The 80% Conundrum.

One of the most dearly held yet utterly inexplicable tenets of the MRA/PUA/creepy-Internet-men-in-general complex is the following (paraphrased):

The top 20% of men are alphas, and can get a woman at the snap of a finger. The other 80% of men are either betas who almost never get laid and have to wheedle and connive to get the scraps that they get, or omegas who can't possibly get laid no matter what.

The hole that immediately becomes apparent in this thinking (well, the second one, after the "have you ever been to Earth?" hole) is: what about teh womenz?

That is, if 80% of men are near-celibate, what the hell are 80% of women doing on a Friday night? (Even if we assume Alphas sleep around so much that all women get laid, this still leaves them alone 80% of their time, at least.) If 80% of men are involuntarily celibate, does that mean 80% of women are voluntarily celibate? 80% of us could be getting laid and loved and are just like "eh, no thanks"?

The only way this works is if women don't have sex drives, if women are so picky that they'd rather be alone together than sleep with a guy who's only average, or if 80% of women are so hideous that even a man with years of frustration wouldn't want them. I'd say something about how this doesn't fit with my observations of reality, but really, my observations of reality are so many miles away, I feel like I'm explaining to a Martian that pigs aren't green and mice don't go woof.

My observations are that the majority of people are in couples, with moderate minorities either slutting it up or voluntarily celibate, and small minorities involuntarily celibate. And most of those for reasons that have a lot more to do with themselves (either in a "life circumstances" way or a "total creeper" way) than with their desired gender or with the "system."

I guess what most of these guys are saying is "I'm not getting laid and I see that other people are, so those other people must have some super magical unfair advantage." Well, sort of, but that advantage is a lot more common than you think, and has a lot less to do with "being a millionaire lawyer with perfect abs" and a lot more to do with "acting like women are people." As long as women are The Challenge, The Enemy, The Gatekeeper, The Quarry, or any other fucked-up-all-to-hell metaphor, you're going to keep having trouble with us.

If we're people, well... no more and no less trouble than any other kind of people, is all I can promise you.