Because I suspect that men find it more appealing to think of themselves as clever, seductive villains than as just catching up to normal people.
True, and quite insightful—but only if “normal” is prescriptive rather than descriptive. (The norm, in the sense of actual average, is to be less than skillful.)
What you are referring to as “normal” is what PUAish people refer to as “natural”. i.e., a person who is naturally good at the social games and graces, or has learned them implicitly.
Women, as a rule, are themselves “naturals” in this sense, which results in them thinking that any “normal” guy ought to know what to do.
Right… the level of social skills that men need to be considered dateable by average women is not the level of social skills that the average guy has. It’s something higher; in fact, it might even be above the female average.
Women have the right to whatever preferences they have. But if the above fact is true (that average men aren’t good enough for average women), then you quickly realize that it leads to a broken system of supply and demand.
Right… the level of social skills that men need to be considered dateable by average women is not the level of social skills that the average guy has. It’s something higher; in fact, it might even be above the female average.
Do you have any rigorous evidence for this, or is it only based on your personal experiences or perceptions? Because it sounds remarkably close to something I hear a lot from women, which is that men have unreasonable expectations re: women’s personal appearance, beyond what “real women” can live up to. My answer is the same in both cases: in practice, people adjust their expectations according to what is available. Most people don’t see celibacy as a real option, so they’re more likely to try for the best available partner than just give up on mating.
On the other hand, women are certainly more willing to go without sex in the short term than are men, on average. Maybe that’s what’s leading to your perception of a mismatch between supply and demand?
it sounds remarkably close to something I hear a lot from women, which is that men have unreasonable expectations re: women’s personal appearance, beyond what “real women” can live up to.
Note that this isn’t inconsistent with ev-psych: our preferences weren’t evolved for the purpose of making us all happy. Instead, they’re tuned to make us want better than whatever the other guy or gal has got.
My answer is the same in both cases: in practice, people adjust their expectations according to what is available.
Note that in both the male and female complaint, the unstated part is that men/women the complainer finds attractive are the ones with the “impossibly high” standard. The reason the other party can have that high standard, is because they themselves are more of a “catch” and can thus be more selective.
IOW, men are saying that the women who meet their unreasonable expectations expect too much of them, and the women are saying that the men who meet their unreasonable expectations expect too much of them. In both cases, this is consistent with the notion that the average guy or gal is looking for an above-average gal or guy, respectively… and suggests that our evolved preference is to look for someone just out of our own (perceived) league.
(I think some experiments have been done to test that idea, but I don’t recall the specifics at the moment.)
IOW, men are saying that the women who meet their unreasonable expectations expect too much of them, and the women are saying that the men who meet their unreasonable expectations expect too much of them. In both cases, this is consistent with the notion that the average guy or gal is looking for an above-average gal or guy, respectively… and suggests that our evolved preference is to look for someone just out of our own (perceived) league.
Yes, but if women are more selective in general, then this situation is not symmetrical: women are more likely to try to date “out of their league.” Or they perceive their “league” to be high than men at the same percentile of attractiveness think that their own league is.
My hypothesis is that the difference between minimum or maximum percentile attractiveness of the mates you are aiming for, and your own percentile attractiveness, is greater for women.
For instance, it could be the case that a man in the 50th percentile of male attractiveness views his “league” to be the 45th percentile to the 60th percentile of female attractiveness. Although he might sometimes make a pass at women of higher percentile attractiveness, most of his mating effort occurs in that window.
In contrast, a woman in the 50th percentile of female attractiveness may view her “league” to be the 55th to to 70th percentile of male attractiveness.
If it’s the case that such dynamics are in play, they would predict certain problems in the dating world that match up well to my experience in real life. The result is that both sexes are often in a situation where “what you want, you can’t get, and what you get, you don’t want.”
And note, I’m not saying that this broken system is women’s fault for being prissy princesses, or something like that. The problem isn’t women’s preferences and selectivity in a vacuum, the problem is the gap between women’s preferences and men’s traits, and the gap between female and male selectivity. (PUAs try to solve this problem by changing men’s traits to be more in line with female preferences, such that less women are forced to select them out.)
And note, I’m not saying that this broken system is women’s fault for being prissy princesses, or something like that. The problem isn’t women’s preferences and selectivity in a vacuum, the problem is the gap between women’s preferences and men’s traits, and the gap between female and male selectivity.
I’m confused. The data you present shows that women are more picky about personality, and men are more picky about looks. But what (of your data) indicates that “the difference between minimum or maximum percentile attractiveness of the mates you are aiming for, and your own percentile attractiveness, is greater for women”? You can break personality into several separate traits, yes, but you can break looks into several separate traits too, so it isn’t clear that women have more requirements on more traits.
The data you present shows that women are more picky about personality, and men are more picky about looks. But what (of your data) indicates that “the difference between minimum or maximum percentile attractiveness of the mates you are aiming for, and your own percentile attractiveness, is greater for women”?
You’re correct, most of my discussion in this case hinges on the proposition that women are more selective in general. I haven’t yet presented evidence on that proposition, and it will take me some time to write it up.
For now, people can read my post by assuming for the sake of argument that women are more selective in general.
I am not sure how assuming that women are more selective in general does a better job of explaining observations than assuming that both sexes tend to desire mates who are “out of their league”. In both cases, this would create a situation where, as you put it, “what you want, you can’t get, and what you get, you don’t want.” Why do you favor the hypothesis that it’s only women who are over-selective?
Why do you favor the hypothesis that it’s only women who are over-selective?
There is some more research on the subject that I need to write up, but you can start with the OkCupid analysis for now.
Look at the boxes showing the reply rates by race. They have row and column weighted averages, and at the bottom right there seems to be the total weighted average response rate. Men get responses to 27.6% of their messages. Women get responses to 42% of their messages.
On OkCupid, women are more selective in who they respond to. How much does this generalize to more general male-female interaction? That’s uncertain, but it show lead us to raise our probability for the hypothesis that women are more selective in general.
I’ve seen the OkTrends results before, but I’m really not comfortable making any general inferences from them. Are there even roughly equal numbers of men and women on OkCupid? Is that information available anywhere?
There is some more research on the subject that I need to write up
Are there even roughly equal numbers of men and women on OkCupid?
That would be highly unlikely.
Is that information available anywhere?
It isn’t the sort of thing that I would expect a dating site to advertise. “10:1 ratio of guys to girls” (for example) isn’t the kind of message that is well calibrated to attract participants of either sex.
I have seen research done into sex ratios for online dating sites in general, not limited to OkCupid and the balance is far from even.
That’s what I would guess also, and it would certainly go a long way toward explaining why women on OkCupid appear to be so much more selective: 1) They can afford to be and 2) Their inboxes are too full to respond to a large fraction of their messages even if they wanted to.
That’s true. If OkCupid has a high male:female ratio, then it does make those numbers seem like weaker evidence of general female selectivity. But I would like to make a point:
Why are there more men on online dating websites? Could it be because they are less likely to have adequate options in real life because, perhaps… women in real life are more selective?
EDIT: Whoa! Actually, OkCupid published their stats, and they have a nearly 1:1 gender ratio. It really depends on age group there are more 18 year-old women than men by 3:2, and more mid-twenties men by about 6:7. But it’s mostly pretty damn close. So I’m going to maintain my hypothesis of greater female selectivity.
Whoa! Actually, OkCupid published their stats, and they have a nearly 1:1 gender ratio.
I thought that initially as well when I saw that post but if you look at the subheading of the graph ‘Distribution of Singles on OkCupid, By Age’ it says ‘in our sample pool of 100,000 of each’ so it is not clear to me that they actually have a 1:1 gender ratio. Presumably the sample pools were chosen to be reflective of actual age distributions within genders but it doesn’t necessarily follow that the overall gender ratios are 1:1.
That’s what I would guess also, and it would certainly go a long way toward explaining why women on OkCupid appear to be so much more selective:
That’s what I had been lead to expect, so my own anecdotal experience surprised me. The majority of my interactions on OkCupid, including those that have lead on to dating and relationships, have been initiated by the women in question. But I’m not complaining! ;)
Why do you favor the hypothesis that it’s only women who are over-selective?
Trivial understanding of game theory in an evolutionary context, observation of human behavior or accepting the nearly universally acknowledged stereotype (or generalisation) would suggest this hypothesis. Since evolution doesn’t ‘care’ at all about our happiness and given the payoffs for human mating it would be extremely surprising if female instincts were well calibrated for ensuring the individual’s wellbeing. The payoffs for males are such that it would be credible to hypothesise from evolutionary reasoning that their selectiveness would any one of too low, just right or too high for the males individual wellbeing.
Trivial understanding of game theory in an evolutionary context, observation of human behavior or accepting the nearly universally acknowledged stereotype (or generalisation) would suggest this hypothesis. [emphasis added]
A slightly less trivial understanding suggests that a human male’s selectiveness will be an increasing function of the investment he expects to make in the resulting offspring.
A slightly less trivial understanding suggests that a human male’s selectiveness will be an increasing function of the investment he expects to make in the resulting offspring.
Exactly. This is what allows me to make the claim in the final sentence:
The payoffs for males are such that it would be credible to hypothesise from evolutionary reasoning that their selectiveness would any one of too low, just right or too high for the males individual wellbeing.
Do you have any rigorous evidence for this, or is it only based on your personal experiences or perceptions?
I don’t have evidence that’s tested this hypothesis specifically (that the average man isn’t good enough for the average woman, particularly in the area of social skills), but there are several lines of scientific evidence that suggest it.
Women’s physical attractiveness —but not their personality scores —predicted their own, their partner’s, and observers’ evaluations of interaction quality, with more attractive women experiencing better quality interactions than less attractive women. Conversely, men’s personality scores —extraversion, in particular —predicted their own and observers’ ratings of the quality of their interactions, with more extraverted men experiencing better quality interactions than less extraverted men. Men’s physical attractiveness was unrelated to any measure of interaction quality.
The finding that female interest in men is loaded on extraversion is consistent with women finding male social skills important. Of course, this doesn’t tell us how average male social skills measure up to the requirement of the average female.
In general, women seem to be more selective than men about all traits other than looks.
If it’s the case that women are more selective than men in general (even taking into account men’s greater selectivity for looks), or require higher levels of certain personality traits than are present in the male population, that could indeed create weird issues of supply and demand. This isn’t the fault of an individual women; the difficultly is the weight of aggregate female preferences.
My answer is the same in both cases: in practice, people adjust their expectations according to what is available. Most people don’t see celibacy as a real option, so they’re more likely to try for the best available partner than just give up on mating.
Don’t forgot the option of multiple people dating the same person. Humans are considered a mildly polygynous species.
The kind of scenario I’m imagining is if two women of average attractiveness both want a man of slightly above average attractiveness (attractiveness, in this case, means more than just looks). Either they both go out with him, or one of them goes out with him and the other goes out with nobody and lusts for him. Since one man is monopolizing the sexual attention of two women, the supply of women of average attractiveness is choked, leaving less possible partners for men of average attractiveness.
Of course, two men often go after the same woman. Yet if it’s true that women are more selective in general, then it’s just a lot more likely to see the situation where two women want the same guy and neither of them will settle for an inferior guy. So it’s more common for the supply of women at any level of attractiveness to be choked.
OkCupid also found that women rate 80% of men as below average in attractiveness while men have a much more symmetric distribution of attractiveness ratings with pretty much 50% of women rated below average and 50% above. Men on the other hand are much more likely to message the most attractive women while women are actually most likely to message men rated as slightly below average in attractiveness. As OkCupid puts it:
As you can see from the gray line, women rate an incredible 80% of guys as worse-looking than medium. Very harsh. On the other hand, when it comes to actual messaging, women shift their expectations only just slightly ahead of the curve, which is a healthier pattern than guys’ pursuing the all-but-unattainable. But with the basic ratings so out-of-whack, the two curves together suggest some strange possibilities for the female thought process, the most salient of which is that the average-looking woman has convinced herself that the vast majority of males aren’t good enough for her, but she then goes right out and messages them anyway.
Are you seriously suggesting that women are naturally good at social games and grace, but that men are not? And moreover that despite apparently being better at social intuition, they fail to understand that men aren’t?
This thread is getting increasingly hostile, but none of it seems to be flamebait—apparently many LWers have genuinely warped perceptions about gender.
And moreover that despite apparently being better at social intuition, they fail to understand that men aren’t?
I don’t suggest that women fail to understand that individual men aren’t good at social perception or intuition (as you imply, that would indeed be contradictory); I’m merely suggesting that women are prone to perceiving this failure as meaning the men in question are broken (i.e. not “real” men).
The default tendency is for people to assume that people unlike themselves are defective; it is an uncommon person who can look at a typical person of the opposite sex and not see an apparently-broken person of their own sex.
(Presumably, this is because our mental machinery for predicting others’ behavior relies far too heavily on our own habits, experiences, ways of thinking, etc.)
I don’t suggest that women fail to understand that individual men aren’t good at social perception or intuition (as you imply, that would indeed be contradictory); I’m merely suggesting that women are prone to perceiving this failure as meaning the men in question are broken (i.e. not “real” people).
Fixed that for you.
The default tendency is for people to assume that people unlike themselves are defective; it is an uncommon person who can look at a typical person of the opposite sex and not see an apparently-broken person of their own sex.
(Presumably, this is because our mental machinery for predicting others’ behavior relies far too heavily on our own habits, experiences, ways of thinking, etc.)
I’ve been thinking about that. I’m not sure what the solution is. Thinking that other’s behaviour is unlike our own is very unhelpful, because it doesn’t say which bits are unlike our own.
Also people tend to form groups of people like themselves, so there is less data to gather naturally. I’m also not sure fiction helps either, it tends to be unrealistic.
… apparently many LWers have genuinely warped perceptions about gender.
Well, when you get much of your information about gender from online discussions which are totally dominated by your own sex, of course you develop some weird ideas.
Just for laughs, and perhaps a bit of consciousness-raising, I would like to lurk a bit at a female-dominated forum which discusses gender politics, inter-gender communication, and perhaps the female variant of PUA (a la Cosmo magazine, but non commercial). Someplace halfway intelligent. Anyone have any suggestions?
Are you seriously suggesting that women are naturally good at social games and grace, but that men are not?
Let me put it this way: there are far more creepy men than there are creepy women. And there are more autistic men than autistic women. I strongly suspect that women are less likely to fail as badly in social situations as some men sometimes do. And I don’t mean ordinary social failure, I mean “Go away or I’m calling the police” level of social failure.
And moreover that despite apparently being better at social intuition, they fail to understand that men aren’t?
Not that they don’t understand, just that individual women tend to judge men harshly for not living up to the standards that they set.
This thread is generating an interesting collective definition of creepy. I don’t think I disagree with it, but it’s most interesting to me because it seems to not fit any of the concise definitions that have appeared.
I think it’s a big jump from
women are less likely to fail [… in a] “Go away or I’m calling the police” level of social failure.
to
Women, as a rule, are themselves “naturals” in this sense [naturally good at the social games and graces]
I guess I think of those as being different enough to not fall on the same spectrum. To me, someone who is not good at the social graces is still very far away from someone upon whom the police could reasonably be called. Also, as remarked elsewhere in this thread, women generally feel much more physically threatened by men than vice versa, so are much more likely to want to call the police in an extremely uncomfortable situation.
From
Women, as a rule, are themselves “naturals” in this sense, which results in them thinking that any “normal” guy ought to know what to do.
Which is ridiculous. [EDIT: I mean ridiculous in the sense of being stupid, not in being wrong. It certainly could be valid, which would be unfortunate but not the stupidest thing that’s true for humans by a long shot]
I think that straight women generally do have higher standards for how socially skilled men are than straight men hold for women. I just don’t think that this condition is caused by women being more socially savvy than men. It’s also really hard to measure, because social skill means different things for men in women following traditional gender roles.
I think that straight women generally do have higher standards for how socially skilled men are than straight men hold for women. I just don’t think that this condition is caused by women being more socially savvy than men.
Perhaps the assumption that wasn’t explicit enough in the way I said it, is that women are more socially savvy at relating to women than men are. (The term “natural” in PUA lingo more specifically refers to “naturally good at meeting/relating to women”.)
It’s pretty straightforward, though, how this leads to the PUA meme that “women are more socially savvy”, when a more precise claim would be to say that “women are generally more sensitive to the social nuances of men’s behavior than are the men performing those behaviors.” The latter is the point the PUAs are trying to teach, namely that men need to learn to be able to see their own behavior from someone else’s point of view.
(That the typical model for “someone else” used in such trainings is often “women of above-average physical attractiveness in bars and nightclubs” is a separate issue, which has spawned other debates here in the past!)
In general, problems occur when fairly narrowly-focused PUA concepts are interpreted without the aid of the background assumptions underlying them. Unfortunately, it’s usually difficult for human beings to identify their background assumptions, because, well, they’re in the background, not to mention being assumptions. ;-)
“why are descriptions of it so often done in such a bad way”?
Because I suspect that men find it more appealing to think of themselves as clever, seductive villains than as just catching up to normal people.
True, and quite insightful—but only if “normal” is prescriptive rather than descriptive. (The norm, in the sense of actual average, is to be less than skillful.)
What you are referring to as “normal” is what PUAish people refer to as “natural”. i.e., a person who is naturally good at the social games and graces, or has learned them implicitly.
Women, as a rule, are themselves “naturals” in this sense, which results in them thinking that any “normal” guy ought to know what to do.
Right… the level of social skills that men need to be considered dateable by average women is not the level of social skills that the average guy has. It’s something higher; in fact, it might even be above the female average.
Women have the right to whatever preferences they have. But if the above fact is true (that average men aren’t good enough for average women), then you quickly realize that it leads to a broken system of supply and demand.
Do you have any rigorous evidence for this, or is it only based on your personal experiences or perceptions? Because it sounds remarkably close to something I hear a lot from women, which is that men have unreasonable expectations re: women’s personal appearance, beyond what “real women” can live up to. My answer is the same in both cases: in practice, people adjust their expectations according to what is available. Most people don’t see celibacy as a real option, so they’re more likely to try for the best available partner than just give up on mating.
On the other hand, women are certainly more willing to go without sex in the short term than are men, on average. Maybe that’s what’s leading to your perception of a mismatch between supply and demand?
Note that this isn’t inconsistent with ev-psych: our preferences weren’t evolved for the purpose of making us all happy. Instead, they’re tuned to make us want better than whatever the other guy or gal has got.
Note that in both the male and female complaint, the unstated part is that men/women the complainer finds attractive are the ones with the “impossibly high” standard. The reason the other party can have that high standard, is because they themselves are more of a “catch” and can thus be more selective.
IOW, men are saying that the women who meet their unreasonable expectations expect too much of them, and the women are saying that the men who meet their unreasonable expectations expect too much of them. In both cases, this is consistent with the notion that the average guy or gal is looking for an above-average gal or guy, respectively… and suggests that our evolved preference is to look for someone just out of our own (perceived) league.
(I think some experiments have been done to test that idea, but I don’t recall the specifics at the moment.)
Yes, but if women are more selective in general, then this situation is not symmetrical: women are more likely to try to date “out of their league.” Or they perceive their “league” to be high than men at the same percentile of attractiveness think that their own league is.
My hypothesis is that the difference between minimum or maximum percentile attractiveness of the mates you are aiming for, and your own percentile attractiveness, is greater for women.
For instance, it could be the case that a man in the 50th percentile of male attractiveness views his “league” to be the 45th percentile to the 60th percentile of female attractiveness. Although he might sometimes make a pass at women of higher percentile attractiveness, most of his mating effort occurs in that window.
In contrast, a woman in the 50th percentile of female attractiveness may view her “league” to be the 55th to to 70th percentile of male attractiveness.
If it’s the case that such dynamics are in play, they would predict certain problems in the dating world that match up well to my experience in real life. The result is that both sexes are often in a situation where “what you want, you can’t get, and what you get, you don’t want.”
And note, I’m not saying that this broken system is women’s fault for being prissy princesses, or something like that. The problem isn’t women’s preferences and selectivity in a vacuum, the problem is the gap between women’s preferences and men’s traits, and the gap between female and male selectivity. (PUAs try to solve this problem by changing men’s traits to be more in line with female preferences, such that less women are forced to select them out.)
Another instance of DHTP,HTG!
I knew you’d get that acronym.
I’m confused. The data you present shows that women are more picky about personality, and men are more picky about looks. But what (of your data) indicates that “the difference between minimum or maximum percentile attractiveness of the mates you are aiming for, and your own percentile attractiveness, is greater for women”? You can break personality into several separate traits, yes, but you can break looks into several separate traits too, so it isn’t clear that women have more requirements on more traits.
You’re correct, most of my discussion in this case hinges on the proposition that women are more selective in general. I haven’t yet presented evidence on that proposition, and it will take me some time to write it up.
For now, people can read my post by assuming for the sake of argument that women are more selective in general.
I am not sure how assuming that women are more selective in general does a better job of explaining observations than assuming that both sexes tend to desire mates who are “out of their league”. In both cases, this would create a situation where, as you put it, “what you want, you can’t get, and what you get, you don’t want.” Why do you favor the hypothesis that it’s only women who are over-selective?
There is some more research on the subject that I need to write up, but you can start with the OkCupid analysis for now.
Look at the boxes showing the reply rates by race. They have row and column weighted averages, and at the bottom right there seems to be the total weighted average response rate. Men get responses to 27.6% of their messages. Women get responses to 42% of their messages.
On OkCupid, women are more selective in who they respond to. How much does this generalize to more general male-female interaction? That’s uncertain, but it show lead us to raise our probability for the hypothesis that women are more selective in general.
I’ve seen the OkTrends results before, but I’m really not comfortable making any general inferences from them. Are there even roughly equal numbers of men and women on OkCupid? Is that information available anywhere?
I’ll be interested to read it.
That would be highly unlikely.
It isn’t the sort of thing that I would expect a dating site to advertise. “10:1 ratio of guys to girls” (for example) isn’t the kind of message that is well calibrated to attract participants of either sex.
I have seen research done into sex ratios for online dating sites in general, not limited to OkCupid and the balance is far from even.
That’s what I would guess also, and it would certainly go a long way toward explaining why women on OkCupid appear to be so much more selective: 1) They can afford to be and 2) Their inboxes are too full to respond to a large fraction of their messages even if they wanted to.
That’s true. If OkCupid has a high male:female ratio, then it does make those numbers seem like weaker evidence of general female selectivity. But I would like to make a point:
Why are there more men on online dating websites? Could it be because they are less likely to have adequate options in real life because, perhaps… women in real life are more selective?
EDIT: Whoa! Actually, OkCupid published their stats, and they have a nearly 1:1 gender ratio. It really depends on age group there are more 18 year-old women than men by 3:2, and more mid-twenties men by about 6:7. But it’s mostly pretty damn close. So I’m going to maintain my hypothesis of greater female selectivity.
(...and I need to recreate my account.)
I thought that initially as well when I saw that post but if you look at the subheading of the graph ‘Distribution of Singles on OkCupid, By Age’ it says ‘in our sample pool of 100,000 of each’ so it is not clear to me that they actually have a 1:1 gender ratio. Presumably the sample pools were chosen to be reflective of actual age distributions within genders but it doesn’t necessarily follow that the overall gender ratios are 1:1.
Right. Must have missed that up late last night. I stand corrected.
That’s what I had been lead to expect, so my own anecdotal experience surprised me. The majority of my interactions on OkCupid, including those that have lead on to dating and relationships, have been initiated by the women in question. But I’m not complaining! ;)
Trivial understanding of game theory in an evolutionary context, observation of human behavior or accepting the nearly universally acknowledged stereotype (or generalisation) would suggest this hypothesis. Since evolution doesn’t ‘care’ at all about our happiness and given the payoffs for human mating it would be extremely surprising if female instincts were well calibrated for ensuring the individual’s wellbeing. The payoffs for males are such that it would be credible to hypothesise from evolutionary reasoning that their selectiveness would any one of too low, just right or too high for the males individual wellbeing.
A slightly less trivial understanding suggests that a human male’s selectiveness will be an increasing function of the investment he expects to make in the resulting offspring.
Exactly. This is what allows me to make the claim in the final sentence:
I don’t have evidence that’s tested this hypothesis specifically (that the average man isn’t good enough for the average woman, particularly in the area of social skills), but there are several lines of scientific evidence that suggest it.
See this study by Berry and Miller for instance:
The finding that female interest in men is loaded on extraversion is consistent with women finding male social skills important. Of course, this doesn’t tell us how average male social skills measure up to the requirement of the average female.
In general, women seem to be more selective than men about all traits other than looks.
See Botwin and Buss 1997:
Also, see OkCupid research, which found that women are pickier about race than men.
If it’s the case that women are more selective than men in general (even taking into account men’s greater selectivity for looks), or require higher levels of certain personality traits than are present in the male population, that could indeed create weird issues of supply and demand. This isn’t the fault of an individual women; the difficultly is the weight of aggregate female preferences.
Don’t forgot the option of multiple people dating the same person. Humans are considered a mildly polygynous species.
The kind of scenario I’m imagining is if two women of average attractiveness both want a man of slightly above average attractiveness (attractiveness, in this case, means more than just looks). Either they both go out with him, or one of them goes out with him and the other goes out with nobody and lusts for him. Since one man is monopolizing the sexual attention of two women, the supply of women of average attractiveness is choked, leaving less possible partners for men of average attractiveness.
Of course, two men often go after the same woman. Yet if it’s true that women are more selective in general, then it’s just a lot more likely to see the situation where two women want the same guy and neither of them will settle for an inferior guy. So it’s more common for the supply of women at any level of attractiveness to be choked.
OkCupid also found that women rate 80% of men as below average in attractiveness while men have a much more symmetric distribution of attractiveness ratings with pretty much 50% of women rated below average and 50% above. Men on the other hand are much more likely to message the most attractive women while women are actually most likely to message men rated as slightly below average in attractiveness. As OkCupid puts it:
Are you seriously suggesting that women are naturally good at social games and grace, but that men are not? And moreover that despite apparently being better at social intuition, they fail to understand that men aren’t?
This thread is getting increasingly hostile, but none of it seems to be flamebait—apparently many LWers have genuinely warped perceptions about gender.
I don’t suggest that women fail to understand that individual men aren’t good at social perception or intuition (as you imply, that would indeed be contradictory); I’m merely suggesting that women are prone to perceiving this failure as meaning the men in question are broken (i.e. not “real” men).
The default tendency is for people to assume that people unlike themselves are defective; it is an uncommon person who can look at a typical person of the opposite sex and not see an apparently-broken person of their own sex.
(Presumably, this is because our mental machinery for predicting others’ behavior relies far too heavily on our own habits, experiences, ways of thinking, etc.)
Fixed that for you.
This bears repeating.
And read this, too.
I’ve been thinking about that. I’m not sure what the solution is. Thinking that other’s behaviour is unlike our own is very unhelpful, because it doesn’t say which bits are unlike our own.
Also people tend to form groups of people like themselves, so there is less data to gather naturally. I’m also not sure fiction helps either, it tends to be unrealistic.
Well, when you get much of your information about gender from online discussions which are totally dominated by your own sex, of course you develop some weird ideas.
Just for laughs, and perhaps a bit of consciousness-raising, I would like to lurk a bit at a female-dominated forum which discusses gender politics, inter-gender communication, and perhaps the female variant of PUA (a la Cosmo magazine, but non commercial). Someplace halfway intelligent. Anyone have any suggestions?
Jezebel for the lighter side, Feministe or Pandagon for heavy politics.
Never found them that rational, unfortunately.
There’s also Feministing… the level of discussion isn’t close to LW level, but it’s not terrible.
Let me put it this way: there are far more creepy men than there are creepy women. And there are more autistic men than autistic women. I strongly suspect that women are less likely to fail as badly in social situations as some men sometimes do. And I don’t mean ordinary social failure, I mean “Go away or I’m calling the police” level of social failure.
Not that they don’t understand, just that individual women tend to judge men harshly for not living up to the standards that they set.
This thread is generating an interesting collective definition of creepy. I don’t think I disagree with it, but it’s most interesting to me because it seems to not fit any of the concise definitions that have appeared.
I think it’s a big jump from
to
I guess I think of those as being different enough to not fall on the same spectrum. To me, someone who is not good at the social graces is still very far away from someone upon whom the police could reasonably be called. Also, as remarked elsewhere in this thread, women generally feel much more physically threatened by men than vice versa, so are much more likely to want to call the police in an extremely uncomfortable situation.
From
I pulled out
Which is ridiculous. [EDIT: I mean ridiculous in the sense of being stupid, not in being wrong. It certainly could be valid, which would be unfortunate but not the stupidest thing that’s true for humans by a long shot]
I think that straight women generally do have higher standards for how socially skilled men are than straight men hold for women. I just don’t think that this condition is caused by women being more socially savvy than men. It’s also really hard to measure, because social skill means different things for men in women following traditional gender roles.
Perhaps the assumption that wasn’t explicit enough in the way I said it, is that women are more socially savvy at relating to women than men are. (The term “natural” in PUA lingo more specifically refers to “naturally good at meeting/relating to women”.)
It’s pretty straightforward, though, how this leads to the PUA meme that “women are more socially savvy”, when a more precise claim would be to say that “women are generally more sensitive to the social nuances of men’s behavior than are the men performing those behaviors.” The latter is the point the PUAs are trying to teach, namely that men need to learn to be able to see their own behavior from someone else’s point of view.
(That the typical model for “someone else” used in such trainings is often “women of above-average physical attractiveness in bars and nightclubs” is a separate issue, which has spawned other debates here in the past!)
In general, problems occur when fairly narrowly-focused PUA concepts are interpreted without the aid of the background assumptions underlying them. Unfortunately, it’s usually difficult for human beings to identify their background assumptions, because, well, they’re in the background, not to mention being assumptions. ;-)
Good point.
Indeed it is. I think the implication was supposed to be “Women will conclude that many men aren’t normal, when in fact they are”.
Indeed it is. I think the implication was supposed to be “Women will conclude that many men aren’t normal, when in fact they are”.
It is more fun to think of yourself as some kind of scientific mastermind or wizard than as a special ed. student.