Ignore the Cads

On Dalrock’s post “The Great Douchebag Mystery” I got into a discussion with a couple of people about the Zippy Hypothesis (described in previous posts as the theory that women like cads because they like what men like and men admire cads, in a nutshell). I’ll recap it. Deti mocked Zippy and his hypothesis in the thread without actually mentioning him by name. Here was my response:

But wait, Dalrock.

You imply that men become douchebags because women like douchebags.

There are some tradcons, though, who ridiculously claim that women like douchebags because lesser men “look up to” douchebags.

-AKA Zippy.

So according to tradcons, it’s the non-douchebags’ fault that women like douchebags.

“Tradcons” meaning Zippy, and possibly some of his readers.

But anyway, why do you act like this is such a ridiculous notion? Women like status and power, and if men put douchebags on a pedestal it gives them status and power. It’s a pretty straightforward and eminently defensible correlation.

I don’t know if it’s TRUE, but it’s certainly worth some exploration.

A few people, including Dalrock, weighed in with their thoughts on it. All disagreed with the Hypothesis, but most were fairly gracious about it at least. And then there was jf12. He responded to me with this gem:

Rhetorical questions aren’t for cynical purposes, especially when they are so answerable. You know what increases a douchebag’s sexual attractiveness to women” The douchebag’s sexual attractiveness to other women. NOTHING other men say or do about him really matters to women’s preferences; only what women say and do. In fact, the more other men tell women “You better stay away from him,” the more women will go after him. It doesn’t matter that you feign ignorance of this phenomenon: e.g. women seeking conjugal visits with serial killers. We know you know.

What a bizarre response, and not a particularly good one besides. I came back with this next comment, but I’m posting it here because right now Dalrock is not moderating the thread and as a result my post is stuck in limbo.

Okay, leaving aside your weird assumptions about my motives, knowledge, or lack thereof…

You actually just contradicted yourself, and pretty obviously. You said:

NOTHING other men say or do about him really matters to women’s preferences…

But then you said,

In fact, the more other men tell women “You better stay away from him,” the more women will go after him.

CONCLUSION: Stop pretending cads are important.

So altogether I’m not so sure that Zippy’s hypothesis came out of that mess looking too badly. I’m moving towards the position that both the traditional hypothesis (women like bad boys because it’s in their nature) and the Zippy Hypothesis both have their merits, and neither is true in its entirety. But in any case jf12’s response, besides apparently showcasing his amazing ability to read my mind, is pretty obviously self-contradictory. I DO think it points to the idea that perhaps the best method of dealing with the cads is exactly what the Zippy Hypothesis would recommend: Just ignore them.