Thanks to everyone who answered/commented! Here’s a takeaway from the discussion so far, where I feel I’m less confused about something that confused me before.
There is a vague cluster that can be described as “straight men who are socially awkward STEM nerds”. Let’s call it “the Cluster” for now. Online, you often encounter men from the Cluster bemoaning their lack of romantic success. That made me think that the Cluster is a great “market” for women who find this type of men attractive (i.e. it should be easy to compete there). However, in my personal experience it is not really so.
Here’s my new model of what’s happening. Men care about looks of potential lovers much more than women. Women care about status of potential lovers much more than men. Adolescents and sometimes young adults in the Cluster are low status (due to poor social skills and unusual interests) and therefore have low “romantic market value” (RMV). They are the main source of the complaints one hears. However, adults in the Cluster have great careers in STEM and are therefore high status and have high RMV. On the other hand, a woman doesn’t gain nearly as much RMV from having a great STEM career, and is therefore uncompetitive in that market unless she is also exceptionally good-looking (which I am not).
I guess my tentative actionable conclusion is that I need to aim for men who are either older, or bad-looking or doing poorly in their career despite still being intellectuals. Some kind of penniless artist types, maybe? Not sure where to find those...
However, in my personal experience it is not really so.
It might be worth thinking about where the bottleneck is. E.g. do you go on plenty of dates but they don’t lead anywhere? If not, is that because you ask people out but get rejected, or drop hints but don’t get asked out, or don’t drop hints and don’t get asked out, or?
Roughly speaking: I don’t go on many dates, I rarely ask men out, I do drop hints occasionally (without success). The actual situation is more complicated (don’t want to go into too much detail), but my overall impression is that men in the Cluster are rarely interested in me (at least, for the age group I usually interact with).
If you’re trying to penetrate the market of socially anxious STEM nerds but you’re mostly just dropping hints instead of asking people out, that might be part of the problem. Especially if you’re trying to drop hints in mostly male dominated communities; lots of STEM nerds are sort of explicitly conscious of the fact that they don’t want the one girl at such a function to be inundated with flirtations. But if you are the first to ask, this isn’t an issue.
I am not sure if you’re right or wrong, but this seems like actually the best place to start for OP. It’s all upside if the main problem is that she just needs to be much more overt about wanting to go on dates with the people she’s interested in. Perhaps no compromises needed?
Re the straight male STEM nerds: shouldn’t that be a good market for women who are into that stuff regardless, due to the uneven gender ratios? Like, if a community is heavily male dominated in the gender ratio, then presumably women in the community will need less traditional attractiveness to be competitive (relative to other communities), even if the guys primarily cared about traditional attractiveness?
Man, I don’t doubt you’re telling the truth, but I find this bizarre. As a 22yo just starting his career, I would kill to go on a couple dates with some women “in the cluster”, I just mostly never get a chance to because I don’t know any such women.
The question is what tradeoffs you’d be willing to make in other virtues in order to find a women “in the cluster” who’s available and willing to date you. A young, beautiful, friendly, ethical, successful etc. STEM-oriented woman would be, according to these ideas, in high demand as a dating or marriage partner.
We might also consider that the STEM field, unlike many others, notoriously does not select for traits like looks, wit, humor, kindness, charisma, etc. It selects for intelligence, conscientiousness, and other traits relevant to science, engineering and math. If you’re looking more for a mate than a colleague when you go on dates, you might find the things one conventionally desires in a mate unusually enriched dating outside “the cluster,” where those traits are actively selected for in for example the service industry, and perhaps also being unusually depleted among available partners inside “the cluster” since being good at STEM is probably an attractive trait for people who are also into STEM.
The oldest woman I’ve ever dated was in her thirties. Forty would be a little weird, and I probably wouldn’t instigate, but if I thought she seemed open to it I wouldn’t rule it out.
This seems like a reasonable take. You may not need to pursue men doing poorly in their careers, just men who’ve prioritized other pursuits than building a high-status career. An artist is probably a good example. You might also look for men who prioritize living close to nature, farmers, activists, teachers. or men who’ve found themselves in a caregiving role or are single dads.
I dunno, EAs who earn-to-give in lucrative jobs or do EA-aligned research have high-status careers, even if they have less money than they could have. Status is not just about money.
I think a good arbitrage for finding a male partner in the Cluster is to join a Cluster social circle which is somewhat insular, to the point where men in the social circle place a significant premium on finding a partner who’s also in the social circle. (Or, they don’t have much of a social life outside the social circle, so potential partners outside the social circle aren’t options they’re considering.)
I would suggest that you research nerdy hobbies which are popular in your area, figure out which seem most interesting to you, then go to a meetup for that hobby. Find a guy who seems suitable, explain to him that you read about the hobby online and it seemed interesting, you’re new to the hobby, and you’re looking for someone to show you the ropes. Repeat until a guy takes you under his wing. If you can’t find meetups on meetup.com, I would suggest using the Wizards of the Coast store locator, then go to the store and ask what the best event to attend is if you’re a noob at Magic the Gathering (or some other game the store caters to).
If you’ve gotten to know a guy well enough to determine that you’re interested, don’t be shy about signaling that it’s appropriate for him to escalate your relationship romantically (you don’t want him worried that you’re going to make a “women in <hobby> horror story” post about him online). You could make a little joke out of it: “I wouldn’t mind if you asked me out, by the way.” Something like that.
Thanks to everyone who answered/commented! Here’s a takeaway from the discussion so far, where I feel I’m less confused about something that confused me before.
There is a vague cluster that can be described as “straight men who are socially awkward STEM nerds”. Let’s call it “the Cluster” for now. Online, you often encounter men from the Cluster bemoaning their lack of romantic success. That made me think that the Cluster is a great “market” for women who find this type of men attractive (i.e. it should be easy to compete there). However, in my personal experience it is not really so.
Here’s my new model of what’s happening. Men care about looks of potential lovers much more than women. Women care about status of potential lovers much more than men. Adolescents and sometimes young adults in the Cluster are low status (due to poor social skills and unusual interests) and therefore have low “romantic market value” (RMV). They are the main source of the complaints one hears. However, adults in the Cluster have great careers in STEM and are therefore high status and have high RMV. On the other hand, a woman doesn’t gain nearly as much RMV from having a great STEM career, and is therefore uncompetitive in that market unless she is also exceptionally good-looking (which I am not).
I guess my tentative actionable conclusion is that I need to aim for men who are either older, or bad-looking or doing poorly in their career despite still being intellectuals. Some kind of penniless artist types, maybe? Not sure where to find those...
It might be worth thinking about where the bottleneck is. E.g. do you go on plenty of dates but they don’t lead anywhere? If not, is that because you ask people out but get rejected, or drop hints but don’t get asked out, or don’t drop hints and don’t get asked out, or?
Roughly speaking: I don’t go on many dates, I rarely ask men out, I do drop hints occasionally (without success). The actual situation is more complicated (don’t want to go into too much detail), but my overall impression is that men in the Cluster are rarely interested in me (at least, for the age group I usually interact with).
If you’re trying to penetrate the market of socially anxious STEM nerds but you’re mostly just dropping hints instead of asking people out, that might be part of the problem. Especially if you’re trying to drop hints in mostly male dominated communities; lots of STEM nerds are sort of explicitly conscious of the fact that they don’t want the one girl at such a function to be inundated with flirtations. But if you are the first to ask, this isn’t an issue.
I am not sure if you’re right or wrong, but this seems like actually the best place to start for OP. It’s all upside if the main problem is that she just needs to be much more overt about wanting to go on dates with the people she’s interested in. Perhaps no compromises needed?
Re the straight male STEM nerds: shouldn’t that be a good market for women who are into that stuff regardless, due to the uneven gender ratios? Like, if a community is heavily male dominated in the gender ratio, then presumably women in the community will need less traditional attractiveness to be competitive (relative to other communities), even if the guys primarily cared about traditional attractiveness?
That’s what I thought before, but now I think the men just date outside the community.
Man, I don’t doubt you’re telling the truth, but I find this bizarre. As a 22yo just starting his career, I would kill to go on a couple dates with some women “in the cluster”, I just mostly never get a chance to because I don’t know any such women.
The question is what tradeoffs you’d be willing to make in other virtues in order to find a women “in the cluster” who’s available and willing to date you. A young, beautiful, friendly, ethical, successful etc. STEM-oriented woman would be, according to these ideas, in high demand as a dating or marriage partner.
We might also consider that the STEM field, unlike many others, notoriously does not select for traits like looks, wit, humor, kindness, charisma, etc. It selects for intelligence, conscientiousness, and other traits relevant to science, engineering and math. If you’re looking more for a mate than a colleague when you go on dates, you might find the things one conventionally desires in a mate unusually enriched dating outside “the cluster,” where those traits are actively selected for in for example the service industry, and perhaps also being unusually depleted among available partners inside “the cluster” since being good at STEM is probably an attractive trait for people who are also into STEM.
Would you go on a date with a woman around 40 though? Tbh I would also have second thoughts about dating someone that much younger.
The oldest woman I’ve ever dated was in her thirties. Forty would be a little weird, and I probably wouldn’t instigate, but if I thought she seemed open to it I wouldn’t rule it out.
This seems like a reasonable take. You may not need to pursue men doing poorly in their careers, just men who’ve prioritized other pursuits than building a high-status career. An artist is probably a good example. You might also look for men who prioritize living close to nature, farmers, activists, teachers. or men who’ve found themselves in a caregiving role or are single dads.
Or EAs, frankly.
I dunno, EAs who earn-to-give in lucrative jobs or do EA-aligned research have high-status careers, even if they have less money than they could have. Status is not just about money.
I think a good arbitrage for finding a male partner in the Cluster is to join a Cluster social circle which is somewhat insular, to the point where men in the social circle place a significant premium on finding a partner who’s also in the social circle. (Or, they don’t have much of a social life outside the social circle, so potential partners outside the social circle aren’t options they’re considering.)
I would suggest that you research nerdy hobbies which are popular in your area, figure out which seem most interesting to you, then go to a meetup for that hobby. Find a guy who seems suitable, explain to him that you read about the hobby online and it seemed interesting, you’re new to the hobby, and you’re looking for someone to show you the ropes. Repeat until a guy takes you under his wing. If you can’t find meetups on meetup.com, I would suggest using the Wizards of the Coast store locator, then go to the store and ask what the best event to attend is if you’re a noob at Magic the Gathering (or some other game the store caters to).
If you’ve gotten to know a guy well enough to determine that you’re interested, don’t be shy about signaling that it’s appropriate for him to escalate your relationship romantically (you don’t want him worried that you’re going to make a “women in <hobby> horror story” post about him online). You could make a little joke out of it: “I wouldn’t mind if you asked me out, by the way.” Something like that.