It seems that women are borderline bisexual by nature. For example, heterosexual women are significantly more likely to want to dance with other women than heterosexual men are to dance with other men, and the same thing is true for all sorts of other activities that have some kind of borderline relationship with sexual activities. So perhaps there is a kind of implicit bisexuality there which is more often made explicit in the case of Less Wrong women than other women, perhaps on account of higher introspection or the like.
I am suspicious of this as an explanation. Most straight-identified women I know who will dance with/jokingly flirt with other women are in fact straight and not ‘implicitly bisexual’; plenty of them live in environments where there’d be no social cost to being bisexual, and they are introspective enough that ‘they are actually just straight and don’t interpret those behaviors as sexual/romantic’ seems most likely.
Men face higher social penalties for being gay or bisexual (and presumably for being thought to be gay or bisexual) which seems a more likely explanation for why they don’t do things that could be perceived as showing romantic interest toward men (like dancing or ‘joking’ flirting) than that women are borderline bisexual by nature.
It seems that women are borderline bisexual by nature. For example, heterosexual women are significantly more likely to want to dance with other women than heterosexual men are to dance with other men, and the same thing is true for all sorts of other activities that have some kind of borderline relationship with sexual activities. So perhaps there is a kind of implicit bisexuality there which is more often made explicit in the case of Less Wrong women than other women, perhaps on account of higher introspection or the like.
I am suspicious of this as an explanation. Most straight-identified women I know who will dance with/jokingly flirt with other women are in fact straight and not ‘implicitly bisexual’; plenty of them live in environments where there’d be no social cost to being bisexual, and they are introspective enough that ‘they are actually just straight and don’t interpret those behaviors as sexual/romantic’ seems most likely.
Men face higher social penalties for being gay or bisexual (and presumably for being thought to be gay or bisexual) which seems a more likely explanation for why they don’t do things that could be perceived as showing romantic interest toward men (like dancing or ‘joking’ flirting) than that women are borderline bisexual by nature.