Entries Tagged 'Society' ↓

I have never been married so this post is completely biased. However, I’ve been to many weddings like most people have in their lifetimes. And in 3 cases I have been best man, twice to cousins and once to a best friend from school. I’m not sure if they were engaged but I assume they were because it’s such an excepted part of the wedding rituals. Anyway I received the following email from an American lady…

I have never done this before…messaging someone I don’t know at all, but I have a question to ask you and I would be most obliged and appreciative if you could give me an answer. I am from the United States and my boyfriend is from South Africa, and he’s lived here for about 4 years now. My boyfriend and I are planning on getting married in 2 to 3 1/2 years. He says that in South Africa (he’s from JoBurg), you only get engaged 6 months to a year before getting married… that they don’t do it like they do here (in America). I just wanted to know if this was true or if this is something that’s been fed to him in order to postpone getting engaged. I thank you for your time and would truly appreciate a reply.

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Popularity: 82% [?]

One of the most popular posts I’ve written on this blog is asking the question why several successful black South African women are dating or married to white men. Now in the post-Apartheid South Africa there is no statistics about interracial marriages as their used to be. So what I’m talking about today is purely based on local observations and inferring research by economist Ray Fisman.

So here we go. In South Africa there seems to be more and more interracial couples. Since these couples are forming part of the pop culture on television soaps opera’s they can be seen as more acceptable than ever before. There are various combinations of interracial dating e.g. white man, black woman; white man, Indian woman; white man, Chinese woman; black man, white woman; black man, coloured woman; Indian man, Chinese woman, etc. My own observations does concur the findings of Ray Fisman, i.e. women have stronger preference for men from their own race, while men have little to no preference for the race of the woman they date. I do think this criteria become even more sensitive and conservative when men and women consider marriage.

I have had relationships with Black, Coloured, Indian and White women. Only the Chinese girls have eluded me so far And I have found subtle differences here and there. Overall it was better for the same reasons or worse for the same reasons. Where possible I avoid meeting family these days to avoid giving these women the wrong idea and creating any unfounded expectations. The social conditioning has made it easier for me to meet and mingle with certain groups less so that other groups. However, I have found with my mixed racial heritage I can adjust and blend pretty easily into most groups. And I always keep them guessing.

From the article, An economist solves the mysteries of dating, to find out the conclusion about interracial dating are as follows:

“Another clear gender divide, this one less expected, emerged in our findings on racial preferences, reported in a forthcoming article in the Review of Economic Studies. Women of all the races we studied revealed a strong preference for men of their own race: White women were more likely to choose white men; black women preferred black men; East Asian women preferred East Asian men; Hispanic women preferred Hispanic men. But men don’t seem to discriminate based on race when it comes to dating. A woman’s race had no effect on the men’s choices.

Two wrinkles on this: We found no evidence of the stereotype of a white male preference for East Asian women. However, we also found that East Asian women did not discriminate against white men (only against black and Hispanic men). As a result, the white man-Asian woman pairing was the most common form of interracial dating?but because of the women’s neutrality, not the men’s pronounced preference. We also found that regional differences mattered. Daters of both sexes from south of the Mason-Dixon Line revealed much stronger same-race preferences than Northern daters.”

So what about post-Apartheid interracial dating in South Africa you ask? Well it’s happening all around you but don’t look to meet someone of the opposite sex on a online dating website or at a speed dating event. All but one of over 40 dating companies in South Africa are run by white people, and for reason (maybe its the advertising) attracts mostly white people. The black market in online dating has exploded according to my own research. And it’s a face that there are very few black or non-white people attending speed dating events.

People seem to be extremely sensitive for being classified as racists but when they completely dating profiles, it’s really is their own private right to choose to exclude or include those from other races. My own experience on DatingBuzz, the largest online dating network in South Africa, has been that by far the majority of white women opt for non-negotiable on their criteria for their ideal match. And I can prove that when I meet these same women in a social setting all those hidden or unconscious psychological prejudices disappear.

Here’s another interesting article you can explore from CNN: Could Mr Right be white? And I’d love to hear your story about an interracial relationship or fling from the past, or better yet questions about how to approach someone from another race. This blog will focus more on interracial dating advice in 2008.

Popularity: 25% [?]

Something that I’ve come to realise, the more I listen to Tom Leykis, is which women, women think are beautiful is often vastly different from the women, men find attractive.

Just think Julia Roberts vs Scarlett Johansson or Susan Sarandon vs Jessica Alba.

Anyway the women on this Maxim poll are mostly women that are considered beautiful on television and the media, and it may be perceived as politically incorrect to say that they are in fact not beautiful any more and it may be questionable if they were ever attractive, especially given the amount of plastic surgery in Hollywood.

On the other hand Esquire magazine chose Charlize Theron as their Sexiest Women Alive!

1. Sarah Jessica Parker
2. Amy Winehouse
3. Sandra Oh
4. Madonna
5. Britney Spears

I would add the entire cast of Desperate Housewives to this list minus Eva Longoria.

Who would you add to this list?

Popularity: 21% [?]

The last few days I’ve been in beautiful Cape Town, South Africa. Now I visit this wonderful city about once every two or three months and whenever I am here it feels like home - that is another story. I’d like to share with a lesson in charm school.

A few days before leaving Joburg I booked my car rental through Avis - the “we try harder company.” I got the best deal and was content. First thing I realised after checking in at the newly renamed OR Tambo International (Johannesburg International) airport is that I forgot my drivers license in my car. This was parked at the long term parking so there was no way I’m going to run out to the parking lot to retrieve it before taking off from Cape Town.

The little voice in my head told me “don’t worry you’re a damn charming fellow and whomever you speak to at Avis in Cape Town will help you out.” This is where I first programmed the belief into my own mind.

Now let’s skip to Cape Town airport and my arrival at the Avis desk. I am a “preferred member” but left my damn card also back at my place in Jozi. So with only slight hesitation I headed over to the Preferred Customer section (always a shorter queue and all for filling in a form to get a loyalty card.) I stood up straight and in my most authentically charming voice told the woman behind the counter I have a special situation , she must please try to help me out.

Read the above again - I basically issued an instruction, not a request. You see the human brain is the most programmable computer ever invented. And the great school system prepares you to become an automaton who listen to commands much more than questioning them - just look at how people around you behave. If you studies any NLP at all you’ll be smiling by now.

So as she looked at me I also looked deep into her eyes. I used a technique called “Sending” recently learned from Dr Paul Dobransky to send her good feelings. Next thing is I assumed rapport and treated her like an old friend. Smiling but not to much and always keeping very good body language - meaning confident body language. You loose more by poor body language and bad voice tone then any crap you may speak.

Anyway the end result here was that I used charm instead of flattery. I did not compliment this woman except in the end and it was sincere. Now most people in my situation would have tried to be overly nice - this is flattery. And most guys when meeting a new girl they find attractive dish out the compliments without the women doing one thing to deserve it. This woman from Avis deserved a compliment. And I may just send her some flowers before my next trip in June - this will secure continued excellent and preferential service. I like to see this as building goodwill for the future.

What’s your experience with charming people to help you out of problematic situations?

Popularity: 16% [?]

Sweet for love: The cosmopolitan Malick graces the exit of a Long Street bathroom

Not for sale: Eddie, a Long Street regular of long standing, considers his many opportunities to find true love

Royal: Prince Gilbert, a Moroccan aristocrat and experienced lover

Write to us: Is Cape Town becoming a sex tourism destination? lifestyle@sundaytimes.co.za

‘People are so horny in Cape Town. I have never seen a place where everyone is so horny’

‘There has always been a shortage of men in Cape Town: eight girls to every man. Perhaps these foreigners are simply — to coin a phrase — filling a gap’

In Cape Town’s Long Street, Lin Sampson meets delectable African boys who lay honey traps for streetwise women from Europe — or is it the other way round?.

They walk down the road, startling in their beauty, pink suit in shot silk, polished hair streaked with henna, the crackle of crocodile-skin shoes, liquorice- coloured lips, skinny vests — a posse of young black men on the town, wrapped in a shield of alpha-male ego.

They know what they want and, luckily for them, there’s a lot available.

Long Street, club land of Cape Town, awaits them, and with it a shine of foreign girls — many from the cold northern countries — with hair the colour of sauce Béarnaise.

This night — the hottest, apparently, in living memory — the street tumbles with single women of all ages, sizes and nationalities. They are nice girls from good homes, many from Scandinavia and Germany; girls who were confirmed in the Lutheran church, who have strict moral codes.

This is about the most exotic place they have encountered in their lives. It is a long, long way from Stockholm.

Some of the women are what is known as mature; many as old as 60. These women are on romance holidays, and this summer Cape Town was the hot destination.

The new Latin lover is a black African.

Prince Gilbert is a smooth-talking Cameroonian, sleekly sexy and a member of his country’s royal family. He now lives in Oslo but witnessed the Cape Town scene when he lived in the city. He says it’s tough on the guys.

“You meet quite a few girls. A young, handsome African like me feels a bit like a meat market, almost like an abuse. You have to think what you want, if you just want to have fun or whether you are really wanting to settle down. People are so horny in Cape Town. I have never seen a place where everyone is so horny,” says Gilbert.

Malick, on the other hand, says he is only looking for love. He is a sweet- faced man, lightly perfumed with something spicy. His father comes from Morocco, his mother from the Congo, and he was brought up in Kinshasa. He lives in a small apartment which he shares with others, and spends his nights in Long Street.

He has tried various entrepreneurial activities; many, it seems, failed. Surviving is a treacherous affair, tricky and often demented, but he lives life with hope and patience and good manners. His English is fractured and our conversation has a strange on-and-off quality, like a faulty electrical device, because we stop frequently for clarification.

Are these girls looking for sex? I ask Malick.

“He can’t tell you he wants sex.”

Do you mean “she”?

“Yes, she, but you can see yourself when you talk with him.”

Do you mean her? “Yes, her.

“I meet lots of girls here. I meet one from Germany. I meet another from Sweden, England, France.”

Why do they come here?

“It is the white man. How do you say? The white man is not being sexy, you can say. Black men very strong, every time they are going on.”

And do you take money? “No, no, this is for love.” Malick looks affronted and puts his hand on his heart.

“It is my dream to marry a white girl; that is what I am dreaming of all the time.”

Like Malick, Eddie, an old Long Street hand much loved by women, says he would never have sex for money. “Never, never.” He reclines in his black-and-orange floral shortie pyjama suit, much in vogue here. “But sometimes you have some financial problems and the woman can help you out, like in any normal love affair or marriage.”

When I say, But you are very sexy, Eddie, he agrees calmly: “Yes, I know.”

Later in the evening we see his black-and-orange pyjama-style outfit, his familiar swagger, batting his way down the street with a pretty blonde girl on his arm.

Biya (not his real name), another Cameroonian and habitué of Long Street, has been dating foreign girls for many years. He is as polished and lacquered as a geisha. His aim is twofold: self-preservation and self-presentation.

His voice sounds like water trickling over ice cubes.

“There are many, many women who are coming here. My friends, they like the blondes. The white skin. It does not matter the girl. It is the skin. They do not care if they are big or small, big fat girls, they do not care about the face. They want the blonde.

“What happens is that in the beginning they [the girls] don’t take it so serious, but they end up by falling in love. Some of them fall pregnant, then the whole thing becomes something else. Most of them who come have boyfriends. They leave their boyfriends behind. You say, ‘So, what are you doing?’ They say pleasure-doing. They end up by going back and dumping their boyfriends and coming back.

“Then these girls get up by getting stuck?” says Biya, pointing to his head.

“Stuck in Africa. Once you have black man, you don’t want other man.”

According to Biya many of these girls are experienced.

“They know what they want. First thing they look at your face and they imagine about size of penis. They are always in group. They sit among them and gossip about size of penis from the way you look. That is how they go for you. There are certain people who they know they have nothing and they don’t worry about them. I was so shocked when some girl greeted me and started folding my hand like this [he makes a fist]. I say, ‘What you looking for?’ She says she looking for size of penis from my hand,” he explains.

Biya says the common age group is between 23 and 50. Money is not initially discussed — that is something that comes afterwards. “With a man,” says Biya, “things are very different. Money is discussed immediately.”

The magicians of these holiday romances are the tour guides.

They are not efficient, blazored men with clipboards who know the history of Long Street, but exotic freelancers with the gift of the gab, dressed in something loudly African. Many of them have contact with the concierges of hotels who use them as taxi drivers or guides.

read the full story on the Sunday Times website here…

Popularity: 24% [?]

Today is my first post for the new year. So happy new year to all my readers. This is going to be a real cracker as my public speaking career is taking off and the media interviews keep coming in. Just this morning I did an interview on RSG, the national Afrikaans radio station here in South Africa, all about online dating, speed dating and sms dating. What I didn’t get to say was that I personally do not use any of these anymore, and only keep track for research purposes. I am aggressively using my social network to expand the potential women I am exposing myself to.

Anyway the Mail & Guardian featured a shockingly sad article about the state of American and even British men today. This article quotes a few of these men who are now seeking brides in Thailand. Now the first thing they mention is how demanding the American and British women have become. And how feminism has made a very negative impact on how modern Western women behave. The biggest problem I see is the disproportionately high expectations expectations by women toward men. The exaggerated indoctrination that modern women can have the same success as men in their careers and also have the perfect relationship with a man. This kind of expectation leads to ongoing disappointment by women.

And also you have men growing up with much fewer strong male role models. More and more are growing up without any father figure. The mothers rip into the fathers and blame them for everything. The sons dislike their fathers and does everything possible to please mommy. You end up with the common, nice guy syndrome or wussy behavior I see all the time. Men who just cannot stand their ground, set any boundaries, and behave like the confident men that women desire.

I’d be very keen to get your perspective on this story: Thai brides on the Internet.

Popularity: 12% [?]

I came across this amazing presentation by Professor Barry Schwartz, author of The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less. In this talk he outlines the problems we face in making decisions when we have so much to choose from. This is evident every time you go shopping and you are bombarded an almost unlimited variety of options to choose from compared to a few decades ago. Yes, we may call this progress. And yes, we may also call it freedom. There is a direct link between to many choices and our dissatisfaction with those choices. I’m still trying to let this all sink in because it is so profound. All I can say is that it fits in with my philosophy of simplifying my life so that I can make quicker, better choices. You can listen to it online or download the audio talk from IT Conversation website.

You can also checkout this video presentation at the annual TedTalks by Professor Schwartz.

Popularity: 11% [?]

This is an article I discovered listening to a Tom Leykis show from 10 January.
Male Pride and Female Prejudice
By JOHN TIERNEY, New York Times

When there are three women for every two men graduating from college, whom will the third woman marry?

This is not an academic question. Women, who were a minority on campuses a quarter-century ago, today make up 57 percent of undergraduates, and the gender gap is projected to reach a 60-40 ratio within a few years. So more women, especially black and Hispanic women, will be in a position to get better-paying, more prestigious jobs than their husbands, which makes for a tricky variation of “Pride and Prejudice.”

It’s still a universal truth, as Jane Austen wrote, that a man with a fortune has good marriage prospects. It’s not so universal for a woman with a fortune, because pride makes some men determined to be the chief breadwinner. But these traditionalists seem to be a dwindling minority as men have come to appreciate the value of a wife’s paycheck.

A woman’s earning power, while hardly the first thing that men look for, has become a bigger draw, as shown in surveys of college students over the decades. In 1996, for the first time, college men rated a potential mate’s financial prospects as more important than her skills as a cook or a housekeeper.

In the National Survey of Families and Households conducted during the early 1990’s, the average single man under 35 said he was quite willing to marry someone earning much more than he did. He wasn’t as interested in marrying someone making much less than he did, and he was especially reluctant to marry a woman who was unlikely to hold a steady job.

Those findings jibe with what I’ve seen. I can’t think of any friend who refused to date a woman because she made more money than he did. When friends have married women with bigger paychecks, the only financial complaints I’ve heard from them have come when a wife later decided to pursue a more meaningful - i.e., less lucrative - career.

Nor can I recall hearing guys insult a man, to his face or behind his back, for making less than his wife. The only snide comments I’ve heard have come from women talking about their friends’ husbands. I’ve heard just a couple of hardened Manhattanites do that, but I wouldn’t dismiss them as isolated reactionaries because you can see this prejudice in that national survey of singles under 35.

The women surveyed were less willing to marry down - marry someone with much lower earnings or less education - than the men were to marry up. And, in line with Jane Austen, the women were also more determined to marry up than the men were.

You may think that women’s attitudes are changing as they get more college degrees and financial independence. A women who’s an executive can afford to marry a struggling musician. But that doesn’t necessarily mean she wants to. Studies by David Buss of the University of Texas and others have shown that women with higher incomes, far from relaxing their standards, put more emphasis on a mate’s financial resources.

And once they’re married, women with higher incomes seem less tolerant of their husbands’ shortcomings. Steven Nock of the University of Virginia has found that marriages in which the wife and husband earn roughly the same are more likely to fail than other marriages. That situation doesn’t affect the husband’s commitment to the marriage, Nock concludes, but it weakens the wife’s and makes her more likely to initiate divorce.

It’s understandable that women with good paychecks have higher standards for their partners, since their superior intelligence, education and income give them what Buss calls high “mate value.” They know they’re catches and want to find someone with equal mate value - someone like Mr. Darcy instead of a dullard like the cleric spurned by Elizabeth Bennet.

“Of course, some women marry for love and find a man’s resources irrelevant,” Buss says. “It’s just that the men women tend to fall in love with, on average, happen to have more resources.”

Which means that, on average, college-educated women and high-school-educated men will have a harder time finding partners as long as educators keep ignoring the gender gap that starts long before college. Advocates for women have been so effective politically that high schools and colleges are still focusing on supposed discrimination against women: the shortage of women in science classes and on sports teams rather than the shortage of men, period. You could think of this as a victory for women’s rights, but many of the victors will end up celebrating alone.

Popularity: 16% [?]

I’ve been single for my 31 years on this planet so far. And I plan to continue that way into the foreseeable future. Some people may say its because I’m afraid of commiment because my mother and father divorced when I was a toddler and others may say I have not found the right woman yet. Both are correct and I have more reasons. Firstly, as a man, I have realised there is no benefit to getting married. Getting married is usually (note usually not always) the woman’s dream and not the man’s dream. Men dream of success in the world, becoming a sports champion, becoming a CEO, inventing something amazing and reaping the benefits of that. And sometimes a man may dream of a particular woman. But not in the same way.

Someone once told me when a man sees a woman he thinks, “I wonder what sex with her would be like.” And when a woman sees a man she may think, “I wonder what a relationships with him would be like.” This is essentially the difference between how men and women see the opposite sex. Now it is a biological fact that men can become interested in a relationship, pear-bonding and even starting a family with a particular woman. This normally happens after he had sex with her, and almost never before hand.

So its with amusement I read some of the people listed in this article on single life. The only people that are even remotely convincing is George Clooney and Charlize Theron. George Clooney certainly is proving the statement that a man has no benefit in getting married. And here’s the brief reasons why I got from Tom Leykis:

• He can still have sex with a woman
• He can have babies if he chooses too
• He can even live with a woman if he really wants too

All this while not being married! I must say because of the disaster of single mothers its best if children are born into a married life. That stability and security is important to a childs self-esteem. And especially male children which I will write about more in the future. Single mothers raising male children in most cases are a disaster in the making.

Popularity: 17% [?]

This is a post the Ideagasms Forum

There are more girls being born compared to boys. Michael Moore refers to it as, “The End of Men” in his book “Stupid White Men“. According to Michael this is happening in the USA.

When Micheal was young (I’m guessing something like 40 years ago), the ratio was about 50-50. 50-50 meaning there were about the same amount of males and females. Then the ratio went 49-51, with males in the minority. Soon the ratio will be 48-52. The book was published in 2001-2002 so we might be at 48-52. I’m not sure if this is happening all over the world, or just in the states. I would bet that it’s not an isolated thing and is global. Michael thinks more women are being born because men are dangerous, destructive, crazy, etc (which is really just a deeply entrenched ego). He goes on to say that Mother Earth’s defense to the tendencies of man is to kill them off, so that the planet can survive.

Anyway, I’ll get to the point of this post, this is only a theory. Maybe Mother Nature, God, or some other Divine Force is doing something different than weeding out males. If you think about Hermetic Circles for a second, the ones that Ideagasms is about, you will notice that there is 1 male living with multiple females. can you see where I’m going with this now? The ratio in Hermetic Circles is that females are easily the majority. Maybe this Divine Force has another grand plan for males. Good news is that we don’t need to wait. Eckhart Tolle in his book “The New Earth,” tells us how flowers were once an isolated phenomenon. Then one day after a critical threshold was reached, flowers were everywhere. Stephane also told us the story of the monkeys on two islands. Teach the first island how to do something, go to the second island, and they are already doing the task you taught the monkeys on the first island because the critical threshold was reached.

I don’t mind being one of the monkeys on the first island right now. Ok maybe I’m not on the first island yet, however Stephane is, and possibly others who inhabit this forum. So if you are ready, God Speed on your path. I will work vigorously to get on the first island. Personally I know that I need more experience with one women before I live with two or even three women. I know this will be made easier with my Chakra meds in one hand, Squirt DVD in the other and the GTP coming soon. I’ll be ready in no time.

So don’t wait for evolution to take place. It could take 500 years or more. Act now and join “Squirt Master” Stepahane and others on the first island now, it’s probably lonely for them. Actually with all those girls I’m sure their content.

Popularity: 9% [?]