A Roissy by any other name

Today Roissy (look, if I start writing "Heartiste, the artist formerly known as Roissy", the next time I step onto the field I'll have to expect the divine justice I receive when someone inevitably drubs my faggy ass!) wrote on the comparability of benefits received from marriage and long-term cohabitation, pointing to a previous post here as evidence of what happens when that comparability is ignored. My response follows.

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My man,

I realize you’re making a rhetorical point, and I even appreciate a little condescension because it points a lot of your readers my way, but I’m certainly aware of your concerns re: the GSS. Here’s the brief post preceding the one you linked to, in response to the assertion that marriage means, as you so eloquently phrase it, “crossed arms and clamped pussies”:

In aggregate, of course, married men get more sex than unmarried men do. But that’s because the latter category is dragged down by men who are unattractive or uninterested in women.

What about those guys who are able to successfully play the field? In addition to variety, do they also enjoy greater frequency? Among those aged 22-36, sexual frequency for married men (4.15) is marginally higher than it is for unmarried men who have racked up double-digit counts (4.10).

Getting married will tend to net you about the same amount of snatch time as a go getter gets. The treasure chest won’t be clamped shut, though your prize won’t glitter as much.

GSS variables used: YEAR(2000-2008), AGE(22-36), SEX(1), MARITAL(1)(2-5), NUMWOMEN(10-250)

I don’t have a dog in the fight, I just like rummaging through the data. But if, instead of writing primarily for and to the benefit of silver-tongued alphas as you do, we think of the above as being relevant to a broader and presumably majority-beta audience, the point that marriage (or long-term commitment, if you prefer–marriage just happens to be the only reliably way to track it in broad-based social surveys of which the GSS is the best of the best) does generally offer men who aren’t adept at playing the field a tolerable sexual lifestyle is at least worth considering.

Your filter, and your subsequent reactions to the things that come in through it, aren’t universally productive upon reception, even if they are perfectly valid for your target audience. By way of analogy, you’re like the entrepreneur who offers tips for the self-employed to make them more successful in their ventures while simultaneously belittling the poor suckers who go work for someone else. But a lot of those corporate cogs don’t have what it takes to run their own businesses and, despite your best advice, are staring down economic ruin if they go the route you prescribe. Many of them will be better off working for someone else. As someone who is grounded in the realities of HBD, it’s difficult for me to conceive it being otherwise.