating professionals. Dan the dating coach and matchmaker is certainly one example. The masculine pathologies also affect speed dating organizers. I have been asked to attend those events for free in order to fill an available empty seat for guys. At the time, I found that to be rather astounding. But through my research, I learned at the time about masculine social isolation. This meant the lack of men attending made unfortunate sense.

As for the matchmaking element of Dan’s business, the same types of problems exist for him. A bit of the of the difficulty lies in the fees involved. Good matchmaking is not cheap. The process requires time, effort, and the ability to understand and analyze people. Knowledge and time are quite justifiably worth the expense. Understandably, not every man can afford the fees. But once Dan hooks a potential client, it’s not hard to get that client to sign a contract. It’s finding those potential clients that presents the problem. Fortunately, matchmaking is a growing business.

Dan’s personality is very outgoing. He learned through his dating coach services that approaching women in person leads to success. With that in mind, he has absolutely no problem finding single women to add to his database of potential dates for his own clients. He knows his marketing strengths and wisely capitalizes on them.

“But where are the men?” asks Dan when he’s scouting for potential clients. That question is also asked by so many women who are far more willing to go out and be social or even hire a matchmaker. Dating coaches ask that same question. Before that question can be effectively addressed, it’s extremely important to rephrase it to make it more accurate:

“Where are all the suitable and attractive men?”

Even in a social environment where men actually show up is invisibility is a problem. The typical night club swarmed by hopeful young men is no guarantee that the typical young women will actually see such men. Women of a certain age typically do the same thing. They simply don’t see the men that are out in public. In both these instances, it’s a matter of the men not making the effort to stand out. Pick-up artists (PUAs) encourage men to “peacock” with clothes and style so that they stand out from the great mass of indistinguishable men. It’s sound advice.

It’s almost amusing that women seek out all sorts of advice and pay dating coaches. Women can certainly learn a thing or two about being more feminine. But until the men work on themselves by being more social and less invisible, all the self-improvement of women is all for naught. As a bonus, Dan the matchmaker and dating coach would end up doing more relationship and marriage coaching.

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Guys, Prioritize Your Efforts On Yourself

In my ongoing research efforts to find good information about attraction and dating for the post-divorce crowd, I often turn to Reddit, a vast collection of news stories and subsequent comments. In particular, this subreddit, The Red Pill, contains hundreds upon hundreds of discussion where guys are brutally honest about attraction, dating, and masculine self-improvement. This part of the Internet is not for the faint of heart. It is also quite public. Anyone can read what is being said, regardless of membership status.

Because of the strong feelings and very direct words, this subreddit – with over 130,000 members – receives some very direct criticism and there have been calls to shut it down. This means that essential truths are being presented and discussed and such truths are so uncomfortable there are calls for censorship. This fundamentally means that this subreddit is a go-to place to read what men are saying honestly to each other, particularly about women, dating, and relationships.

A recent topic discussion raised an important issue of how a man must prioritize his efforts at “fixing” things. The white knight (profanity-laced page, cool!) instinct is strong in men and when confronted with an issue faced by a woman (or women), a man is sorely tempted to attempt to fix the problem. This includes attraction and dating issues. The very solid subreddit post, by PemBayliss directly and cogently addresses this very issue. I’m highlighting some of the more relevant text but readers can view the entire post by clicking the link just above. My own comments are in boldface.

Women have problems with dating and sex. And they are tough problems.

But they’re not your problems.

Let me explain.

Take your average woman. She’s a 6 in attractiveness — attractive enough to get a male 7 as a boyfriend. She’s also attractive enough to get male 9s and the occasional 10 for sex, but getting commitment from one of them is never going to happen. Come on guys, you know these women. You know 25 of them in real life and you go to school or work with at least 10 of them.

She’s got a tough row to hoe, a needle that is very, very difficult to thread. She has to find a man she’s attracted to and who is dominant and confident, able and willing to support her and sire/father her children. She has to find a man whose clothes she wants to rip off and whose cock she wants to suck twice a day; but who she’s also willing to pad around an apartment with in her fuzzy slippers and sweats. She has to find a man she really, really wants sex with; but the catch is that the man also has to be one who really, really wants to keep her long term.

Her prime problem is that almost all the time, she can find men who fit one bill or the other, but not both. Most of the men she can find are either (1) hot but don’t want to stick around after they fuck her a few times; or (2) want to be her boyfriend and will offer a relationship; but she doesn’t want to fuck them at all because it would be like fucking her brother or her bestie.

She’s in a tough spot.

But… and pay attention here. All that is not your problem.

The author has summarized a woman’s attraction and dating dilemma quite nicely. This dilemma is sometimes played out in the rather cynical game of Fuck, Marry, Kill where girls get together to rate men. It’s extremely important to understand that there is a separate category for sex and another for marriage. This is the woman’s dilemma stated succinctly through a parlor game. This dilemma is exacerbated by a dual message that women, especially young women, receive from social expectations. Have sex with the bad boys, marry a stable provider. It’s more tersely and severely explained in the four words, “alpha fucks, beta bucks”. Sheryl Sandberg in her book “Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead” even admits it:

“When looking for a life partner, my advice to women is date all of them: the bad boys, the cool boys, the commitment-phobic boys, the crazy boys. But do not marry them. The things that make the bad boys sexy do not make them good husbands. When it comes time to settle down, find someone who wants an equal partner. Someone who thinks women should be smart, opinionated and ambitious. Someone who values fairness and expects or, even better, wants to do his share in the home. These men exist and, trust me, over time, nothing is sexier.”

Here we have a successful executive exhorting the dating dilemma at full volume. She’s telling young women to sow their wild oats sexually, just as young men are biologically driven to do. But Sandberg is completely blind to the biological realities that men and women are different. A woman’s biological motives are very, very different than a man’s biological motives. To make the dilemma worse for younger women, consider this Twitter hashtag that is percolating through the Twitterverse: #nohymennodiamond.

This only describes the nature of the woman’s dating dilemma. The other part of social expectations, as well as an element of biology, is how men are expected to respond to their dating dilemma. We men supposed to help in some way. The subreddit author presents this well:

Society and the culture tells you it is your problem. You have to offer yourself up to be her Boyfriend, because that’s how you’re going to get sex. Society tells you this is your problem because our hypothetical girl is Not Happy, and it is men’s job to Make Her Happy. What’s more, you’re told that if you Make Her Happy then She Will Make You Happy (“happy” being you will get your dick wet).

Well, no. No, being a Boyfriend will not Make Her Happy. You undertaking herculean effort to satisfy her will just make her less happy. Your beta boyfriends don’t enrapture her with joy; you just piss her off.

Stop trying to solve your dating/sexual problems by taking on and trying to solve HER problems. Her problems are not your problem to solve.

This is crucial for men. The white knight instinct must be completely stifled. In effect, a guy shouldn’t be a schmuck.

Men, YOUR dating/sexual problems will be well on the way to being solved when you focus on yourselves, your wants, needs, hopes, dreams and desires. Your dating/sexual problem is that you are not awesome and your lives aren’t what you want them to be. You’re overweight, you don’t eat well, and you don’t take care of yourself. You don’t exercise, you don’t take care of your body and you don’t dress well. You don’t look and feel your best. You don’t like your job or you’re not all that good at your job. You don’t have anything in your life you really enjoy being or doing, just for you.

You don’t need to be nicer. You need to hit the gym. You don’t need a girlfriend; you need more men around you to sharpen and hone you. You don’t need to spend time figuring out how to be what she wants; you need to spend more time deciding who you are. You don’t need to spend money on her; you need to get some better clothes and a haircut.

Her problems are not YOUR problems. Let her figure out that Chad’s not coming back. Let her figure out how to get commitment from a suitable man. YOU need to figure out how to be the most awesome man you can be. When you are, then you’ll be the one who decides on commitment or not; you’ll decide how and when and where your resources are best allotted.

But the thing is, it’s not my problem to solve [her dating problems]. And it isn’t yours either. Identify it. Mull it over, empathize if you want. But don’t try to fix it, solve it, resolve it, change it, alleviate it, or wish it weren’t so. Just don’t. Because you can’t alleviate it one bit. You cannot change it. Wishing it away is totally ineffective. The ONLY thing you can do is to get better yourself.

Here’s a great irony to all this. If a man does help a woman with her dating dilemma, he’s helping her to be more attractive to other men rather than working on his own attractiveness. So, the schmuck helps some dame have a higher sexual/relationship market value and along comes Chad Thundercock to sweep her off her feet. Or, sweep her onto her knees. No, the man must work on himself first and work on himself for only himself, not to impress some mythical, unicorn of a woman.

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Pay To Play

No, I’m not talking about prostitution. Pay to play is the concept where a fee is levied in order to present information or entertainment to an audience that is not always aware that a fee is required to the entity creating the information or performing the entertainment.

Wikipedia has a good definition:

Pay to play, sometimes pay for play, is a phrase used for a variety of situations in which money is exchanged for services or the privilege to engage (play) in certain activities. The common denominator of all forms of pay to play is that one must pay to “get in the game,” with the sports analogy frequently arising

There are many examples of this concept in action. It’s likely better known for those folks aware of the live music scene. The Wikipedia page provides examples in other realms such as politics, stand-up comedy, radio, even corporate financing. Part of me understands and appreciates the need for an entry fee in order for a musician or stand up comedian to help the venue (or promoter) to make money. A huge part of the performing arts is a capitalistic endeavor motivated by profit.

Pay to play is moving into other areas. Last year, I was in communication with YourTango.com, an online source for dating and relationship advice. That website gets a lot of attention and plenty of page views. Dating advice folks brag that their content has been featured on YourTango. There is a section of that website with the name “YourTango Experts“. That was where my own content was to be published… for $48 a month at the time. Ah, pay to play. I declined.

Again, I completely understand charging folks like me for an online presence that gathers plenty o’ eyeballs. Besides, YourTango needs content and the profit margins always need to be improved. By charging content creators, it’s a win-win situation. YourTango gets content and some lucre as a bonus. The expert gets valuable exposure to help pitch a book or some type of coaching services.

How long until Huffington Post charges content creators? With so many website desperate for eyeballs, clicks, and the subsequent advertising revenue, it’s likely already happening, especially since so many content creators are pushing a book or a paid service. The trend was established years ago in the print publication industry. If an advertiser was willing to buy up enough ad space, the publication agreed to write a feature story about that business. Making things even more efficient, the advertiser sometimes actually WROTE that feature story. This still happens in local publications.

I have just learned about the Great Love Debate. It’s a series of shows and performances where the there is a fun and lively discussion about attraction and dating in a live audience format. I’ve watched quite a few of the available videos. In general, the format works. A friend recently attended one of these events in Austin, Texas and generally had good things to say.

The format of the Great Love Debate involves a group of attraction, dating, and relationship experts up on stage to speak more about audience questions and talk more about the subject matter. The videos show some lively talk and a generally engaged audience. With that in mind, I thought to myself that I could be one of those experts up on stage. I sent an email to the show’s organizers. The response I received was not unsurprised at the response. Given my under-the-radar status as a dating blogger, I was expected to pay a fee to be up on stage. Fair enough. Outside of the ‘sphere, I’m not particularly well-known.

As a reality check, I contacted a local dating coach to see if he had participated in the same show. He did last year here in Miami, but was not charged a fee given that his local public reputation is better than mine. This local dating coach, Dan Silverman, does better with his matchmaking services. A note for guys here in South Florida, his clients are heterosexual men and he has MANY more women available than he has male clients. I might have him write a guest post or do an interview with him so he can discuss what he’s learned from his matchmaker services for men.

There is a glaring problem with the pay to play business model. There are seriously reduced incentives to deny fees to the unqualified. Consider the the pay to play concept at a comedy club. The promoter or club owner accepts fees from performers who are not at all funny. The audience still pays for an entry ticket and drinks but is thoroughly  not amused by the terrible act(s) up on stage. No one wins but the promoter or club owner. But the win is short-lived because the club’s reputation will quickly be ruined.

This applies to any business model that charges an audience and also charges the performers. It’s fraught with difficulty because of financial incentives. The takeaway for guys is to be very circumspect about what advice they are reading on the ‘Net. If it’s pay to play, then the advice should be heavily discounted.

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On Feminine Pleasantness

[Note: Lots of links in this post to other blog posts I’ve written over the years]

Life is not easy. This is known. How we respond to the difficulties of life illustrates our essential character. Because men and women are different, the two sexes will have different emotional responses to life’s challenges. Men might become more intense, more focused as he concentrates to solve the problems at hand. That’s masculine and because the masculine attracts the feminine, women will be attracted to that.

The culturally discordant plague of “strong and independent” women try to face life’s problems by responding in a masculine way with the same focus and concentration that a man would manifest. But this is contra naturum and impacts women quite negatively in terms of mood and unhappiness. Trying to act like a man simply doesn’t make women happy and this, taken one step further, makes women less attractive to men. Please have a look at the five noble rules of dating.

In the realm of dating and attraction, consistent unpleasantness should never, ever be tolerated by a man. A woman having a bad day or days certainly happens. Having a bad week, month, or year where a woman’s mood never improves is a reason to stop dating that woman. Yes, that includes PMS and menopause. Guys, it’s not your job to make her overall mood and general happiness better. Emotional self-control comes from within and that includes the woman (or women) you are dating. I am not heartless. It’s perfectly reasonable to avoid making her bad mood worse. But if that means constantly walking on eggshells, just leave. It’s not worth the cost to your psyche to be dating such a personality type.

Have you heard or read either of these two hoary platitudes “If Momma’s happy, everyone is happy” or “happy wife, happy life”? Both those sentiments are complete crap. If Momma is unhappy, she’d best get her shit together emotionally. If wifey ain’t happy, it’s not the husband’s nor the family’s responsibility to boost that happiness, especially at the expense of the happiness of others. The woman who “speaks her mind” is also related to this.

A happy and pleasant demeanor is very feminine. A woman’s smile, despite her personal adversity, can melt a man’s heart. Actually, the ability to smile throughout tough times is ferociously attractive in a woman. It’s a wonderful sign of emotional resilience and self-reliance. Kindness, pleasantness, and caring are too often the first qualities a woman abandons when faced with adversity. A blast furnace of social expectations and media messages encourages women to act against their essential nature. This is where the bossy and domineering notion comes into play and it’s not something natural in a woman.

To be blunt and tactless – ladies, go be unhappy on your own time and keep it away from men and the dating process. When your feminine graciousness and pleasantness is restored – that’s up to you and no one else – meet men, go on dates, enjoy your life as you pursue your relationship goals. Your family and female friends will be there to help you through the tough times. Dates, boyfriends, fiancés, and husbands are not the ones to restore your happiness. This is part of your emotional self-control, a very attractive thing, indeed.

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Video Podcast 8 – Social Media & Men

After some introductory stuff about Periscope and the events in Asheville, NC, there’s a presentation of some strategy tips on how men should handle common social media.

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The “Boris Flight Simulator”

Hanging out with my readers in real life is always great fun because my readers are a clever bunch. I wish there were more local readers. But there are three or four who are great guys and have been helpful to them and I do hope that my blog has been helpful to them.

I was hanging out with my reader and friend, Boris, the other day. We were discussing life, work, and our approach to being social, especially in regards to women. Boris is relatively young (to me) and a white-collar professional with a good gig. He also has some serious ambition because in addition to his full-time job, he’s seriously in school to advance his degree. He takes his school work seriously.

To unwind, Boris sometimes visits strip clubs. As he is a clever and thoughtful fellow, he knows the score regarding how strip clubs and strippers operate. Of delusions about such establishments, he has none. When he attends a club like that, he has a particular goal in mind. No, it’s not to meet and date the dancers. Strippers are not good girlfriend material, he knows this. So why does he do this? Here are his brilliant words.

“A strip club is my flight simulator”.

The analogy is perfect. Before pilots actually take to the air with an aircraft, they often safely train in a technological simulator that represents an airplane flight with a virtual experience through sophisticated technology.

Though a strip club is not usually associated with sophisticated technology, it can be seen as a way for men to, in effect, practice their charisma with the opposite sex and not have to worry about the outcome. Such practice can help a man with his social skills and charisma with girls with no emotional crash and burn should the “flight” go awry and come to naught. It’s important to know that Boris considers a phone number as the mark of success for being in the simulator.

There are, of course, some caveats apply. Strippers are going to be receptive to a man’s interest. This is their job because table dances and stage tips are how they earn their keep. With this in mind, Boris escalates by going for a phone number. Keep in mind that good strippers are not only good on the pole (hehehe) they are also good marketers and will give out a phone number so that she can cultivate a group of free-spending guys.

What Boris does to counteract the girl’s marketing efforts is to be a modest spender and use his charisma to secure a phone number. This element is the essence of his flight simulator analogy. Strippers, like the vast majority of women, are after some type of security. But an exotic dancer in a strip club doesn’t have the luxury of a dating ritual to pursue. The dancer only has enough time as she can garner from a man’s attention in one shift. His attention is great because she wants to transform it into cash money.

Because Boris isn’t the hugely free-spending customer, he has to rely on his charisma and confidence to charm a phone number from a woman who has to rely on her physical assets and flirty charm to secure a table dance from him. This is somewhat similar to the whole dating and attraction model outside the doors of the gentlemen’s club.

One other point for guys considering the “Boris Flight Simulator”, don’t drink too much while at the club! Not only is it expensive, the alcohol can lead to some bad decisions including a costly visit to the champagne/VIP room. This puts the guy in the big spender category which completely ruins the flight simulator analogy.

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And don’t forget my one-on-one advice services]

 

 

Need Personalized Attraction & Dating Advice? Skype Me (Google+, too)

[Note: This blog post is always displayed at the top of my home page. For my most recent blog post, scroll down past this particular post]

Let’s start with a pleased client:

But with all the taboo around the pill it makes us men looks like women-hating misogynists and other naturals may not know what the hell “game” is. They just get it.

The Private Man just gets it too. You can schedule live lessons with him via Skype like I did and he’ll ask you introspective and goal-oriented questions to get you on the right track. It’s refreshing to have someone I can talk pill-lingo with and have someone just get it. The Private Man did not wait to criticize my looks, quickly learned what I’m struggling with in game, provided resources on how to improve my weaknesses, and created milestones for our next live meetings.

I highly recommend this type of one-on-one with the Private Man.

I did this a couple of years ago and got a nice response. So, I’m doing it again. I’ve now got much more research, observation, and experience under my belt so I’m even more prepared to help all men with attraction and dating advice from a truly honest perspective. Here’s a video so you can see and hear me.

This is all done via Skype only, audio and video. Each session is recorded (optional) so it can be reviewed. As well, I provide exercises and “homework” customized for each person. Here is a just a partial list of things that I can help with:

• The mistakes you might be making once you’ve established an initial connection, whether online or in person.
• Online dating advice including profile photos and text.
• What you’re getting right or wrong during the dating process.
• General encouragement for you to keep on with dating. It’s not easy, I know. My own mistakes (and how I fixed them), observations, and research will be helpful for you.
• A safe place to vent. Guys get frustrated when dating and life  gets difficult. There are few places where some righteous disgust can be expressed without the tut-tutting of the feminine imperative getting in the way. I ain’t the feminine imperative.

Here is what you need before we can begin:

• A Skype account and video capabilities on your computer or smart device. I’m Drewsky1962, add me as a contact. On Google+, I’m emailtheprivateman@gmail.com (Private Man)
• A statement about your relationship goals.
• A willingness to listen and implement specific solutions (I don’t give platitudes)

Each session will about an hour in length and I ask that you click the donate button at the end of all sessions. If you’re in South Florida, I can do in-person conversations.

Please note that I don’t give advice about serious, long-term relationships, I refer men and women to Athol Kay for that. However, I can refer guys to so to some other good informational websites for such things as fashion, health and diet, fitness, social skills, and more. While my blog is mostly aimed at men, I would be pleased to offer advice to post-divorce single women, too. Or, those women can hit up EMK or Bobbi Palmer because these two excellent and successful coaches have a 100% female clientele.

I’m very much looking forward to helping people. Because of my regular work in the technology sector, I’m particularly empathetic to attraction and dating challenges faced by technologists. So nerds, hit me up… we could talk about the perils of Agile software development.

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An Attraction Preference Is Never An “Ism”

Rarely do I venture into the culture conflict that plagues our social landscape with political correctness and the “blank slate” concept of human development. Attraction and dating information for post-divorce singles is my usual haunt and it’s a passion of mine. Sometimes, however, the small and pointless world of the social justice warrior (SJW) attempts to intrude into the fiercely realistic world of attraction, desire, and dating.

Through Twitter, I was informed of this recently published dreck from The Daily Beast. The article in question focuses on the gay community. But over the past few years, there has been discussion about individual’s attraction preferences in the context of dating between heterosexuals and gays.

If you’re a gay man, phrases like “no blacks” and “no Asians” aren’t just words that you’d find on old signs in a civil rights museum, they are an unavoidable and current feature of your online dating experience. On gay dating apps like Grindr and Scruff, some men post blunt and often offensive disclaimers on their profiles such as “no oldies,” “no fems,” and “no fatties.” Among the most ubiquitous are racial disclaimers like “no blacks” and “no Asians,” which are most frequently posted by white men.

A gay man defending himself from potential charges of misogyny because of his clear desire to not have sex with women provided a reasonable response:

Those who deploy these disclaimers defend themselves from accusations of “racism” by claiming that they merely have “preferences” for certain races over others. Wrote one gay blogger, “Don’t tell me I can’t have a preference! I don’t want to have sex with women. No hard feelings. Does that make me a misogynist?”

Naturally, a feminist in another article says much the same thing:

Claiming that someone is unworthy of associating with you because of race and hiding behind the flimsy excuse of sexual tastes or lack of hypothetical romantic chemistry is racist.

This is shame, pure and simple. The authors of those essays are using an old method to manipulate our attraction and dating behavior. It’s “attraction preference” shaming. Shame is crude, but fundamentally effective in the public sphere. Thankfully, online dating preferences are only barely public, much like an iceberg is mostly underwater and not visible. This ultimately saves dating from the horror of political correctness

The author of the second essay goes on to claim,

Race in itself has absolutely no bearing on a person’s effectiveness as a partner or their impact on a relationship.

It just doesn’t.

Well, if a potential partner’s race is sexually undesirable to the partner, that’s an extremely large impact on the potential relationship. Put simply, social shame can do nothing to increase sexual ardor and blood flow to the genitals. Desire is something that happens between our ears, not in the messy and dysfunctional world of social expectations. In effect, initial desire for another person is private, only manifested publically when an online dating profile is created and those preferences are readable by many.

Of course, the unintended consequence will be simply to drive people away from freely expressing their desires and words and using their actions instead. A man or woman eschews writing honest preferences and simply doesn’t send messages to, or reads messages from, those individuals whom they don’t find desirable for whatever reason.

There’s something else about these articles. They focus on the racial element of dating attractiveness preferences. All singles looking for love (or nookie) have a wide variety of preferences. At a basic level, heterosexuals prefer the opposite sex. Yet there is so much more involved. Height, weight, religion, personal habits, employment, status, are all of the many factors that are blended into attraction.

There are many articles and opinion pieces about this subject. They all reach towards the same conclusion, that attraction preferences, whether gay or straight, are somehow “crimethink” that go against a particular ideology. Will such an attitude lead to a whole raft of new shaming because all the preferences we have regarding potential romantic partners?

Dating is already challenging enough. Most people complain about the process. Such articles only heap ideological garbage on top something that is, fundamentally, a very private effort. Who we kiss is no one else’s business, especially not ideologically driven busy bodies trying to shame singles to fit into a cultural agenda. The actionable advice is this – ignore such attempts at shaming. Maintain your preferences as much as reasonably possible based on the economics of dating attractiveness, not the ideology of dating attractiveness.

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Video Podcast 7 – Bad Dating Advice

In this video podcast, I cover two pieces of really bad attraction and dating advice. [Note: This video’s focus is not quite as sharp as the others.]

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